299: Destined for Middle Earth

[Clankenbeard]

This is good to hear. Turbine has a decent policy for picking up talent when they see it. They picked up Merlask (now Dev Tolero) who was D&D Online player and well-known role player in the community. They picked up Mockduck (now Cordovan) who hosted 200ish very positive DDo Podcasts about the game. So, hard work and devotion to their games is a real selling point for Turbine. I guess it is easier to say "Yes, that person will be a good employee." if you get a chance to watch them and their work for a long period of time whilst they are milling about in your gaming world. Go Turbine!

Both of these players sucked into "the Turbine" are really great folks that I have had the pleasure of getting to interact with on occassion.

Tolero (Senior Community Specialist) http://my.ddo.com/tolero/
Cordovan (Turbine Community Team) http://my.ddo.com/cordovan/

 

[maantren]

The apparent 'get a game design/art/CS degree then start applying for jobs' path is an illusion. The numbers alone will crush you unless you have very good contacts or are incredibly lucky. From what I've seen the most useful paths to game industry employment in a meaningful role are:

* Showing you can make awesome things and build an audience round them (games, comics, mods, whatever: listen to Gabe Newell talk about this)
* Being demonstrably, psychotically, one-in-a-million good at engine programming
* Organizing a community and/or business around something to do with games

All of the above will be made easier if you show that you had the discipline to finish a 4 year degree, and that you have a professional work ethic that includes being able to deal with many different types of personality + deliver things to deadline. But then, if you can do all that, as others have said you may not really want to be working for an industry that treats its employees so badly...

Cheers

Colin

 

[aldowyn]

One thing that articles like this never mention is that you'll be incredibly lucky to find a job like this. The MMO market, when LOTRO was coming out, still wasn't really full of stuff, and it fills a definite niche there, so the relatively new Turbine needed people for jobs that there really weren't that many people with experience for. (decent quest text? In an MMO?)

It'd be a heck of a lot harder to get into the normal AAA game designing market. It's hard for a new developer to get ahead, and many of the old ones don't hire new people all the time. I imagine the best chance would be to get a job with one of the newer companies, or, even better, an expanding company, do your best work, and then use that to get a job that you like even more.

Another aspect is the education. Even 5 years ago, there weren't all that many game design schools, but it's starting to become more common, and developers are looking for people with that kind of education. Not to say that someone without that can't get in, but I imagine it would be a lot easier!

I've thought about this a fair bit - I'm seriously trying to get into the industry.

 

[duchaked]

forgot I had read this 2 years ago lol...very inspiring re-reading this with some new perspective

it's good to have an expansive background of experience. never know what you'll need!