askagamedev:

Hello and welcome. Don’t worry about asking questions that were asked before - I always try to answer the questions I get as reasonably and respectfully as I can, and the worst case scenario is that you’ll get a link to an earlier post where it is answered. That said…

A lot of schools out there have some sort of game design program now, mostly due to popular demand. Some are very good at getting you into the industry, and others are awful scam artists that will happily take your money and leave you with a degree that means mostly nothing. There’s an excellent video about game schools in general by the lads and lasses at Extra Credits that explains most of what I would say when it comes to selecting a good game school, so I’ll just embed that here and you can take a look. If that answers your question sufficiently, wonderful. After the video, I’ll try to explain a little about my own background and how I got into the industry, what it is that the AAA industry usually looks for in hiring at the entry level, and the sort of responsibilities and tasks someone at that level would be doing so that you get an idea of what it is you want to consider studying. These should all be pretty relevant for somebody who’s decided on a career in the industry. 

First, the video:

The only things I’d like to add to this is that wherever you end up, should you wish to make your career in games, you should always, always, always be on the lookout for two things while in school:

1. Follow and apply for internships in the industry. Experience is indeed vital. You might not get paid, but the pay shouldn’t matter too much, it’s the project experience in an actual game that will (most likely) ship that’s important. I know many publishers and studios that take on interns, and it is the quickest and best way to fast track your way into the industry. If you manage to get one, work hard and try to make a good impression. It is fairly likely that once you graduate there will be a job waiting for you.
2. Reach out to members of the industry, especially in the field you are interested in. If you aren’t, you can reach out to folks like me to bounce questions off of or get suggestions for how. The game industry is very small, so a support network of sorts is incredibly handy. Alumni from your school of choice are an obvious target for outreach, but you could also try a local chapter of the IGDA, or go to a conference like GDC and try to make friends and meet people. Actual face time is way more important than online or email contact too… if you can put a face to a name, it goes a long way to help establish a connection.

Ok, so now a little background time. I went to a famous and established four-year university and graduated electrical engineering and computer science. While I was there, I did some project work on my own time, using the Half-Life SDK and then the Quake 3 SDK to work on my own programming and design skills. I learned the theory and concepts of computer science, software engineering, and math from the classes I took, and taught myself how they were useful in my own off-the-books project work. After graduating, I went to GDC - the Game Developer’s Conference, where I shopped my resume around at their career center (including my personal game project experience). I managed to get a callback from a studio that had noticed and liked my own side project work that I had included on my (admittedly bare) resume. I talked with the development director on the project who was impressed by my passion and interest in games, and I demonstrated that I knew how to program in C at the interview, but they were on a hiring freeze at the time so they couldn’t hire me.

The development director did say that I could ask him any questions I had about the industry, so I did ask him about game schools (which were just beginning at the time - I believe that DigiPen had only been around for a few years at that point), and he told me what I’m about to tell you. Most of the time, game companies want solid, demonstrable skills from their candidates. A game-specific school degree usually doesn’t carry that much weight, even if it’s got accreditations. Even most university degrees don’t carry that much weight - only a handful really do. It’s more of a checkbox for some candidates, but the real takeaway is the passion and the sort of project experience someone has. You can take all the classes in the world, but it doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t get the work done. When it comes down to getting a job, you need to convince the team that you’ll work well with them, and that you’ll be able to get your tasks done. Your GPA or degree won’t help anywhere nearly as much as your knowledge and mastery of your skills and project experience.

A few months later, the hiring freeze ended and they took a chance and brought me on as an entry level UI programmer. I’ve been working in games since.

Let’s fast forward several years. Since then, I’ve found myself on both ends of the interviewing table a number of  times for a variety of roles. Here are a few things that I would suggest for job-seekers, or those interested in the industry to keep in mind. Standard caveats apply, there are always exceptions to the rule, etc.

• Job titles are mostly meaningless unless you have a commercially shipped game with that title. If you were lead programmer or designer on a mod or a school project, that won’t impress very much. Entry level developers don’t generally become leads right away, you need a lot more experience and understanding for that.
• You need to be able to work in a team. Nearly all games from big studios are done in teams of at least 20+ people, so you’ll almost always be working with others. You’ll need to be able work well and communicate with others, but also with a minimum amount of hand-holding. The team invariably wants any new person to be able to be productive quickly.
• Be confident in your work, but also be honest in your assessments of yourself. Don’t try to overplay your achievements (especially right out of school); the people who decide whether you’ll get a job or not are most likely the more senior members of the team who probably have years of experience on you.
• Know your own work. It’s your stuff, and they will have questions about how and why you chose to do certain things. You need to be able to demonstrate mastery of it. After all, you made it. If you don’t know or can’t explain, it stands to reason you might not be able to explain or understand what they ask you to do as well.
• Do your stuff on time. A lot of game production is making estimates on how long it will take to do your tasks, and then doing them. A lot of productivity is lost when you make bad estimates. 

Entry level game development is also not always particularly glamorous. Programmers usually start small with UI (hooking up options to work, handling corner cases, etc.) or elements of gameplay (simpler tasks, like tracking achievements and setting special modes) and then can branch out into other fields of interest. Artists are a bit of a special bunch, since it’s all about their portfolio, but the general rules still apply - be able to work with a team, make sure you can work within given technical constraints, make sure that you can get your tasks completed on time, and the like. For designers, you’ll probably also get started handling smaller features, like bonus features and image galleries, scripting small encounters, or designing portions of levels under the mentorship of a more experienced designer. As you gain more experience, the sort of tasks you’ll get to work on will become meatier and more interesting.

Ultimately, school is what you make of it. I’ve been in and out of universities quite a bit, both as a volunteer to represent my company talking to prospective graduates, and as a student or auditor to polish my skills in some relevant classes. A lot of students out there are just there to try to game the system by maximizing the grade point average while minimizing the effort put in. When you try to find a job, especially in an industry as passionate as games, it’s never going to be about what grade you got. It will be about how you are able to apply the things you learned in school and on your own to the work you will do with others on the team. This is why it’s tremendously important to try to internalize what it is you’re learning, and why it is important.

I hope this answers your question and provides some context for getting into the industry. If not, or if you have further questions, my inbox is always open. And, as a reward for sticking it out this far, this is the video that the Extra Credits guys were talking about. It is hilariously bad.