Getting a job in the games design industry.

Getting a job in the games design industry.

I have been in email correspondence with many ex games design students. Their are a large number of students who are unable to get a job in this industry this is a scary statistic.

I have been scratching my head about how a excellent games design student gets into the games design industry itself?

How do developers recognise new talent?

Do they look at qualifications?

There seems to be no one answer.




Yes qualifications are important, but contacts are more important.

Experience is also very important.

However here comes the catch 22. How do you get experience if you need experience in order to get a job?

I hear this time after time from previous students I have taught.

So how do you get experience when you need experience in order to get the job?


Volunteering is one answer, many student don't like this path as their is no money in the short term. However if a student really is talented then a prospective employer will see this and that student will get a job in time. Its a risk and how do you get bills paid whilst you do this? Well for those students who will be 'signing on' and getting universal credit (as its now called) volunteering is recognised and comes of the the mandatory 5 hours a day a job seeker needs to do in order to get money from the government. So how do you get into volunteering? Well you do some research about games development companies in your area and then you try to link up with them, Email and written mail, Remember people are getting very disconnected from emails these days. Most people just delete unwanted emails and treat them as spam. So write to them! A personal connection may work better!

Develop some games and get them out their. Is for me a better answer. Develop a game and publish it independently. Not cheap and you need money to get it out their.

Steam Greenlight is a good option its $100 initial cost and you can even charge for people to have your game. However who actually uses greenlight? I am a steam user and I have rarely used it. What image does greenlight have? I still think that as a first step it's a good idea.

Google Play : $25 one of fee + up $99 a year afterwards per app (game in our case). However issue here are there is massive fragmentation in the android market.



Apple App store : $99 for Apple Developer Program to get publish any number of apps for one year. However Apple have to approve it first! From the articles I have read Apple tend to reject apps if they find the slightest error.


See this article about comparing them both,

Here is an excellent article by the guardian newspaper on this subject as well