Start Your Video Game Career: Free Chapter

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

I’ll never forget the day I got my first video game console. It was a chilly Montana morning. I climbed out of bed and stumbled bleary-eyed to the living room, with plans to watch Saturday morning cartoons in my full-body Spider-Man pajamas. (Did I mention I was six years old?) As I turned toward the television, there it was: a brand-new Atari 2600 home video game system, in all of its beautiful faux-wood and black-plastic glory.

I immediately fell in love.

On that day, way back in 1980, I began my lifelong obsession with video games. In grade school, it was staying up past my bedtime for “just five more minutes” to finish a level (or two, or three). In college, it was skipping out on social events to binge on whichever new game had just been released. As an adult, it’s shirking housework to burn entire weekends gunning through bandit camps with my wife Shawna. Gaming has given me so many memories, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But even as I poured all that time, energy, and passion into playing games as a kid, it never occurred to me — not even once! — that it was possible to make games as a full-time job. Even as I sketched detailed schematics for science-fiction weapons during class, or spent my summers filling graph paper with complex maps for detailed Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, I never realized that I was accidentally preparing myself for a career in game development.

Fast-forward a decade or two. I landed my first video game job in 2001, and I’ve had many different job titles since then: QA Tester, Game Designer, Lead Programmer, Studio Technical Director, Product Manager, and Studio Head. I’ve spent years hiring, managing, and supporting game makers from varied backgrounds, and I’ve written for game industry magazines, spoken at international game industry events, and worked with top game development colleges and universities.

But I’m not telling you that to brag.

(Maybe just a little.)

I’m telling you because my mountain of experience has helped me understand exactly what it takes to get into the game industry, and exactly what it takes to succeed once you’re there. I know what questions you want to ask, and I know how to answer them — or, in some cases, how to help you find your own answers, because each of us has unique talent and is following our own unique path.

My hope is that after you read this book, you’ll have the knowledge and tools you need to succeed every step of the way — from choosing a career, to getting an education (either formally or informally), writing your résumé and portfolio, finding and applying for jobs, interviewing, and succeeding in a lifelong game development career. And I sincerely hope that you’ll be more inspired than ever to pursue your dream job making video games.

There’s no need to read the book cover to cover, if that’s not your style. Feel free to skip around between chapters, or read just the sections that cover whichever stage of the journey you happen to be in right now. If you do skip around, I hope you’ll come back whenever you need more guidance or advice. I’ll be right here waiting for you.

Let’s get started!

Could I really get a job making games?

Game development is the art and science of creating a video game — all the way from coming up with a game idea, to building the art and writing the code, to finding and fixing bugs, to launching the game so people can play it. You can use the term “game developer” to describe anybody who makes games, no matter what their specific job is on the game team.

If you’re a student thinking about your future career, a job making video games might seem too good to be true. Also, your parents might be skeptical about whether game development is a “real job” with a salary that could support you and your future family.

The answer is easy: Yes, it’s a real job. And yes, you can make a great living doing it.

To be fair, this wasn’t the case twenty years ago — the game industry used to be tiny, and it was rare to get a job making games. But today, the video game industry is huge and it employs thousands of game developers around the world. Here are some important statistics to help you (and your parents) understand the massive scope of the game industry today:

• Total consumer spending on video games is over USD $70 billion annually. That’s more than the movie and music industries combined, and it’s growing each year.
• Over 60% of Americans play video games. That’s more than the number of Americans who watch sports.
• The average gamer is thirty-one years old.

Games aren’t just for kids. They’re a daily part of mainstream life for millions of fans of all ages, and have created an enormous market for new games to be created and sold each year.

The industry is growing, with no signs of slowing, so it’s likely to continue providing job opportunities for decades to come.
Someone needs to build all those new games. Why shouldn’t it be you?

CHAPTER TWO

Choosing a career

When I was a kid, adults were always asking me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Adults love that question. I used to think they asked because they were legitimately interested in my choice of future career. But now that I’m an adult myself, I’ve come to realize they ask it for a different reason — they ask because most adults still don’t know what they want to be when they grow up, either. They’re locked into a job they don’t like, in a career they don’t love, so it’s fun to live vicariously through young people who seem to have every fantastic option still open to them. It’s charming, but also kind of sad.

What did I want to be when I grew up? Like you, I’ve had different answers over the years. Early on, I wanted to be a ventriloquist, because I got a ventriloquist dummy for my birthday one year and it was a fun toy. But then one day, a grown-up told me you can’t make a living as a ventriloquist. That turns out not to be true, but I believed it at the time, so I came up with other answers: paleontologist, because I loved dinosaurs; cartographer, because I loved maps (and I loved how impressed grown-ups were when I used the word “cartographer”); magician, because I could do card tricks and I was pretty good at it. By the time I started college, I had my sights set on marine biology, because I loved the ocean and the mysterious creatures of the deep.

But the fact is, whether you’re in grade school, high school, or even college, it may still be too early to know what you want to do when you grow up. Partly because you’re still learning what you like and dislike, and what you’re good at and not so good at. And partly because there are thousands of different jobs you haven’t even heard of yet, so it’s impossible to know which one might be right for your unique mix of talent and personality.

The video game industry is full of people who didn’t know what they wanted to be when they grew up. Most of them are like me: they’ve been avid gamers their whole lives, but didn’t know it could be a full-time career. I’ve worked with game developers who started out as accountants, restaurant waiters, movie theater managers, soldiers, auto mechanics, and teachers. But the game industry is also full of people who knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives — they researched the various career options, chose one they thought would fit them best, then went to school to learn the right skills and graduated to get a job making games. My own career path was meandering, but many of the game artists, designers, programmers, audio engineers, producers, QA testers, and others in the game industry took a more direct route.

Whether your path into the game industry is like a high-speed raceway or, like mine, more of a dusty, meandering back road, it’s best to start out by researching and understanding your options. The following section takes a look at some of the different career paths available to you, and offers advice to steer you in the right direction.

That’s it for the free preview!

Writing this book was a huge effort, drawing not only from my own experience as a hiring manager in the game industry, but also from interviews and conversations with hundreds of students, professors, other game industry professionals, and fans of my website and podcast.

Why did I write this book? Because working in the video game industry is an incredibly rewarding career, but it’s hard to break in unless you have insider knowledge. This book levels the playing field.

Topics range from choosing a career track, all the way through writing your resume, building a portfolio, starting your job search, applying for jobs, interviewing, and turning your first job into a successful game development career. After reading this book, you’ll know exactly how to:

• Choose a game career that matches your life goals, both creatively and financially
• Get a game development education, either formally or by learning on your own
• Build a resume and portfolio that will stand out from the crowd
• Find and apply for game jobs and internships, locally or internationally
• Compare job offers to select the one with the best pay and perks
• Find mentors and build a powerful professional network to support your career
• Succeed in your game development career, wherever it may take you!

Whether you’re interested in video game art, design, testing, programming, audio, production, or business, this book is everything you need to launch your career making games. What are you waiting for? Your new career starts today!

“The perfect balance of indispensable insider information presented in a throughly enjoyable read.”

Randy Briley, Senior Lecturer, DigiPen Institute of Technology

“Well thought out and organized information for anyone considering a career in video game development.”

Kris Durrschmidt, Crazy Viking Studios

“Could — and should — be the standard reference for game industry job-seekers for the next few years.”

Jack Brummet, game industry veteran

Thank You for your support, and here’s to an amazing start to your own career as a video game developer!