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| Future Publishing, Bath, BA1 2BW |
When Video Games journalist, Rob Taylor had come in to talk to us, I was interested in speaking to him about possible work placement, which the course requires that I find. He wasn’t able to provide me with two weeks but he managed to score me a single day’s work experience working on the Xbox World 360 Magazine with the Deputy Art Editor; John Strike. I was instructed to get to the Future Publishing HQ at Quay House, Bath for 10.00am. One of the amazing things about this placement was its location. The Future Quay House building has multiple floors dedicated to all the magazines that they work on. My bus stop was literally across the road from the building which meant I could get there in good time. Upon entering the building and waiting in reception, I met John Strike and Rob Taylor (for the second time) and they showed me around the Future building; the cafeteria (with free coffee vending machines and a wide selection of tasty treats!) and upstairs I was led into the South Wing, where John and Rob are based with the Xbox World 360 magazine team, as well as the PSN team and PCGamer team. It was a fantastic place to work, and had a really nice relaxed and friendly atmosphere. Everywhere you looked; there were magazine and video game equipment and memorabilia…truly it was Heaven on Earth! I had asked John in an e-mail whether it was possible to interview him regarding his background and life at Future and he had agreed. And we went down to the cafeteria and had a nice long chat about a number of topics (which I will expand upon in my next post). John was a very down-to-earth guy and had a lot of information for me, which was fascinating and very helpful, and I was even given a free copy of the latest XBW360 magazine! After the chat and interview, we went back into the South Wing and I was put to work on one of the freelance iMacs. John had provided me with some in-game screenshots of the upcoming game ‘Rage’ for me to spruce up using PhotoShop.
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| id Software's 'Rage' Due for release in Sep 2011 |
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| Sandbox style action and shooting at it's best! |
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I was then taught how to add them into the InDesign magazine template page, It was a lot of fun and I learned some core skills on PhotoShop and InDesign. After my work with the ‘Rage’ news page, I learned that it would actually be used in the upcoming series of XBW360 magazines and that I would be credited for the work done which was an exciting prospect! For lunch I went down to the cafeteria and then when I got back I noticed that one of the journalists working on one of the other magazines was heading off to London for some Pokémon related event. It just shows how busy and demanding this career can be. The same team had also managed to get hold of one of the new Nintendo 3DS hand-held consoles and Roy (presumably a journalist or reviewer of some sort) was playing around with it on the ‘Monkey Ball‘ game. Judging from his frequent outbursts of profanity, I expected that the game was pretty difficult! After I had finished manipulating and adding the pictures into the ‘Rage’ double spread, I was given another page to work on, adding the pictures into the news article regarding a new ‘Sherlock Holmes’ game. The work done is likely to be featured in the next few editions of the XBW360 magazines (104 & 105) so I will have to look out for those in the local newsagents when they get released! I had a lot of fun from my time at Future and felt a lot more experienced and skilled with the software and industry at the end of the day. I was very thankful for the opportunity John and Rob had given me and would love to go there again in the future perhaps one day!
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| I added the pictures! |
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| Pictures and Background on here too! |
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