Posted by I offer the LinkedIn community my time to get them prepared for interviews, writing resumes, and general advice when it comes to getting into games and tech or growing their existing career. In 2020, there were hundreds of you that reached out and I enjoyed every bit of our conversations. This post collects commonly asked questions and shares answers that you can use today to move forward in your journey. Similar to the blog series around getting into Product Management, I have a ton of valuable information to share here so look for more of these Q&A posts coming soon!
Note: There won’t be any personal information shared here. All Q&A info will be anonymized to protect your privacy.
There’s no particular order here and the topics span across multiple disciplines. If you’re interested in a specific discipline for further blog content, let me know in the comments!
Q: I have an art portfolio that gets positive feedback, but it’s from another industry – how can I prepare it for games?
In the end, it really is about getting yourself seen as well as your work. People have to want your work as well as you as an individual.
A: That’s great to hear that you’re leveling up your craft even if it’s in a different industry. Working with the illustration team on LoL, I had quite a few people from various backgrounds (comics, trading cards, and many others). The consistent trait I saw in all of them is they LOVED to hone their craft in and out of work. They always had work-related and passion projects. This helped them stay up-to-date as the industry evolved around them.
I’d say you’re in a great spot to do the same. Speaking to previous art management, they loved seeing a variety of pieces from general artists (environments, shape compositions, concepts, and rendering). This way they can see that you can take a project from beginning to end while showing the process along the way. I’ve also seen great portfolios succeed that focus on the job itself. E.g. concept portfolios that dig into item, character, environment, etc. for a pure concept artist job.
I’d say start with what you’re good at and build the portfolio from there. Get your work out there into spaces like Deviant Art, Patreon, and Twitch. Once your body of work is out there, it’ll be easier for people to discover you. You can also look at people in those positions you seek on Linkedin and visit their portfolios online in spaces like Deviant Art to ask for mentorship and review of your work.
In the end, it really is about getting yourself seen as well as your work. People have to want your work as well as you as an individual. That’s important in many industries, but especially in games. The companies I’ve worked with look deeply into culture fit, so look into why you specifically want to work at a studio, dig into their core values, and be able to speak to it in your work.
For example, when I worked with League’s splash art team we reviewed each others work for 2 hours a day 2-3 times a week. That feeds into the craft excellence and stay hungry stay humble core values at Riot. You have to be strong by yourself, but also make your team strong through feedback and collaboration.
Hope this helps get you going. Start building that online presence for your portfolio, reach out to artists in positions you want to be in, and find your identity in a studio you believe in.
Q: What was your professional and educational background when you started out in the game industry? I thought I could transfer my experience into games, but was recently declined. How can I think differently about ways to get in at a different experience level?
Ultimately, what helped me get in was understanding I would be switching my career around a bit and would have to start lower on the pay scale and experience ladder.
A: Sorry to hear about your decline . Did you receive any specific feedback? If not, I’d say that’s a good place to start when you get a decline so you can identify what to improve from that specific experience.
I had experience as a web engineer, a computer information systems major, 1 year of management training / experience in retail sales, and a life-long passion for gaming when I finally started out at Blizzard.
Though I started out in technical QA since I didn’t have game industry experience at the time, I was able to quickly utilize my experience to get into technical management roles over time such as scrum master, assistant QA lead, and producer.
Ultimately, what helped me get in was understanding I would be switching my career around a bit and would have to start lower on the pay scale and experience ladder. It took a year or so to catch up, but it was well worth it.
Q: I want to get into games as a designer focusing on x (in this case, narrative design). I have transferrable skills in some parts of design, but not others. How can I build out my skillset and prepare for applying to game design and other entry level positions such as QA?
None of this takes much money, but it does take time. And without having pre-existing game industry experience, showing that you’ve spent a great deal of time in the space still counts.
A: If you want to write for a living, then you have to write on your free time to build up that skill. Same goes for artists, systems designers, programmers, or any other field people are looking to shift into. They have to take their own time to build up that skill.
Luckily, the game design field has astounding amounts of tools and support to let you build your portfolio and body of work before you start to apply.
Here are my suggestions:
1. Collect your writings and create a portfolio focused on a specific type of writing (e.g. Fantasy) or a general one that digs into the discipline itself (e.g. short stories that are fictional, non-fic, argumentative, background lore for a world, country, city, person, race, etc.). This shows you are either a general writer that could get into editorial jobs or a narrative writer that could get into a game team’s world-building or character building group.
2. Take the next step and make some games. This could sound scary and very time-consuming, but there are tools that cut that time down to hours in some cases. Show that you can build a game. Download a tool like Unity and go through a Youtube tutorial for free. You can build games in under an hour just to get your feet wet in the experience of building a game end-to-end.
3. Once you’ve built a few simple games and understand what some of your team might be experiencing in their job, dig into the narrative design element since you want to focus on that. Look into tools like RPG-maker on Steam and download some pre-existing games to learn how the tool works. Create your own, simple game that digs deep into narrative design elements you want to explore and learn about. This utilizes your skills as well as gives you a tool that can export the game for you, give you a build you can upload/share on your portfolio, and most importantly – shows job recruiters and hiring managers that you put effort forth to try something and finished it.
4. Once you’ve gone through the above steps, you can join online communities around the mentioned tools (Unity, RPG-maker, etc.) and start getting feedback on your work. You can even publish your games through Steam to see how they do and get that experience.
None of this takes much money, but it does take time. And without having pre-existing game industry experience, showing that you’ve spent a great deal of time in the space still counts. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions. I started out as QA as well. It’s a great way to go to get a general understanding of how things work across various disciplines. It’s a great way to get into the industry.
Q: I’m aspiring to be a 3D artist, but am not getting any hits on my applications. What can I do to improve my portfolio to get more interviews?
It’s critical that you learn to take feedback, show improvement, and still be able to own your work. That’s a core part of what your position will be when working on a team.
A: I reviewed your portfolio and think it’s great to have your body of work visible to the outside world so you can share your work, get feedback, and ultimately, see your own growth over time.
Something you have to think about when applying for a position is the scale of the company and scope of your position. Your portfolio shows that you’ve dabbled into various aspects of 3D art, but the positions that exist in the larger companies in the industry will have you working with multiple people on a cross-discipline team where you will have a focus.
In this case, work that stands out to me are ones that are (1) original and (2) are focused on showing off the specific 3D art you want to feature. Think of (1) as a way to show what you created. The [redacted] piece is a great example. I love that you created that and showed some of your progress pics as well as the rendered final product. It’s important to show you completed the work.
For (2), my favorite piece in all of your portfolio for animation is the [redacted]. It focuses on the animation by using a basic model and clear background. This way, every frame of the animation can easily be reviewed.
When submitting work along with your resume on an application, I’d use these types of assets over the movies that include modeling, art, and animation all-in-one. This is of course the opposite if you’re applying to an indie/ start-up that may be looking for someone to wear multiple hats.
In the meantime while growing your skills, consider joining online communities where you can share your work and get feedback. It’s critical that you learn to take feedback, show improvement, and still be able to own your work. That’s a core part of what your position will be when working on a team.
Give me your feedback!
Thank you for stopping by and taking time to read this post! If you have feedback on what you’re seeing as well as what you’d like to read about in the future, comment below or hit me up on LinkedIn!
As always, GL HF out there!