Boomstick Studios Seeks Artists, Web Designers

[Spec0ps]

Boomstick Studios, creators of Reaction Quake (www.rq3.com) 3 is searching for a few talented concept illustrators, 3D artists, and web designers.
Following our recent release of 3.2, we're shifting gears toward a Half-Life 2 mod. The design process has only recently begun, but we already have a firm grasp as to what we're shooting for. Our plans for the next chapter of Boomstick Studios are as follows:

-Creation of concept art for our Half-Life 2 mod project "Heatwave"
-Development of a main site for Boomstick Studios as well as for "Heatwave"
-Possibly restructure or re-design our Reaction Quake 3 pages

As for the mod's info...I'm not at liberty to reveal too much, but here's a cut & paste from our design document:

Heatwave is a multiplayer mod that will be made for Valve Software's Half-Life 2 game engine. The mod will pit expert thieves against the cops in objective-oriented gameplay modes. Players will be thrown into the heat of battle in futuristic interpretations of modern-day cities and will have to rely not only on firepower, but on strategy and intelligence in order to achieve victory. The goal of Heatwave is to produce a game that is fun, suspenseful, and tactical. A simplified interface and more gradual learning curve make the game friendlier to newcomers. Our motto is to make a game easy to be "good" at, but difficult to "master".

We have a strong core of developers. Most have been since us from the beginning of Reaction's development--nearly 3 years ago. We're fairly laid back, but we expect team members to be mature and dependable. In terms of recruitment, we're looking to fill the following positions:

-3D Artist
-Concept Illustrator
-Web Designer

With that said, if you're interested, then fire off an e-mail to [email protected]. In the e-mail I'd like for you to include the following: samples of your previous work, an explanation as to why you applied, and what you intend to get out of the experience.

 

[Majestic XII]

Hmmm, cant you tell us alittle more about the game play? Sounds like every other mod out there at the moment. Im sure you got some cool unique features.... care to tell us?

 

[Spec0ps]

Like I stated in the recruitment post, I can't discuss any major specifics. Right now we're doing some heavy design work and we just added a concept artist to the team.

We're heavily focused on "fun-factor" in our games. One of the more important aspects of the mod is the simplified interface and gradual learning curve. We don't beleive that a game must be complicated (feature bloated) to be fun. Suffice to say, everyone on the team is a gamer. Only in our case, we're gamers with some mod development experience under our belt. But we've always approached these things with the perspective of "if we make this, would we enjoy playing it?"

Anyway, that's all for now...I know I'm being pretty vague with all this, but that's the way we are handling PR and whatnot--at least for right now. You've got a quick trigger finger on that reply button, Majestic. Thanks for the query.

 

[The Dark Elf]

a month ago mod teams were "focusing" on dynamic realism or whatever the buzzword was, now its fun factor. But do these people really know what the fun factor is?

Have you gone out and asked people, doing polls and finding out in depth what people want and don't want. What is fun to you could be the biggest bore to someone else.

and gamers don't always make for good developers, imagine the naffness of having a development team made up of fans of quake deathmatch for example fine for "those" kinds of games, but doesn't really stretch the Source engine or people's intelligence.

 

[Majestic XII]

You need to release some details on how the mod will play to get anyone interested. My mappar part is telling me to write that I really dont know anything about the mod. Could be another cs/ww2 mod... or one of the best mods every in prodution... My mapper part would be very sad to miss out that... but he tells me that he wont join something he dont know anything about... because, i could be a cs mod... that that will make Majestic´s whole body very sad.... and he might die..

Bah... nevermind...

 

[Spec0ps]

I see where you're coming from Fenric. I agree, there does seem to be a lot of hype and "buzzwords" and all that mumble jumble associated with mods nowadays. People seem to be more concerned with a commercial image than a polished, playable product.

Well, let me just leak out a few details here. We're aiming for class-based gameplay. We also intend to make the use of vehicles fairly important for both the cops and robbers.

That's all I can give you folks. We haven't even officially announced the mod yet. This thread is intended as a way for us to recruit team members, not players and fans.

 

[Cerberus]

because

because their recruiting for a team thats already done a mod, I think that added legitimacy means they dont need to tell us what their hl2 mod is.

 

[The Dark Elf]

because their recruiting for a team thats already done a mod, I think that added legitimacy means they dont need to tell us what their hl2 mod is.

This doesn't really make sense, their recruiting for a team thats already done a mod. So that would mean they have a team already, it would make more sense to then utilize the team they have to create something complete to attract new team members. Or on the other hand if its just one or two from the old team and their looking for replacements, then its not the same team atall and having worked on a past mod means nothing this time around.

Mod teams should work more like those trying to setup companies are forced to do. Putting together a complete and professional proposal, not just some discription of "this is what we want to do" They should create something solid to show off what they have in mind, if they can't do that then what hope do they have of making a completed mod. It's quite simple really. Create a proposal, ask for help from concept artists and so on, stop assuming a post on a forum is going to suddenly have people charging toward them with their pencils waving in the air. The mod teams should actively SEARCH for new talent, not expect it to come to them. A great many are doing this, and thats why they will fail. An empty site is worse than no site. I'd far more respect an in depth portfolio where its clear everything has been thought through. Than to see a link to a site where you get on almsot every page "coming soon" or "not yet but click back later"

And to those who say "well blizzard or Sony don't do that, they don't tell you everything their gonna do to get new talent" no they don't, and they don't have to cause they pay their staff, and they are known companies and professionals and legit.