The reality of the games industry

What it’s really like to make stuff up for a living.

Since we started the atomic.edu section, we’ve covered a wide variety of institutes and courses. We’ve looked at many different fields of employment, ranging from games development to high tech storage. This month we’re again focusing on games development, although our mandate is somewhat different to usual – we’re keen to address some of the misconceptions prospective employees of the industry may have. To, put simply, provide a bit of a reality check.

Studies
Last month, we looked at the offerings of two private institutes that run games development courses. As we discovered, both the Academy of Interactive Entertainment and QANTM offer a good selection of courses. With campuses of one or both institutes located in the capitals of all the eastern states bar Tasmania, attending either of these two world class institutes is more of a realistic proposition for more budding games developers than it was even a couple of years ago. The games development courses that are available and the institutes that are running them have matured significantly in recent years. Course providers work closely with local developers to ensure their material is relevant and that their graduates enter the workforce equipped with the skills necessary in a creative industry that is highly lucrative and high in pressure.

Despite the industry’s involvement with shaping the curriculum of these courses, despite the increasing availability of games development courses, despite this section bearing the name ‘atomic.edu’, you would be mistaken to assume that a prospective employer’s qualifications are all the human resources manager at a games studio pays attention to. Pieces of paper, though they may bear the mark of top notch private institutes or Group of Eight universities, aren’t the be all and end all in the games industry.

Kevin McIntosh from Torus Games says, "The courses typically provide the right skills that an applicant needs for a role in the industry. If the new employee has the right foundation, they’ll find it easier to learn our internal packages quickly. However, we have hired self-motivated staff that have learned [what they need to know] from books and websites – it shows dedication to their career and we love that."

His point – that courses are primarily there to provide a foundation of knowledge – is one echoed throughout the industry. David Giles, Chief Operating Officer at Tantalus Media in Melbourne, says, "[The courses] are important as this is where a large number of our new staff will come from. The value of these institutions for us is how quickly the new hire is able to come up to speed and fit comfortably into the work place."

And it’s true. With more courses on offer in more institutes in more states, more people are doing courses – whether it’s at their local TAFE, through a university or in a private institute like the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. It makes sense that the bulk of hires in the games industry will be graduates of the many certificates, diplomas, advanced diplomas and bachelor degrees now available. But not all of the hires will have such a background. The industry still takes on the self-taught, as Kevin McIntosh observed. You may have learned C++ from a tome at home, but your knowledge is still valuable. Just remember – it’s not enough to simply say that you know xyz. Your knowledge must be demonstrated in a tangible way.

As both David Giles and Kevin McIntosh said, the most important part of these courses is that they provide a good foundation which individual developers can build upon as they impart their own lessons to new employees. Australian developers work on a wide variety of projects on a wide variety of platforms – they obviously don’t all require the same skills and attributes from their employees. At the same time, having a solid foundation of the core skills required of everyone in the industry is important. The games industry is deadline driven. A studio can be a nurturing environment, but ultimately you’re not going to get hired if you need to be guided by the hand from step one. Having a solid foundation of knowledge means you can easily slip into any development environment – be it Firemint or Epic – and quickly get your head around how it operates. To put it in coding terms, once you get your head around the theory behind programming – the part that’s common to all languages – you’ll be able to easily move between different languages, even if their syntaxes and APIs differ considerably.