Getting Into Any Industry

October 24th, 2014

Undergrads these days… I want to step away from the general course I’ve been taking with this blog and focus on something a bit more personal, yet very possibly applicable or helpful to you if you’re aspiring to work in the games industry. Or actually… any industry, to be honest.

As an individual who has built up my portfolio and professional experience even in just two years to the point where I could graduate comfortably, it pains me to see students in my own department ignore this facet of their career. It pains me to hear them say that they’re fine just focusing on their grades, maybe doing an internship later on, and having fun with their friends. What I mean to say is in this field of creativity, design thinking, project management, and everything that is creative development, I feel that there is a lack of appreciation for the fact that companies and employers don’t hire you because of the premise your education holds, assuming they would even have heard of the program you’ve done, but rather by the amount of experience you have.

“Can you actually DO this? Have you DONE this before? PROVE it to me.”

Very early on I realized this, and so I got to work on my experience. I started paying attention to everything that relates to what I’m doing around me, whether it’s advertisements, companies that are covered in the news, or developer diaries of video games. Anything. I went to Eventbrite and attended to ten conferences over the summer. For free! And I made so many connections that I can pull on any time in the near future. There was a conference called SA Tech Toronto I went to where I was the only student, and everyone else was a professor. And I not only did I learn so much from the speakers and attendees alike, I ended up impressing everyone else to the point where they all gave me their cards and expressed an interest in working with me in the future. There is so much to learn everywhere, and not only do I want to know it all, I NEED to know it all. There are individuals who are in a year above me, even individuals who have graduated, that come to me for advice; it shouldn’t be this way. We all need to put an emphasis on learning everything we can that is related to our respective fields.

I felt that my knowledge in the games industry was as comprehensive as it was going to get with what resources I had, and so it was then I decided that to learn more I had to work in the games industry. Earlier this year I had attended the Young Entrepreneurs Challenge at UTM, a conference and competition centered around pursuing entrepreneurship. I presented my idea for an augmented reality system that would enhance education as we know it. I had made my presentation the day of the competition and had come up with the idea a week before. Needless to say, I hadn’t placed in the top three. But someone who was watching my presentation was impressed with what I had to show and spoke to me after my presentation. As I talked to this person more and more we both discovered our backgrounds in games and our mutual appreciation for it. And after I described just how much I knew and what my professional experience was, since I was essentially networking, I found out that I was talking to the organizer of the Level Up Showcase, an annual game design showcase for college and university students. Before I knew it, I was being offered an opportunity to take control of the marketing for the showcase.

Time froze for a moment. Was this it? Was I finally entering the industry?

Time resumed. “YES!” I said. And so later that month I was given all the details for showcase and I was on my way to marketing. I coordinated with sponsors big and small, I worked with design teams from OCAD and created marketing campaigns with Sennheiser and SPC. It was awesome. And while I knew this wasn’t what I thought I would be doing initially in the games industry we all know and love, I knew that this was a stepping stone on my way up. And was it ever! I got to meet the community manager from Ubisoft, a very nice man by the name of Zack Cooper. I talked to him for a good while and I made it clear that I was very driven and determined to get into the games industry. So what did he do? He set me up with human resources from Ubisoft so I could do an informational interview, and get a sense of what it takes to get into the bigger publishing and development companies.

For those aspiring to work in the games industry, I’ll save you some time here. These are the three main points I got:

1. Publishers do not take applicants straight out of university, no matter what program or pedigree they come from.
2. Most publishers if not all require at least five years of experience in the games industry.
3. Connections can supercede the first two points.

It’s tough, isn’t it? Especially if you consider the second point real hard. How do you get experience in the games industry if you need five years of experience… in the games industry? Like I said, connections! At a recent event put on by Nspire, I met the Founder of UKEN Games, Toronto’s biggest mobile development studio, Mark Lampert. His company was actually one of the main sponsors of the Level Up Showcase, and so he was very interested and wanted to talk to me more. As a result, he asked for a copy of my resume and ensured that he would put my resume through in the event of an applicable job opening. Now to be realistic, I’m not sure that will actually happen. BUT that is still a lot more than nothing, and this is how you get your foot in the door.

The “Don Mattrick” approach may have worked for a certain time, but today you get escorted out by security if you do it his way. When Mattrick was a teenager, he desperately wanted to work at a local game store, but the manager claimed that they were fully staffed as they were. So what did he do? He worked in the store for free until the manager had no choice but to hire him. It’s not documented if he took this approach throughout his entire career, but his resume speaks for itself. Up until 2007, he was the President of Electronic Arts Worldwide, the biggest games publisher to this day, and in 2007 joined Microsoft and very quickly became the President of the Interactive Entertainment Business unit, which was responsible for the production of the Xbox 360 and most recently the Xbox One. Mattrick left Microsoft earlier this year and joined Zynga as their Chief Operating Officer. Where Don Mattrick was more aggressive, we now have to be more clever and creative in our approaches.

You’re not going to get that dream first job because of your program, or the skills that you learned. If you get it, it’ll be because of the experience you’ve gained from extracurriculars, internships, and independent work. The other reality is is that it can be hard to understand what you can do when you have little or event nothing to start with. One thing you must understand is that everything starts from nothing. If you have no artistic ability but want to work in art, then you start making art. Fail. Make crappy art. Do it again. Make slightly less crappy art. Keep going. Eventually, you’ll reach a point where your art and skills are actually presentable and worthy of being on your resume. This principle can be applied to many things, but as you get into more intricate fields or skills like project management or marketing, there is less room for error. That’s where your education comes to play. APPLY IT. See what happens. Learn. And when you succeed, slap it on a resume. Get a job. Do well. Then get a better job. Succeed even more. And then succeed at life.