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Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I just accepted a job at CDPRed for the chance to work on Cyberpunk 2077 and chill out in poland. Very excited. Thanks everyone for the earlier help with the resume. Congrats! Getting jobs is good. Which is a perfect segue into this: About a year ago on Polycount, a thread showed up about whether it is appropriate to show up to a game developer's office unannounced to hand in your resume and apply. http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89165 I posted something snarky and a dude PMed me, I gave him more snark, and he took it to heart. And then last night he refreshed the PM chain and told me he's looking to do something similar. My OP is the first message, and names have been changed to protect the witless. I don't know if I should continue to gently caress with him or break it to him that he probably shouldn't follow in my (fake) footsteps. Ghostscape;1432686 posted:Do it! a dude from the internet posted:You are joking about this right? Ghostscape posted:It is step by step how I got my job, dude I tackled still has a slight scar on his face from where his head hit the pavement. dude said last night posted:If you could go back and do it differently, would you? I am thinking of doing something similar! Ghostscape posted:It is better to regret what you have done than what you could have done. But it is best to do things and post about the results. a dude from the internet posted:I agree. Sometimes that's what it takes to get the job done, especially in this industry and how tough it is to find work. Ghostscape posted:eh, there isn't much else to that story. a dude from the internet posted:A strategy is still being formulated. Any tips or warnings? So do goons feel it is appropriate to show up to a developer and apply in-person with rapidly warming finger food?
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Nov 17, 2012 01:55
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That reminds me of the time the pizza delivery guy wrote on the inside top of the pizza box that he wanted to be hired and wrote out the URL for his deviant art profile.
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Nov 17, 2012 01:58
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Chainclaw posted:That reminds me of the time the pizza delivery guy wrote on the inside top of the pizza box that he wanted to be hired and wrote out the URL for his deviant art profile. Wait... are you talking about the Pizza Time guy or one of the random crunch dinner delivery guys. The pizza time guy always seemed so nice, I would hate to find out he was crazy all along 
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Nov 17, 2012 02:39
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Kitten Kisses posted:Wait... are you talking about the Pizza Time guy or one of the random crunch dinner delivery guys. The pizza time guy always seemed so nice, I would hate to find out he was crazy all along I don't think it was the Pizza Time guy, I think it might have been the Jet City guy? I just remember the box was pinned in the downstairs break room for a year or so.
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Nov 17, 2012 02:45
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Shindragon posted:My defintion of AAA is games that use alot of money to be produce. I mean you can basically say that's nearly for all games Well most non-casual studios advertise themselves as AAA when hiring, but I'd personally peg AAA as a studio that makes games with budgets at or above the average for multi-platform releases ($20-$25 million for this console generation) OR if the studio is owned or has an exclusive deal with a major publisher or platform developer to work on internal IP.
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Nov 17, 2012 05:12
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but seriously yeah I can't really talk about mines either.
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Sigma-X posted:So do goons feel it is appropriate to show up to a developer and apply in-person with rapidly warming finger food? I believe this is relevant. In short, some blogger I'd been following decided to take the direct approach to apply at Blizzard after going through the normal channels and not hearing anything back. He'd come up with a thorough raid dungeon design and showed up at their doorstep handing out printed copies of this design to anyone who'd take them. Long story short, he did make an impression, but didn't have prior design experience nor a piece of actual gameplay to show off, so I suppose it didn't meet Blizzard's standards. I guess showing up in person can help distinguish yourself, but if you don't have a great portfolio or CV to show after that, then it's not all that useful. But then, if you have a great portfolio or CV, you probably don't need to show up camping a developer's doorstep either.
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Nov 17, 2012 05:42
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Blizzard is pretty hilarious to apply to. I got referred to an open CM position by a very senior person in the community department, got a phone screen by HR almost immediately, then a follow up with a manager a few days later. Then that was it. My referral person said the position was still unfilled 6 months later when I got a phone call telling me that they already had someone in mind for the position.
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Nov 17, 2012 05:49
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Jan posted:I believe this is relevant. The "show up with resume in hand" worked pretty well for this guy: http://www.tk409.com/gettingajob.html Cribbing my plan of "bring food and then assault people" doesn't seem like it'll go very far, though.
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Nov 17, 2012 05:49
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Sigma-X posted:The "show up with resume in hand" worked pretty well for this guy: For what it's worth, it did help the Blizzard guy land a job at 38 Studios later on. Which is kind of tragic now, but hey.
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Nov 17, 2012 06:02
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It's not like social/mobile folks can talk about unreleased products any more than AAA can. I couldn't talk about stuff in that world or this one. Actually I think the rules may be even more strict in my new job, which I would have thought to be nearly impossible.Comte de Saint-Germain posted:I just accepted a job at CDPRed for the chance to work on Cyberpunk 2077 and chill out in poland. Very excited. Thanks everyone for the earlier help with the resume. Outstanding! Congrats!
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Nov 17, 2012 06:15
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True, but the dev cycle on casual/mobile is a lot shorter, so you can talk about what you're working on a lot faster. With AAA you might be working on a title for a year or more before it even announces, where a mobile team might ship 2 or 3 (or more???) titles in that same year.
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Nov 17, 2012 09:36
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Jan posted:I guess showing up in person can help distinguish yourself, but if you don't have a great portfolio or CV to show after that, then it's not all that useful. But then, if you have a great portfolio or CV, you probably don't need to show up camping a developer's doorstep either. 
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Nov 17, 2012 10:36
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Bubble Blaze is the No. 1 Kids games in the UK and US! 
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Nov 17, 2012 11:10
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Magic posted:I remember one HR scout at a publisher told me that getting yourself noticed however goddamned much it takes is worthwhile such as sending your CV (resume) on a bullet-shaped USB device to an action game developer.
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Nov 17, 2012 14:53
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We're on the front cover of this month's EDGE magazine! That's pretty neat. Even if I'm not personally a fan of the bot they picked for the cover... Now I guess I gotta go buy a copy!
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Nov 17, 2012 15:53
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Hey folks, I know this isn't really 'industry' but I could really use your support.  Monster w21 Faces posted:Hey, so you know those guys and gals at 2K? They loving ROCK!
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Nov 17, 2012 15:56
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FreakyZoid posted:Ah yeah, the recruitment guy at Codemasters who's entire job is just looking at incoming CVs, but who can't be arsed so in a Develop article said you should spend more money to make sure you catch his eye.  To be fair, I think it's a valid point (people just shouldn't spend a huge amount, of course) because the industry already gets a quadrillion applicants on top of fresh newcomers.
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Nov 17, 2012 17:12
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As an artist, it's my goal to elicit that kind of taken-off-guard reaction but do it with my actual work instead of some gimmick.
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Nov 17, 2012 17:26
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mutata posted:As an artist, it's my goal to elicit that kind of taken-off-guard reaction but do it with my actual work instead of some gimmick. Good luck. Mostly everything is gimmick's these days. Edit: New to this thread. I was wondering if I posted my website if you all would have any advice on my resume/other? Game related, still looking for work/in school. Found everything super informative so far. Really good job, and good group you have here.
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Nov 17, 2012 17:43
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Zr388 posted:Good luck. Mostly everything is gimmick's these days. Post it! Just realize that when people tell you to change poo poo you should change it.
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Nov 17, 2012 17:54
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How are people coming up with 3 month dev cycles for mobile / social games? My experience that is far far from the truth. Hell, Facebook social games are year long dev cycles. Granted that's still way shorter than 3/4 year AAA, but is a far cry from 3 months. For the record I'm at Disney. And at least here the dev cycles are way longer than three months, even for the Facebook games being done at Playdom.
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Nov 17, 2012 18:43
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xgalaxy posted:How are people coming up with 3 month dev cycles for mobile / social games? Please come and talk to my bosses, they have selective hearing.
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Nov 17, 2012 18:44
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Yeah I've been at Outplay for nearly two years and we've only just launched our third game. Social games, sorry, high production quality social games, take a lot of loving time.
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Nov 17, 2012 18:56
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xgalaxy posted:How are people coming up with 3 month dev cycles for mobile / social games? I'm also at Disney and the actual dev time on our iOS game was 6-7 months. Still longer than 3-4, but only because we had single engineer working on it.
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Nov 17, 2012 19:09
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Monster w21 Faces posted:Hey folks, I know this isn't really 'industry' but I could really use your support. So thats what we did with the boxes and boxes of swag in the marketing office. And yes, the marketing people at 2K are awesome (even if they do cheat at Ultimate Frisbee) Also, I'm AAA but we have 1 year development cycles. Thats what happens when you have to release a game annually. Still better than before when we the same team made 3 games at once all of them on yearly cycles. The Glumslinger fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Nov 17, 2012 |
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Nov 17, 2012 19:17
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xgalaxy posted:For the record I'm at Disney. And at least here the dev cycles are way longer than three months, even for the Facebook games being done at Playdom. Best I can figure, the 3 month meme is from the early days of the App Store. Back before polish was a huge focus, when stuff like Doodle Jump was viable. ... definitely nice to hear others are seeing this too, though. For a while, I was wondering how it was that it took me so much longer than "average", heh. Shalinor fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Nov 17, 2012 |
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Nov 17, 2012 19:27
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xgalaxy posted:For the record I'm at Disney. And at least here the dev cycles are way longer than three months, even for the Facebook games being done at Playdom. Yah, but from a friend of mine who was at Playdom, all their engineers were contractors and there was a shocked conversation as one discovered variable scoping and the other was amazed such a thing existed...
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Nov 17, 2012 20:46
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Hughlander posted:Yah, but from a friend of mine who was at Playdom, all their engineers were contractors and there was a shocked conversation as one discovered variable scoping and the other was amazed such a thing existed... I can't speak for all the studios. There are actually 3 or 4 different Playdom locations now. And then on top of that there is Disney Mobile. Where I'm at, all development is done in-house. At least on our immediate end. Can't speak for the parts of systems that are done at HQ though that we have no real control over. You are going to run into idiots everywhere. Shouldn't paint an entire company with a color from the experience of a single individual. Your friend must have walked into a lovely situation. And that engineer that was shocked about variable scoping was probably a flash designer turned "programmer" who has been working in ActionScript his entire life where the variable scoping rules are hosed up. xgalaxy fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Nov 17, 2012 |
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Nov 17, 2012 22:21
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Sigma-X posted:So do goons feel it is appropriate to show up to a developer and apply in-person with rapidly warming finger food? Most places have the person working the front desk trained to accept the document, and simply tell you they'll pass it on. If they do their job properly, you won't get near anyone in HR.
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Nov 17, 2012 22:25
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Pixelboy posted:Yes. I'm curious, does the industry have it's own internal memes related to Q&A or management verbs ? (ex: rightsizing, creative empowerment, 'come to jesus talk', etc etc )
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Nov 17, 2012 22:29
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Is there a good, comprehensive article on simulation/motion/sea sickness, and how it relates to games? I need to share it with every single developer I can. I feel like in this era of mouse smoothing, post processing, quadruple buffering, there are more and more games I just can't play. Batman Arkham Asylum and Battlefield 3 are two games I've tried playing most recently that I just can't, I get really sick from them. It's not that I can't play 3rd person games and shooters, Planetside 2, Mechwarrior Online, and Dark Souls don't cause me any problems, so it's clearly poor practices on the developers end for Batman AA and Battlefield 3. I'm also bringing this up here because hopefully I can get more of you guys thinking about it, I hate staring at Batman on my Steam list, unable to play it.
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Nov 17, 2012 22:31
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I applied in-person to a local social games startup (YC grad, unsure which year), with a friend in the position I was applying for to talk me up, who was leaving shortly, and a tour of the studio with good impressions made by all. Follow-up email, hard copy of resume left with my friend to pass along. Not even an acknowledgement in return. Sometimes you do everything you can and it still doesn't happen.
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Nov 17, 2012 22:42
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Chainclaw posted:Is there a good, comprehensive article on simulation/motion/sea sickness, and how it relates to games? I need to share it with every single developer I can. To this day, I still can not complete Half Life 2. I get crushing headaches when playing that game. Whats weird, is I have the same problem with TF2 and Portal 1/2. Something Valve is doing with those games gives me a loving headache.
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Nov 17, 2012 22:42
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Chainclaw posted:Is there a good, comprehensive article on simulation/motion/sea sickness, and how it relates to games? I need to share it with every single developer I can. Try messing with FOV. I had serious problems with playing games on my work monitor before I cranked the FOV.
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Nov 17, 2012 22:46
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Hal_2005 posted:I'm curious, does the industry have it's own internal memes related to Q&A or management verbs ? (ex: rightsizing, creative empowerment, 'come to jesus talk', etc etc ) I'm sure individual studios have some inside humor unique to them, but in my experience we suffer from the same verbal nonsense as every other industry that has management. 
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Nov 17, 2012 22:53
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Chainclaw posted:Is there a good, comprehensive article on simulation/motion/sea sickness, and how it relates to games? I need to share it with every single developer I can. http://www.gameaccessibilityguidelines.com/ We are starting to see colour blindness being catered for and subtitles are available in pretty much every major title now (something they even joked about in Assassin's Creed 2 when 1 didn't have any). I'm partially deaf so I'm utterly ruined when it comes to following plot and not having subs. I feel your pain with the Field Of View thing though, 75 FOV is a bare minimum for me while I'm more comfortable with 95-100ish, dependent on the game. I try and avoid bitching about consoles but low FOVs are a console legacy thing that crept into PC games all unwelcome-like. I was mostly ready to chuck my guts when i played this, FOV 40?!?!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crbMcCJXZCQ GeeCee fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Nov 17, 2012 |
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Nov 17, 2012 23:00
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Aliginge posted:This is a great site: Oh jesus, I watched like 15 seconds of that and I already feel sick
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Nov 17, 2012 23:19
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Aliginge posted:I feel your pain with the Field Of View thing though, 75 FOV is a bare minimum for me while I'm more comfortable with 95-100ish, dependent on the game. I try and avoid bitching about consoles but low FOVs are a console legacy thing that crept into PC games all unwelcome-like. I prefer 85-90 in most first-person games. I played with 100-120 in Quake 2 MP. I argued about FOV with a programmer friend. He pointed out that while a higher FOV in single-player games should be fine, higher FOVs might be akin to cheating in multiplayer games.
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Nov 18, 2012 02:07
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Adraeus posted:I prefer 85-90 in most first-person games. I played with 100-120 in Quake 2 MP. I argued about FOV with a programmer friend. He pointed out that while a higher FOV in single-player games should be fine, higher FOVs might be akin to cheating in multiplayer games. See I don't get that argument, as long as everyone has the ability to change their FOV to anything they want through the GUI rather than through a console command then surely it's not cheating right? Hell, you're even slightly disadvantaged in games like Battlefield with long sight distances for maxing your FOV as it means far off targets appear even further away. There's definitely an argument for stopping people making binds to stop them changing it on the fly though. :L
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Nov 18, 2012 02:27
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xgalaxy posted:To this day, I still can not complete Half Life 2. Same, nothing makes me motion sick and headachey except for Source engine games, and even then, not always. Which sucks because HL2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I'e only managed to play it once.
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Nov 18, 2012 03:49
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