Breaking Into the Industry

Despite a plethora of comics, games, TV, and movie panels, Comic-Con has a few self-help seminars that may well be worth the price of admission to the convention. One of those is Adventures in Game Development. Every year Alex Jimenez and a coupe of his industry friends get together to share best practices on what to expect, what to do, and what the industry is really like from the inside. I attended last year and you see where that got me. This year's panel was comprised not only of the Jimenez, but also writer Blake Hitchins (whose work has been seen and heard in Tribes games) and artist David DeVries.

While Alex claims to have created the characters of Darkstalkers in 30 minutes, he entertains, instructs, and provides a welcome dose of reality for would-be gaming professionals. For aspiring practitioners, understanding which area of expertise they would most likely fit in is essential. The three categories of development he uses are:

Programmers are useful people, nerds among nerds – you will never have enough programmers. If you have a life, forget it, because when you join the industry, you will lose it. If you are willing to put in the hours, you will have a lucrative career
Study C++, Visual Basic, Java, and many, many other languages. If programmers are the builders, Software Engineers are the architects.

Artists, semi-useful people. What do devs look for in a portfolio? Game deves want traditional artists. Don't bring disks to portfolio reviews. Bring a sketchpad. Devs will describe something and you better be ready to sketch it out at the drop of a hat. David DeVries recommends having detailed, finished work, but also quick, fast sketches that can convey character ideas and concepts. One time he had 6 great items, in a review, he was beat out by somebody who brought 60 quick sketches.
Somebody once brought in a roll of paper, unspooled it and revealed scores of quick sketches that showed stream-of-consciousness character designs.

Designers need to know what they are applying for. Entry-level for design is Level designer. Making mods allows you to improve your skills. If you want to teach yourself the art of design, you can buy the books, make the mods, or run a pen-and-paper RPG campaign. Read a lot of the indie game systems. You can see rule variants, ritual phrasing, and non-combat negotiations. Dogs in the Vineyard, Spirits of the Century, and Polaris are a few recommended systems to start with. If you want more, plumb the depths of story-games.com to see if you can't come up with more. Alex oultlined many ways developers could build a decent portfolio. Writen articles for gaming publications. Make mods. To check out papers in the industry gamasutra.com is recommended reading and posting intelligent discussion in online forums (hint, hint) is also well received.

In the end, individual effort is best peppered with the following strategies:

1. Be sneaky. Leave your sketchbook, find backdoors to get in front of the hiring managers.
2. Keep it short. If you are showing art and demo reels, keep it brief. Do funny, creative moves if you are an animator.
3. Know what is going on. Keep up to date with what titles are in development at a potential employer. Understand what processes a developer uses to create games.
4. Be versatile. Have one or two things you are good at, but also be able to do other things. Animators should be able to texture, art designers should be able to help with level design. Can you program in multiple languages and are you adept at multiple applications?
5. Make good first impressions. You need to walk the walk and talk the talk, but you also have to demonstrate a willingness to learn.
6. Sacrifice. Be willing to start as a tester or take a lesser role to get into the industry or company you want to be in. It's okay to be a tester for a bit, but make sure you are not one forever.
7. Remember it's a game. One of the most important things to remember is a story has to fit gameplay. By association art has to be part of the story and overall composition. You have to understand how it all comes together into a cohesive whole.

Finally, the panel provided a couple other pointers for dedicated future developer employees. If you are a tester, learn how to give constructive feedback. If you are going to tear down walls, provide relevant information on how to make it better. If you have an idea, bring a design document. Keep it concise, keep it accurate, and keep it brief. Be ready to network, pitch, and develop relationships with a lot of people in a lot of outlets. getting game pitches picked up is only becoming more difficult. For now only screenwriters have a harder time getting projects off of the ground.