Advice for people entering the Northern UK games industry
 

Hi everyone,

I have just entered my final year of an Animation degree course at Birmingham City University, and one of my modules is related to learning professional practice, to ready us for employment in industry. Whilst I wish to focus on animation for film and TV production, many in my class are specialising in games design.

For a mini project, my group have to put a small leaflet together, with information on the video games industry and employment opportunities in the North of the UK! My first thought was naturally JAW!

I wonder if anyone from JAW would please be able to provide any information that could help us, for example what the company looks for in job applicants, advice for portfolios, or any info on the industry?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide me, it's greatly appreciated!

Don't work for videogames.

You'l probably want to contact Wil or Glitch for that one. I'm sure they will point you in the right direction.

In Wil's case, towards his crotch.

So that's how you get a job at JAW?

I don't want to talk about it.



Regarding you questions Michael:

What the company looks for in job applicants:

We look for people who have talent and flair. Other than that it's hard to not just say "we look for people who are good". We get a lot of art tests sent to us, some good, some not so good, the difference can just be 10 extra minutes spent on each element and a good eye for the little details.

Passion is important. We want people who care to be making our games, because that means they will care more about the end project than if they're just looking forward to getting paid.

Advice for portfolios:

Always make sure your very best stuff is at the top, and your worst stuff is at the bottom. If you're not sure whether to include something in there because it may not be good enough, don't. Too many people tend to put the first stuff they ever did on the first/top of the page with their later, better stuff buried under a pile of practice work. Don't make finding your good stuff a treasure hunting expedition.

Info on the industry:

This is pretty vague so I'll use it as a chance to give up some other information that I think would be helpful.

It's a pretty tough industry with tight deadlines and the occasional long nights. People work hard because they want to see their product succeed, not necessarily because they're obsessed with career advancement. Paradoxically I think it's the people who care about the products they work on who advance the most; it's a vital trait to have.

Getting a job in the industry varies greatly between roles and I can only tell you about my experiences and what I have noticed since gaining employment in it.

Artist:
All artists must have a strong portfolio, available online and linked at every opportunity. There's nothing worse than an artist applying for a job without linking to any examples of their work.

Artists of all types really have to love their work; you need to constantly be striving to improve; as far as I can tell the best way to do that is to join a community, such as polycount, and use that to have your work critiqued as often as you can bare.

On that note, everyone, not just artists, need to learn how to take criticism, give criticism, and ignore criticism. It's very difficult to know when to take and when to ignore, all I can say is you need to be open and logical when analysing criticism.

Designers:
Getting a job in design is a little weird because you generally have to learn other skills that allow you to become a designer via the back door. Almost every designer gets their first design job by working for a company in some other capacity. For me this was GUI design and development, for many others it is QA (game testing and bug reporting).

The thing to remember with design is that a portfolio for design can only contain games you have designed or made. Not design documents or concepts that you have thought of. You cannot send such things to developers; they will not be read due to understandable legal issues.

Programmers:

Patience, skill, talent, and patience.

Also, learn as many different programming languages as you can. But before that, learn C++.

Become accustomed to working with DirectX and OpenGL.



There are other jobs but I have such little experience with them that I don't feel comfortable guessing/estimating what it would take to get a job in those capacities.


Any questions, give me a shout and I will happily try to answer them.

I'd add that "knowing" C++ is not enough, you have to know it inside out to be the best. I know a lot of devs that have no idea what the compiler will output machine code wise, this is important when working in games.

A real life example is any C++ running on a PS3 SPU has to have its vtable patched otherwise it will be pointing to main memory instead of local SPU memory. Also don't confuse C with C++, C++ is not C with classes, its far more than that! [End of rant]

When I say Learn C++, I mean learn how to think in C++. I don't consider a language learnt until I can think in it. (I certainly haven't learnt C++ yet)

Not the same creative field, but I’ve heard it said that the best way to structure your portfolio is to pick your three strongest pieces, and then place one each at the beginning, middle and end of your portfolio. You want to open on a strong note, keep the viewer’s interest going strong throughout, and then close on an even stronger note.

But what you say about being choosy is right. I’ll add that it’s usually a good idea to keep updated too – swap out older projects for more recent work whenever it makes sense.

Thanks Glitch, and everyone else too! The info you've provided is very helpful!