To get into the game industry is an elastic term. You can try to form your own "Dream Team" and follow the path of an indie enthusiast, mastering all the subtleties of game building on your own. You can go through specialized courses. Or you can find a classic entry-level job at a large company and learn the basics of teamwork there. But, sooner or later, you can still be faced with another job search. It doesn't matter if it will be connected with the closure of the company/downsizing of the ranks, or if a tired of indie developers will want to do something more ambitious as a team member of a big game company - in all cases, you will have to look for a job. In this article, I will tell you what can help both beginners and established professionals to find a job in the game industry.
TIP#1 LOVE WHAT YOU DO & SPECIALIZE
The reason why I say this is because if you’re excited to go to work then you’re going to do a good job. So, picking a path is picking what part of game development you want to be a part of. Do you want to be involved in art, in design, in programming - or do you want to be a support function? Do you want to work in IT, work in Consumer Experience, in Branding? There are many jobs within games not just game design. If you’re passionate about games, if you love playing games, you love watching games, whatever it might be just stick with that for that. Use your knowledge of games and bring that with you into the industry.
TIP#2 BE CURIOUS & EAGER TO LEARN
This is about educating yourself, being knowledgeable about your topic and it doesn’t necessarily mean going to university. You can self-teach online. But one of the things we really look for is practical experience. So, have you done an internship? Or are you involved in communities? Do you have an active portfolio? Do you have passion projects? Things that you are working on and developing all the time. Every job ad that we post we list some of the tools that you would need in those roles. So I would suggest looking at those tools and pick them up as a hobby may be. Develop your skills with those tool sets. Obviously, if it’s Programming or Game Design you want to look at Unity and Unreal. And then maybe more design skills like Photoshop, Brush. All these things will help you to develop your craft.
TIP#3 PROVE YOUR SKILLS & UNDERSTANDING
So, this is about demonstrating what you can do and showing not just the recruiter but the hiring team, getting your foot in the door essentially. So you want to have a strong CV and show all your skill sets and not just say: «I’m a really good programmer». But write down, prove, demonstrate experiences, examples, situations that you’ve been through. And be very specific with what you’ve done so far. Portfolios are almost always essential for art and design roles. So make sure that’s up to date. You’ve got a full stock of material maybe your published work, but if not anything that’s published. Personal projects are always helpful. And a strong portfolio is almost better than a CV. So that is one of the things we’ll look at first. It's also a good idea to get kinds of reports from your employer about the work you've done so you can use them. For example, one of the boost companies called Pirate Bay Service provides experienced players who want to change jobs with screenshots of proofs of jobs done by them so that boosters can use that for further employment.
TIP#4 PUT YOURSELF OUT THERE & NETWORK
This could be going to big events like E3 and Gamescom or maybe in your hometown. Maybe there is a meet-up, maybe there is a developer conference. I don’t know what it is, but go to events, meet people, introduce yourself. Get familiar with the technology, the people, the industry. Grow your network.
TIP#5 BE PERSISTENT & DON’T GIVE UP
So maybe you’re not going to get the first job you apply to, but if you keep trying and you adapt your applications, your portfolio. If you personalize your approach to the company you’re more likely to receive feedback from them. And then, moving forward, if you do get rejected ask for feedback. Be very specific. So ask them what you could have done differently. Maybe it was you got to a design test and they didn’t like something, ask exactly what it was you could’ve done differently. Speak to the recruiters and maybe ask them the profile that got hired. What did they have that was different from me? Kind of pick the pieces together and maybe you’re designer and one of the things we look for in the test that we do is you can explain to us the design process so A to Z. Maybe it starts off with just pencil, drawings on a piece of paper. But that’s actually important information for us to see your methodology from start to finish. Not just the end result or the polished, finished article