Australia to Middle Earth

This week we had to present our findings on a given country/province/continent with regards to the games Industry and related media. My team was given Australia and New Zealand which was fortunate as is a place I would very much like to work if given the opportunity.

2K is a company I have always had an interest in and looking into 2K Australia I may look further into weather jobs are going there in the near future. It is also apparent that there are very few AAA games companies in Oz compared to the rest of the world, as most are smaller studios under a larger company or even branches like 2K.

Weta whilst being a great inspiration within the SFX and leading the way in the MoCap front are way too out of my field to even consider, as they are also far more animation geared than I am capable.

Ninja Kiwi are at to this day the leading Company for Flash Games, and whilst most if not all of their 60 games are 2D it does make me realise that there are other niche games industries aside from AAA I could enter and still be successful. I may go back and look at some of my Game-Dev ideas and see if any could apply to Browser/Flash Industry

Animal Logic was another VFX and animation company that outsources to other companies on large projects, whilst cool and interesting I will not be looking much further into this company as they are very geared to animation, rigging and VFX skill sets in employees and so I wouldn't suit their needs.

The smaller Indie companies as a whole didn't show much promise for me with he exception of Kixeye who are very successful having branched out from Facebook games to small 3D indie games with great success. I may apply to them in the future as they continue to improve upon their games like War thunder for Facebook with regular large updates and fan service.

Censorship is something I rarely think about having lived in the EU all my life and having been able to play a majority of games when appropriate, so finding that some countries are truly as strict as Australia and New Zealand was a surprise. whilst some of the games listed are censored rightly others are odd to me especially if they are age appropriate. I obviously need to consider censorship in greater detail with regards to my future planned games. Further research needed.