Game Industry Confidential: Real Advice from Experience.

Post 1: Pressing Start on Your Career

You’ve probably heard a lot of scary stories about how the game industry is hard to get a job, or it’s just luck, or it’s who you know. While a lot of that has grains of truth in them, that isn’t the whole story, and it’s the part of the story that people do have control over that they usually miss. I want to tell you about the part that you can control. People get discouraged because they believe they are doing all the right things, following poor advice given by various people. These people end up not getting jobs, or the jobs they want, and don’t understand why. They end up frustrated and hating the industry. This is bad for everybody all around.

Who am I? I’ve worked in the games industry and digital entertainment for over 15 years now. I’ve been both the eager worker in the trenches at the mercy of management, and I’ve been management and been one of the deciding voices in giving people jobs in games and digital entertainment.

I’ve been in front of the curtain and behind the curtain, you can say I’ve fully studied this silly curtain that gets in the way of a lot of people’s dreams. So everything I’ve learned about this curtain I am now giving to you for free.

We’re going to start at the very basic beginning, even though you may have heard this before. That’s because we have to confirm you are starting with the strongest foundation to build upon.  The first main element you have to nail is the Job Search itself.  

People usually stumble right out the gate because they don’t know how to job search well.  Lots of people don’t even give this step any thought which leads them to roadblocks in their career because they didn’t take this first step properly. Since everything is connected in your career journey, you want to try and start out as strong as possible, and that begins with what kind of jobs you are applying for and how you are making that decision.

So which job do you want? Step 1 is figure out yourself and your interests. There are many many different types of jobs in the game industry, from programmers, to artists, to narrative designers, marketing people, product strategy, finance, and hybrids of all sorts in between.  At this point, you need to make a decision of what you want to do.  This decision doesn’t have to be permanent, you can definitely change your mind after a year or two and decide to move down a different branch.  But you should still pick a discipline to focus on. It’s far more effective to focus on one area at a time rather than trying to shotgun a few different types of jobs at once.  Most people say “I want to make games” but unless you are going to be a solo dev indie one man studio, you’re going to join a company and you’re going to need to make some decisions on how you’re going to fit in.  What part of the game do you want to build?  Do you want to build the features like a programmer? Do you want to design gameplay systems or create puzzles for a game?  Do you want to make decisions on what types of games get made or make commercials hyping up the latest releases?  Figure out what you are interested in doing and write down the job names and titles of the people doing what you are doing before you jump into applying. You may not be qualified for that job yet, but we will get there.  That’s already an important first step, write down a list of your ideal future goal job title.  Then, and this is the important part, write down the job titles that report to that job and are in a direct chain of command.  For example, if your ultimate goal is to be Creative Director on a project, the people reporting to Creative Director are most likely in order: the Lead Game Designer, then Game Designer, then Associate Game Designer, and so forth.  This is important to remember, only write down job titles that are in the direct reporting line to the job you are interested in. It may vary a bit from company to company but generally these things are similar.

This runs contrary to the idea of “horizontal movement” but I’m here to tell you that horizontal movement is a myth, or at least far far more rare than people think. Taking a job to “get your foot in the door” is much more difficult if the door is on the other side of the building. Pick the door that’s closest to your department. A real world example of how this approach is wrong that I’ve personally seen is taking a QA job when you want to be an artist, which is a much harder path than just applying to entry level art jobs. I’ve even personally experienced this when I first started out, so I’m speaking from experience. Don’t get sucked into a job that isn’t along your path because, when you try to switch, you’ll find you built a lot of experience in the wrong field. If you want to be a game designer, don’t apply to marketing jobs.  If you want to code, don’t work in QA.

Next, write down the companies that you would be interested in working for.  Not all companies are the same. Some are gigantic and pumping out mega action games, and some are smaller, more indie, pushing edgy artistic games.  What type of games and what type of company do you want to be at?  What kind of work culture do you want? Think of this and start making a list of the companies you want to keep an eye on.  Do your research.  Go to the company's website, read articles in the news about them, and try to talk to people who work there to get some first hand accounts. (Ask nicely of course.) Make your list of the companies you want to be at.

Now that you have your two lists made, a job list and a company list, just match up the jobs you want with the companies you want to be at.  Not all companies have openings or even have the same type of job. Some developers won’t have a marketing job.  If you go to work at a publisher, they probably don’t have game designers.  Use your combined list to find the opportunities that you want and these are the jobs you should be applying at. The best way to apply to these jobs is to go directly to their websites and click that career openings button. I meet so many people who have no process in their job search and just randomly apply to everything.  They end up getting jobs at companies or in departments they don’t want to work at, and just become miserable and stuck. Don’t let that happen to you. My goal is to not just have you “not be miserable,” it’s to love and excel at what you do.  You give yourself a far less chance of finding that if you don’t have a process.  So remember, each job is a stepping stone to your career goal so use this method to start your journey on the right foot.  Next time we’ll talk about writing your resume and the application process.  Also feel free to ask questions, I’m always happy to help.

-CK