Game Development Industry

part 2
Make game modifications (mods)
The days of hiring individuals with little or no experience and giving them on-the-job training are, for the most part, over. Companies are looking for individuals who already have experience using their game development tools to produce game content so they can bring them in and put them right to work. Since game companies began releasing development tools for their games, there have been a growing number of companies hiring developers from the mod communities on the Internet.

At Raven Software alone, there are at least six employees who were hired on the basis of their mod work. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast Programmer Rich Whitehouse began working on games five years ago with a Duke Nukem' 3D total conversion team. Shortly thereafter, he began modifying Quake and working on bots for Quake II and Half-Life. His bot work got him an independent contract with Raven Software to do a bot for Soldier of Fortune: Gold Edition.

"As one can imagine, making a mod that ends up shipping as part of an official add-on type package is a good way to get your foot in the door with a company," explains Whitehouse about the experience. "In short, what I've learned is that if you work enough at something like this and keep producing work to show for it, someone is bound to notice and pick you up."

Make a demo
Similar in many ways to mod making, creating your own game demo is a fantastic way to get a game company's attention. This method is particularly effective for Programmers. Degrees in computer programming, management computer systems or computer science pale in comparison on your resume to actual, finished game code. Whether it's an original idea or a clone of an existing genre, producing your own game demo shows potential employers that you are familiar with games and what makes them work.

Ensemble Studios Programmer Herb Marselas knows firsthand the value of demo work. "Producing a demo game is key," he says, "because it shows you really understand how to put together the basic parts of a game. If you're interested in graphics, you should concentrate in doing a simple game with knockout graphics. If you're into Artificial Intelligence, your demo game doesn't need to look so hot, but it needs to show off your great AI programming skills."

Marselas says he spent much of his spare time for almost a year working on demos and trying to learn as much as he could about how games work, and after sending out a bunch of resumes, he finally got an interview at MicroProse in Hunt Valley, Maryland and was finally hired as a tools and general game programmer. He's now been in the industry for more than six years.

Get your start in QA
Most large game companies and publishers have a Quality Assurance (QA) department that tests games at the end of their development and reports bugs and related problems to game developers. Quality Assurance testing isn't glorious by any means and the pay isn't spectacular, but it is an important, entry-level sector of the industry that is constantly looking for help.

One nice aspect of QA testing is that everyone starts out on a level playing field. If you are diligent and hard working with an attention to detail, you'll find that you are able to advance within the department and put yourself in a position to graduate from Quality Assurance tester to QA lead and beyond. In my experience with Activision (which owns Raven), I've seen QA testers move into development positions, associate producer positions and various other posts throughout the company after proving themselves in QA.

The Game Development Industry -- Part 3