10 PROVEN Ways To Get Into The Gaming Industry

There’s such a thing as backing yourself into a corner, and that’s true of this industry, too.

Do you remember when you were in high school and you’d just sit and draw the same thing over and over again on your jotters, seemingly unable to break out of the trance to draw anything else? For me, that was this little mean-looking cyborg guy, and I’d draw this cyborg bloke everywhere I could. Little did I know, this would inform my particular style of art, and when I got to college, I got a big wakeup call.

”You can’t just draw everything in this angular, overly-intricate style. You need to learn different styles, too”, said the evil lady who clearly knew nothing and was intimidated by my talent.

She was, of course, talking some wise words, but for me, a smarmy twenty-year-old with a bit of a golden-boy complex, I just wanted to dig my heels in deeper.

Fast-forward to my first ever games industry job interview, and the superlatives flew in - “definitely talented”, “nice guy”... I was nice and smug. “...Not much variety, though.” Sure enough, the recruiter was kind and intelligent, the same as all my tutors past - but only now did I think to myself that perhaps I’d been too overconfident. I went home empty-handed, but with good advice.

All it took was looking back over my portfolio and considering adding some completely unique, not-my-style-at-all pieces in there for the recruiters to reconsider the application, and I got the job shortly afterwards.

The same thing applies to your chosen specialism/field - don’t get too stuck in the idea that “I don’t do that - my job is X, this is someone else’s problem”. There will definitely be times where your job roles overlap (especially if the studio is smaller).

If you think game designers don’t need to learn any production skills, or concept artists don’t need to know any video production, or a vehicle artist might not need to know tech art... you might be in for a shock!

Be special. Just don’t be too specialised.