Chris Avellone Gives Interview Advice

In his latest blog entry on the Obsidian Entertainment forums, Chris Avellone provides us with some advice for scoring a job interview at your favorite video game developer. Scratch the recruiter:

First off, know what you want to do. If you’re not sure if you want to be a programmer or a designer, choose one and focus on that until you (1) realize you hate it, or (2) discover you love it. More than that, if you decide to be a certain discipline – art, programming, design, or production, research the field enough to know what sub-set of that discipline you want to pursue. For example, for design, knowing whether you want to pursue technical design, systems design, narrative design, etc. is important when seeking out a job in the industry.

Second, don’t use a recruiter. Please. Spend an extra hour and check the game companies in your area, then apply to them on your own – if given the choice between candidates, we’re less likely to go with the candidate sent via a recruiter because they have the recruiter’s fee on top of the normal salary that we have budgeted for the position. If you absolutely must use a recruiter, try to do enough research to choose one wisely – there’s certain recruiters that know the business, others that don’t know the difference between production and design candidates, nor do they know the first thing about how to place a programming candidate. Popular recruiting agencies don’t mean much if the recruiter you’re assigned to is a junior or is new to the industry.

Thanks, RPGCodex.