How to get a job in games

So you want to work in games?

5 Ways to Help You Get a Job in the Games Industry 2019 (for Beginners)

It's a funny old industry, games. It's kind of like the story of the weird, underestimated kid growing up with annoyingly successful siblings 'TV' and 'Film', suddenly coming out of nowhere to become the belle of the ball... Or in this case, a multi-billionaire...

This year was another meteoric success for games, with gamesindustry.biz reporting a global revenue of $134.9bn, expecting to hit $180bn in 2019 and it won't stop there! Finally, telling your parents that you want a career in games development might actually be respected and not this huge surprise drawing disappointed frowns, as it historically did for so many. With all this wonderful fun and all these wonderful figures (which have surpassed TV and film), why wouldn't you want to be a part of it?

I recently attended a great workshop hosted by Into Games in Brighton, which focused around giving youth the best possible chance of making their first steps into the industry. Whilst there I got to speak to an interesting and diverse variety of people from current students, professionals, careers advisors, veterans and lecturers. What did I learn? First and foremost that the difficulty of breaking into the industry is an acknowledged pain point, brimming with talented and knowledgeable people trying to do what they can to support beginners (you're in good hands guys, I promise!). However, I couldn't help but notice people are still being guided in the wrong direction at times and a lot of the 'general advice' out there is getting pretty dated. In this article, drawing from 8 years' experience recruiting in the computer games industry, I will try to give you some useful (and hopefully a little bit fresher) information about how to make those first steps into games, with the perspective of recruitment from the inside.

These days the emphasis is on you and who you are. Embrace it... You've just got to know how to flaunt those feathers!

1. Get out there

Go and have some fun with the sort of people you want to become. The games community is small and intimate, so it takes no time at all to be recognised and known. This is one of the few industries in the world where people want to meet you for the sincere and simple reason that they just hope you're a cool person to hang out with, so make the most of it. Take yourself off to launches, enthusiast groups (such as 'Indie Game Developers', 'Augmenting Reality', 'Unity User Group' on meetup.com), game jams, and events (Develop: Brighton, Rezzed), as this is a sure fire way to springboard your way into the industry. They're not always expensive and a lot of these events have free expo areas and parties around them, where the vast majority hang out anyway!

Honestly, your next employer would probably prefer to meet you over a drink and a chat about games than via an expensive recruiter

Surround yourself with people who will make growing the natural thing to do.

2. Build an online presence

There's a chance you will have some sort of online presence already, but how good is it?

LinkedIn is a good place to start if you have no presence but you do have some experience. Build a network of connections and politely request recommendations for any previous (industry relevant) work that you have done. Even if that means connecting with your old uni peers and asking a lecturer to recommend you, it's a good start to padding that profile out. Make sure you add projects to this, and specify what your role/duties were – that part is crucial!

Available now? Looking for new opportunities? Make sure prospective employers can see that in your title or summary. Spoon feed visitors information to visitors of your profile, so that they know what you're about the moment they click on your your name.

Freelancer? Why not add your next date of availability to your LinkedIn title.

Portfolio/Showreels

Building a portfolio site is the next big step you should take – or in some cases putting some love into that site which has been sitting half finished since your second year at uni. For you artists and designers in particular, the appearance of your site is critical. Having an ugly or badly-designed site can call into question your sense of design or usability, and that's not what you want... Even the coders amongst you can be judged on it!

I probably don't need to tell you this, but it's probably best to keep your Flash use to a minimum these days too ;)

Make it as easy as you can for the hiring staff to evaluate your work, including Github if possible. My advice would be to run through your projects history, ring fencing each one clearly. Ensure that you describe what you did, and what software you may have used to do it. Any visuals you can provide, including YouTube clips to gameplay where possible, is a massive bonus.

Other places to build a presence

Online communities and forums are a good place to get others to critique your work, and frequent involvement (especially if it displays how you are improving) can get noticed by the right people.

Twitter is another great tool and an excellent way to show everybody what an interesting person you are! At the end of every conversation with a new client I ask them if there is anything more I should know about the kind of people they'd like to recruit, and the answer is always the same: we want people with personality! Now this doesn't mean you need to be 'crazy', but gone are the days that a interview meant you have to be the most boring version of you – bear this in mind when CV writing and Twittering – we want to know that you’re suitable for the role and what you think of the new Star Wars movie as long as 'bad' is the answer, of course ;)

3. Recruiters are great, just make sure you choose wisely

Your first port of call should be to make yourself a shopping list of companies you'd like to work with and reach out to those directly - include a cover letter for each application outlining why you'd be great for a role in that company. Trust me, it'll get you extra brownie points and only 10% of people actually do it!

Use LinkedIn to identify whether those companies have an in-house talent acquisition team and introduce yourself personally over a message. In-house teams are usually dealing with a lot of live candidates at any given time and sometimes you could have as many as 200 other applicants. By introducing yourself you may well make yourself stand out from the crowd.

I'm going to level with you here. Recruiters don't have the best reputation and they know it, but the good news is that there is actually a generous collection of great agents out there who are passionate gamers just like you, that genuinely want the games industry to strive – just like you – I promise!

An early suggestion is to work with just one recruiter initially, and do your research first. This way you will maintain control of your job hunt and be able to actually collaborate with your agent as an individual on how best to approach the market. Your agent will get to know where you've been, where you'd go, what you would/wouldn't like to do and how much for. A good agent will already have the industry knowledge/contacts to connect you to the right opportunity.

Do your research

There is only a small collection of agencies throughout Europe which are genuinely and truly embedded within the games industry. Look at websites, read testimonials and recommendations on agent's individual LinkedIn pages, get a real feel for who is most likely to get you your dream job. Bear in mind recruiters rarely come from a technical background, so make sure you're working with somebody with experience. On my first day in games recruitment (albeit 8 years ago) I called C# "see-hashtag"... True story.

4. Applying

Here are some tips, broken down into area of expertise which may assist you in getting an interview:

Being a 'Jack-of-all-trades' is a no no! Whether you are inexperienced and looking for a first position, or a total veteran, labelling yourself as a 'Jack-of-all trades' or listing a number of different job functions which you may be able to do just isn't cutting it I'm afraid. You need to know what you are and label yourself. People want specialists. Naturally you will have other skills and that gives you some excellent CV/interview fodder, but for now go in with your forté. How can you really show what you can do to get ahead of your competition? Think about the following and let your recruiter or future employer know about it early.

Programmers:

Demonstrable games/programs/assets studio's developers can look at
Code samples
Blog posts or tutoring vids on programming theory or techniques
Published papers

Artists:

An online portfolio, or at very least a zip file or drop box
Examples of games that use your work, outlining your responsibilities and software used
For 3D Artists, renders with edges you want to show off about and efficient use of polygons

Game Designers:

Downloadable samples of your work
A clearly creative side for colour and flair
Level maps

5. Interviewing and attitude

It’s about value and values. You're working in games and you're clearly in it for the love, because very rarely did anybody ever 'fall into' games. So feel free to show how passionate you are about what you do!

Make it clear what you value, aim specifically for those studios that do the same and tell them why: you'll never tire of games development like this. In fact, you’ll look forward to it!

Remember (cliché alert): it doesn't matter how experienced and long in the tooth you are, if you're doing what you love then you will never work a day for the rest of your life. (At least I warned you).

For this reason asking early questions about working hours and salary packages in interviews is a no no. You will get the opportunity to find out about that at a later stage – for now, let's focus on the positives:

What are they trying to achieve
How would you fit into that
What does the person interviewing you enjoy about their position
Do they have a long-term vision
Opportunities for progression

Research, prepare & research some more

I cannot tell you how many interviewees, no matter how good, lost out to the candidate that stayed up all night playing the client's game the night before as research, or even creating something specifically for them as prep. You get to play games as 'research' for a company you might work for – it's a perk, make the most of it!

Well, that's it... good luck!

Feel free to get in touch with any questions or if you'd like to have a chat :)

Author

Guy DeRosa

Guy is the Head of Talent for Studio Gobo (Hove, UK) and Electric Square (Brighton, UK), overseeing growth in all studios. In an industry in which culture is paramount, Guy believes that being a part of the community is of utmost importance, which is why you can usually find him somewhere gamesy and fun.

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