[game_edu] Seeking Your Insights

[Ian Schreiber]

>4. Ability to work well with others in a team environment 
>- Being an engineer, the ability to work with people from various
disciplines is a must (mechanical, 
>software, management, purchasing, materials, etc.), so anyone with a
few years working in any industry 
>"should" have this basic skill set.

"Should", but as you suggest with your quotation marks, there are a good
many people that don't. I've personally met a lot of programmers who are
masterful at writing code, but don't have even the most basic training
in business, management or economics.

Now, this is perfectly fine for a lot of companies in a lot of fields.
But game companies in particular have a lot of tightly integrated
disciplines working so closely together, that it's more important to
have this skill in games than in most other fields.

>To summarize, for someone looking to get into the game industry after
working for several years in 
>another industry and has the character traits above, what are thoughts
on achieving this?

Speaking as someone who crossed over from hospital patient databases to
computer games, the game industry (sadly) tends to be a bit xenophobic
as a whole -- other things being equal, if two people are applying for a
game job and one of them has industry experience and the other doesn't,
the one with will get the job. There can (and should) be very long
discussions within the industry about why this is so and whether it's
practical or not, but for the purposes of this list I'm just noting that
this is how it is.

To bring the question back to the EDU domain, I think this is true for
students right out of college, too. With so many colleges springing up
to offer degrees in game programming or game design, someone with "just"
a computer science degree can be at a natural disadvantage.

That doesn't mean it's impossible to get a game job (we were all newbies
once, after all). But it does mean that the importance of networking is
much higher than most other professions. Go to GDC. Beta test for game
companies that interest you, send good feedback and develop personal
relationships with the people at those companies. If your situation
permits, be willing to take a job as anything (such as secretary or QA)
just to get your foot in the door, although that's probably more
practical for a fresh college grad than a veteran engineer.


Ian Schreiber
Game Designer
Cyberlore Studios, Inc.