Working next to Rock Band.

I have been working in the game industry for almost 3 years.  Ever since I started in Immersion Games I have had time to play different games and enjoy some of them while at work.  It was almost like a company rule to play some game in the afternoon or almost when the day was over.  Back then we didn't had any console so we played mostly Valve's Counter Strike: Source and some other racing games for the one who didn't like shooters.

But now times have changed.  We have all Wii, PS3 and XBox 360 in the office and worst for me... we have now Rockband and the GuitarHero: World Tour game.  I must admit that I like this type of games a lot, mostly playing the battery.  I can almost use 3 hours of my day playing games because is not only the rockband/guitarhero but all the games that now I can find in the steam with some kind of special offer. 

Times have changed for my studio and also for the whole world.  We can find almost any demo on the XBox Live or the PlayStation Network.  For me, a PC gamer, I have the wonderful steam that for the first time in history has granted me to access to a whole lot of games and promotions to buy these which were never accessible to Latinamerican gamers.  Now I can buy a small game for US$9,99 when times before I had to spend almost US$29,99.  Big games are between US$29,99 to US$49,99 now when almost three years ago I had to spend almost US$99,99.  I think the way games are been comercialized nowadays is great reaching a whole new audience... but this is not what this is about right now, this is about playing games!  As I was saying, there a lot of games at the office with which I can get very distracted.  The question I make myself is: is this wrong? am I affecting the production flow by playing games?  Doest it get worst when everybody in the studio does this?

What I have seen is that there's a lot of design changes in the middle of a game's production.  I'll take as an example Cellfactor: Psychokinetic Wars, a game in which I worked as programmer.  There were design changes until the end of the production (including the game name).  The thing here is that there are a lot of design issues all accross the development time and this can be a setback if the developers don't know exactly what they are looking for.  It's also a big time consumer when you have to test something in order to know if it goes well or bad in the game.  And that's when playing a lot of games is the best thing to do because there will be a lot of game references which can aid developers in all kind of design issues no matter if he is a programmer, modeler, 2D artist...  It also doesn't matter what type of game you are doing and what type of game you are taking for reference: there are always little details that you may find helpful like UI elements, Visual Effects used, Story design... you name it.

And finally, you will not only be having this games as a reference, but you will be updated with the last in innovation.  When I say innovation is not just about playing the latest games with the best graphics... is also playing those independent casual games that are sometime somehow under estimated.  But you'll be surprised with what you find in the most simple games to do.  I have found really brilliant games and ideas for game mechanics that could also be implemented in a good AAA Game (sort of what Valve did with Portal by taking the Narbacular Drop idea).

[Update: (For the guys at the office)  Even though we play a lot games, we are still the most hard working developers you can ever find]