Methods of making the break through...part 1

Sorry I missed last week….work exploded in intensity for a while and I ended up getting sick so I lost a day or so…to make up for it, I’m going to try and put a coupla articles out this week…looking at the various methods of actually getting into the industry…

A classic route into the industry is to start off in QA with the intention of moving into other areas once you’re inside as it were…

This is a common method but has mixed results. You’d think that getting industry experience, being able to demonstrate an understanding as to how games are put together and what can go wrong would be enough to make you an auto-choice when it comes to hiring for junior positions. Sadly, in my experience at least, this happens rarely…

There is an inherent difficulty with internal hiring that causes this…basically human beings like to label and order things/people/places/stuff etc…this means that if you join as a QA tester then you’ll be labelled a ‘QA tester’ and shifting that category is hard work. In order for this route to succeed you need to demonstrate your aptitude for other areas within development. See my previous posts about being able to talk about games and building levels in a recognised editor…you need to do this to start making people think of you as other than a ‘QA tester’.

 

The advantage to this approach is that you have plenty of time to build the right relationships and work them over to you way of thinking…for example, if you wanna get into design then get to know the senior and lead designers. Build a relationship and over time you will have plenty of chances to show what you can do...downside is it might take a coupla years and you’ll need to be laser-focussed on timing your run in to coincide with the ramp down of a recently shipped title with the ramp up of the next project…

Timing is hard to advise on, it is very situational…but I can talk about building the relationship in the right way…a common mistake is to hope that the sheer brilliance of your ideas will get you noticed and they’ll take real notice…this is highly unlikely! Don’t even think that providing excellent critique and suggestions as to improvement and tweaks to the game in development will get you where you want to be…it’ll get you noticed but not the kind of relationship you want to foster…one of ‘jeez, not that guy and his ideas about how I can do my job better again’ is to be avoided…

Don’t forget, what we want is for people to believe in your potential in the role you want…

So here’s the Mat Hart secret method, in my experience there’s no better way to do this than to go to them for advice about a personal project you’re working on….ask them to share their experience and knowledge and then act on it….then, and this is the good bit, you have a reasonable reason to go back to them and say ‘I tried that, can you take a look and let me know what you think?’ and then get more feedback and, most importantly, you are then acting the role of a designer in their team albeit on a personal project…this way they will stop thinking about you as a ‘QA tester’ and start thinking about you as an enthusiastic designer…

Also, speak with HR…make sure they know about what you want to achieve

This works for all disciplines…everyone loves to be asked advice….it makes them feel special and respected and who doesn’t respond well to those feelings….here’s another tip for you, try it on your Dad if you’re a bloke or your Mum if you’re a girl, its solid gold, trust me! Basically as you get older and more independent then the less you need your Mum or your Dad on a day to day basis, so flip this over, go and ask them for their help on something (it doesn’t have to be a big deal) and watch as their hearts melt…trust me, I’m a dad as well as a son…

So this is a great method overall if you a) are patient b) able to time your approach c) can tailor your approach to the individuals and most importantly, d) are willing to put the effort in to have a personal project and work on it…but then this last part is easy ‘cos you love this shit already right? Good luck… J

brilliant, i got my first hate comment...awesome! it always surprises me how extreme people are willing to get when they can remain anonymous...i'd be willing to bet that if they had to put their name to their comments and stuff like that was traceable then they'd tone it down a lot...

for example, i'm not Alex Ferguson's biggest fan...i'll happily shout and scream abuse in his direction when Arsenal are getting smashed by Man Utd but if i ever met him in real life i'd shake his hand and be quite friendly...mainly 'cos i wouldn't want to come across as a twat but also because i was brought up properly to be polite and respectful...

so with the haters, my first reaction is to offer them out...seriously, if they want to say that stuff then they can say it to my face and we can 'discuss' it...i come from Essex after all and thats how we deal with things...but then that's not the right thing to do...the right thing is to ignore it and carry on...so if you wanna post hate, carry on...i'll ignore you and press delete...its takes almost no effort for me to do that, certainly waay less than it took Anonymous to knuckle out an insult on his keyboard...

Maybe we should have a 'would you want your Mum to read this' filter applied to the internet? oh wait, that's definitely not such a good idea...

in closing, i have deleted the comment but it does make it look like someone coming to the defense of this blog is actually insulting someone else...my bad...please insert a shitty comment between Mayank's comment and Neil's comment to properly understand the thread :)

Producing Chaos Series 1 - Getting Into Games "Creating Levels"

One of the best pieces of advice I can give people wanting to get into development, design especially but also applicable to other disciplines is to start using a level editor. You really can’t go wrong with Unreal in my opinion but there are others out there. I’d wholeheartedly recommend doing a bit of research but make sure you pick one of the bigger names…

What’s even better, is that many of the bigger engines provide free-to-use versions…more details on the free Unreal Development Kit can be found here: www.udk.com

The best reason to go with a more popular engine is the amount of support and information there is out there. Download the UDK, grab yourself a book like this one: Mastering Unreal Technology: v. 1: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3: A Beginner's Guide to Level Design in Unreal Engine 3 and (snappy huh?) and get started…if you get stuck, jump online and get active in any number of UDK dedicated forums.

Once you get some basic skills/knowledge then just start to create some levels…this’ll do multiple things for you…firstly, it’ll tell you if you even like making levels for a start as this is what my designers and artists do pretty much 80% of the time…secondly it’ll teach you the right process for designing and making a level which will enable you to talk confidently about how you approach designing a level/scenario/player experience and then actually creating it which’ll be relevant for a whole bunch of disciplines like production, design, art, animation etc…thirdly, it’ll give you examples of your work which will help you way more than anything on your CV…trust me!

Just make sure you come up with lots of examples of different types of gameplay such as high action, chases, puzzles, exploration etc…

As always, please feel free to link this out, spread the word and let people know about the blog…it is very encouraging for me to see comments and get into conversations with people on Twitter and stuff…please message me here or on Twitter with ideas for specific topics, I’ve got a backlog of ideas but its always good to hear what people want to know…

Getting into Games: You need to play games!

So building on from last week’s article, there’s been a few comments which is ace…I’ll not address each and every one but I will just say that what I write here has to be non-specific advice and will not map onto every individual instance…history is full of people who succeeded without a solid core education and this will continue into the future…this series of articles is all about boosting your chances of getting your dream job and will focus on the key elements that give you the best chance of success…

So what I’m saying is, if you don’t have qualifications then it isn’t game over, you just need to find a way to positive spin what you have instead…

In the future I’ll talk about most of them but suffice to say for now that there are many ways into the industry, some more expedient than others…regardless of which route you’re gonna try, what you need to understand is that you are not alone…sadly, for you, there are literally hundreds of people just like you who also want to land that precious break-through job…so the key question is how do you get noticed?

If you’re trying to break into the industry then I’m assuming you’re going to be targeting a more junior position and will work your way up…think about this, you don’t need to be the best designer or coder or artist in the world right at the start of your career…instead you need to be able to make the person interviewing you believe that you have the potential to be a star in the future…the key word is potential…what you are selling is what you could become not what you are right now...cool?

The following will help you to a) understand if this kind of job is actually for you, b) give you some solid grounding upon which you can start demonstrating your potential and c) make you different, in a good way, from dozens of other applicants!

But be warned, once you start doing this, you will find it very hard to stop doing it and it may well spoil how you play games from now on! Curious?

Let's assume you wanna get into design (but this works for any discipline, you just need to tweak the questions to suit)…what you need to do is pick a gaming genre and become an “expert” in it…take first-person shooters for example…the fun bit, make sure you have played as many games of this type as possible, and not just the good ones either! 

This gives you breadth of knowledge, so when you’re in an interview and someone asks you what games you’re playing (and they will) then you can talk about all the FPS games you’ve and not just COD or BF3…

The next step takes our breadth and gives you depth of knowledge...you’ll be able to talk confidently about what you liked, didn’t like, felt could be improved, what changes you would make and why…how? Read on…

When you’re playing you need to stop playing as a gamer and start playing as an game analyst…I warn you again, once you start doing this it will fuck you up in terms of being able to enjoy games just for games sake in the future! You have been warned!

When you’re analysing a game you need to sit down with a pad of paper and a pencil and take lots of notes…pause the game often to take these notes don’t just play the game and hope to remember them later…think about every second, every minute, every hour of your experience and what factors are affecting how you feel, what you're doing, why you’re doing it etc. etc.

Every time you pause the game, think specifically about:

How the geometry/environment is set out and how that affects the gameplay…

How many enemy types are there…what makes this fun?

Where do the enemies spawn/appear from? Why?

How many waves are there? Why?

What is the composition of the waves…how does it affect gameplay?

How does the lighting affect the experience?

What is the mood/atmosphere? Why have they made it like that?

The music, what is that doing? Why?

How is the story told through the game? Why did they do it like that?

What are you feeling while playing it…why?

How would you improve it?

And so on…obviously these questions are neither exhaustive or universal…tweak them to suit your chosen genre and feel free to come up with more…

Do this over and over and over and over…and then start spreading to other genres...become a student of the industry...know games inside out...

Trust me, do this now while you're young and have the time and you'll use this knowledge base for the rest of your career...wait until you have kids and a mortgage and you'll never find the time to do i properly...

This habit I want you to get into will mean you can confidently and expertly talk about games of a specific genre with a view to an interviewer thinking ‘this guy know his stuff, he may well make me look awesome for hiring him so I’ll give him a chance as a junior designer’.

Especially if what you learn from your analysis can then be demonstrated in your own levels…but more on this next week…

As always, please comment…its great getting feedback…let me know if there’s any specific areas/topics I could cover…

And if you can, spread the word…tweet this, facebook it…sky-write it in the sky…cheers!

quick plug for my friend Mark Davies...he was the Lead Designer on Enslaved before he, and his family, decided to have an adventure over in the States...he's having a blast but hopefully he'll come back one day...


anyway, he read my blog entry earlier and revisited his own 'how to get into design' series...check it out here: http://lifeofadesignmonkey.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-to-get-job-in-game-design-revisited.html

Getting Into Games: where to start...

So where to begin? This is a tricky question so I guess I'll start with the basics, namely core education...essentially this is one of the first things I look for when I'm checking out a CV of someone trying to break into the industry.

It's boring I know, but in my experience there is an inescapable fact that 99% of people who work in the games industry are pretty clever and have a solid education behind them...I think there's a solid link between creativity/imagination and raw IQ power...you need the horsepower to drive the ideas and problem solving...

Not only that, but a solid education demonstrates an ability to understand and learn...this is an essential selling point for you in an interview when you're trying to land a job for which you have no experience...you need to be focusing on your potential and demonstrating how you will be successful in the role to the person interviewing you...

So between the ages of 11-16 (GCSE's in the UK) and 17-18 (A-levels in the UK) you need to be giving yourself a solid foundation in terms of core subjects such as Maths, English, Sciences (biology, physics and chemistry), and History...these are the solid foundations upon which you will build your specialist skills and knowledge...so boring as it may sound, get your head down at school, work hard and get some solid qualifications in proper subjects...

And by proper subjects, you know what I mean! Easy subjects that the dossers go for are fucking obvious to people checking out your CV...don't fall into the trap!

Additional subjects such as art / religious education / foreign languages / music can all have a part to play, mainly dependent on the field of development you want to get into...but make sure these are the sprinklings on top of your solid education pie and not the pastry and filling!

Beyond this point there are a multitude of options to look at...definitely topics for future blog posts to look at them in detail but the more obvious options include:

Higher core education

Vocational education

Internship/trainee schemes

But to sign this off on a positive note, if you are between 11-18 and now you're thinking that all you have ahead of you is hitting the school books then don't despair as there's additional stuff you need to be doing which is much more fun! This is the next week’s topic - 'playing games for gain'

So what are my plans for the future? well, i think i'm going to write a series of articles on what the key skills, experience and characteristics you should have to give you the best chance of breaking into the industry...

stuff like:
...what courses to study
...what games to play
...what life skills you need
...how to get noticed and your foot in the door

basically i've been kicking around the industry and have interviewed enough peopl now to be able to give you a good insight into what's good and what's not good for your chances...feel free to comment and ask questions :)