Introduction
The road to getting a job in the gaming industry can seem very daunting, with it being hard to plan your journey into the industry. Over the past semester, I’ve been fortunate enough to have several talks delivered by people working in all areas of the industry. This essay will unpack everything I’ve learnt from these talks and how I will use this new knowledge moving forward. I will also discuss details of the industry I’ve learnt from useful resources such as GDC talks and leading game designers in the industry. The intention of this essay is to present a reflection of these talks and show my overall plan to secure a job in the fast-paced and ever-growing gaming industry.
Goals for the rest of the Academic year and the 5 years following
Mark Rands, a representative from Barclays Eagle Labs, delivered a talk in which he stated the most valuable thing a student can do is create a 5-year plan. This plan could show how you could develop your own start up business or the route you want to take to get your dream career, either way Rands stresses, it’s the best thing to help you achieve the goals you have. This ideology is how I believe I can best show the main goals I have over the coming years and will demonstrate within this essay.
The first goal I have set out in my 5-year plan is to create a strong portfolio, displaying the best of my creative skills. My main focus in my uni work and personal projects, is 3D modelling and sculpting, and I hope to use these skills when I enter the gaming industry. The main goal at the end of my 5-year plan is to be a successful Character Artist at a good, reputable gaming studio, but in order to achieve this, I first need to have a portfolio that outlines the strengths and creativity in my artwork.
Currently my portfolio consists of the one present on my Artstation profile (an image of this can be seen below). The portfolio is extremely light now, though by the end of the academic year I hope to have the portfolio fleshed out to a total of 5 pieces. In addition to this I also plan to have an alternative version of my portfolio available on my own personal website that I plan to create. Lucy Kyriakidou, an Assistant Director in the game industry, stated in her talk that “Artstation or website’s are the best ways to create a portfolio”. This is a similar piece of advice I’ve heard from multiple Game Developers Conference (GDC) talks, so I feel confident with these being the main ways to display my portfolio to potential recruiters.
Along with the pieces I plan to make in my own time for the portfolio, I will also have the several pieces made from completing work on the final major project of this course. Adding to my portfolio several character pieces and a playable game that displays these characters.
Networking is one of the most essential parts of getting into the games industry and can decide who might consider employing you.
My plan is to network at gaming events this year, including WASD on the 7th to the 9th of April, Develop on the 2nd to the 4th of November and EGX on the 22nd and the 25th. Lucy Kyriakidou and Barclays Eagle Labs both made clear notes of the importance of networking which I will be able to do at these events. Along with networking, many job opportunities will be listed online, with the application process most likely being online as well. So, it will be crucial that I keep an eye out for any potential job opportunities. During the talk with Mark Rands, he makes note that if you have the 3 first points listed on the job spec as part of your skillset, you should go for the job no matter what. Using this advice, I have widened the overall job applications I’ve considered. At the time of writing this essay there are several jobs listed that I’m applying for including roles for Criterion games for junior positions. Another piece of advice taken from Mark Rands talk that I will keep in mind when communications open with these studios if they consider my application, this being that in some studios I wont legally own the work I’ve produced and wont be able to use it outside of the company. Obviously even if this is the case, I will be gaining experience during my time there, which will be valuable in the early years of my career, though it will limit the progression on my portfolio.
(example of one of the Internships I’ve applied for on LinkedIn)
The last step in my 5-year plan is to gather as much experience as I can with both indie studios and more corporate ones. Dan Bernardo founder of the studio Playtra Games, mentions in his talk that there are both negatives and positives to both types of studios.
Indies typically benefit from there being a greater work environment, with it being a smaller and more creatively free team that can communicate ideas in a safer space. The main draw back to them is the overall lack of resources available to them as studio. This along with some of the personal benefits such as pay and other perks found with most jobs, means there’s a cost to this better work environment. When looking at bigger studios, it’s pretty much a reversal of this with the resources being there and personal benefits being much better. Though again this can be at the cost of not knowing everyone at the studio and having to feel like you must limit your creative freedom to express ideas. Personally, I’m still undecided with sort of studio I would want to go with, so after uni in the 5 years following, I would like to ideally experience both types of studios. The goal at the end of this 5-year plan is to secure a steady job at a studio of my choosing with the experience of several smaller studios under my belt and a solid 5-piece portfolio.
Portfolio
As mentioned in the plan above, a crucial area for me to have in place by the end of university is my online portfolio. Earlier I also noted that I wish to have on my portfolio 5 completed character pieces, during the talk with Dan Bernardo when questioned about what he would like to see in artists portfolio he answered, “not quantity, I would prefer to see 5 pieces, but they are actually very good.”. Similar points are also made in two other portfolio talks I’ve seen recently, one from a portfolio talk at GDC and the other with Rafael Grassetti, art director at Sony Santa Monica. In both talks they say that 5 art pieces is the sweet spot for a portfolio and can effectively show your skill, as long as they’re your best work.
I’ve also compiled some examples of student portfolios that have gone on to start junior positions in the industry, who all featured this strong but small amount of pieces.
So, with this in mind the plan by the end of the academic year is to have my portfolio filled with 5 of my best pieces. To help in this plan I have compiled a PureRef document that has a selection of character ideas to work on, this is to try and keep me on target to have this portfolio ready and not leave a down period between pieces where I’m looking for my next inspiration.
(Screenshot taken from the Mood boards)
Along with the characters that will be displayed on my portfolio I also wanted to show that I had gained knowledge with the more extensive process of developing games, this made me come to the decision that all characters I create will be displayed in a game environment that is built in engine. The engine I decided to show these characters in is the Unreal Engine, as this is also the same engine me and my team have plans to create our game in for another module in this course. I have also been gaining more knowledge in this engine and I’m very happy with the results, which can be seen below. From the point of view of employers looking at my profile, I am hoping this shows that I have a range of skills fitting into the V skillset that Dan Bernardo went through during his talk. This skillset he describes as a person who has knowledge in several skills but can bring them together in fresh and unique ways. I feel like having this skill displayed to employers will look extremely good moving forward.
(Images of recent environment work made in the Unreal Engine)
Another area that came to my attention after the talks and specifically the talk with Lucy Kyriakidou, is the lack of representation in the characters I have planned to produce for my portfolio. I want employers to see that I am more than capable with tackling different body shapes, racial backgrounds, and gender. The point that really influenced me to change up my current character plans was a quote I took from Lucy Kyriakidou’s talk “As character designers I think we have the responsibility to represent different bodies in what we do”. So, with this in mind, I added two new character ideas I wanted to create from book series that I really love, these characters aren’t just here because I want to include representation, I love the design of them and feel they could be used to create really solid character pieces. They are pictured below.
The other area of my portfolio I want to work on, as mentioned before, is to create an alternative platform to display It on in the form of a website. I plan to use Wix to develop this site as its what I have gained the most experience with over my time at university. I’ve currently been developing the websites and have used several portfolios out there for inspiration, including the ones published by two of our speakers Hannah Nicklin and Lucy Kyriakidou which can be seen below.
Once a lot of these areas have been completed to certain level, I will begin to present my portfolio to any portfolio review sessions that are being held, several people in the industry hold portfolio review live streams coming to the end of the educational year such as Rafael Grassetti and a studio called Flipped Normals. Hopefully this will allow me to get some feedback on the current progress of the portfolio and make any changes that are needed.
Personal Workflow
During these talks I was also able to gather some useful advice purely on the creative process and how I could use some of the techniques used by people in industry to better my own. One of these areas was dealing with art blocks, the main speaker who went through this area was Neomi who is a concept artist at Playtra games. In her talk she said, art blocks are very natural in the creative industry and dealing with them is completely personal, and different methods can work from individual to individual. It was good to hear about art blocks from someone in industry and that it is just a natural occurrence, I’ve had to deal with them in the past with the final major project for second year being a difficult time with them. Though moving forward into third year and with the work I have planned, I will try to deal with them in a healthier way and accept that they are going to happen and if I need a few days to reset creatively I will do that.
“Make peace with that they will happen and that everyone gets them” – Neomi
Another area Neomi touched upon was the appropriate amount of time to spend on a piece and when to hand it off, with her saying that as an artist you will want to keep improving pieces and it will never feel natural to leave it be, though there are people waiting for it on the other end of the creative process so you need to be professional and stick to deadlines set by the team to be effective. This is a personal practice I want to set myself to as much as possible, so that I’m ready to adopt this mentality in the industry and with the final major project of this degree. Moving forward with all the character pieces I want to create for my portfolio, I will set strict deadlines for each character with me setting around a month for each piece.
Skills being transferred into Semester 2 Game Project
Several of the skills learnt in these talks I will be directly taking over to the current game project for the Project Proposal and Major Project modules for this course. The main area is to continue to widen the overall amount of prototyping I do for game features and ways to tell the games story. One of the main speakers who drove this point was Toby Milner Gulland who works for Moving Brands, in his talk he shows in detail several of the ways Moving brands prototype for a project and just how extensive their process is. My team has already began working on an interesting way of prototyping the layout of the game and the audio that will be featured in it. Though I hope to also work on other prototyping methods, such as possibly talking to students in the fashion design course to come up with mock designs for outfits seen in the game, and filming team members acting out movements and story elements for future reference when compiling the story.
Some examples of this can be seen below
Another area I want to make sure we use effectively as a team for the final major project is communication. Several of the speakers pointed out just how key it is to have good communication between the team members to create a solid game exspirenece. In the talk with Neomi, she says that communication between departments is crucial as something that looks great on the art side might just not work from a programmer’s point of view.
Hannah Nicklin, studio lead at Die Gute Fabrik, also touches on how communication is essential. She claims that it allows the writer to explain that even if their idea doesn’t work from another creative point of view, it is crucial to what they are trying to achieve.
Even though in her analogy she uses a writer’s point of view, I feel like this piece of advice could be transferred to all department and creative roles. In regard to this applying to the current game project, I would like there to be constant communication between team members and any decisions that one team members wants to make, as a team we will allow them to fully explain why they feel this change or addition is needed without completely dismissing the point out right.
Networking
Another area I detailed in my 5-year plan at the start of this essay was how I want to have a focus on networking as much as possible in the coming years. One of the first ways being to get in touch with family and personal friends that are currently in the industry, this ranges from a 3D lead artist at games studio in Brighton to a Business Development manager at Steel Media. Though I can’t just rely on established connections and will have to make my own moving forward. One of these ways will be through the events I listed earlier in the essay; at these events I plan to have business cards ready to present to people I talk to. One of the reasons I want to go down the route of having business cards made is so that I can give these out in casual conversations with members of the industry without being too pushy for them to visit my portfolio in conversation, during the talk with Lucy Kyriakidou she makes a point of noting that when it comes to networking don’t be too pushy as it will put people off wanting to look further into your skills. The business cards will feature my full name, email, and my profile on Artstation along with the skills and area I work in.
Social Media
Another key area to be networking in will be social media, during the talk with Matteo Menapace a board game designer, he goes through how networking on social media was crucial when beginning to work on his in-development board game. Before work on this board game Matteo began to tweet at the game designer behind hit board game ‘Pandemic’ about his design process, leading from inquisitive tweets about his design process to starting to talk about collaborating on a game together, it really showed how powerful networking over social media can be. This has led me to want to have a more presentable set of social media platforms and to overall gain more of a following around my game design.
Starting with updating my twitter to feature a profile picture of me along with a banner featuring some of my work. I also included in my bio that I’m a “3D Character Artist and Games Designer”, I didn’t want to include student as I feel like that will make people look at my profile instantly think I’m under experienced and not considering looking further into my work. Along with this I also have my Artstation linked. I plan to upload all my work in progress shots up onto twitter and use relevant hashtags to spread my work.
I did the same for my Instagram and have the same plan to upload progress shots on there.
Conclusion
These talks have provided me with some much-needed insight from industry professionals, from the work ethic to culture in industry, Improving the presentation of my work for potential employers to the many forms of networking I can do in the coming years. This module and the talks that have come with it have brought me that step closer to becoming employed at a studio and will greatly help how I approach and work on this final game in the second semester. Personally, I feel if I keep the skills and advice I’ve learnt from these speakers and from other sources in the industry in mind and improve myself with it, I am very confident I will find a job in my dream employment.
Special Thanks to all of the speakers during semester one and to the course leader for arranging these talks.
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