Having and getting game industry jobs

[Marek]

(This thread split off from this one.)

Oh, man, I knew the Thumb was cool. Time to suck-up. Well, no. I hate sucker-upers.

The reason thumb doesn't get updated much these days is that everyone got cool industry jobs. It's pretty absurd how fast that went. but also for thumb.

[toblix]

What? What jobs did you all get?

[Marek]

Let's see. Ben is at SEGA, Alex at EA, Steve at Perpetual Entertainment, Lawrence at Namco, Spaff and Nick at NCSoft, Rusalka did a thing at Climax, Bob is ... uhh, going to London (shit I totally forgot what his new gig is), Jake and Doug are at Telltale, Chris of course went to Shack, and I'm working at a game dev in Amsterdam. It's the Idle Thumbs exodus.

[DanJW]

And I am back at college studying art, but essentially unemployed.

Anyone want to give me a highly paid 3-day-a-week job? Anyone?

[elmuerte]

Anyone want to give me a highly paid 3-day-a-week job? Anyone?

Lemme think ...

Ok.

Oh, wait.. You said highly paid...

[Ben]

Bob's gig is BVG/Disney.

[Marek]

Oh yeah!

[Duncan]

Let's see. Ben is at SEGA, Alex at EA, Steve at Perpetual Entertainment, Lawrence at Namco, Spaff and Nick at NCSoft, Rusalka did a thing at Climax, Bob is ... uhh, going to London (shit I totally forgot what his new gig is), Jake and Doug are at Telltale, Chris of course went to Shack, and I'm working at a game dev in Amsterdam. It's the Idle Thumbs exodus.

Wow, that's a depressing post.

[miffy495]

They grow up so fast...

[Marek]

Wow, that's a depressing post.

Spread your wings, and GO... GO WITH THE WIND!

The wind of the game industry.

Not that wind.

[elmuerte]

The wind of the game industry.

Not that wind.

What's the difference?

[Marek]

Game industry wind produced by much larger asses...?

[Thyroid]

Day of the Tentacle? Really?

Yes ... especially since I got Laverne walking early-on, so everytime I'd think I got all the areas I'd climb-up the chimney or discover that I hadn't fully explored with Hoagie yet.

Why would you do that? There is no good reason. It's a lot closer to six short games than one game separated into six parts.

Well, I don't do it. I'm saying he should if he can't wait.

Let's see. Ben is at SEGA, Alex at EA, Steve at Perpetual Entertainment, Lawrence at Namco, Spaff and Nick at NCSoft, Rusalka did a thing at Climax, Bob is ... uhh, going to London (shit I totally forgot what his new gig is), Jake and Doug are at Telltale, Chris of course went to Shack, and I'm working at a game dev in Amsterdam. It's the Idle Thumbs exodus.

Now, in seriousness, what's working in the industry like? I'm wrapping-up my highschool years in July, and I want to work as a game designer, so help would be appreciated.

[Mel]

Let's see. Ben is at SEGA, Alex at EA, Steve at Perpetual Entertainment, Lawrence at Namco, Spaff and Nick at NCSoft, Rusalka did a thing at Climax, Bob is ... uhh, going to London (shit I totally forgot what his new gig is), Jake and Doug are at Telltale, Chris of course went to Shack, and I'm working at a game dev in Amsterdam. It's the Idle Thumbs exodus.

I'm curious as to what kind of jobs you all have at your respective companies (except Doug and Jake - I know they cause all kinds of mischief work on the web site aspect of things at Telltale).

[Marek]

I'll let others speak for themselves, but for the past two years I've been working at a media/advertising company (which also has a console games sister company). Mostly been doing short-cycle projects for 3rd party clients, like advergames and web games. Those projects kind of led up to an elaborate internally developed online game that I've been lead designing for a year now. We've been pitching it to publishers and I expect we'll get funding soon and really ramp up production. It's exciting.

Regarding Kroms question: you're going to hate this answer, but... it depends. My job makes me very happy and the company culture here is amazing, but I also know people (outside Thumbs) at other companies who are less fortunate.

If you want to be a design lead, be realistic, set your expectations low and prepare to find a secret weird route into the industry. Nobody is interested in a newbie designer unless you make the next fl0w or Narbacular Drop, which isn't the most likely thing to happen, so you gotta find ways to gain experience in different ways.

[Ben]

I'm a games designer and consultant.

Kroms: Working in the games industry has its highs and lows just like any other job; and the initial buzz of working "in games" quickly subsides as the day-to-day realities come into play. Still, it has its perks (well, my job does at least) and I absolutely love my job: every day is different, I get to be creative, and the 'routine' is thankfully minimal.

As for getting into design there is no real standard process for it; in the old days (and to some extent this still exists today) the way to become a designer was to be a programmer and work your way up from programming small bits of a game, to doing your own level and learning how to 'design' (read: code) a level in the process and so on... until hey, you're a lead designer. There are other routes that don't involve being a programmer (I have no programming skills, nor do some well-known designers, such as, topically, Tetsuya Mizuguchi), but that way is much more random and I really have no specific practical advice to offer on that side. As Marek said, just try to get your foot in, gain some experience (even if it's testing experience), make contacts, be prepared to invest a few years doing that kind of stuff and then hopefully the stars align and you get your chance.

[Roderick]

At the moment I'm doing a project in my final year at artschool for Guerrilla Games, makers of Killzone, and I think that could be a nice way in. If you also spend some time networking. But the strangest thing happened: while I was going through the whole trajectory of making a game as a designer (constructing schemes, writing docs, testing...) I discovered that a lot of these aspects didn't really interest me. Sure, I enjoyed putting down the foundations of the game and writing them down, and having intense discussions with the other designers on almost trivial details, but the technical stuff I thought was uninteresting, and testing the alpha versions didn't fire me up in the slightest.

Basically, I discovered that my only interest was really in the writing of the fiction of the game. And more overtly; that I was finding a lot more satisfaction in my freelance journalism jobs than in actually making games! So I've begun considering stepping away from getting into the games industry as anything more than a freelance dialogue writer, and starting to think about becoming a professional journalist. Which could be refreshing, as then I won't see it as a means of getting a job in the industry, but rather as an end in itself, trying to create awesome reviews and articles.

[vimes]

I've worked as an intern in a one-man game studio[on Global - see signature] last summer and it was great. I don't what to do next though : I've got a double diploma going on with Georgia Tech in 2007-2008 but in the meantime, I'm due to make an internship... and I'm still wondering what kind of amateur project I should get involved in , in order to add something meaningful to my experience and 'interest' possible employers.

It's kinda hard to understand what's the entrance in the 'industry' when you've got a technical background and would like to be something of a gameplay programmer.

[Marek]

That's funny, I had pretty much the opposite experience of Rodi's. When I started doing games I came out of 8 years of running AdventureGamers.com. And since I had enjoyed screenwriting class so much, I thought my main thing was going to be story.

Then I actually made an adventure game in college and realized that I don't like coming up with stories, plots and characters at all. What I had actually really liked about screenwriting class was tinkering with the dialog, e.g. bringing it down to its purest chunks, leaving out as much expository dialog as possible, and implying as much through actions as I could. I would love to be a dialog editor on a game someday, or collaborate as a game designer with a screenwriter, but actually conceptualizing the meat of a story is not a hugely fun experience for me at all. I keep hating the premises and treatments that I write because it's all so lame, and it won't become interesting to me until I can actually start filter stuff and move stuff around.

Like for my current project, I keep putting off writing a backstory or explaining the differences between the different factions in the game, because I just don't give a damn right now. I've become so much more fascinated by gameplay mechanics. When all the different game rules are in place, I'll probably come up with some justifications for some of the faction's abilities and so forth, but I'm not even sure if I'm going to spell them out.

For another game that I'm going to co-design, we're planning to build a complete board game prototype before we write a single line of code. That sort of thing is ridiculously more exciting to me than I thought it would be three years ago.

[Marek]

It's kinda hard to understand what's the entrance in the 'industry' when you've got a technical background

If you have programming skills that's actually one of the most straightforward paths into the industry. If you want to be a gameplay programmer, familiarize yourself with as much scripting languages as you can (Python, LUA, Ruby, etc.). Then apply for a junior position somewhere. It's actually really uncomplicated compared to other positions of the industry.

[Roderick]

Heh, amusing to hear, Marek.

Maybe Woedend can hire me to do the backstories?

[elmuerte]

If you have programming skills that's actually one of the most straightforward paths into the industry. If you want to be a gameplay programmer, familiarize yourself with as much scripting languages as you can (Python, LUA, Ruby, etc.).

Well learning languages is more or less useless. They are pretty much all the same (e.g. being procedural/imperative), if you understand one language it's just a small matter of time to learn the syntax of the other.

Besides making sure your programming skills are on par, I think it's best to pick a good mod'able game with a good implementation of gameplay elements that you can modify or reuse and play around with that stuff (e.g. try to introduce new gameplay dynamics). Or even try to simulate gameplay dynamics from other types of games in the game you are modding.

[Marek]

Well, yes. Once you know the basics you can transition into any language, but a lot of people don't seem to know this. So you might as well mess around with a bunch of common ones, just so you're able to say you have worked with them all.

Rodi: well, we have a screenwriter we're interested in bringing on board, but you never know.

[Roderick]

Heh, well first let me finish my studies I'm not aiming for a salaried job anyway, it's freelance stuff I want. Part-time could work for me though. Does Woedend actually give away stuff to freelancers or is everything in-house, or on temporary contract?

[Marek]

In-house, contract work, outsourcing to other studios, freelancers, slavery... we do everything.