Carrie Warwick Guest Lecture Report

 

One of the topics Carrie covered was the difference between working in an indie company versus working in an AAA company. She addressed a few differences such as amount of pay, perks of the job, creative liberality of the jobs and organisation of employees. To begin with she mentioned that when working for an indie company you usually start off with better pay than in an AAA company as you don’t get perks for working there such as health or dental care, but mainly you get more money as you don’t really have complete job security as the company could go bust at any time. Whereas working for an AAA company you get job security and perks for working there but you do get slightly less pay to start with.

 

Another difference Carrie talked about was the contrast of creative freedom between the two types of companies. She said that working for an indie company she was able to have a lot of input in the game she was working on and managed to help improve it, so working for an indie company you have a closer link to the development of the game so you can influence the outcome better. However working for an AAA company you don’t get that freedom as the major decision are all made by the lead roles, but you can have a slight influence by stating if this can or cannot be done but as a rule of thumb you lose most creative freedom, although you do get to work on something massive and hugely creative.

 

The organisation of roles in the two types of companies where described as easy going, friendly and extremely cool in both types but she stated that in the indie company as the group is much smaller you have the opportunity to work on different parts of the game development and you have the chance to learn new skills. You also get to know the rest of the team like family as it is a much smaller team and you spend an incredibly long amount of time together. In AAA companies you are a much smaller cog in the machine as the team you work on is going to be very large, this means you don’t really get the chance to learn new skills but you do get to hone your skills in a particular field very quickly.

In conclusion there are pros and cons to working in both indie and AAA companies and I think it’s best to work in both at least once to get the feel and see which one feels right for you.