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Ask A Dev: Breaking In

All questions are in! Congratulations to those that were answered, you will be contacted for prize redemption ;)   Want to know more about Ascend? Next week will be part two of Ask A Dev: Ascend: New Gods, so make sure to submit your questions here!   Without further ado, here are your questions…answered!

Luvz2sploog34: Can you rank the following by importance for someone trying to get a a job at Signal? Elaborate why you rank them the way you do please!

• 4 year CS degree
• previous experience/shipped titles
• work ethic
• personality
• recommendations
• killer portfolio

Personality

Personality is the most important thing. We spend a lot of time together- best if you fit in and are easy to work with.

Recommendations

Most everyone who has been hired here has come from a recommendation from current employees. It’s a lot easier to take a risk if someone you already trust is telling you it’s ok.   Work ethic      There’s a lot of entitled people  in the world nowadays that expect everything should just be handed to them. I prefer people that understand they need to earn it.

Previous experience/shipped titles

Experience is relatively important. It helps a lot to have an understanding of the challenges we face in game development before you get here.

Killer portfolio

Important to be a good artist..but we can always fix that. Better you are technically sound, fast, and create with common sense. Anyone can output an amazing piece of work with no constraints. We are commercial artists that need to work  within guidelines and limitations.

4 year CS degree

In my opinion, college degrees aren't all that useful in the game industry. I am sure Digipen would argue differently. I would say save your money.    

-D.R. Albright III, President and Creative Director

Oxidized: What kind of background does one need to get into game programming? Like degree, classes, internship experience, etc?

Really you just need practical experience. Practice writing games in your spare time. Try new interesting and novel ways to achieve high levels of efficiency and simplicity for developing game content. Figure out what works by experimenting and failing and improving on your mistakes. As far as specifics, you should understand the intimate workings of a compute. Design an emulator or a small hardware computer made from discreet components like transistors or relays. But the important thing is to always think outside the box, to break new ground, to do revolutionary things. Always have a thirst for new information and become a master of your craft.

-Matt Kincaid, Lead Gameplay Programmer

TheRallykiller: What jobs can people who don't have programming, or really much computer expertise do? Is there room for an aspiring business or marketing major to be part of a team or do they work outside the company?

Funny you should ask TheRallykiller, I'm actually a  Business student! First let me introduce myself, my name is Yesenia and I am the Production Assistant here at Signal Studios. So TL;DR version, yes there is definitely room to be a part of a team. As a Production Assistant, I help around the office with a lot of the day-to-day tasks. One of my many tasks is making sure the team gets fed and that there is enough caffeine to resuscitate a dying heart for the long crunching nights ;) There are many routes you can take if you are not a programmer or an artist. You can be a Community Manager such as Logan, Producer such as Brett, Marketing Manager, or Production Assistant such as myself. As cheesy as it sounds, the world is your oyster - you just have to have the passion and work for it! If that is the route you want to take, I always encourage that people get their feet wet with game testing-that is how I started out. This way you can start to learn the development cycle and see if this is the industry for you. From there you can start to explore and see if you want to stay on the Publisher side or work on the Developer side and work your way up to the position of your dreams. Just remember, a degree means nothing if you don't have the drive to apply it. YOU have to sell them on why they want to hire you and what value you can bring to the team!   Hope that answers your question - if you want to know more, feel free to ask in our forums :)

-Yesenia "Mystique" Cisneros, Production Assistant