Hello everyone! Another week started and more work to be done. This week, as promised will be all about the specialist in the game that you can hire. As it stands, I took the approach to keep the list of office positions manageable for all players. I didn’t want you to have to take a class in organizational management in order to play the game, so my efforts have been focused on keeping it manageable for everyone. In that regard, I have a few positions in the game for each department field. So a while back we went over the employee entry positions, the entry level workhorses for your company. This included positions like customer service agents, marketing analysts and accounting positions. So this week, we will discuss all of the specialty positions.
To begin, in the game your overall goal is to achieve success as a company the best way that you can. In order to reach that goal, you will need to create good products, manage your company efficiently and hire and train great talent. Specialist in this game serve to create the central products offered in the game or research the know-how in order to achieve this at a high level. Right now the available products that you can create in-game are:
- Central Processing Units (CPU’s) – Hardware Engineers
- Graphics Processing Units (GPU’s) – Hardware Engineers
- Personal Computers – Hardware Engineers
- Consoles – Hardware Engineers
- Video Games – Software Engineers/Game Designers/Writers/Artist/Animators/Sound
- Operating Systems – Software Engineers
- Productivity Software Applications – Software Engineers
(More to come post release…)
Your hardware engineers will create the CPU’s, GPU’s, Consoles and Personal Computers. Your software engineers will go about creating your operating systems, applications and video games. However, engineers aren’t the only ones creating games. You will also need to staff an entire game development team for creating games. Lastly, you will have the option of hiring research scientist to keep your company’s technology level and aptitude high in order to facilitate the creation of advanced technology-based products. Here is a list of all “Specialist” positions in the game along with exactly what they will be doing.
Hardware Engineers – Hardware Engineers are focused on producing all of your hardware related projects, taking them from concept to reality. All Engineers have personality, so they will be skilled in specific technologies, which will lend itself better for creating some products over others. However, all hardware engineers are capable of working on all forms of hardware technology, just to different levels of effectiveness. The impact that hardware engineers have on the final quality of hardware products is quite profound. Each product in the game will have its base attributes that determine how effective it is at what it does. For example, a CPU is designed to be the brains of Computers, Consoles and other technological devices. To that end, they will need to have some combination of being powerful, fast and efficient. The other aspect that you must be aware of is how well the CPU is manufactured. This starts at the planning phase for the design of the product, which is a part of the engineer’s role and goes all the way through to when the product is mass produced in the warehouses. This will have a direct effect on how easy the CPU is to operate (usability), how durable it is (durability), and how easy it is to repair (repairable) for your in-house product repair technicians. So I will discuss more on the specifics of this game-play feature soon.
Software Engineers – Software Engineers are the programmers and architects of your software projects. Video games, operating systems and software applications are their job to code and develop. Much like the hardware engineers, the rules apply the same—just for software projects. Software engineers have specializations and they also have to be careful to create the software in a way that makes it easy to maintain (troubleshoot), use (usability) and operate bug-free (bugs present).
Research Scientists – Research Scientists are your technology research gurus who spend their energy pushing technology forward for your company. Do you want to be the first to discovery that next level technology before the competition? These guys are your avenue to achieving that goal. Depending on their skill and specialties, they will be most effective pushing technologies in the fields in which they are interested or have degrees in. Without them, you will be severely limited in your ability to push your company forward technologically.
Game Designers – Game Designers are the ones whose primary focus is to bring all other team members together and properly communicate game ideas and structure. They will be the ones who will be responsible for making sure the game is structurally sound and balanced properly. So communication is a big deal for this position. You, the CEO will be the one to design the game idea, your team will bring that design to life and it starts with the game designers who are responsible for communicating those ideas to the other team members.
Artist – The Game artist creates the art for the game. Each game artist tends to be proficient in one style over another, however they can be skilled in multiple styles depending on their skill level. So be mindful of that when you are choosing what type of game art to create. Make sure you hire the employees who are proficient in the art styles you desire to create games with.
Animators – Animators bring your game to life. They are responsible for making your characters, and environments immersive. They are also the employees that do lighting for your games, so all things that give life to the art created by your art team comes from these employees.
Writers – Writers write the story and lore for your games. They are directly responsible for giving context to your game. Without them, your game would just be moving objects… They can make a huge impact depending on the genre of the game that you are making.
Sound Engineers – Sound engineers also help bring your games to life with sound. Just like the Animators bring visual life to your game, these engineers bring life to the audio in your game. Without them, your games immersion score will suffer.
Thank you all for reading, that is a full list of all specialist positions that you can hire at your company. This list could get longer by release, but at the moment, this is the list. Next week I will share with you the management teams that you can hire at your company. See you soon!
