How to break in the games industry - an insiders' guide

Good luck!

Yep, hope it goes well for you

Quote from dux

Who with?

Black Rock Studios, ace place. Now the waiting begins.

Incidentally a top tip I got in my interview (and hopefully bonus points from), straight from the company design director and franchise director; Designer's CV's should be 1 page. If you can't make your CV onto one page you're not a very good designer.

haha good tip.

Quote from Ginger Lord

Black Rock Studios, ace place. Now the waiting begins.

Incidentally a top tip I got in my interview (and hopefully bonus points from), straight from the company design director and franchise director; Designer's CV's should be 1 page. If you can't make your CV onto one page you're not a very good designer.

Most HR people will tell you for any profession to keep your resume at 1 page.

Best of luck man!

I've been looking around level designer job openings and keeping find under the non essential requirements that a bachelor's degree or equivilant is desired. Exactly what kind of degree are they looking for (sorry if this is super obvious)? If they aren't looking for anything specific what kind of degree would benifit me the most?

Right now I'm a total noob who downloaded the Unreal Engine last night and am trying to tailor make an education that'll land me a job as a level designer. Thanks in advance for any help.

The general opinion of game degree's is low. From what I can gather as someone out side the industry you don't need one unless you are looking into programming. That said I have applied for a game design degree at Stafford Uni (England UK), hope to find a job before September but not sure if that's going to happen or not.

In my opinion the day of needing a degree for anything film, game, graphics, web related are over, work hard and make cool stuff that's worth far more than a bit of paper. Uni does give you loads of free time to work on stuff though, on my HND (not going to explain how that works in relation to degree's etc lol) I am only their two and a half days a week.

Quote

In my opinion the day of needing a degree for anything film, game, graphics, web related are over

The opposite actually. You didn't need one 10 years ago. You are much more likely to need one nowadays. There are now WAY more people who want to get into this industry, and as of such the games industry goes through the same evolution that other industries have gone through long before us, and that is that they need a way to quickly filter through a large number of applicants, and one of the things they will look at are degrees. Furthermore a good education will help the students get in touch with companies. The schools have a big network of contacts, and that is yet something else to fight as individual. It is certainly possible to get into this industry without a degree, but it does become a little harder every year. If someone is starting out with game dev and such, you are looking at at least 3 years of studying (school or mod) before they make a chance of getting a job. What do you expect the job market to be like in 3 years? I believe the demand for proper schooling will go up in 3 years. Will you still be able to get a job without a degree in 3 years? Yes, but you will have to be so good that your skill alone will beat everyone else to it, because it is all you got to convince the company you are applying to. Will you be that good...?

Simple answer: Get a degree in game dev or related, but be sure to work on mods in your free time, and also have a non-gaming backup plan ready as well. Research educations you are interested in well, many game dev educations are pretty bad. If you don't work on hobby game projects in your free time and just attend school, you will not get a job.

i'm actually in a school in belgium which give after 3 years, a degree in computer graphic (the school is not only for video games) but yeah diploma it's cool but our teecher said that have a portfolio, something good to show and have contact in the industry is more and more important. That is why there is a trainig period of 3 months in third year and a very important work, the creation of a demo game from A to Z with a group of work.

-----------------------------------------

Guys, I want to know what you have to say about different trades and specializations in video game.

Being in a school which shows a little of all the tricks of video game creation, it's preferable to choose which job you want to move during the third year, I'm currently in second year and even if I had the idea of going to the level design in arriving at the school, see a little every area of business has allowed me to open myself to other career opportunities.

But when can we claim to be a level designer or a 3D Artist, animator, character designer, etc ... ? At what point should we insist to be the most possible serious? Which projects should be put forward in its portfolio ?

Another point otherwise, before this studies, I obtained a degree in mechanical engineering and industrial automation. I did that when I didn't like much but throw in the Video game industry without once had a decent computer and without knowing schools and possibilities was not very serious. This diploma does not give me much but I am still fairly easy to know how the mechanical systems works.

I should take this degree to specialize in modeling which asking engineering knowledge (weapons, vehicles, large structures ...) to have more leverage in future negotiations?

(i know my langage is probably poor )

Otherwise I don't think I can provide assistance in this topic now but if I can just help future students to won't end up like half of my class, ie, having no chance to get at school out or one day a job in the video game, ask me

I think Hourences hit the nail on the head. You certainly can get a job without a degree, but getting a degree makes it easier to open the first door. On the flipside, having a degree means nothing if you have no distinguishing portfolio at the end. Nobody hires on the strength of a degree alone, particularly if your portfolio is the same university deliverables that everyone else has.

I'd personally stay away from game development degrees and do something more mainstream (vanilla computer science if you're a programmer, traditional art / design stuff if you're an artist) then improve your game development skills via modding & personal projects. I think this is a good balance.

Quote from Hourences

The opposite actually. You didn't need one 10 years ago. You are much more likely to need one nowadays. There are now WAY more people who want to get into this industry, and as of such the games industry goes through the same evolution that other industries have gone through long before us, and that is that they need a way to quickly filter through a large number of applicants, and one of the things they will look at are degrees. Furthermore a good education will help the students get in touch with companies. The schools have a big network of contacts, and that is yet something else to fight as individual. It is certainly possible to get into this industry without a degree, but it does become a little harder every year. If someone is starting out with game dev and such, you are looking at at least 3 years of studying (school or mod) before they make a chance of getting a job. What do you expect the job market to be like in 3 years? I believe the demand for proper schooling will go up in 3 years. Will you still be able to get a job without a degree in 3 years? Yes, but you will have to be so good that your skill alone will beat everyone else to it, because it is all you got to convince the company you are applying to. Will you be that good...?

Simple answer: Get a degree in game dev or related, but be sure to work on mods in your free time, and also have a non-gaming backup plan ready as well. Research educations you are interested in well, many game dev educations are pretty bad. If you don't work on hobby game projects in your free time and just attend school, you will not get a job.

That's a fair point. I guess I am looking at it from a different preservative that does not really reflect everyone or my self even, don't want to sounds like i am saying i could do it no bother with out one. I totally see the value in a degree and am actually looking forward to it mainly to meet other people and work with them on projects. Qualifications are just handed out though maybe its different in other country's and standards will vary between different schools, but you can get a degree in really silly things like selling beds over here.

Long term I don't think the traditional Uni is the way forward for education in new subjects matters but if anything else steps up is another matter.

Rofl ! it's so hard to understand me ? Ok i'll see tomorow, now it's time to bed

I asked the guys at Ensemble Studios what their recommendation was since I worked in the same building with them. They all said for schooling to do the masters program at SMU's Guildhall. Granted a number of them were teachers or founders of that program, but the students who come out of it have mostly gone straight into Junior Positions at every major studio that I know of (except Blizzard). If you don't mind moving to Dallas after getting your bachelors it's a really good option. Expensive, but good.

Quote from sarge mat

I need to ask about portfolio building. I like to play around with web site building but when it comes to building something really solid.... I am playing with wordpress at the moment but there I would need a really good theme for the layout. Can anyone recommend a good way to go as far as site building is concerned? Want to start to think about this good and early.Thanks

There are a fair amount of wordpress themes out there where they release them with the required PSD's so you can take a theme with the layout you like and pretty much make it your own. To a degree..

You can try using some more website oriented SQL solutions like Joomla, but they require more time and the benefits probably arent worth the time investment. If your host has something called Fantastico you can use that to quickly try out all the SQL-based content management packages and see which one works for you best.

Something I was asking myself yesterday: it seems a good thing to bring your laptop to events or interviews to allow possible employers to try out your levels right away. But my laptop died a while ago, and I really don't have the money to buy one that would run Crysis without having to tune it down to low setting, and I really wouldn't want to show the game in low settings for fear of the poor dude going blind.

Is there a solution to my issue? Did anybody here ever have this issue and still managed to get a decent interview going? Maybe by bringing the CDs for the games involved?

I took my laptop to my interview but they didn't want to look at my work, just discuss theoretical stuff. I made sure to leave them a CD with all my work on to check out later on if they wanted, it included all the levels I wanted to show in .bsp and the source files, as well as a full copy of Ham and Jam. The laptop I took could barely run HL2 on low anyway, I suspect my case was probably more the exception to the rule however.

Reposting from other thread for posterity

My advice is to do a general media based degree rather than a specific computer games degree. That way if it turns out you don't like the industry you don't have a paperweight degree.

I did mine in BA(Hons) Multimedia Design & Digital Animation which covered traditional 2D design, traditional animation, digital animation and modelling, web design, flash design and more.

The answer to almost everything entertainments industry related is make yourself worth hiring, how you do that is down to you Never forget thats the bottom line and everything you do with the target of getting a job should come from that.