I know some BT'ers are in the industry and was seeking your, and any one else's, advice on looking for a job. Basically i'm being made redundant in July so i'm on the look out for a new job. And as I'm a UAT lead tester with ISEB foundation qualification, I thought a QA role in the game industry may suit me. I've been scanning the web for recruitment sites and trying to find out more detail a generic "QA" role. And checking developers sites in the region. So any advice, experience or tips on the QA role or looking for a job in game? Sites that may help?
I've been looking into this field as well, I know it'll be a while before I actually go into the workplace, but it's still nice to know where the good jobs in the industry are. Looking at jobs locally (Yorkshire area) the best place to go for computer game design jobs is Leeds, so I'd assume that's somewhere to start looking for the position that you're after. Hope this helps Sean
What kind of qualifications do you need to enter this line of work? I'd love to go for games design, storywriting or games journalism but I suppose they all take preference to people who've done Games Design, Creative Writing and Journalism courses...which, I remain stubbornly convinced, don't make you any better at it in the end. There's always indie gaming; a possible avenue is to attain some fame working on indie titles, then offer yourself around to more mainstream companies. Probably a long haul if you're hurting for a job in the immediate future, though.
I'm not in the games ind, but have been a casual observer as a lot of friends of mine are... from a non-games dev point of view (i.e I'm a c++ dev but not in games) it seems like it's now: a:very hard to get into if you're not already in, or know someone in (though grads are easier as they're cheap...) b:comparatively low paid unless you're a rockstar leet coder/designer/artist c:conditions can be atrocious (google ea spouse) the situation is better now but not much... d:little other reward apart from getting to work on stuff other people find cool - e.g AAA titles e:a lot of projects get canned at 90% so you get nothing to show for hard work although I'm quite negative here, there are upsides. the internal scene is a blast, you'll never be bored at work, when you do finish a big project, you might get a fantastic launch party/holiday... you need to judge if the real life trade offs are worth it for you. for me they are not... burnout is high in game devs, but if you would do your craft for no pay at all then it's the perfect job
Journalism for one doesn't have any requirements than a knowledge of the field. In fact, of all the journalists I know in all the different fields only ONE of them has a journalism degree and only one or two have Creative Writing or English degrees...of which I am one. For Journalism you really don't need anything other than any ability to write and the knowledge to do it. Games design and storywriting are the same from what I know, but don't expect to get anywhere there unless you have tonnes of experience because everyone wants those jobs. Ken Levine, Ron Gilbert, Warren Spector - these are all people who started somewhere else in the industry and then worked their way to where they wanted to be. The same is true with journalism - work experience that you can point to is better than a certificate on the wall. Qualifications do help for a lot of the tech stuff, because there are solid facts and management styles and so on that you just need to know to do your job. It isn't like journalism and English degrees - learning child language acquisition and poetic stylistics has been of little use to me. Regarding indie games, that's a good idea if you can finance yourself solo for a while - but the market is getting rapidly more crowded and you need to have definite talent to stand out. The area is ripe at the moment though. For QA jobs and the like the level of experience you need will depend on where you work. I've known testers to be turned down by companies because they didn't have years of experience in testing, but I've also known some recruiters to just hire tonnes of students as testing fodder. As the above points out though, people don't go stay in the industry long unless it's a labour of love; seriously long hours (think 7 days a week, 19 hours a day) are not unheard of in both development, design, journalism and testing sectors.
Having done a degree in games development (and then set up a web design company, but that's another story) I can honestly say that the courses do help. Not so much from what you learn, but from the contacts you make. I got to know some key people in a few companies, I'll see if I can dig out thier details for you.
Personally I'm planing to go straight into the industry straight after Uni (a while off yet though). I've heard QA is where you generally start. I've never heard that before.
Definitely. Of course, just because you don't know anyone doesn't mean you have nowhere to go. Work experience or temping is a great way to get introduced to people.
http://gamedevmap.com/index.php http://www.gamesindustry.biz/jobs http://www.blitzgames.com/ Three great places to start looking for jobs in the game industry I would agree with everyone saying that you should start small. I was talking to pretty much everyone at the London Games Career Fair when I was there, and pretty much all of them started out with either QA, or knowing someone in a design/development position who put in a good word for them. If you're starting with QA, the easiest way (So I'm told), then check all the major companies. A large number of them have in house QA, but the rest outsource it. Gamedevmap is a good site, but some of the devs are dead and the links haven't been changed or removed, so there is some stuff you need to cut through. I would avoid Testronic labs at all costs, though. They sound good on paper, but three of my friends have worked for them (Two at Pinewood and one in Poland) and I'm reliably assured they're amoung the worst places to work.
Thanks for your input everyone, very helpful . Hopefully my current experience in testing (2 yrs +) will be a tick in the box for me. I'm used to the long hours/weekends at crunch times, and the tedious nature of testing at times! Thanks, gamedevmap.com is very useful. I'm putting the final touches to my CV together so will send it speculatively off to devs in and around Yorkshire. It may limit my choices (but there are still some well know names up here) but its what i'm looking for. I'm not pinning my future on this, the company i work for is pretty big and always has internal vacancies going (which i automatically get interviews for due to my redundancy) so its one of a few avenues to explore! I'll let you know how it goes.
Story writing maybe, if you don't have the contacts and pitching experience. Journalism though is quite easy - all it takes is a bit of flair and a few emails sent out. We're always interested in taking on work experiencers for instance. People get to come and play with our stuff and get their name on the site, meet us etc. We get someone to make a cup of tea. Kieron Gillen has a great guide on how to get into journalism on his blog. It's pretty much what I did.
I know you've all been on tenterhooks for the last 3 months, so thought i'd update you. After all the other redundancies and a few others moving on they realised they had a large, BigD sized, gap in skills so last month they changed the terms of a job I "aspired" and failed to get last year and gave it to me!! So now will be homebased, in a slightly different role and a decent payrise!! Thanks for the advise, all the sites are still bookmark for next time!
I know Uni of Teesside just built 2 new buildings for games programmers and designers and is pretty popular in general and have good links to various companies as they run different competitions with them. Dunno if it gets you anywhere like but certainly its the growth area in the School of Computing but do know of one lad who now works for UBI in Newcastle.
