How did you react to landing your first game dev job?
polycounter lvl 6
I've always been curious as to how I'll react when I get that first break into the industry, so I'm curious what it was like for you guys who currently work in the industry. Were you self taught or went to college, and how did it feel when all of your hard work finally paid off? Thanks!
Replies
First fulltime job, I thanked God that the two and a half years of inconsistent financial existence would come to a temporary end. One of the better Christmas gifts I got. That call for an interview initially came as I tearfully was retreating south from Seattle to LA because of a botched Microsoft contract. It was snowing and I was in a parking lot of some mountain town mall.
I was freaking out. I was a huge Nintendo fanboy at the time, and I felt like I was enemy territory. I tried to talk to every artist in my team. They were all Seniors or Mid-level. I know I bothered them a bunch, especially Ryan Benjamin, a Comic/Concept Artist. I was so nervous to mess up in the job, and obsessed over the work, and tried not to play around in the office. The feeling was pretty cool, just the feeling of breaking in and working with people who worked on games you're familiar with or heard of. So, how I saw it, was that you try and learn from the internship and use whatever experience you have there to the next job and all that. It was a totally different vibe after the internship.. (went to QA, wasn't brought full-time after). But, that internship started it off, and it was fun as hell. I'm sure once you break in, you'll love it.
The rest was great though (no, seriously!) and the amount of experienced people I was surrounded with was intimidating, but in a good way.
Just looking at your portfolio, you're extremely talented and I really appreciate the response! But back to what you said, how do you handle the moving aspect assuming you live far from the studio, like having to find an apartment quickly? That's something I've always wondered about. Do you stay in a hotel temporarily until you find one, or something else?
If you get a nice client though like I did it is a truly humbling experience, someone, somewhere in the world has chosen you over lots of others. It is a lot of pressure to live up to expectations but once you do more and more you start to settle in and can give future clients that little bit extra from the lessons learned before.
However in a studio you would be surrounded by what would hopefully be very helpful professionals who can guide and aid you if you feel you are lagging behind a bit. In freelance you generally have yourself and your client to feedback, you could do a piece the client is happy with but from an experienced persons perspective the work you did could be substandard. It makes improving yourself through client work tough since most work you do is under NDA so you can't post online asking for feedback!
When I land my first studio role I imagine I will be in the exact same boat as everyone else. You are surrounded by masters of their craft which is bound to be overwhelming at times but in the end you had the skills to get noticed so I don't imagine they would be so quick to throw you under the bus if you go wrong.
If you are polite and not overbearing I am sure many people would be happy to show you some good hints, tips and workflows so see it as an opportunity to draw from a well of experience.
I can always do personal work to get feedback over on the animation section of Polycount however freelancing doesn't leave much time or energy for it!
Freelance is more the fear of consistency in the finance side of things, you may pick up lots of jobs but they could be low paying indie jobs that won't help you survive. I have been quite lucky in that regard, picked up some very awesome professional clients.
Never going to stop trying for that studio job though and you seem to be in the same mindset, keep up the portfolio; every year there should be a steady improvement and eventually with the right amount of time and effort you will be at your first day in a studio terrified of all the amazing professionals that surround you.
Bigger companies have their own accommodation or have a contract with a local complex. For my current job I arrived in Korea, was given a code to the door and the address which was 10m walk from work.