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Career Change (Gaming)
Vaash
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Hello all..
I've been looking to make a career change recently. I'm a software engineer (~5 years experience), and I have a fair amount of coding experience and also architecture/design type experience.
I'm a good engineer, and I'm currently with a company that has an internationally recognized brand, but for a variety of reasons I'm not really happy with it. In part because I've always wanted to be in the gaming industry (which I have never worked in). I'd like to do either development work or design work, and I believe the experience I have would be relevant for either. I think I could do the job just fine, and I believe I interview well. I haven't been able to get to that point, though.
I'm based in Chicago, which doesn't have the biggest game development community, but there are a number of studios and some of them look like I'd be a really good fit for. Generally people I know think I would be great at making games, and are encouraging me to find a job doing that, but I've been having a really hard time with the 'how' part. I know that people in general tend to get jobs through networking, and I've heard that's especially true in gaming, but frankly I'm not sure how to meet the right people (and that doesn't touch on the fact that I'm not really sure how to meet someone new and then ask them for a job...).
I'm hoping some people here might be able to help me out. General advice on changing career paths and getting jobs through networking would be pretty useful. I think any inside perspectives would be pretty good too.
Thank you for reading, and for any advice you might have!
I've been looking to make a career change recently. I'm a software engineer (~5 years experience), and I have a fair amount of coding experience and also architecture/design type experience.
I'm a good engineer, and I'm currently with a company that has an internationally recognized brand, but for a variety of reasons I'm not really happy with it. In part because I've always wanted to be in the gaming industry (which I have never worked in). I'd like to do either development work or design work, and I believe the experience I have would be relevant for either. I think I could do the job just fine, and I believe I interview well. I haven't been able to get to that point, though.
I'm based in Chicago, which doesn't have the biggest game development community, but there are a number of studios and some of them look like I'd be a really good fit for. Generally people I know think I would be great at making games, and are encouraging me to find a job doing that, but I've been having a really hard time with the 'how' part. I know that people in general tend to get jobs through networking, and I've heard that's especially true in gaming, but frankly I'm not sure how to meet the right people (and that doesn't touch on the fact that I'm not really sure how to meet someone new and then ask them for a job...).
I'm hoping some people here might be able to help me out. General advice on changing career paths and getting jobs through networking would be pretty useful. I think any inside perspectives would be pretty good too.
Thank you for reading, and for any advice you might have!
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Posts
Look up game companies in your area and check their website for openings, then apply for those openings.
Option B:
Work on a few games of your own in your free time to add to your resume, then goto Option A.
I've had some success with that approach. Sometimes they'll want you to send them some sort of small project to show you know what you're doing (I had one want a function that navigates a maze). Networking can help, but I don't think it's required at all. Just don't be surprised if you're working for Small Mobile Game Developer for a little while before you move to working on Dudebro Shooter 3 for Actibioblizz. You don't have to have game development specific experience (though it would certainly help). Having that much experience as a SE will help you out a lot.
*this advice accurate as of several years ago
http://gamedevmap.com/
Also be aware, the industry as a whole can be... rocky. Depending on the company, you may see surges of hiring/firing depending on how many projects are being worked on. It isn't necessarily the most stable form of employment at times.
Also, often game jobs usually list certain years of game experience requirements or released title requirements - just ignore em and apply anyway.
And if you do want to network, check out the local chapter of the IGDA:
http://igdachicago.com/
And you might create an indie hit that lets you just open your own studio!
Basically, the CEO was a computer science graduate. I was a computer science student. He grilled me on my education so far, primarily in Graphics and AI.
COO was more on the design and art side. Asked me what games I played.
For both, the second subject that they both raised was "What games have you made?".
While not a dealbreaker, if you've made games, it's a positive. I don't think studios really care if you have 3-5 years experience, they care that you've made games period.
I'm currently also now a software engineer of just under a year. I'd like to move into games as well, but considering my weak skill set (math ain't that great, AI is meh), I really need to just make one single game that I can at least show that I've gone thorugh the process at least once.
There's one attitude that I actually went into searching for game development jobs that I dropped after seeing the type of work that developers need to deal with. I used to think that I needed to get my "foot in the door" through either QA or being a programmer, then move into a more favorable position. Honestly, figure out exactly what discipline you want to work in (design, art, programming) and make sure you can show off your abilities in relationship to where you want to work. If you want to work as a game designer, make a game and show you can analytically break down the components of a game and show your design intuition through a fully fledged game. Want to be a programmer? Make a graphics engines or a full suite of tools and make a game out of the tools. Show them the tools you made and how they flow into each other to make a game. Art? Make concept art. Learn Maya or Max or whatever and make some assets. Find a game engine that can take those assets and add them to simple game.
I used to think I should be a programmer and go to EA and get a job as programmer, working 80 hour weeks while trying to find some avenue to put my design input. Now that I have a job as a software engineer, my feelings are that I really don't want to code all day to design solutions to smaller problems. I want to be on the abstracted layer of game design. Instead of spending hours staring at a blank IDE trying to write tools that I'd use to create some semblance of a game, boring the hell out of myself, I should have taken whatever game engine or game creation tool existed out there and just started making a game from inception to completion. Creating fun and intuitive systems. Forget the design doc, just make a game. Compromise. Make something good if not great.
Now, I don't know what discipline you want to truly enter, but for whatever field you are entering, find out what skills the employer wants or find out what skills you need for that discipline and find a way to show off your skills. I'd say to avoid stubbing your toe on the door and just go for exactly what you love to do. Don't go around and hope to land where you want eventually. Just go directly for it.
How I see it now, you're probably working with comfortable enough hours and get pretty decent pay. With multiple years in the workforce, I'd hope you'd pay off most of your debt if not all and you are looking at the game industry as a career change. By trying to make games, you'll find out exactly what part of the process you love and what you can leave. When you know what you love, then go for it. Because unless you can find a studio that caps weekly overtime at 2.5 hours and allows you to work hours that benefits your lifestyle, you'd probably be moving into a sharp occupational downgrade.
That's my 2 cents.
Just to follow up on a few things that have been raised:
I have been trying just applying to open positions (WMS among them). So far, I haven't gotten any kind of response. I know that isn't necessarily atypical in any industry of course, but it is always a bit discouraging.
I do think I'm probably better suited to and would more enjoy game design over development. I definitely had an impression that most designers came up through development positions, though, and it seems like that may not be so true.
I don't necessarily mind instability, I'm pretty confident in my ability to find a job to pay the bills, this is much more about finding one I truly want to have. The instability factor does cause me to prefer to stay in Chicago, though, as moving out to a new city and then having the studio go under would be a little more difficult to deal with. Though I haven't entirely ruled out relocation.
I wouldn't even be opposed to a small start-up type. As with any start-up I'd care much more about the specific project(s) than I would at an established developer, since I would need to believe it could succeed.
In cases where the roles of design and implementation are somewhat compartmentalized, there are few things more aggrevating than a programmer trying to suggest to a designer how to design their game. Imagine you draft up the functional specs to an application your client wants and you go to your tech team and your tech team starts suggesting functionality that is completely different from what the customer wants. You talked with the customer. You discussed what the use cases are. Your programmers do not know what the purpose of the program is other than it needs to do a, b, and c. At that point, you might as well just implement the program yourself.
This scenario assumes that your designer has enough foresight to cover most obvious cases for ease of use and clarity. I mean, if your designers ask you to create a platformer where the player can be jump and shoot but defines the actions in such a way that the player cannot jump and shoot at the same time, then yes, your designer is probably bad so go ahead and suggest to your producer that your designers are bad, should feel bad, and you should replace them because you are a rockstar game designer with hella intuition. XD
The most preferable case is that design comes to you with a design document, you point out glaring design flaws that exist and create a prototype, your designer looks at the prototype and make changes to the design, and you iterate.
Ideally...
However, every studio probably has their own way to doing things where some studios may have very rigid roles for their employees or you might have a more freeform studio like Valve where everyone dabbles in design, creative, and technical. There may be companies where everyone is simply a software engineer so everyone designs and implements.
I'm only simply saying that if you want to get into design, shoot for design. If you go into development with the expectation of transitioning into design, do not expect to get many chances to show off you design chops so cherish any chances you get. I met a few employees over at EA years back who started in QA who eventually became Head QA or some producer for some satellite companies. Their biggest complaint rising through the ranks was a lack of input into their projects. Recently, some of my friends got hired into a start up game company and they had more chances to give their input into the design of their games but not the nature of the projects. While everyone could say their say in how a game may be designed, they're still working on I Spy games and small mobile word games. There's not much indepth design to be had when making a game where you're just poking the screen looking for hidden objects.
If by "developer" you mean programmer, nope. The two tracks are entirely unrelated. If you can, become a programmer, as they are much better paid and valued by most companies, due to rarer skills. You also have the option of saying "fuck it" and getting a regular coding job with the experience, but game design experience is not so transferrable. Game design sounds more fun than programming on the face of things, but they can sometimes just end up doing big gruelling spreadsheets of game stats rather than being "auteurs" as a lot of people imagine them.
If you like both programming and design, apply to small companies where all the workers need to wear many hats. I'm a programmer that can do design, and one of my friends is an artist that can code and design. This is very rewarding and never gets boring, unlike working in one very defined role for big companies like EA which can be a bit soul-destroying. Of course you are more likely to be working on iPhone games than the next Bioshock so you may view things differently.
The game industry is very nomadic. People get hired, fired a year later, then move across the country to their next job. If you have strong roots in one place that is not California you may find it very hard to chase jobs.