The "are you passionate about games?" question
polycounter lvl 4
Is it simply "will it be easy to make this guy work extra hours?", but using nice words, or is it a genuine question? It doesn't make much sense to me. As I understand the word "passion", it means "being ready to sacrifice some parts of your life for the sake of the thing you're passionate about". If I'm passionate about playing the guitar, I'm ready to sacrifice my social life/money/time to be better at playing the guitar. Instead of going to a party, I stay at home and practice guitar for 8 hours. If I do it for years, that's passion. Hearing such a profound question at a job interview feels shady (to say the least). Why would I be passionate about something I don't and will never own? When I work for someone I'm selling my time - I agree to do my job the best I can and as fast as I can. I shouldn't be passionate about it, I should fulfil my part of the contract. I consider my approach to be fair and logical. That's how I would like someone to work if I were to hire anyone to work on my game.
Therefore I see two options here:
1) it's either a question to assess whether the interviewee is naive and easy to be exploited, or
2) it's just another cliche and meaningless question formed by some HR guy long time ago and still mindlessly repeated by other HR people, because they have no actual idea what they should ask about
Replies
Its not about willing to sacrafice your social live its about are you interested to learn. To adopt new workflows and tools. Its about Artists they come to work and say have you seen the environment in the new God of War? Let us make such great rocks.
And a lot of time you arnt allowed to break the pipeline.
To be honest, you are coming off like the perfect example why this question is being asked. It has nothing to do with being exploited. But there are so many people trying to break it into the industry, why should I bother with someone who thinks doing just the job is enough, when I can have someone as good who also enjoys doing it and has the internal drive to improve and wants to get the most out of the work he/she is putting it?
In any job I would go to the person passionate about it because they do more than necessary to keep up with their field and do their work. Don't kid yourself, if you are not passionate about doing the work, investing in your career you will never work as hard and/or fast as someone who cares about it. I don't know anyone who got really good at his/her craft without being passionate about it.
But my Jobs allows me todo what i love. More time for my family. Happy me.
I mean obviously its good to be passionate about what you do, especially in art, and being passionate does make doing the job more enjoyable/bearable for a great many people.
However to take the answer to the question "are you passionate about games" at face value is meaningless, asking it is more about checking a box on the list, at least formally.
Its while you're working that you may have an opportunity to demonstrate how passionate you are.
And this again depends on the job and how people perceive what being passionate means to them.
For instance you may be passionate about the process of character art, and not necessarily the character in the game, and his helps you do your job well.
Or you might show up on time and stay late hoping that this might get you a promotion, your passion is also probably more about status/money in this case or just wanting more responsibility.
A lot of opportunity in a large corporate game studio does depend on a lot more than just the quality of your art because of your passion for it, so many people understandably approach it with what's possible for them.
Like if making money to live a life was all a job meant to you, you'd likely not go out to drinks with your senior co-workers for the slight possibility that doing so might result in promotion at work.
Or probably you'd do it because of the money that comes with the promotion.
Not every employee has some ulterior motive though, many are just trying to fit in.
Now the next bit depends on how your employer responds to this passion.
If they value you, you'll have much to gain from the experience,
If they don't, for some, the experience might be a valued asset to the next job, or you stick with your job and your employer is a ass and abuses the s* out of you.
In the case of the latter, again some people may be too blind in their passion to realise this, kind of like an abusive relationship, and others might decide to stick around hoping that this would change, or they won't leave because they have other responsibilities like family, bills and mortgages that rely on staying within the job.
Usually for people that have the "a job is for money to have a life" mindset, a lot of that money is spent on things that need maintaining.
When the job is lost, unless they're prepared for it they're pretty much f*ed, so its rare of these sort of people to leave a job unless they have a better offer.
I feel that given how unpredictable this industry is, that's probably a good approach, though I for one would limit my spending and save up.
I've always felt that if you are truly passionate you might consider being more entrepreneurial or atleast distinguish yourself as one of the best in your craft so you are valued more for it and have more options.
In my experience some companies (particularly indie companies) value passion more, since their budgets are lower and they rely on their employees to learn and apply themselves to a multitude of situations. They would also rather have their employee stick around rather than just leave in a year.
The good ones treat their employees well and achieve this loyalty naturally.
Other companies would prefer an employee to fill a quota which can range from anything between needing another level artist to hiring a certain person since the team lacks diversity, the employee in this case is just a number that can be easily replaced if needed.
And besides you need employees like this to do the work no one else wants, rather work that anyone else can do with little to no training.
In that sense maybe passion is more about looking pleased with yourself even if you're getting the worst possible deal, since to you it would still be good enough, or better than the minimum wage job you were doing.
Most people in this position aren't really cut out for taking greater risks and regardless of how passionate they think they are, its probably not going to change ever.
Usually the employees that are in the firing line for this question and suffer the most are also the company's greatest bootlickers.
They're the sort of people who would list a series of cons and then go on to give the company 5 stars just because of their anonymity, or justify lower compensation or layoffs.
I don't think they'd go very far, and if they're passionate it certainly isn't about what they're doing in their job, rather their passion isn't strong enough for them to make it on their own.
Not that everyone needs to.
We had this one guy back at my game dev school who really took the initiative in standing out of the crowd, even started his own company and was managing multiple teams.
He was seen as someone who'd go pretty far in his career.
Then he met a girl and that all went to s*.
I think he's happy with the girl so that's probably where the passion went.
Different strokes for different folks.
I never even had a job as a 3D artist yet. That's why I made this thread, I'm trying to figure out things.