Tips for Aspiring Devs

This week's question is from Stephanie Reid-Simons (who, in full disclosure, used to be my boss when I worked in news media).

Stephanie asks: "What advice do you have for a college student or recent grad who is interested in this as a career?"

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The game industry right now is strangely a complete trash fire while also being as porous to entry as its ever been.

And that’s the problem. With the COVID money boom over, the industry has shrunk in terms of studio-based hiring so much and so fast that there’s suddenly a glut of talent on the market. Game openings get thousands of applications. HR departments are overwhelmed. Veterans are having a hard time landing jobs despite solid resumes, and those devs hired will have to relocate.

To paraphrase Three 6 Mafia, “It’s hard out here for a dev.”

Thousands of game devs have been let go as I write this, but there a number of college courses and internships sprouting up. Game Jams are ubiquitous and you can fool around the same engines big studios use for cheap. Tutorials to learn the tools are everywhere, and if you know where to look, you can pick up these educational modules for a song. Anyone can be a game developer and the proliferation of self-publishing options (from itch to Steam) means you can make a game and release to it the world. In a way, the industry has reverted to its roots of garage or bedroom developers, making games with a low budget so they can recoup dev costs with modest sales.

So, here’s what I would recommend to get into the hypercompetitive game industry.

Step 1) Make your own stuff.

Step 2) See Step 1.

Nothing says you know some aspect of game design more than building a level, writing a branching narrative game in Twine, creating soundscapes or soundtracks, or creating weird alien creatures or photorealistic people in art tools.

Whatever your craft is, start making things. The first few will suck beyond reckoning. Don’t show these to people. Maybe your mom. She’ll be proud of you.

In time, as you get familiar your tools of the trade, you’ll get smarter, more ambitious, and you’ll make bigger and better things. The excellent mobile game Liifeline was make in Twine. The stellar interactive fiction game 80 Days was make in Inkle. You can get both tools for free. Check them out and get inspired.

Step 3) In your spare time, read up on the theory behind your discipline. There’s also a ton of free GDC talks on YouTube where experts talk about their craft. Learn from them. Also, hit up your local library to get any related books.

Step 4) Join Discords or other online venues where fellow dev mutants like you (and me) hang out and exchange tips and tricks all the time. This is also a good place to get feedback, too. It’s also a place to vent, play virtual TTRPGs, and share pet pictures. And it's a great spot to hear about what people are playing.

Step 5) Once you get some good stuff made, then make a portfolio site and post it up there, which leads to…

Step 6) You have to start marketing yourself. Just don’t be sleazy about it. Learn how to be your own champion with class and charming bravado. When in doubt ask yourself, What Would Han Solo Do? Probably be charming about whatever he’s doing. Do that. Talk to people in the industry. Follow them on LinkedIn. Approach them with that Han Solo charm and ask them for advice about how to get better/what does their studio look for in their discipline of choice.

Step 6.5) Look into internships. Your allies in the Discord might know something, but you will have to put in the investigating.

Step 6.75) If you haven’t already, get your resume together. Your Discords are a great place to ask for advice on this.

Step 7) Survive. There’s no guarantee you are going to get into the industry. You have to be ready for this possibility. A lot of entry-level jobs, where you can enter with no experience, are evaporating. They might exist here or there, but that watering hole is draining. You might be great stuff in your portfolio, answer all the interview questions perfectly, and be the top candidate and still not get the job. To quote one of the great sages of our time, “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.”

If you read nothing else here, please read and digest this: make things that interest you, that makes your brain fizz with curiosity. Do not chase trends or twist yourself to be what a studio wants at the moment. Do not think you need to be at a AAA studio to feel legitimate. Game dev is a fickle business. Do your best. Don’t be cruel or cowardly. Start (but also finish) your great art today

Step 7.5) Protect yourself against AI. This is mostly for artists, but I expect soon other dev disciplines will have tools prevent AI from scraping video, code, audio, and even text.

Step 8) Remain human. It’s a tough industry right now, but it’s also a small one with a long memory. If you act the jerk now, it will come back to bite you.

Good luck.