10 PROVEN Ways To Get Into The Gaming Industry
It’s the skills that pay the bills.
The gaming industry is booming. Where once a team could’ve been made up of a vast and unstoppable army of... well, one single developer - nowadays, triple-A studios can be over a thousand people strong, each with their own defined niche specialism.
Therefore, the demand for fresh faces and creative minds has never been greater, with most triple-A studios now perpetually on the lookout.
But, with the increased necessity for more developers, so too must the competition increase.
So, how do you really stand out? And more importantly, what’re some of the dos and don’ts when you’re trying to get into the industry?
Well, of course, I could just write “have the secret sauce”, but that doesn’t translate all too well to a list format, nor is it all that descriptive. The truth is, there really isn’t anything quite that simple.
Though the ever-shifting games industry is as varied as it is vast (and so there’s no definitive one-size-fits-all solution to each and every studio scenario), here’s a few universally-accepted truths that should help you get an advantage when trying to get into the games industry.
10. Maths & English (Seriously)
As my old maths teacher once said, “students are normally good at English, or maths, but not both, because those people are psychopaths”.
Depending on the role you’re looking into, chances are you’ll need at least one of these two, daily.
For example, you’d probably expect the programming roles to need a high degree of mathematical knowledge, but there are also ones like tech art which require you to be able to make calculations for things like particle creation, or even for making some more complex shaders.
Other roles, like designers and QA, require a high level of communication and documentation skills - for the former, it’s likely expected that you spend a huge amount of your time writing up documents, but some graduates I’ve spoken to were quite surprised to hear how much time a QA member spends in software like Excel, JIRA, or even Microsoft Word (hint: it’s a lot).
If you’re proficient at maths and/or English, you might have more in your pocket than you think.
I have a Bubbaloo and forty-six pence in mine.