Beer and Breaking Into the Gaming Industry
Before my “meager” 2 years of experience in the gaming industry, I would read people like Brian Green’s advice on “breaking into games“. A lot of his advice, I have to admit, I am only now beginning to understand and appreciate.
Some of Brian’s highlightable bits of bite-sized truth include:
“you should realize that there isn’t really an ‘idea person’ job description. Most game ideas will come from senior people with years of experience under their belt.”
and
“Network, network, network, network. I can’t emphasize this enough.”
These two I feel obliged to comment on, since they have been very much a reality in my life.
Everyone new to a QA position will find that they have ton and tons of suggestions that weigh heavily on their minds. Most of these will be shared by the whole of the design staff and are too complex or too far beyond the scope of the project to implement.
If you want to have your ideas taken seriously, by all means, obtain some coding and scripting skills and put together a demo in Unreal, Flash, or Game Maker. Seriously. Most games are 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration anyways, so learn to script or code.
As to the second point. If you want to break into the industry, find some game people and offer to buy them beer or food. Be cool. Have intelligent things to say. Maybe they are looking for one of the plethora of enthusiastic script kitties who are willing to work for less than their business software counterparts.
Chances are, if you actually manage to get a career in the industry you’ll work with just about everyone in your city at some point. So a few beers bought here and there will go a long way for you in the long run.
I’ve heard more than one director say “never hire anyone you wouldn’t drink with after hours.” And they mean it.
People who have been in the industry much longer than I have have said essentially the same thing. If for some reason you’re reading about this for the first time here, the gods help you, don’t take this as wistful advice.
