I’ve started a first proper ‘article’ post, honest. However, work is hectic, so I haven’t had a chance to finish it off, but I saw that this place looked lonely, so here’s some content that, with luck, someone will find useful.
Here is how to get a job as a games designer. Or how to try to, anyway.
Step 0) Do some game design stuff at home.
Make a mod. Do mapping. Think of game ideas and write up concept docs for them. Fucking anything.
Write documentation for the mod/map/game ideas. Talk about how they work at both a high level and a low level. For example, how is health worked out? At a high level, you have a health bar and colliding objects take away a certain amount of health. At a low level, you have 100 points of health (even if it’s a bar), and an object can take n points away multiplied by speed x… object A will take 10 points away, multiplied by… etc etc. You get the idea. There are lots of tutorials about this. Register on Gamasutra (on the right) and search “documentation” for lots of articles on it.
At university or college? Got to do a group project for a module? Make a mod – and try to do it properly. Set one or two guys as artists or mappers, another guy or two guys as programmers, and one or two guys as designers. Document it all as properly as you can – do a layout map for a level you’ll make for it. Write detailed documentation for the mechanics you create. When I say detailed, I mean so any programmer could read them and create a good implementation of them for you.
You could do this at the same time as you…
Step 1) Get into testing.
Yes, testing is shit. But it’s also one of the easiest game development positions to get into and is totally, absolutely necessary in the development cycle. Oh, where would we be without our testers? Working later than we do now, probably.
Testing is (generally) not fun. You will work late. You will do the same thing over and over again. You will not play the game – you will hammer it to death. You will be expected to complete the game faster than anyone will realistically play it. And throughout all this, your pay will be crap and you will have no job security, as few companies hire permanent testers.
However, think of all of this as training; you should come to expect crap pay in all your further game development jobs, including in design. You should come to expect to work late and to do the same thing over and over again. You’ll also meet a lot of like-minded people and will hopefully enjoy the experience of working with them. But the experience, on a whole, is better in proper development because the tasks you will be doing there will be far more interesting. Probably.
Step 1.5) Do some learnin’.
While you’re slogging through testing, you might get the chance to learn some other things that you might find useful in the future. Buffing up your CV with things you can do is never a bad thing. If you haven’t done or used any of these at this point, now could be a good chance to do so:
- Lua
- C++, Java or some other object-orientated programming language you could draw some knowledge from
- Your Favourite Game Engine’s SDK (Source, UE2/3, CryEngine, whatever)
- Sketchup
- Microsoft Word
Lua is used a lot for scripting these days, and it’s a solid programming language in general, so try and learn it. Having some C++ or Java experience will help because the games you are going to be working on are going to be in development and knowing what some of the terms or messages you’ll hear and see will help you understand just what the hell is going on when unexpected things happen. Knowing how to use Visual Studio or something similar would be handy in your day-to-day worklife as more often that not you will need to use an IDE to start up the game.
Your favourite game’s SDK is useful because they could be similar in some ways to what you could be using daily. Sketchup is a very, very useful planning tool for planning areas, buildings, locations and creating diagrams for use in design documents, and learning some basic tenets of 3D art if you haven’t already will not go amiss.
And you may be asking yourself, “Word? Seriously?” Yes, seriously. You will need to know how to use Word to a very high level. Design is a lot of writing, and part of the job is making that writing clear and easy to read. You need to be able to rite gud, but Word helps with layouts and styles – all part of the clarity of your document.
Step 2) Getting an interview.
You’ve been testing for a while now, and you want to try for an interview. You’ve seen an ad. Coo!. Find out what company it’s for as soon as humanly possible.
When you prepare your application, don’t be overly wordy. Keep it to the point. A covering letter with about two paragraphs is enough. Your CV should not be more than two pages. There are a lot of CV-writing guides out there – use them.
Choose a few things to send in, such as any design documents you’ve done, map layouts (with accompanying notes explaining your decisions), basic concept art to explain mechanics, and so on and so forth. What you send in is going to depend on what position you’re applying for and what they might ask you to send in, however, so don’t take any of that as a gospel-truth list of things.
Don’t spend too much time fiddling and fart-arsing over the wording of your application. Oh, sure, spend some, but don’t sweat over it for hours on end. An employer will look over it and decide within minutes whether you’re right or not based on what you know and how good you are at what you know, not how you’ve structured your third sentence in your covering letter.
Know what you’re going in for. If you are going in for a designer position, do not talk about how much you love 3DS Max or zBrush – they don’t care about those because you will not be using them. I’ve seen applicants failed just for doing this. Harsh? Maybe. But you gotta get it right.
Step 3) In The Interview.
If you’ve made it this far – congratulations. It’s fucking hard, isn’t it?
Don’t be put off if you’re rejected. It’s the shittiest feeling in the world, yeah, but lots of others will also be feeling it at the same time, because only one person has got that job. Above all else, don’t let it stop you from trying again.
But… assuming you’ve got it:
Read up on as much as you can find about that company – know them inside-out, because one of the questions they will ask you is “what do you know about us and the games we make?”
Play their games, if you can. If you can’t, read up about them. Form opinions about them. Did they do something you particularly liked? Why did you like it? Remember that, because you can mention it. Was there anything they did that you didn’t like? Remember that in detail, because if you mention it, you need to be absolutely, 100% sure you know what you’re talking about, or you’ll look stupid.
Those above points go for your own personal favourite games, too. Your favourite games are not flawless; pick them apart. Work out what you like about them, but more importantly, work out what you don’t like and what you’d change about them if you could.
Know how you like to design. Do you think of yourself in the player’s shoes and design from there? Do you create a story, setting and characters and design from them? Do you think of base mechanics and expand on them? Describe your designing style.
Be opinionated. Have opinions on what you think is shit game design. Express those opinions, especially if asked.
If the studio is open about what they’re making, try and think about certain aspects of that game and what you’d like it to do. Is it an FPS? Is there a particular weapons system you like and you think would be particularly suited? An aesthetic or gameplay twist you think would be interesting? This is probably easier if what you might be working on is an established sequel, of course.
Remember when I said that if you make a mod, do it properly with specific roles and documentation? This part of the process is why, because they are going to ask you about it. And because you’ve done it properly (you did, didn’t you?), you are going to have some really, really good answers for questions such as “what exactly did you do in the mod”, “what problems did you come across and how did you handle them as a team” and “what would you change about the process now you’ve finished it”, among others.
More than anything else here, be enthusiastic. Come across as someone who loves games so much that you really, really want to dedicate your life to them. If you’re an entry-level with no professional experience, make them think that you’ll jump into the mug on the desk if they ask you to.
Step 4) Shit yourself.
Wait. You’ll wake up in the mornings, look at your letter slot/mailbox every day until a letter arrives, or you’ll desperately reach for your mobile phone every time its signal makes your speakers do that warbling thing when you might be getting an incoming call. It will be excruciating.
Remember what I said about being rejected? Applies here too. If it happens, don’t feel bad – carry on working on what you were doing before. Another opportunity will come up and you could always be more successful next time.
Step Appendix) What might help.
Having friends in the industry will help you a lot. The games industry is highly incestuous – if someone in the dev team can vouch for a friend of theirs, saying “oh yeah, this guy/gal is really good with [this] and [that], ” that guy/gal is going to get bumped right to the front of the queue. If they’re that good, they might be hired based on what the friend in the dev team says, with a good interview.
If you’re working as a tester in a dev studio, always keep an eye out for design positions in your current workplace. If there are multiple teams working on various games in various states of completion, don’t be afraid to go around and ask the lead designers of those teams if there are any openings in the present time, or in the future. If they’re willing, have a proper discussion about what you can do, what you’re interested in and what you like – almost like a mini-interview right there.
A lot of companies talk about “communication” being important – this is completely true. You must be able to write punctually and clearly on practical, mechanic and technical matters.
But what most people don’t realise is that it also encompasses verbal communication. As a designer, you will be talking to every type of person on the development team – programmers, artists, other designers. AI programmers, motion programmers, rendering programmers, prop artists, environment artists… and you need to be able to communicate well with these people. You must be comfortable going up to someone you’ve never talked to before and saying, “hey there, [name], right? Got a minute to chat?” and then going on about something you’re not certain about to someone possibly much smarter and much more experienced than you. When we could be talking about people who were lead programmers on games you grew up on and/or that sold millions of copies, it’s natural if it feels a little bit daunting.
And I don’t have much more to add to that. Maybe, in the end, this reads just like every other “get into games design yay” post on the internet – if so, perhaps that is because this is really what you have to do.
Posted by Aeoni 