Getting a Job outside Australia
polycounter lvl 12
I know I've got a bit to go on my portfolio before I'm at a level where I can get hired.
But how the hell do I get a job in the 3D industry.
here's my situation, I'm in Sydney Australia, where there are practically 0 video game studios, there's really only one stable studio within Australia and that's Torus Games who are an outsource studio who work on movie games and external franchises.
So I don't think I'm gonna find much luck here, so how the hell do I get out of Australia and get hired overseas, Is it as simple as having a great portfolio?, Would't studios just settle for someone within their own country than hassle with Visa's and paper work?.
But how the hell do I get a job in the 3D industry.
here's my situation, I'm in Sydney Australia, where there are practically 0 video game studios, there's really only one stable studio within Australia and that's Torus Games who are an outsource studio who work on movie games and external franchises.
So I don't think I'm gonna find much luck here, so how the hell do I get out of Australia and get hired overseas, Is it as simple as having a great portfolio?, Would't studios just settle for someone within their own country than hassle with Visa's and paper work?.
Replies
That said, unless you want to go indi, you don't have a very large number of options, though with the Australian dollar slowly being dragged down, that's likely to improve a bit soon - we're already starting to see a few more projects kicking off here and there.
I would also start looking at mobile or facebook/web based games companies. Not every games studio does AAA console titles.
Keep working on your portfolio and start looking at visa requirements for different counties.
Oh and watch out for Marty Howe and Figurehead studio.
Most Australians in the industry are over confident and have a limited range of skills, unless you mean specifically ones that got work overseas?
EDIT: To justify my opinion more. We have some of the worlds worst art education, that if it teaches 3d, ONLY teaches 3d. And our culture is very much anti hard work for teaching people how to be artists.
You just have to look at the work that the big games companies produced. While there was a few good games, very few were technically and artistically exceptional. The tales i heard about so many games being developed here are horror stories.
I dare you to ask Malus, Hazardous or nizza about what they think about our culture and artist average quality.
With regards to the lack of artistic elite (And I think you might be exaggerating there just a tad), I think it can be tough to get really passionate when all of the projects were so uninspiring for so long. There's only so long you can think "I'm going to put in a bunch of extra hours at home so that I can make the next Nicktoons game look extra nice".
I would agree that for the most part our art education does need work, but from the sounds of things that's not just limited to Australia. I also have found that degrees outside of game art tend to be more useful and there are some decent traditional art routes you can take in oz
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My advice to getting a job overseas or not is to remove as many barriers to getting hired as possible. Get a great portfolio, experience, make connections and friends, target your portfolio to specific places you want to apply and if you want to go the further step get a visa or passport for and area you'd like to live and do it over there. I know from experience that getting a Canadian visa is piss easy if you're under 30, same for the UK I've heard and even easier if you have heritage ties.
Seriously though, Australian developers got themselves into a rut where those paying the bills were asking for mediocrity - that's what the Australian devs were for as far as outside interests were concerned.
Apart from that it's just size, you can find as many if not more "horror stories" from devs in the USA, Canada, Europe, Japan, etc. but they'll just seem much less significant when there's so many more studios in those countries than in Australia; therefore more chance to be good.
I'm so sick of Australian dev/art being dumped on wholesale without simply acknowledging that we are different, that we got dealt a shit hand industry-wise, and that in the past we've just damn fucked up like anybody would.
Also in terms of colleges, yeah I don't see ours as being particularly great, but hey those ones overseas, they're all great aren't they, dime a dozen, they're all so accessible, and honest, and cheap too right?
You don't touch computers at all for the first semester. Possibly the first year. Instead the focus on learning to sketch and work physically - learning the basics and making sure there are no gaping holes in your knowledge before you jump on to a computer that can allow you to hide them until you run hard into your lack of knowledge. Now a games development course that has an entire year free of computers might not quite fly, but some moves in that direction would make for pretty major improvements to the quality of the games art graduates.
There's also a business stuff later on for being able to work successfully as a business or freelancer and the like which is also something that was sorely lacking from my education. Not the most exciting lessons I'm sure, but something that's going to help a lot of the students survive in the Australian environment.
As for skills, from what i've seen the medicore that get a job cling to that job with their life. The skilled work hard and move over seas. Its the same with all our creative industries. Those with talent leave because there is nothing that drives that talent here. Even if we do get studios working on bigger games again. It will likely be, B movie spin off games just like before.
Krome was the largest independent games company in the WORLD, they were not trapped making only shitty movie tie ins. Yet they made Blade Kitten and Ty the Tasmanian tiger when they put their own cash in the ring.
Creative Assembly tried making storm rise. A massive budget original ip rts game with gorgeous concept art, but it was destroyed by terrible design, and as far as i can tell, ego from production artists who honestly weren't very good. (not all, this is a massive generalisation)
Pandemic had the batman license. But it was taken away from them.
Massive shame about THQ Brisbane and the avengers game, that looks like it could have been a studio defining title.
Auran had the budget to make a giant original IP game. Yet they made Fury. (wtf was that. 55% metacritic woo!)
I hate the defense that making a licensed title forces you to make mediocrity. There are tons of examples of great movie tie in's and licensed titles. The fact of the matter is that every major games company in Brisbane(I only know Brisbane) was given multiple opportunities to make quality, and that's not to say they haven't made quality before.
No executive ever desires to pay for mediocrity.
But i do sound like i have a really negative opinion about the old guard, and that's because i do. But i am confident that there are some really smart people left here and I'm personally committed to helping this industry grow here again instead of trying to ship myself overseas. But it's important to realize the death of the Australian games dev wasn't the GFC that was just a catalyst, everything probably would have fallen over just a bit slower, it was mediocre games and a lack of vision.
Games culture in a city is super incestuous, if it's rotten in one company it usually spreads throughout. And in that same way i really want to see a culture of quality and vision rise out of the ashes of the old guard. But maybe this is a pipe dream.
A lot of people said Krome grew too fast. THQ struggling also hurt us hard. Our dollar became stronger making it more expensive to hire us. And I think even in those days we had trouble holding on to our talent.
I moved from Aus to Canada last year on a working visa, if a studio really want you to work wit hthem they will get it no problem. I then moved from Canada (not a fan of the area) to the UK on a visa which also didn't take long to get. There is another thread talking about how many years experience you need to qualify for a visa so you may need to look into that, but then in some cases skill can supercede taht. Good luck maen!
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"Creative Assembly tried making storm rise. A massive budget original ip rts game with gorgeous concept art, but it was destroyed by terrible design, and as far as i can tell, ego from production artists who honestly weren't very good. (not all, this is a massive generalisation)"
way to talk out your ass there mate. For someone who who never stept foot into that studio. From all your ranting I can see you have a very bitter attitude about the Australian industry. Sure it's pretty dead and the colleges aren't that great, but who cares. Get some skills and work abroad, if someone really wants to work in an area they will probably spend a heap of time learning things at home anyway.
On that note, the colleges can produce some top level talent ie - www.denz3d.com
By what measure were they the largest? I'm sure there were plenty of overseas devs that were on the level, and it depends on how you define 'independent'. Also Ty the Tasmanian Tiger was in no way a failure; it just wasn't AAA.
And all of this has happened countless times overseas, it's not an Australian thing.
Not just that it was terrible, but it was also an MMO - the majority of which has gained negative or dwindling traction against the big names. Even if Fury wasn't bad, I'm sure it would still be dead by now.
Sorry I should re-clarify my point. I wasn't claiming that licensed titles forces mediocrity, in fact I didn't mention licenses at all. What I was saying is that in the past many Australian devs were tasked with making games and through a combination of mistakes, poor experience and issues with overseas management/investment/budget would deliver a B-game.
Executive's didn't want mediocrity but they did want to pay the low price of mediocrity. This was profitable back then, but isn't now; now it's only AAA or mobile/F2P that makes bank. So for a while we were stuck in a negative feedback loop: we'd make a B-game, publishers would know we can make B-games, and then would offer contracts to make more B-games. Some devs would make their own IP with a range of successes and failures but most would be knocked back by publishers.
Were a small isolated country that gets the same cultural status as other first-world nations but gets none of the logistical benefits. All of our failures are magnified, with no way to shift circumstances and costs across the borders.
I digress though. I realise that my attitudes about the industry may be becoming increasingly toxic.
Snaccum.
I'm not entirely sure what you are arguing, I think we actually agree on all of honest points, just that you seem to be justifying the crash, whereas I would rather look at it an understand that it is a lot of problems that could have been prevented,
I fully get that I also might have a skewed picture of things, when all that shit went down I was at the only company still thriving in Brisbane. But most of my opinions that I've gotten were pieced together with long conversations with people who did work in those companies, but I never stepped foot in those buildings as stated, and in fact my views could very well be biased, I can only make conclusions from what I see, and if that information is distorted I apologise about offence caused. If you know that my generalisations don't apply to you then feel free to be the exception. But the number one problem I've had with Australian artists is massive egos which I'm not entirely sure where they came from. Maybe beating the odds and getting a job despite everything?
But no matter how you look at it, storm rise was an utter failure, with technical and design problems in a lot of areas. And in many ways the reason why that happened could be beside the point.
That being said that project fascinates me i would love to hear your side of the story.
I'm not actually very bitter about it, I'm just making observations, I love what 5 lives are attempting, i have good friends who run the indie studio hitbox team (dust force), I know a lot of talented people, not everything is rotten, but vision is needed.
What defiant for example are doing doesn't seem wise with their card game, aiming at a niche already packed genre with a gimmick and a forgettable art style and shtick. They are good artists and technical people. It's the project choice there that I think sucks.
Its extraordinarily rare that the sorts of licensed titles that we used to do in Aus got the time or budget to be anything other than, if not mediocre then decidedly average (that's probably the same thing). Lord knows we always tried our best with them - the designers tried to work in little innovations here and there and the artists did what they could with they time they had. There's only so much you can do with 4-6 months. Clients were typically only interested in getting the game on the shelf under budget and on time and locking rigidly to their IP. The publishers have to prioritise keeping the client happy so they were seldom terribly enthused about any kind of innovations that we suggested.
TL;DR working on licensed IP the way we used to is a lot more difficult and painful than I think a lot of people give credit for.
How many years of experience do you have, Mr Smo, if you don't mind me asking. 10 years was always the number that I'd heard in the past, but I'm not sure that I ever actually read that from anywhere outside of hearsay on forums.
I guess when i mean ego, i mean more the sort of ego where people don't listen or give out feedback very much. I've come across very few people who are willing to take the new guys under their wing and mentor, or actively seek out colleague feedback and push themselves. Maybe ego isn't the word I'm looking for.
I'm as guilty of this as anyone as well, but i respect that was partly because i was mirroring what i saw other artists i worked with do.
(i don't think i'm the shit, i know I'm very very good at only really 2 things, characterisation and game feel. I'm actually really shit at 3d)
It's common and proven enough here how much hard work art can be but if I bring my own opinion into this, I'm sick of it being a defining factor of us. This ideology that if somebody fails then they didn't work hard enough and deserve to be called lazy and subpar in general. You guys can call me lazy all you want but I'll never accept 'being Australian' as one of the reasons.
Muzz - There's no arguement that stormrise was the biggest failure in Aus gaming history, this was compeltely down to lack of any sort of structure, the theme, genre and story of the game changed every week. The 'brain' behind it had no clear direcction and pinned their hopes on the 'whip select' control system.
As far as what you were told in conversation with people who worked at CA towards the end - The problem there is that being told something from one or two people in regards to alot of other people is always going to be biased. Having not known the people or the works of those people apart from what you were told by others, it was a pretty crude statement.
From my epxerience in this industry, the talk of egos and downplaying other peoples skills usually came from people who aren't confident in their own skills and are like this to make themselves feel better.
Spiffy - sorry for helping de railing this into an anti auustralian industry arguement. You can probably guess from this sort of talk one of the reasons stuff has fallen apart.
My suggestion would be as the other guys said - work hard and enjoy yourself and your portfolio should come along in strides. I personally miss Australia and the people I worked with, but looking abroad is a good experience that you should definately try. But if the industry were to pick up in Aus I would go back there right away.
Snaccum:
-Were a small isolated country that gets the same cultural status as other first-world nations but gets none of the logistical benefits. All of our failures are magnified, with no way to shift circumstances and costs across the borders.
nicely put!
To answer your question Spiffy, I think just working on your portfolio so it's so badass that people will just have to hire you is a generally good way to go, along with looking into visas requirements for the places you want to move.
But in the wake of these giant companies are smaller, indie, companies that are doing surprisingly well, Halfbrick for instance because what else is there to do when you are jobless in a jobless industry, you make your own company.
AiE's incubator program should be great for our industry, they have already churned out a few start up companies.
Back on tsumea's band wagon, http://www.tsumea.com/developers
as an example.
Now that the Australian dollar has cratered again, we should start to see a bit more overseas investment. We'll probably see a flood of cheap work for hire type projects too, but at least they keep the lights running.
This is pretty much my opinion of the future of the Australian games industry, there's a lot of indie devs out there who are getting bigger (and better) and I think in a couple years we'll have a blooming scene.
I have to say I also didn't realise the extent of the negativity surrounding the Aus games industry, looking back we have had a lot of downs in the recent past but I tend to be optimistic. Of course I did just get made redundant at the end of last year so take that with a grain of salt
I know the school/teacher doesn't make the artist, but places like Qantm and AIE didn't really focus on the art aspect, and came off as money grabby.
I don't feel the need to pay for college/uni if I'm already progressing at a steady pace through Polycount and Online research. I just hope in the future the lack of a degree won't deny me good opportunities.
As for the Australian Game Industry, I really hope you're right Naturon, While it would be nice to get a job in a steady industry over seas, I would love to see the Australian scene flourish.
I guess it's business as usual for me, Portfolio development to see where I get in 6 months.
Thanks for the advice and info guys.
Adding to that, I also recommend a course related to your interests but not focused solely on game design/game art. Instead choose something that will broaden your knowledge and skills as well as open your doors in multiple industries, add in some game dev elective/minors if desired.
@ Chillydog - I worked at Team Bondi for a couple years and while it was made up by and large by very talented, awesome and hard working people, lets just say I'm not too surprised they aren't still around. I think having that talent spread around Australia can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole, because they aren't going away.
Qantm doesn't do hecs though, they do fee-help which, for memory, was terrible in comparison (with fee-help you'd have to pay back an extra 15% or something, which would've made the qantm course ~50k for two years). Not sure about any others. I decided to do a non game-related degree at a uni that does hecs while doing game art in my free time.
Yeah that's the kind of thing I was suggesting. HECS wasn't available to me when I went to AIE and that stung, as does the general lack of usefulness current game degrees that doesn't need to to go into detail here.
I'd like game-related degrees to become a force in the industry through an improvement of standardised and varied curriculum with skills relevant in today's world, so far Designers benefit the most. That could take a long time - how long did it take before a degree in film stopped being a joke?
I wouldn't say it's as bad as all that but yeah, your career opportunities are vastly superior overseas.
Get a job working in 3D be it for cartoons/ advertising/ indie movies/ online freelancing etc. Then once you have some work going.... look for what you really want to do, otherwise you could be sitting on your thumbs hoping for that magic chance to happen for a very long time.
Check out this program for small business's its amazing if you want to try your hand at freelancing, helps fund yourself as a small start up buisness.... free money! - http://www.missionaustralianeis.com.au/about.htm
I know its hard as hell trying to make it in Australia. My first job was overseas and my current one is working remotely for a small studio. I'd recommend trying to do something like that. Check out gamedev.net or any one of those sites and try and get on board. I don't know if you're opposed to it or not, but I love working remotely and I'd look into that before looking at big overseas studios.
One studio I know of in Australia that might be worth looking into that hasn't already been mentioned is Wicked Witch in Melbourne. I did some volunteer work for them years ago and they're an awesome bunch.
Also want to echo a previous poster and say avoid Marty Howe and Figurehead.
http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/funding/games/games_production.aspx
Its odd that Australia does not have a bigger games industry as its such a fantastic place to live. Is it hard for non Australian's to get working Visa's in the games industry?
Also what would you say is the best place to study Games Art/Animation/VFX in Australia?
Good luck
I ripped them off Gamedevmap so it might be a bit of a mixed bag, I hope they help.
www.floor.co.jp
www.igda.org/perth
www.subversivegames.com
www.dena.jp
www.imagination.com.au
www.kukanstudio.com
www.bigant.com
www.dancingdinosaurgames.com
www.endgamestudios.com
www.firemint.com
www.gdaa.com.au
www.impromptugames.com
www.infinite-interactive.com
www.ironmonkeystudios.com
www.redtribe.com
www.sector3.com.au
www.silhouette-studios.com.au
www.tantalus.com.au
www.thevoxelagents.com
www.thirdwavegames.com
www.torus.com.au
www.wicked-witch.com.au
www.microforte.com
www.prophecygames.com
www.subversivegames.com
www.igda.org/sydney
www.konami.com.au
www.microforte.com
www.mindscape.net.au
www.sega.com
www.take2games.com.au
www.tuistudios.com
www.igda.org/sydney
www.konami.com.au
www.microforte.com
www.mindscape.net.au
www.sega.com
www.take2games.com.au
www.tuistudios.com
www.5livesstudios.com
www.defiantdev.com
www.queenslandgames.com
www.eyecon.com.au
www.fuzzyeyes.com
www.halfbrick.com
www.kromestudios.com
www.minimega.com.au
www.n3vgames.com
www.tantalus.com.au
www.thebinarymill.com
www.creative-assembly.com.au
www.wildfire.com.au