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What Game Companies Want From Graduates 107

Posted by Zonk from the so-you-want-to-be-a-game-designer dept.
simoniker writes "Game education site Game Career Guide has a new feature talking to recruiters from notable game companies like EA, Insomniac Games, and THQ. They discuss the best university courses and qualifications for getting hired to be a game developer. EA's Colleen McCreary comments on the rise of some TV-advertised mass market game schools: 'Our concern with for-profit institutions is that students may not learn the fundamental tools for understanding and solving complex issues... We are most likely to hire someone who has a BFA or MFA from a traditional art college and a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science for our entry level artist and software engineer positions.'"
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What Game Companies Want From Graduates More

What Game Companies Want From Graduates

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  • What Game Companies Want From Graduates

    Your soul? (Or are we talking about companies that aren't EA?)

    • Re:TFA doesn't mention... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @06:48PM (#18369621)
      people who don't know what overtime is.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by flyingsquid ( 813711 )
      Your soul?

      But EA told me that it's standard in the industry for employee contracts to be signed in goat's blood!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by genrader ( 563784 )
      I've never worked for a game company, but I hear that all they do is work overtime. I think that the gaming industry has some enormous problems in the management hierarchy and that is where the problems come (leading to game delays, etc etc).

      • I don't think there are especially a lot of delays in the game industry though? Forget about famous vaporware like Duke Nukem Forever, and you'll notice that most games do ship on time. If it was not possible to ship games reliably for a deadline you would not be seeing all these movie-licensed games that ship at the same time as their respective movie.

        Nor is it really fair to blame management for every problem. A failure of the programming leads to build a scalable technical architecture, for instanc

        • Except that's bad management again (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Moraelin ( 679338 ) on Friday March 16, 2007 @05:12AM (#18372729) Journal

          Nor is it really fair to blame management for every problem. A failure of the programming leads to build a scalable technical architecture, for instance, can also be a root cause of delays/low quality.

          Except that's traceable to management failures again. Lemme see:

          1. First and foremost, the games industry doesn't even try to keep talent. Last I've heard, they have a burnout rate of about 5 years. They basically take the cheapest (which sometimes doesn't mean the most talented) graduates available, overwork and underpay them, then they burn out and move to other jobs, and a fresh new batch is hired.

          I'm sorry, but then don't wonder why the architectures are bad, non-scalable and extremely hard to modify or maintain. Sad to say, and that's from a college graduate, college and coding small cool stuff in your free time teaches all the bad habits and none of the good practices. You come out of college having worked only on _tiny_ projects, individually or in 2-3 person teams, and with requirements that are fixed, clear and never changing.

          The funny thing is: a program of 1000 lines, you can hold completely in your head. You don't even need test cases to tell you what you'll break by changing this or that, but even that's ok, because you won't have to change anything ever in an assignment. Plus, the scope is always simple enough so it either works or it doesn't, and you can manually prove one or the other in 5 minutes. (E.g., if your assignment is a heap sort, wth, you can just type in some numbers and see if they come out sorted. Why would you bother with a unit test for that?) You don't even need a good architecture or clear interfaces, because again, you'll never have to re-discover what it does or ever have to change it. It's always by definition write-only, so it's OK to write write-only code. Even 10,000 lines, if you're reasonably smart, you can do it. And that's already more code than in _any_ college assignement ever.

          Move on to the real life and a 1,000,000 line project (which is actually a small one), and all the cool write-only hacks and the "it'll be manually tested at the end anyway" mentality you learned in college become a liability. You have to actually unlearn all the write-only habits that college taught you, and learn how to actually produce quality code.

          Except in the game industry, by that time you've been overworked and underpaid to death, and the original enthusiams has worn off. You may have started with "woohoo, I'm coding cool stuff for the next great game, I'm so much cooler than those boring guys writing boring VB programs for a living", but in a few years you get to the point of, "fuck this shit, I could be writing one of those boring VB programs for twice the money and a tiny fraction of the unpaid overtime, if any." So you move on. And all that experience is lost to the industry, who then proceeds to hire another fresh enthusiast and watch him do "cool" unmaintainable hacks, and spend half a year introducing two new bugs for every bug fixed.

          I'm sorry, but failure to retain talent and experience, _is_ a management failure. You can't just point the finger at the programmers and say "bah, it's those guys writing bad code", when that's the guys you've hired. And in fact, when you just got rid of those who had just learned how to do a better job. It's like buying an old Yugo and then complaining that it's not a race car. Well, that's the car _you_ bought.

          2. I'm sorry, but if you pressure people into holding unrealistic deadlines and into working 80 hours a week, don't be surprised if they produce worse code. People (A) make more mistakes when they're tired, and (B) tend to do the quickest dirty hack when it's either that or working yet another Sunday. Writing well structured, scalable and maintainable code takes more hours than writing the quickest hack. Except usually noone gives you a deadline where you have the luxury to do the former. So if you want to do a good architecture, those hours will come o

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 7Prime ( 871679 )
            That's why I was so impressed when Miyamoto spoke, a few days ago, about letting his design teams screw around with weird implementations. "Play Time" is always an absolute neccessity for any kind of good designer/developer. I bet, with 80 hour work weeks and rediculous deadlines, that's the first thing that goes out the window.

            Bottom line, games have gotten WAY over-blown. The bar is set so high when it comes to detailed complexity that the big picture is completely neglected. After all, it's the quality o

          • The funny thing is: a program of 1000 lines, you can hold completely in your head. You don't even need test cases to tell you what you'll break by changing this or that, but even that's ok, because you won't have to change anything ever in an assignment. Plus, the scope is always simple enough so it either works or it doesn't, and you can manually prove one or the other in 5 minutes. (E.g., if your assignment is a heap sort, wth, you can just type in some numbers and see if they come out sorted. Why would y

            • It's an interesting point, but it doesn't work. Trust me, you're not the only one who thought of that. (Management still loves flowcharts for example.) _Lots_ of people try, the problem is noone managed to make something that actually works better.

              I've actually had the experience of using, well, basically a flowchart compiler back in the 90's. The problem is that the damn thing didn't scale. Oh, it was superb for making 10 line programs or functions. It was an absolute nightmare for anything, say, 100 lines

              • "And finally here's a funny thought for you: the usual "bah, I could be such a great programmer if someone gave me a paint program instead of making me think" argument tends to always come back to the same example: electronic circuits. The argument goes, "see, if they can design an electronic circuit with all those funny symbols for transistors and diodes, the same can apply to programs." The funny part is that even electronics only uses those for really small circuits. If you think that, say, your CPU was

                • Well, noone denies that better tools would increase productivity. That much is obvious. And, yes, as I was saying before, the interest exists, so I'm not surprised that IBM would be interested. Everyone else is.

                  The only question is what would be a better tool. So far noone managed to come up with something visual that actually works better. So far all those visual tools worked worse.

                  So far the tools that _do_ work are more along the lines of doing the clerical work for you. E.g., that you can CTRL-click in
                  • "What's _really_ missing is the _big_ picture, not cutesy representations of what the current function does. The problem isn't telling that a "for" is a loop, and frankly anyone who needs cutesy animations to realize it's a loop can go back to MacDonalds. What's missing is all that other stuff that this loop triggers, some of it burried under 20 levels of calls within calls."

                    Lol I just used that as a simple example, what I'm thinking about goes far beyond that one example. You're taking that example as the

  • So don't hire them. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @06:43PM (#18369567)
    'Our concern with for-profit institutions is that students may not learn the fundamental the tools for understanding and solving complex issues,

    Then don't hire people from vocational schools. Hire those who have excelled through self-learning and those who took the education seriously at an actual university. People who just jump into a cheap vocational school do so because they either don't have the patience or qualifications to attend a university or the self-determination and drive to become self-educated. They're like all the people who jumped into IT a decade ago and ruined the market and the reputation, because it went from being a place for people who enjoyed technology and were thrilled to make a living at it to people who jumped into it because they needed to feed their five kids and they heard it paid more than teaching or digging ditches.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by greyhill ( 992638 )
      I got into programming in 3rd grade because I wanted to make games. I've taken tons of computer science courses through high school and college, looked into programming books, the works. But none of that has been as educational or fun as spending a few hours a night trying to figure out how to work OpenGl works, reading other people's code and writing my own stuff. I haven't read TFA, and I'm not looking to go into the industry, but I have the feeling that the good game programmers do their jobs because

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Seumas ( 6865 )
        Right. And my point is that people who fall for these vocational schools are the worst of both worlds. If they were serious about education and career, they'd be able to attend a university to acquire the desired related degree. Or they might be capable of entering the field on their own steam (playing simon-says and going in debt six figures isn't the only way to pursue a career in a professional field).

        But the vocational schools cater to those who either don't qualify to attend or are to lazy to commit to

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mikael ( 484 )
        That was the spirit of the early game developers - "we're not in it for the money, but for the love of programming and pushing hardware to the limit. Bonuses are, well, a nice bonus - if you want quick money, go and work as a manager in the city" (city = Financial city of London).

        That's something a good many managers/supervisors/financial investors don't understand, and end up collapsing their companies like a pack of cards when they "promote" away from their area of interest.
        • That's all well and good for early game developers, but these days games a multi million dollar affairs. If you're running a studio you usually don't want a load of dedicated, pizza eating, enthusiastic hackers who will spend weeks getting it just right if needs be, you want people who can write code to spec on a tight deadline, and know how to make compromises.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mikael ( 484 )
            In other words, the studios want someone who has done everything at least once before.
    • Except that's not true for all schools or for all people. Just saying you won't hire someone from a particular institution based on nothing but that institution is naive and irresponsible. Some of the best game developers do not have the traditional secondary or graduate education. You simply ignoring them because of prejudice means it's possible (and indeed probable) that you lose someone who could have been a real asset for your company. Hire someone based on their portfolio, their resume, their techn
      • Yes, yes, yes, but...

        This line strikes me as sour grapes, the way I hear it so often. Someone with that degree may have all the abilities and skills of the person without it, and the proven ability to do the things you have to do to get a degree.

        A lot of self-taught programmers have a bad habit of learning things that are only interesting to them. Sometimes, you have to work on things that are neither exciting to you nor easy to do. If you get a degree in computer science, you've probably studied things tha
    • "They're like all the people who jumped into IT a decade ago and ruined the market and the reputation, because it went from being a place for people who enjoyed technology and were thrilled to make a living at it to people who jumped into it because they needed to feed their five kids and they heard it paid more than teaching or digging ditches."

      A decade ago there were a lot of dumb business "ideas" that got funded by a lot of dumb investors. These businesses eventually failed as was inevitable. It had noth

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by xantho ( 14741 )
        Well, he said IT, not programming. I don't know if all the stupid bubble companies had good programmers or not, but I do know that it's hard as hell to find a good IT guy who can handle the hell out of your office environment. Especially a development house that needs a prety diverse set of systems and tools to be quickly installed and configured.

        My company, for example, ties together ASP.NET, SQL Server, CRM, Sharepoint Portal Server and Windows Sharepoint Services, Office on the server (don't ask), and a

    • "Our concern with for-profit institutions is that students may not learn the fundamental the tools for understanding and solving complex issues,"

      Gee, I hope they never have to write a parser ...

    • I don't know if you know about Full Sail, but it would probably be considered a vocational school, as it is hands on and focus on one specific field. I went to Full Sail for Game Design and Development. I can guarantee you that the education I received there is well worth it, and I have no doubt about other schools such as Digipen or Guild Hall.

      Sure enough, you are correct that there are plenty of people that get into it without knowing a thing about game development. But just as many go there knowing what

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Archades54 ( 925582 )
      but then you leave out the demographic that cannot afford University but can afford vocational diploma's. in australia at least uni would cost you 20-50 grand, diploma's cost a few thousand. if you're from a disadvantaged background, you will miss out with your elitist attitude, even in uni degree's you will have people doing it simply for the $$$, and you can get quite a few people in the vocational diploma's that have just as much skill, drive and determination to become great artists, programmers etc.
      A $
      • thank you for saying it... seriously! I went to a technical school for financial reasons, four years later I am now in a position to say that the company really can't do without me. I didn't go to a "gaming" school, I went to a school that taught development, OOP, OOA, SA in two years. Some of the people that came out of there were shit, I agree. I was one of the people who came out bitching about the people that just floated through... it is still fucking me over, everone asks for a degree when I cou
        • I went to a school that taught development, OOP, OOA, SA in two years.

          Development, OOP, OOA, and SA can't all be learned in just two years. Not thoroughly, at least.

          it is still fucking me over, everone asks for a degree when I could run circles around a person with a degree.

          Or maybe it's your smug attitude that's keeping you out of all the prime jobs.

          Humble up and learn to accept that there are people who know more than you. Maybe in time you will come to know what they know.
      • but then you leave out the demographic that cannot afford University but can afford vocational diploma's. in australia at least uni would cost you 20-50 grand, diploma's cost a few thousand. if you're from a disadvantaged background, you will miss out with your elitist attitude, even in uni degree's you will have people doing it simply for the $$$, and you can get quite a few people in the vocational diploma's that have just as much skill, drive and determination to become great artists, programmers etc.

        Not

        • I guess you couldn't afford any basic English classes either. Since you seem to be in favor of self-learning, try learning about plurals. Even here in America, where the public schools are atrocious, we learn the difference between possessive and plural back in early grade school.


          HEY!

          I resemble those remark's!

        • congratulations for inflating your ego, but I really could care about spelling/plurals/etc.

          Basically all i wanted to do was add some input into the discussion, if you really feel the need to attack me on my english skills then you really need to use that intelligence for something more constructive to the discussion. Your whole attitude is quite poor, more so then my English skills.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by C0R1D4N ( 970153 )
        HA! The vast majority of the gaming schools are more expensive than state universities by a long shot. In 2003 I started going to the University of Advancing Technology (a gaming college in Tempe, AZ) and the tuition was ~110/credit hour. In mid-2004 I had to leave because tuition made its way up to over 300/credit hour. All because they wanted to build unnecessary dorms (there are cheap apartment complexes across the freakin street). A BS in Computer Science or BFA is ten times more valuable than a gamin
    • Ah, but hiring people with academic or professional qualifications would require the gaming companies to pay competitive salaries and not the slave wages they pay to fresh graduates.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by entmike ( 469980 )
      SOMEbody's bitter!
    • The people that RUINED the IT market were those expensive ivy schooled college folk who sold out the less costly vocational school used by true plain AMERICANS.

      Your attempt at class warfare and discrimination is really sad. You are truly jealous and afraid of competition.

  • Useless (Score:5, Funny)

    by locokamil ( 850008 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @06:45PM (#18369593) Homepage
    I want my time and bandwidth back. The article is basically four pages of corporate recruiter speak that makes me want to hit someone in the head with blunt implement.

    "Bring your A game" indeed. Why don't I synergistically ping my cheese with your bandwidth while I'm at it?
  • I went to a well known liberal arts college and received a masters in Computer Science. I ended up going to work for a consulting firm instead of taking the engineer path. Knowing what I know now, i would have definitely applied for a games company or similar. Two of the people from my graduating class (a total of 10 computer scientists) went to work for EA (what exactly they do their, i have no idea). In any case, i've been noticing that those with more liberal computer backgrounds tend to get picked up

    • Knowing what I know now, i would have definitely applied for a games company or similar. Two of the people from my graduating class (a total of 10 computer scientists) went to work for EA (what exactly they do their, i have no idea). In any case, i've been noticing that those with more liberal computer backgrounds tend to get picked up sooner and by more interesting companies.

      No offense, but I think you should have concentrated a bit more on liberal arts before college entirely -- say, high-school English

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by badboy_tw2002 ( 524611 )
        Yeah, its a real shame you can't express your snide, asshole comment in color!

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Atario ( 673917 )

          Yeah, its a real shame you can't express your snide, asshole comment in color!
          You would have preferred style manual and dictionary quotes? Sorry, next time I'll try to be more boring, just for you.
    • I didn't get the feeling that they are talking about the difference between a BA in CS or a BS in CS. I felt that they were saying that they would be more interested in people who were non-vocationally taught than those who were.

      For example, I see commercials for some vocational school (like ITT, or it might actually be ITT) for their video game education track. Now this might seem like it's more focused and more desired in the field but from what the employers are saying is that these applicants are l
      • For example, I see commercials for some vocational school (like ITT, or it might actually be ITT) for their video game education track.
        I would be both amazed and scared if the "I can't believe we get paid to do this!" guys were actually hired by a studio. Which is worse: the fact that they portray the industry in such a manner, or that so many fall for it?

  • PhDs want junior programming roles? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by noz ( 253073 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @06:51PM (#18369659)
    I slave full time but still study for a BSc part time and, as I've been at the school for longer than your average undergraduate, know quite a few PhDs, Professors, and the like.

    They all have such a drive for their research. All they want to do is conquer their current topic of research and make scientific progress. I cannot imagine any of them wanting a job like this (EA's treatment of staff, namely 80 hour weeks with no overtime pay, aside).

    • I slave full time but still study for a BSc part time and, as I've been at the school for longer than your average undergraduate, know quite a few PhDs, Professors, and the like.

      Sounds like you are just what the recruiters want. Cheap slave labour that doesn't know better.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by noz ( 253073 )

        Sounds like you are just what the recruiters want. Cheap slave labour that doesn't know better.
        Hehe. Dude I said I know talented people, not that I am one. ;-)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Metasquares ( 555685 )

      There is actually some fascinating research that can be done in game design (graphics, computer music, discrete math, HCI, modeling, etc.)

      Whether these companies will allow employees to pursue that research is another question entirely.

      I cannot imagine any of them wanting a job like this (EA's treatment of staff, namely 80 hour weeks with no overtime pay, aside).

      Like grad. school? :)

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        I agree on the fascinating subjects of research from games, however No game development house will allow any kind of research. They already have to spend 8 day weeks in order to produce games, they do not have time for research.

        As for the Computer Games as a tool for research, I know about AI (it is my field of research for my PhD). Take a look at ORTS [ualberta.ca], the Excalibur project [ai-center.com] and SOAR [umich.edu]. All of them are research projects from Universities using computer games (virtual environments, etc) to research some Art
  • is for you to use your new salary to buy lots of games. Duh!
  • The problem is young kids who grow up gamers and decide they want to "make games" have no clue what it means to actually make a game.

    I attended a private school with a game program and the kids enrolled were the most misguided group I have ever seen. Almost all wanted to "make games" as in, design a game based off their awesome idea. Well sorry to tell you, that is not going to happen outside of college for 99.9% of people. The other 0.01% end up adapting their idea to a mod, a flash game, or maybe even

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      yes, but in todays enviroment there is no reason why they can't start there own company and work on there own game.
      In fact, there is a 100% chance that they can.

      There is a 99.9% chance they won't get paid while developing it. That is a different issue.
      Each person in that class should have encouraged to start there own business.

      Almost noone knows the 'ugly details' of any industry they want to go in when they enter college.

      The best way to get a job in the gaming industry is through social networking.

      "You can

      • Re:The Problem Is With The Students (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moore.dustin ( 942289 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @07:44PM (#18370097) Homepage

        There is a 99.9% chance they won't get paid while developing it. That is a different issue.
        Each person in that class should have encouraged to start there own business.

        They should be in business school if they want to do that now shouldn't they be?

        Almost noone knows the 'ugly details' of any industry they want to go in when they enter college.

        I never said ugly details, I said they dont have an understanding on what it takes to make a game. An ugly detail would be something like crunch time or something, not and understanding of the industry you want to work in.

        The best way to get a job in the gaming industry is through social networking.

        True

        "You cannot do that unless you work for the company first and I guarantee they are not looking for a 22 year old kid to contribute to their game design outside of maybe beta feedback."
        or Harvard business majors.
        Want to make key decsions? be a business major.

        However,, I like the start your own business approach myself. Just wish someone had taught me that 25 years ago.
        What the... they should be business majors then? TFA is about game design/related degrees. You are so scattered with your reply... Game design students should start their own business blah blah

        You should start with a point and reinforce with details to get the point across. Ranting or whatever this was certainly did not cut it. I know it comes across negative, it probably is, but it is more of a tip for future discussions.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by jlarocco ( 851450 )

          What the... they should be business majors then? TFA is about game design/related degrees. You are so scattered with your reply... Game design students should start their own business blah blah

          What he said makes sense to me. If you want to make a specific game, start a company. Big games are expensive and no established company is going to let a person fresh out of school do anything important like design their next game. Therefore, if you have a very specific game in mind, your best bet on getting it

          • I see, that registers much better, thanks.

            Though that is asking to much from anyone who wants to make a game and has to go that route. As if making a game is not hard enough, you need to start and manage a business in order to do so? Ouch! :)

            So, let me ask you, what would you advise a high school senior has a great game idea and wants to make it. Should they go to school for game design or for business in order to see that dream realized?
            • Why not go to school for business and work on the game while getting a minor or second major in Computer Science? If it's that big of a motivator for you, the sky's the limit.

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by NMercy ( 1076683 )
                I would also focus more on entrepreneurship as they will tell you how to actually set up a business, where to get funding, etc...

                If you have an idea for a game right now then you should look into making the game design document and once that is complete putting up fliers around school for artists/musicians/computer programmers and hold interviews (of course if you have friends that can do these to your standards more power to you)

                Since they're still in school they'll be facing the same problems as you with

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Warbringer87 ( 969664 )
      I've seen this problem myself, you get the for-profit colleges promising the world and more to a few kids who don't know the first thing when it comes to developing games. I'm attending one myself, and in our very first quarter we had tons of people, who hadn't the slightest clue. Myself and another classmates came from a modding background, so we had a good idea of what we were getting into. We have lost beyond 50% of our initial classmates as the quarters roll by (now about halfway). The students who came

    • ...you need to put in your time and prove your worth with a company before you start making decisions about the next game said company puts out. You cannot do that unless you work for the company first and I guarantee they are not looking for a 22 year old kid to contribute to their game design outside of maybe beta feedback.

      This pretty much goes for any software company worth its salt. Starting in beta or Q/A testing is a good way to go, however. First it teaches you to express exactly what's wrong with

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by e2d2 ( 115622 )
      This is probably true of all college students studying computer science or similiar. They lack the understanding of the industry and what will be expected of them. Talent is great, but it's worthless if it can't be managed in a team environment. Sure you can wear shorts and black shirts, staggering in at 10:30, BUT ONLY if you get your shit done on time and done right. Programming is not about 14 hour grind sessions. Schedule management, resource management, and communication are imo the three most importan
    • "So basically, non of these kid enter college with a solid idea or plan on how to reach their end goal of designing games. Few understand basic business practices and development processes and it shows."

      So, let me get this straight.

      A bunch of geeks go to school to learn how to make games.

      You criticize them for not knowing how to make games.

      Well, duh! Isn't that exactly why they went to school in the first place?

  • They want experience on video games (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Thursday March 15, 2007 @07:13PM (#18369835) Journal
    If you're not already in the industry, you don't get into the industry.
    • It's too bad really. Early in my career I answered an Ad for an Atari 2600 video game programmer and got the job rather easily. Video games were so new that almost nobody had any experience writing one, so we didn't have to deal with the "chicken or the egg" effect.

      Of course, nothing is perfect. 95% of everyone working on video games lost their jobs in the first crash.
    • It is a myth that you have to "break into the industry". If you have half a clue of what you are doing they will find you.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mypalmike ( 454265 )
      If you're not already in the industry, you don't get into the industry.

      1. This is not true for artists. If you can draw really well, you can usually get a job. You have to be top 5%, but entry level generally requires no specific game-artist background.
      2. For programmers, your first step into the industry is often a game you've written in your spare time. Unlike many other jobs where there's a chicken/egg problem, in videogames, you can make your own egg.
      3. For the designer/producer route, you general

  • They want free talent. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15, 2007 @07:36PM (#18370037)
    The wants of the major studios are pretty simple.

    They want programmers who already know whichever technology they happen to be using on the current project. Kids who are willing to work 80 hours a week and don't cost them any real training time. By the time technology changes the title will have shipped, the coders will be burnt out, and they can be replaced with fresh grads so no raises are required.

    They want masters or phd students in computer science willing to work in entry level positions. Someone to bring them new technology and ideas without spending time on R&D or even staying current with academic research or other industries.

    They want to very best artists they can find. Provided these artists already know how to create content in their format of choice, have a portfolio that matches the style of the game, and are willing to work just as long as the programmers.

    What they do not want, and usually can not afford, is to actually train, research, or develop innovation in house.

  • What a load of bullshit. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an ex-EA employee, let me lay my cards down.

    1) Graduates are a cheap and renewable source of grunt workers. Peons, if you will (for the Horde!). Looking at that list of requirements, I'm shocked. All they will use a new graduate for, in general, is the usual and mundane runner work. As long as you can string a few lines of code together, and step through someone else's code to debug it, you can do the job.

    2) I've watched this cycle happen again and again. New graduate joins, is elated to have a job at (Z

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zymano ( 581466 )
      Great comments.

      Starting your own company might not be a bad idea. It doesn't seem to difficult to get your games on download.com or other numberous PC gaming sites. D&D type games were really fun to download from those sites. Look at how some of them grew.
  • At least know what the farking dot product is and what it does.

    • Thank you. The company I work for has been trying to hire a new programmer for months and we've yet to find a single person who can do even basic 3D math.

    • Amen, brother.

      It's the simplest linear algebra there is, and yet I've still encountered numerous game programming interviewees who couldn't answer the most rudimentary dot product question.

      If you really WANT to program games, you need to LEARN these things. It's not that hard, and if you think it is, you belong in a different career.
  • Suckers willing to give all their free time for slave wages who can be discarded the moment they are burnt out.

    • I work for a large game development studio. The slave labor approach only works for low innovation products. There are definitely studios that make those sorts of games, but even with aggressive overtime an inexperienced workforce will never return a superior value:cost ratio to warrant such an approach. We just finished managing a team of over a 100 people. We were trying to innovate, but such a large team made us too slow. Every new junior person we added after about 80 people probably lowered the overall

  • They want graduates who don't know what talents they actually have to get them to work cheap and sign away any right to thier creative ideas theve've amassed during thier fomative years. Same with MS and all the other companies.

  • Left something out. (Score:4, Informative)

    by joystickgenie ( 913297 ) <joleske@joystickgenie.com> on Thursday March 15, 2007 @11:05PM (#18371279) Homepage
    Hold on a second the snippet above left out a very important line. Sure it quoted:

    "We are most likely to hire someone who has a BFA or MFA from a traditional art college and a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science for our entry level artist and software engineer positions."

    But not the line right after:

    On the other hand, Baker comments that although "the idea of 'Game Schools' is still a relatively new aspect to the industry" which leaves the answer to whether they provide enough relevant experience a little "unclear" she feels that "schools like Guildhall [at SMU] and Full Sail have merit."

    Honestly with the Bias that many traditional school graduates have against these schools and the type of discussion that this type of article starts, this is a very important thing to leave out. The snippet that was pulled out implies a completely different perception of these schools by the industry then the article describes.
  • I can definitively say that game companies (and lots of other companies for that matter) want graduates that are 1) Experienced, 2) Youthful and energetic, 3) Hard working, 4) willing to work for little pay 5) In touch with their audience (see also 2, although under 17 would be ideal) 6) also agree that This Is The Way It's Supposed To Be, 7) Single, and 8) willing to work in excess of 168 hours a week.
  • So EA want PhD for entry level software engineer position? Do they want Grigory Perelman as a janitor too? PhD generally are less interested in games than kids out of collage, and if they are they tend to join/organize independent studios. And with Bubble 2.0 on the rise they could find better salaries and working condition than EA suggest too.
  • If you are in a traditional liberal arts CS degree program at some school, you are not going to learn what it takes to make games, you are going to learn what it takes to be a utility programer. The fact is that traditional CS programs dont teahc you the math, languages, or algorithms that matter for game development. I know this because I went and got a minor in CS at a liberal arts school and am now getting another BS in Game programming from the singls best school for it in the country. We get linear a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DingerX ( 847589 )
      Hey, the article only mentioned Full Sail and Guildhall. It didn't say nothin' about DigiPen.

      While you can say, "DigiPen's been around for twenty years", or something like that, the same doesn't hold true for most games programs out there. For many schools around the country, having a "games program" is seen as a recruiting tool, and a way to bolster flagging CS enrollment ('cos no department likes to lose students). The same youthful lack of experience that makes 18-year-olds volunteer for the infantry dr

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Malkin ( 133793 )
      I agree. A traditional Bachelor's in CS will not give you a lot of what you need. I have a traditional Bachelor's in Computer Science, and I had to self-teach a ton of stuff, before entering the industry. Things you can find at a regular University program that could be of use, depending on your focus: Linear algebra, psychology, physics, C++, algorithms, spatial data structures, databases, network programming, and software engineering. Things a conventional BS will probably need to learn on her own: 3D
    • I'm a programmer at a game development company and I went through a CS major in a liberal arts school. Maybe I'm misreading it, but your comment seems to imply that a person with a liberal arts BS in CS would be completely unprepared for a career in the game industry, while a person who had successfully graduated from Digipen or Full Sail would be more prepared. Of course, things are not so clear-cut in practice.

      The main things game companies want, as I see it, are people who are good problem solvers and
  • I have a BS in Software Engineering and am currently in my third year of my PhD. I would like to work in a game development company!

    What? you do not sponsor international students?

    bummer... I guess you are similar to all the other game devel companies I have applied. Next luck next time.
  • I work for a AAA game studio and we hire "vocational" game school students all the time. You have to remember that this industry is portfolio-based- especially for designers. They're looking for computer science students who are focused on gaming, particularly. If they think you're going to bounce off to Google, you won't get in.

    Most people here have Liberal Arts degrees. We handle our own recruitment, no thank you, THQ Recruiter Lady. :p
  • Sally Struthers: ...and with this correspondence school, you, too, can become a key punch operator...

    Correpsondence School Manager: No, key punches haven't been used since the mid '70's. Computers are all keyboards and online storage since then.

    Sally: No key punch operator? Ok. Well, ummm. ...And with this correspondence school, you, too, can do VCR repair...

    Manager: Nope, DVD players now.

    Sally: ...DVD repair...

    Manager: Nobody repairs DVD players, they're like $20 now.

    Sally: ...Travel Reservationist!

  • What game companies want (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ceswiedler ( 165311 ) * <chris@swiedler.org> on Friday March 16, 2007 @06:38PM (#18381941)
    I'm a lead server developer at a MMOG company in the Bay Area. What do we want? We want talented programmers. If you can hack it, then education, experience, resume, all that crap is immaterial. The most important stuff you have to teach yourself. Learn what's out there, play with it, use it, fix it, rewrite it. If you know it, the job is yours. And by job, I mean that literally, since we're actively hiring. I'm not very hard to find.

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