Looking back, my career in software started with an interest in video games. I was around four years old when I played my first video game on the original NES, and since then, I’ve been hooked.
A lifetime interest in video games (both playing and analyzing them) led me through my college education, leading me to hop from major to major to figure out which niche I wanted to focus on:
- Computer Information Systems, so I could learn about hardware/software systems
- Theater, so I could gain a better understanding of how to craft and compose a story and scene
- Graphic Design and Art, so I could better be able to develop a consistent visual language
I have always been intrigued by how the different parts of video games come together — and there are so many parts! It’s an art form, just like movies or TV, and I analyze them the same way critics do other media. The dialogue, the music, the characters, the art style, how menus work, you name it. I’ve always been a very analytical person (often taking toys apart to see how they work), so I always want to know how these large things come together to make the video game what it is.
Now working in the software product world, I find that I use the same kind of skills and analysis as part of my job. As a business analyst, I want to understand how the requirements, code, design, and planning come together to create the application. At the end of the day, both video games and client-facing software are applications, and I love that I can use my background in art, theatre, and tech to see how the steps and processes of creating games and applications overlap.
With a lifetime of playing and analyzing how video games are made, here are four things I’ve learned that have made me a better software consultant and business analyst:
A Creative and Technical Collaboration
Video games, like movies and software, are the sum of their parts. Creating them is often a highly collaborative effort between a team of creatives, managers, writers, and engineers, all working together to make a cohesive product, usually against a deadline-driven roadmap.
The design effort that goes into making video games is astounding. Much like software apps, games are visual; from the game world, sound effects and NPCs (Non-playable characters) to title screens, menus and HUDs (Heads-Up Displays; any UI that displays during gameplay), design and art touch every part of the process. Some of the most complex software being built in the world right now accounts for what a player can do in a video game.
The complexity of the code that makes literally anything happen in a game cannot be overlooked as well. There are many engines and languages that can be used for creating games (Unity, Unreal, to name a couple), like there are countless languages to create apps. In fact, many games (and game engines) have been built using common programming languages like C# or Python.
Software is where creativity, tech, and planning meet. To be successful as a software consultant, you need to be able to keep both the technical concerns and the creativity of UI/UX in mind as you navigate through the development process. All of these creative and technical considerations are choices that must be made collaboratively to make a cohesive experience for the player or user.
User- and Player-Centered Approach
As software consultants, we need to find ways to engage and empower not only our clients, but also their customers, the end-users. Users are at the core of our work, and we need to find ways we can improve their experience. For video games, the “users” are players, and it’s the developers’ jobs as the creators and developers to delight their players, much like we, as consultants, build relationships with our clients and strengthen the relationship between the client and their customers.
The concerns that our users and players have are obviously very different from each other; players’ concerns usually range from replayability, enjoyment, immersion, and mechanics, whereas users are more concerned with usability (both in terms of UX and feature support), support, and security. The path to get there is the same: a shared focus of a human-centered team coming together to create a product that serves the user or inspires the player.
Building and Playing with Boundaries
Much of the challenge with developing and playing video games has to do with boundaries, such as what a player has access to (and what they don’t). When best used, these set boundaries affect every aspect of the player’s experience to create a cohesive and engaging game. Game developers have to account for everything that the player can do in the game world as well:
- Is there a cloud save or play component?
- What kind of user security is needed, if any?
- Can the game be made available cross-platform (across consoles)?
- Is the game world immersive and consistent?
- How does the player progress through the game?
- What UI settings can be changed?
In software, we set boundaries by accounting for what is exposed to the user and what they can do:
- What kind of security is necessary?
- What regulations does this need to follow?
- What kind of third-party integrations are needed?
- Is the user experience consistent and engaging?
- Do different users need different levels of access?
- What can the user change or do in the application?
These questions are just examples of some of the considerations software consultants and game developers have to keep in mind while they navigate the development process. Understanding what the boundaries are (and where they can be pushed) within our work helps us hone in on what the client and their users truly need — which in turn has made me a stronger software consultant.
Leveling Up Prioritization
The kinds of games I typically play are RPGs, which are story-based role-playing games where you, as the player, must manage items, money, equipment, characters’ skills, and special abilities to ensure you reach the next goal or part of the story. In many RPGs, the more you do, the more experience you gain, the stronger you become, and the farther you can progress — but to gain this experience, you first have to prioritize what ways you want to become stronger. From playing strategic games like these, I’ve learned how to be a software consultant who focuses on what’s most important and maps out a plan for how to move forward.
When starting work on a new software product, we have to think through lots of requirements and questions to ensure we don’t miss anything and deliver a valuable, engaging product to the client. A way to cut through the noise is to prioritize what’s most important now, which involves organizing requirements based on the impact on users, individual business needs, risks involved, and when the client needs the feature ready. This is one of the first steps in prioritizing requests and building a functional product roadmap plan.
The importance of prioritization extends to design and engineering as well. For example, the UX team has to make considerations and appropriately prioritize the client’s need for responsive layout, accessibility, and different user views. The engineering team has to consider how to prioritize their work between maintenance, tech debt, new features, and how to apply best practices. The needs of UX and engineering will vary from project to project, so it’s good to keep in mind how these priorities change and evolve.
Applying my background in art, theatre, and tech and interest in video games to my career has made me a stronger software consultant and business analyst because it’s given me a well-rounded understanding of collaboration, user-centered approaches, boundaries, and prioritization. Like how the different components of a video game come together to create an experience for the player, the numerous parts of design, engineering, and planning come together to create an experience for the user — and being part of that is what makes my job so interesting every single day.
