My goal of game design is to be able to enter a game studio, participate in the game development process in this team, and if the time is ripe, I hope to set up my own game studio with independent style, But I’m still confused about where to start. The speeches are very helpful for finding a job studio, the following is a summary of each speech, I will use a dividing line between the summaries of each speech.
The first speech I want to analyze comes from Rhys Shepherd, a Tech artist of Epic Games. This PPT contains his personal career development and the definition of Tech art, as well as the enumeration and detailed analysis of different Tech Artists.
The knowledge of these details has helped me in two ways. On the one hand, he provided me with a low-threshold entry path reference, at the same time, I can see that in the industry, I need to gradually accumulate knowledge and slowly improve my professional level. At the same time, he also brought relevant instructions about the profession of Tech Art, And I did in all previous school projects, And I have always been inclined to art in the projects I have done in my previous school. This class is also the reason why I hope to join the studio as the beginning.
Rhys Shepherd first worked in Global Step after graduation. At this time, he was mainly responsible for game testing. At the same time, learning some basic software, such as Jira, gave me a good starting point: I don’t have to pursue some difficult and professional jobs when I first entered the company, and gradually accumulated experience and expanded my ability after entering some lower-threshold jobs, but it was a better choice. Then he entered a relatively small studio, 22cans, as a junior programmer. At this time, he began to do some challenging work, and accumulated practical experience in the industry and learned the application of industry software, and left his job three months after he joined the company. The next team he joined was Erase All the Kittens, a very small team with only three people, where he participated in more roles and focused more on art, and only here did he start planning his career path and apply for a senior JavaScript Developer, so in fact, it is very important to accumulate more experience before planning his specific direction. And joining a small studio gives you a better chance to try more aspects of your favorite type of work, and finally find out what you are good at and interested in.
Next, he entered a studio with more than 300 people, called Mediatonic, and here he began to be a junior tech artist in a real sense. In such a large studio, he could work between different groups and began to learn more about what artists could do, such as making UI, but here he also experienced the first cancelled game. Only then did he enter epic game, where he still worked as an artist, and began to participate in the production of Life service AAA game, and found what he loved. Here, he finally completed the construction of his core skills, and participated in cross-platform research and development, lighting, optimization and so on, and finally he was able to skillfully use the Unreal Five Engine and participated in the production of many 3A games. He also worked as a tech artist in these two companies. Although I worked as his artist for the first time smoothly, I am still building my own understanding of this specific position, so I understand that work is also learning, so it is normal to make some mistakes or suffer some setbacks. The key is to find your own goals and do everything possible to expand the learning scope and proficiency of related content.
To sum up, this article has helped me to find the starting point about how to enter the game industry and Let me stop worrying too much about my own ability level, because all this can be learned by participating in projects at work.But at the same time, but I should pay attention to the fact that I can’t be the type of dragging others feet in the project during my learning.
The next article I want to analyze comes from Bea. If the last speech told me the general development path in the industry, this content of the speech is helping me to refer to how to find detailed goal after graduation. she used to study in my present school, so the advice she gave me may be the most suitable for me.
She introduced a more detailed job search path. After graduation: her first chose to attend the summer school of the University and involve a game with college kids. Secondly, she inherited the freelance for UI/UX And do the mockups for apps. All these help her hone her ability and accumulate basic materials that can be used to submit resumes to prove her ability.
Finally, she works in a shoe shop to maintain her income and support her above actions, This is also a reference for me, I don’t usually communicate with others much, so I may encounter difficulties in the interview, If I work outside and get in touch with people like this first, it may help me in the face.Be prepared for possible related scenes in the future.
She then entered the junior game designer stage. At this stage, I noticed that she did one thing: Applied for many many junior roles, just like submitting a college resume. And at the same time, half of the reasons why he was finally hired by the company were because of her previous game design test content, the other reason is that, they like her working methods. These two points are probably the tendency of many game companies to recruit new employees, So I can also focus on these two aspects when I do my portfolio: my inherent strength, and my method of doing projects.
In the junior games designer stage, he still started with the helping the project, For example, help create levels and help balance the game, and feedback. Later, when she started to develop into games designer, she began to lead the process of game production started making new games from scratch, Later, when she entered the stage of senior publish designer, she began to need to make more decisions and show more leadership, and she clearly explained the professional scope of game design, and after some people entered from QA divide and switch to other aspects. It is also responsible for pitching ideas and feedback. These are also in line with the career development process I heard in previous speech, And judging from these two speeches, I don’t have to be too anxious now About my professional level, but I have to make sure I learn professional knowledge at work, so that I can take on the increasing responsibilities with my career and decide exactly What i want to develop to.
And she also told us something about what we can prepare in Uni: role working in team，documentation writing，teamwork，coding，Job opportunities and the portfolio.
About the portfolio，She also gave me a clear outline about what we can put in it: I need to mark all the projects I have participated in and the achievements I have made in these three years, If it is a team project, I also need to mark my role positioning and responsible module in the team. You can add some optimization of existing games to the supplementary content. Game ideas that didn’t landing and related works of game jam.
At the same time, this speech also helped me understand some points that a resume should have: First of all, it should be true, and it should be able to link with the keywords of job recruitment, Academic qualifications can be listed as higher education, the type of work needs to include all kinds of experiences, regardless of size, and should clearly indicate which industry tools you can use in the job position you want. And the most important cover letter should be targeted, and the overall number of pages should be simple, controlled within 1~2 pages, posting published game links and portfolio, And you can write down the language you can use fluently.
Above all, I think what I need to improve most is my writing ability and gather of my existing projects together, Some of my previous works were PPT, some were written collections, and some were web pages, so there was some confusion. I need to find a common carrier and integrate them together, I think the website should be a good choice. It can use only one link and contain a lot of information I need to show, no need to worry about being limited by the file size.
This courseware comes from Jamie Blacknell，He chose to start from a generalist junior role, He used to be the only in–house developer on the team and need to take on more work that does not belong to his position, but at the same time, He is still expanding his ability from the work he has done, Now he has become a middleweight, level and gained greater responsibility and trust, At the same time, and began to Focus on deepening on specific scope of work. These aspects are generally similar to previous present. But there is one sentence that impressed me deeply: “Jack of all trades master of none, but oftentimes, better than a master of one. “. Keep eyes open when first enter the business It’s very important this not only allows you to adapt to the work content faster, At the same time, you can be competent for more work, and at the same time, you can dabble in new skills from these wider ranges. So i think it’s necessary to increase my area of the knowledge, I am now expanding skills to 3D modeling software and programming software, I am now learning how to use Blender to animate characters in 3D games and import them into Unity. While broadening my knowledge, I found that I was interested in character design and animation, This may be my desirable development goal now, but I still hope to explore more.
At the same time, he also gave some experience that can be accumulated through university: During college, you can master the whole development process of the game through FMP，And use this as the basis for your future work adaptation. You can accumulate some work experience in the university, whether working independently or in a team, This can help me to establish a habit of starting with the standard until the prototype. And the school is also a good place to get in touch with industry tools in advance, such as Blender and Unity that I am trying to learn to use now. Finally, because in school, everyone may play different roles in each project, This can help me understand the different communication scenes in the process of game production as these characters, and develop the habit of communicating with team members in time.
Another thing that appeals to me in this presentation is that he made a lot of suggestions about communication: First, he told us to communicate is quite important, and the scope needs to cover immediate colleagues, cross-disciplinary teams and management, and there are different communication skills for different types of people.
In the face of direct superiors, such as senior developers or professional artists, it will be better to communicate directly with professional terms. Before that, analyze the problems, think actively, and try to ask simple and accurate questions to get accurate feedback and professional advice.
And if you are communicating with colleagues in other fields, make it clear to them what you want to achieve, At the same time, we should actively understand each other’s workflow to supplement cross-domain knowledge.The smaller the cognitive gap, the higher communication efficiency will be. At the same time, synchronize tasks key information such as time-consuming schedule and pre-demand is also very important.
For the management, that is, the project manager or CEO, use more popular language to explain the technology, Because leaders don’t necessarily understand all the technicalities in your workflow, They are more concerned about the time-consuming and reasons of that, and things like what the task need.
At the same time, he also gave some methods to build the portfolio, and I think they are very practical and can be started immediately:
First, prepare a LinkedIn account, and start making online portfolio, Whether it’s a Website, a Blog or an Ins. But it would be better if multiple platforms could be interrelated. But at the same time, pay attention to focus on the high-quality content in work set, and don’t fill in too much irrelevant content to pile up the quantity of your work, The content should be able to reflect thinking and ability, and adapt to the target position, Like the project I am working on, I should upload my 3d modeling process and role design concept, and when making and programming games, put those on.
Just look at the requirements of the portfolio with some details, and explain what the developer portfolio and 3D artist portfolio need, These two collections need their own professional contents, such as the necessary tools for developers is Github, At the same time, we should reflect our professional level For example, the code should be clear, and you should be able to tell the code logic, be able to directly display the project results through the platform ect. In a word, you need to show the interviewer that you have the ability to make these and really understand what you are doing.
At the same time, among the core soft skills he listed, I found some of mine discomfort parts: The most obvious thing I said was to draw 2D cartoon characters, but I also need more research on how to use them in game making. At the same time, I need to strengthen my communication skills, and try to explain my thoughts to others better. At the same time, it is also need to start publishing the development progress of works on LinkedIn and trying to expand contacts.
The last one is the most detailed guide to career preparation in creative industries. He has been building a full-scale application material for me almost from beginning.
The first is the contact materials. It needs to contain key contact information, such as name, phone number, email address and personal website, as a convenient carrier of personal contact information, Leaflets, postcards and so on can also be used to increase its flexibility.
Followed by CV, it is best to maintain 50% project experience and 50% personal characteristics, just like Bea’s presentation, Companies generally need to look at your ability and the characteristics of personal work at the same time when looking for employ, In this regard, I think I need to write both in more detail. And one more thing I think I need to pay attention to, when making this, try to avoid using fuzzy words or write irrelevant content.
The next item is a covering letter. It is different from CV and portfolio that focus on past experiences. This part is mainly to express your career demands and future plans to the company. At the same time, explain your own advantages, such as a wide range of knowledge content. Then there is the same point: the recipient should be precise and personalized, and formal and appropriate. The format should also be consistent.
Finally, it is the core: portfolio. It’s even more critical than his grades.
It is best to have 5 to 8 high-quality projects, And the two projects at the beginning and the end need to be the best and the most impactful, Too many works will appear jumbled, and the key points are not prominent, so I need to pay attention to that.
Secondly, it should include the key points of research and development, and explain the design ideas. If necessary, you can make a short film to explain, and be well annotated, Ensure that the logic of the whole portfolio is clear, And take into account the reader’s feelings, do a good job of navigation, and it is best to reach the desired target page within three clicks.
At the same time, we should make a PDF version that can be sent by mail, and embed effective links between video animation and online content, just in case different companies have different requirements.
These are the lectures that helped me, and what ideas they brought me, and there are many similarities among them, such as the course of work development, enterprises generally tend to recruit people through strength and personal habits. But there is another key point that I remember very well “Compared with wrong people with the right skills, enterprises are more inclined to choose right people with the wrong skills”. I have tried some aspects of game design, so in the remaining time of the college, it is my urgent task to exercise my different software use and time schedule.