How To Get A Job As A Game Designer: Step 1: Get A Job As A Game Designer
Step 2: Learn how to design games.
The "how to get into the industry" meme is spreading itself, flu-like, across the intertubes again.
Psychochild's essay on how to be a game designer boils down to being an effective manager: communicate, organize, research, and know a little bit about a lot of stuff. Good advice for many careers, but probably especially apropos for game design.
Paul Barnett's advice is a laundry list of what not to do, chief among them being "don't get yourself so wrapped up in design that you make something that's not fun." Also very worthy advice.
Moorgard has even more poignant advice : Learn, learn, learn.
And then there's game designer hopeful Abalieno (whose post-retirement job seems to be exactly what he was doing pre-retirement, only much more batshit crazy, obnoxious, and own-career destroying), whose advice is to disregard all that shit about thinking and communicating and designing games, because you can do that after you get a design job the old-fashioned way, which is apparantly to "lick asses."
Now let me just say that if it pays my rent I'm not above much of anything. But are we talking the soft fleshy bits, or the salad bowl? Because if it's the latter then there goddamned well better be a matching-funds 401k.
January 22nd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
It’s safe to say neither is in my job description.
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:48 pm
My day-job is in super-computing. Just like game design, there are lots of people who would love to have my job. It’s a relatively small community and we network like it’s going out of style. But if you don’t have the skills, I’ll have a drink with you but that’s it. And if you don’t have a nice personality I won’t even have the drink with you. But if you do have the skills and personality, then congratulations I’ll take your resume and put it in the pile with everyone else.
Abalieno’s post was written only for himself, pay it no never mind. He’s using it as more rationale to justify to himself why he can’t break into the industry. A personality makeover would do him more good than if John Smedley was his brother-in-law.
Now there are jobs you /can/ get for licking asses but you probably wouldn’t want them.
January 22nd, 2007 at 10:29 pm
Yeah it’s called my job.
AND OK Amber time to give it up where is the 3rd friggin Hello Kitty in the video? I see the one on the backpack 2 times but I give up on the 3rd. Help! Im losing sleep over it!!
January 23rd, 2007 at 12:03 am
Oh dear, the secret’s out. Those two steps are *exactly* how I got into the biz!
Contacts are important in every profession, and that’s ok. You can think of it as hiring your friends and cronies, or you can think of it as having friends and cronies who have similar interests/skills/abilities as you, which makes them suitable for hiring anyway. Besides, all those asses aren’t going to lick themselves.
January 23rd, 2007 at 1:21 am
How to be a game designer… the quick and dirty method:
Step 1: Be a game marketer.
Step 2: Hold pursestrings
Step 3: Squeeze balls of “designers” until they bend to your will.
Final Step: Enjoy satisfied feeling of achievement without learning all that fluffy bullshit.
January 23rd, 2007 at 2:07 am
Obviously, knowing people and licking things are not the only way to break into the industry (at least into this industry), but anyway, Abalieno is not completely wrong.
I recently read an article explaining the growing importance of social networks as the increasingly preferred method when it comes to hire professionals in some countries. I can say that is true in Spain, at least. A good 90% of the people in my workplace were friends before being hired, and most of them are good at what they do (programming, drawing, licking things, etc).
Neither black nor white, I think. As usual, “ethical virtue is an intermediate condition between excess and deficiency”.
PS: I still don’t understand why Anna didn’t want to have dinner with David
January 23rd, 2007 at 5:27 am
Ken wrote:
How to be a game designer… the quick and dirty method:
Man, that’s not funny because it’s true.
Anyway, there’s a difference between what I wrote (”What is a game designer?”) and actually getting a job as a designer. There’s a lot more to it, and if you take away Abalieno’s bitterness* he does have a kernel of truth. This really relates to communication: if you have great ability but never connect with anyone, nobody will know your brilliance. Of course, there are millions of other people out there that want to do the same thing, and your desirability as a junior designer is based on many factors, not merely competence. (In Abalieno’s case, it’s the old issue of location, location, location.)
Have fun,
* Note: Despite many game designers being more bitter than a coffee left on the warmer all weekend, it’s not really a job requirement.
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:16 am
There is a kernel of truth inasmuch as it’s always better to know someone inside the industry than not. They are the people that open the doors for you to prove yourself. But you still have to prove competency which he is dismissing as “superfluous.”
I once got a job from a friend of the family working at a convenience store he owned. I guess that counts as getting a job with only a contact and learning the actual job later, but…um…it was a convenience store. If I screwed up the product still shipped.
In Abalieno’s defense he could have written the whole thing as a joke. It’s hard to know when he’s joking because of the language issues.