Learning about the Industry - Rob Taylor

Earlier today we met Rob Taylor, who is a freelance Computer Games Journalist. I have always been interested in the possibility of following a career in the video games industry but have never been one hundred percent about it, so I was instantly intrigued once I learned of Rob's profession. Rob has a PhD in Computer Games Study and landed a job in the journalistic side of the games industry, he spends a lot of his time looking at the various new releases in computer games and writing about them in magazines, I think he has had regular input in the reviews in Future Publishing's game magazines, while not working for them directly. Rob has done TV spots and a lot of work on the media side of the video game world and doesnt know much at all on the technical side of the games. His job requires him to visit the various game companies headquarters and their institutions in order to procure information on the hottest new releases. Last year he went to the headquarters of the game company, 'Bungie', who pioneered the Halo franchise of games (one of the most popular series of games in the world and exclusive to Microsoft's 'Xbox' games console series.) He's also been to the 'Ubisoft'  (who created the hugely popular Assassin's Creed games.) headquarters in Montreal, Canada. He's also been to the 'Epic Games' hq (creaters of the Gears of War series) in Carolina as well as the Electronic Arts (EA) campus in San Francisco. Rob had a lot of enjoyment going to these places as they were often full of playful and quirky features, including slides, basketball courts, expansive cafeterias and video game lending libraries. Rob is a part of the UK game scene, and Britain's game industry is rated 3rd in the whole world. Video Games are very popular and a lucrative medium, in 2010 we had the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops, which is the highest grossing console game ever (even outselling the highest grossing blockbuster movie; Avatar). The internet is very big part of the games industry, epitomised by Xbox Live (Microsoft's gaming community) but the internet is home to many popular games, there are many role-playing games like Runescape, and even basic Facebook games like Farmville and Mafia Wars are extremely popular (Farmville had a recorded 80 million users last year!). Video games have come a long way from their roots and have become increasingly popular and lucrative over time. Britain is a large contributor to that industry and there is a lot of potential working with the big game companies like Lionhead, Rare or Rockstar North. Rob didn't want to excite us too much, and warned us that the games industry is very competitive and it's not the most profitable profession. But it can be a very enjoyable job and you get to travel all over the world, making and playing video games, it certainly souns good to me!