Paul sighting!
We’re pleased to see he’s still alive out in Dreamhack-land. That’s our buddy Rowland with him tossing shirts to the masses.
Games Day/Now Hiring: Update
Since I’ve gotten a fairly large amount of email, PMs and comments in the past couple of days, let me just say a few things:
1) Yes, it’s totally fine for you to talk to any of us at Games Day.
We come to public events because we like meeting you guys, hearing what you have to say, etc. And if you have questions that you’d like fairly detailed answers for, the morning (11:30 AM) Q&A is the perfect venue. Come prepared! Do not disappoint The Hickman by lacking questions!
2) There will be a table at the event for folks interested in the CS positions we posted earlier this week.
If you have questions about hiring, details related to the positions, etc. please direct them to our HR staff. Most of us wont have the information you’re after, so save yourself the headache and go straight to the folks who CAN help you.
3) The hiring date for the CS positions has nothing to do with our launch date.
We need plenty of folks to help us shepherd WAR through the ever-growing Beta test phase and these new hires will be very busy working there well prior to launch. Anyone who says otherwise from this point forward is a SPY. The bad confuses you with lies kind – not the good has inside info kind.
Fun/Not Fun
Fun = The first few hours of Metal Gear Solid 4.
NOT FUN = Zero feedback prior to game not saving the first few hours of progress when exiting Metal Gear Solid 4.
End of lesson.
Now hiring.
Like most folks who make games for a living, I get asked pretty regularly for advice on how to “break in”. I’ll skim over the obvious answers:
1) Learn to code. We always need engineers.
2) Become a talented artist. We always need talented artists.
I think those are pretty self-explanatory and folks who are suitable for those paths already know pretty much how to head down them. For everyone else, there’s good news!
For folks who’ve always wondered how to get a “foot in the door”, this is the door. We do a TON of internal hiring from from our pool of CS and QA employees. These people know our game really, really well – far better than the average Joe with “creative” experience or a CS degree ever will. They understand the company, who everyone is and how things work. Devs have neither the time nor the patience to hold a new hire’s hand and teach them the difference between an Orc and a Dwarf. When we need to fill an empty Dev position, it’s easy to hire someone who knows the game well and teach them technical stuff as needed. Thus, we hire Devs from inside 9 times out of 10.
Starting out in CS really is a great way to get yourself on the path of game development. Both The Hickman and I started in the CS wing of Mythic, way back when and look at us now! Mildly notable on the internet!
So this is it. You’re really, really real chance to “break in”.
Games Day Baltimore
FYI – A bunch of us are heading up to Charm City for the show, so it’s definitely worth coming to if you’ve ever wanted to get up close and personal with WAR. Also, Jeff and I will be doing some sort of Q&A session at the show, so make sure to come armed with questions.