How to start a career in video games

Guest101010

I recently moved to the Seattle area after quitting my job as a hotel night auditor. I got a temp gig as a video game tester that went really well. I'm now on my third contract.

I love the industry so far and would love to have a bit more job stability. I'm really interested in design, particularly the competitive multiplayer aspects, but I'd love to learn sound, art, and low-level programming. What should I be working on right now to begin applying for developer/intern positions? Is school really the only way to get into the industry?

Let's put it this way: If you were starting back at the beginning, knowing what you know know, which skills would you acquire first?

Ott

Internet searching skills. I honestly could have saved myself hundreds and thousands of hours and dollars if I knew more about "how" to research than anything. I could have found reviews for schools and tutorials, as well as answering questions very similar to the ones you have posted (your first two are covered extensively on these boards)

Depending on the studio you are at, working as a tester puts you on the ground floor with the people who can answer any question you want regarding what they do or how to get started. Hell, if I knew about the Joan of Arc tutorials or 3dBuzz.com or polycount.com back when I started I would have more hair than I do now. I barely knew about these things until I got close to graduating college, even though they were the shit "back in the day". The resources available to you today are a hundred times more superior to those of us who started just 5-8 years ago!

Guest101010

I appreciate the reply, tongue-in-cheek and all! I'll check out those tutorials.

Ott

I will say that the first thing you should do is really nail down something you are passionate for among that laundry list of things that interest you in game development. Design, Audio, Art, Animation, Programming...these are all very specialized fields that people traditionally focus on individually at triple A studios.

Smaller, "garage games" studios tend to have grab bag people who can do a little of everything, and can give you a taste of all of these fields, but when making games with multi-million dollar budgets and teams of 40-200 people come in to play, we each do one of something very well.

If handheld or portable games interest you, you could easily find yourself wearing multiple hats on a mod team or small projects and try to "do it all", but for big game goals, find one you really like and focus your research and energy towards that.

A lot of schools teach "grab bag" style stuff with no major focus of any until you get some fire under your own ass and focus your efforts yourself. Which can be good, and bad, considering the old mantra of "Jack of all trades, master of none".

keizza

"The resources available to you today are a hundred times more superior to those of us who started just 5-8 years ago!"


so is the competition!

Eric Chadwick

Ott is so right on in that first answer, actually in both really.
Very good advice.
Some more stuff here...
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryGameIndustry

Mark Dygert

A good resource to listen to: http://gim.acanaday.com/

Nothing gets someone practical experience like doing something, anything, even a step in the wrong direction can be a positive step, so long as you learn from it.

"Every journey begins with a single step".

What ott said is true, there are TONS of resources for people to make games on their own. You can grab UDK or Unity free and start tinkering. You can grab source and start making maps and mods for a bunch of games. You can look up a bunch of other free resources and start learning the technical side of "art".

It sounds like you want to take it all on and unfortunately that isn't a solid career path. There is so much to learn and so much to do that it really isn't possible to master them all. At least not at the same time, so I suggest tinker a little bit with each and explore more into the areas you find most interesting and focus on that thing until you're competent to land a job. Then maybe branch out into other things.

Because you listed off a wide range of job titles its hard to point you to any one resource that will help guide you. Also a big part of being competent isn't knowing where or who to ask but figuring it out on your own. Sometimes you find yourself in uncharted waters and its up to you to navigate the best you can. Sure its always easier if someone does the dirty work and scouts ahead but that isn't always the case.

You'll need practical experience, that doesn't necessarily mean you'll need shipped titles but you will need to demonstrate that you can do the job, and the best way to do that is to actually do it.

Joshua Stubbles

Doing an indie project is a great way to go about it. Even making a small mod is a good way to get your feet wet. There are lots of freeware/cheap engines to purchase or mod for. UDK, Source, CryEngine, Halflife Gold, Dark Sun, Freespace Gold, just to name a few. They all have great documentation, too.

I started working on mods back in 1999, while teaching myself 3d. It started as making custom weapon model replacements for the (then 3.1 beta) CounterStrike mod. I learned more along the way while working on more mods. In 2001, I got my first pro gig and haven't looked back since.

Even today, I still work on mods. I have a deep appreciation for them as it's how I got started. The creativity in small indie teams seems (to me at least) unmatched and really exceeds what a lot of big game dev firms are pushing out today.

Like Vig said, being a jack of all trades really isn't a great idea unless you want to stay indie forever. You really need to focus and hone your skills in one general area. That's not to say it isn't a good thing to know how other aspects work. I've done scripting, level design, animation and low level coding, but art is where my heart is and always will be and it's what I've spent the bulk of the last 10 years working on.