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”.
I know I mentioned this prospect intrigued me on the WHA boards, but truth be told I about soiled myself in at least three different ways in excitement when I read this earlier. I’ve heard numerous game developers talk about how they got started either in CS, Q&A, or even product testing at the studios.
Working in the video game industry was my first choice of a career back in high school when I started to think about careers. Unfortunately I didn’t follow threw and have come to regret it several times. Now I have a chance I don’t plan to pass up.
On a side note, will any of the devs at Games Day Baltimore be able to talk about it or will there be someone specific to look out for?
Hrm, good question. Let me check.
Apparently, we’ll actually have HR people there. Which – for this – is much better than devs.
I am sure you guys do these types of things all the time: http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-33718
And FYI, your wordpress needs to be updated! just a helpful reminder that wordpress told me to relay on. hah!
Now if only you would move your offices to Southern California. 😉
[…] Josh Drescher explains how you — yes YOU — can get hired by EA Mythic. […]
Whenever I see a post or an article about how to break into the games business, it’s always about programmers or artists, but never my chosen field. I’m a network engineer/server monkey and I would *love* to get my greasy fingers on a network that runs a MMO. Any advice to that end? Or is alot of work outsourced and/or handled by more network-centric “devs”?
I’m not an engineer, but I CAN tell you that anyone foolish enough to outsource their net-code for an MMO is begging for disaster. Your network engineers are the absolute backbone of the entire project and you definitely want them on-site 100% of the time. In the past, we’ve hired coder interns, but we tend to hire folks with a lot of experience in the can because development can rarely slow down to train new people.