How do you get work in the gaming industry?

[Duncano]

Let's share some ideas, shall we. Not the typical ones, like go to origin.com and apply for a Painintheass assistant, but like creative ones.

Or maybe someone has contacts and willing to share? Would YOU like to work in the gaming industry? Do you have experience? Let me know...

[yeast]

Buy one of those hats and pretend that you're Notch.
Who wouldn't want to hire the guy that made Minecraft?

[obdigore]

If you want to design games, you design games. Even small ones that can be attached to your portfolio, then you send your info to the places you want to work, and do it anytime they are looking for anyone.

Or you design a successful game and get recruited by a studio.

[Duncano]

If you want to design games, you design games. Even small ones that can be attached to your portfolio, then you send your info to the places you want to work, and do it anytime they are looking for anyone.

Or you design a successful game and get recruited by a studio.

I'd rather do marketing.

[Threndsa]

If you want to design games, you design games. Even small ones that can be attached to your portfolio, then you send your info to the places you want to work, and do it anytime they are looking for anyone.

Or you design a successful game and get recruited by a studio.

This. I am currently working on 2 table top RPG's as an example of what I can do. Once they are out of beta I will be shamelessly using them as applications while working on more projects and pray that something sticks and lands me a job.

[obdigore]

I'd rather do marketing.

Then you need to get some successful marketing campaigns under your belt, and the entire marketing industry really is all about who you know, from what I understand.

[Jurwi]

Let's share some ideas, shall we. Not the typical ones, like go to origin.com and apply for a Painintheass assistant, but like creative ones.

Or maybe someone has contacts and willing to share? Would YOU like to work in the gaming industry? Do you have experience? Let me know...

Depends what you want to do. Below you mentioned marketing, which most likely would require a college degree in marketing or something similar, at least to get into a bigger company. And possibly also have some references, and some marketing internship already done. Which leads to the next and perhaps even the most important thing, the contacts. You will make contacts during the previous parts so it shouldn't be a problem.

But yea, at least where I'm from, the only marketing you will get to do without proper degree and some experience, is telemarketing.

A good way to figure that stuff out is to think what would you personally wants your empoyee to have, if you were a big shot in gaming industry. Would you rather take a educated and experienced marketing person, or some guy who seems he really wants to sell games but has 0 experience of it?

[Fulmetal]

i dont have exp in marketing or the games industry... however i am an IT technician, and my company has to clients (companies not induviduals) that work in marketing. i would suggest making a portifolio of your work up till now, then expanding to involve marketing ideas for games/products that have been announced (preferably by the company you are applying to)

i guess im going with, "dont treat it any different than any other marketing job you would apply to"

standard things apply, tailor your cv for the company you are applying to (make sure you change the filename from "cv_date_forBlizzard" if sending by email)
know the copany you are applying to, their curent development, their history (not just products but the actual company history)
etc...

edit: i was going with the assumption that you already have a career in marketing or at least an intership and a degree, if not that would be the place to start, if you didnt do intership yet... try and get one in the games industry

i also left out that networking is very important in any job, but id say even more so in marketing. go to some game expos and start meeting people in your desired profession

[Varabently]

I'd rather do marketing.

Do you have a marketing degree or any experience in marketing? Do you have a portfolio of ads you created?

[Tutorial]

I'm in college learning to become a Senior Environment Engineer.
The course is called "Game Design and Development". It's only fair to asume that's THE way to get in to the industry.

[Bolson13]

Do you have a marketing degree or any experience in marketing? Do you have a portfolio of ads you created?

marketing is a larger field then just advertisments.

"Today, marketing must be understood not in the old sense of making a sale - "telling and selling" - but in the new sense of satisfying customer needs. Selling occurs only after a product is produced. By contrast, marketing starts long before a company has a product. Marketing is the homework that managers undertake to assess needs, measure their extent and intensity and determine whether a profitable opportunity exists. Marketing continues throughout the product's life, trying to find new customers and keep current customers by improving product appeal and performance, learning from product sales results and managing repeat performance.

We define marketing as: a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others."

-- principles of marketing.

[maximusCat]

I used to work for world's largest video game company. I started out as contract QA -> contract test engineer -> full time software engineer -> laid off when studio closed start of 2009. When I started there I was 3 credits short of comp. eng. degree at a good school.

The QA job (video game tester) to start was really easy to get. I found it listed on an internet job board. I thought I was going to an interview, but it turned out to just be a room full of people signing contracts. That job sucked. Nothing you did really mattered, pay was low, respect was lower. No one wanted to be there and the environment was generally depressing. I was able however to make enough of an impression on superiors (combined with my educational background) to get an interview for the test engineer position.

Test Engineer (automated game testing) was still technically a QA position, but I was working with development day to day instead of other QA. I spent my time writing/maintaining test scripts and diagnosing results.

The Software Engineer job (build engineer) was great in terms of pay, experience and job satisfaction. I cannot emphasize enough how differently you are treated in Development vs QA. People in dev were genuinely interested in solving problems. In QA everyone was unhappy and squabbling over scraps, office politics became tiresome. Unfortunately 3 months after I got the full time developer position they laid off over 200 people including me and closed the studio. This did make some sense since the project I was working on was one that the company had bought and promptly ruined (which seems to be a pattern for them). It was crappy in the fact that those 2 people in charge of game design made some really brutal design choices that resulted in terrible games, but those are not the people who got laid off. While I was there I was always amazed at how many people were employed on such a terrible game, but you certainly had to be careful about who you voiced that opinion to.

The bulk of the jobs in video games are artists and developers. I now work as a software engineer, but not in video games.

Tutorial said:
"I'm in college learning to become a Senior Environment Engineer.
The course is called "Game Design and Development". It's only fair to asume that's THE way to get in to the industry."

Throughout my time at this company, one thing I noticed:
Everyone in QA has some dreams about being a game designer. There aren't that many game designer jobs. The project I developed on had only 2 people who were designers who got to make influential choices out of over 150 people(developers, artists, managers). There were other "junior designers", but those people ended up doing the grunt work of laying out levels with some tool, very little creative choices available there. I would be interested to know what the outcome distribution looks like for people who have done "game design" courses. I would venture to say it is particularly bleak. There are a lot more half-thought through game ideas out there than there is will and funding to see them through.

I'm not saying don't chase your game designer dream, but you had better be ready to put in an awful lot of work and face an awful lot of competition to get the kind of position where you get to make game design choices.

[Deleted]

A lot of it seems to boil down to having contacts in the industry, sadly. That has been my main obstacle thus far, at least.