FluffyLogic is based in central Bristol working in film, digital media, Internet (and networked) content, video games and hand-held devices (such as PlayStation Portable). Ana met with David Smith of Game Careers at the recent Develop conference in Brighton. Her advice to anyone thinking of working for one of he hottest studios in the South West of the UK is “”Email me. But email me with why you like games and why you want to work for Fluffylogic. If what you want is a career ladder, then we are probably not the best company because we are not huge. You are not going to work your way up the company in that kind of way. What you will get is lots of experience, and experience in a pretty open organisation. We have meetings where everyone can put into what our next games idea will be. It’s very approachable and easy going and from that point of view it is a very nice place to work.”
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David Amor is Creative Director of Relentess Software which is synonymous with the Buzz! franchise that’s sold over eight million copies. Relentless has grown from a small team of 11 to a 100-strong studio that specialises in making games to be played in a social environment. They are proud to have won many awards and accolades along the way. David met with David Smith from Game Careers at the Develop conference in Brighton in July 2010. His main tip to work at Relentless is “you must have demonstrable talent. If you’re asking people for a leap of faith with your talent described only through the CV given, that is hard. I think any employer about to hire someone is going to expect the new person not to start and be useful on day one but at least help them feel that in a month’s time this person can be used on a project. So you need something that demonstrates your talent. The other thing that is more pragmatic is that sometimes the ideal job doesn’t come out and perfectly fits what you want to do in your CV. But if you’re in a company and you demonstrate you are smart at what you do then other opportunities will arise from that. So I would say be ready to start in a position that isn’t exactly what you want to do or the salary you want, but get in and demonstrate that you can do a good job and it will lead to other things.” Join Games :: Tester on Facebook just as over 3000 have already done. The original destination site for game testers now has a sucessfull networking group on Facebook as wall as LinkedIn. Log in to your Facebook account and go to http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=289340128181 or search groups for “games tester”.
Click the button to Join Us. Games :: Tester was the first site for game testers created in 2002. This site and the facebook group is completely FREE. It has never charged anyone a fee to join. Beware of any site or group that asks for money upfront. It could be a scam. Happy Networking wth fellow game testers!
Are you passionate about games? Movies? Social networks? The future of interactive entertainment? How about service infrastructure? The Xbox LIVE Core Platform team is looking for a passionate, dedicated senior developer to help us shape the infrastructure of the 21st century entertainment experience. Our business is based on agility, and agility for a service as broad as Xbox LIVE requires someone who lives and breathes solving service deployment, management, health and monitoring, BI instrumentation and storage problems. The right candidate will be active involved in writing production code and tools in each of these areas, and will literally shape the architecture of our business for years to come. We’re looking for a senior developer with strong service experience who is passionate about the vision of Xbox LIVE, and about the infrastructure challenges within our business. We’re looking for self-motivated individuals who are interested in helping to build a technical vision for the future of our service, with all of the skills to help us implement it. Candidates will also be expected to act as a mentor to junior developers. The job will require work in C# and SQL, as well as a bit of C++. Experience in deploying or managing internet scale services is a huge bonus. To apply for this role and other jobs posted by Microsoft, please do the the Games Job Board. Are you passionate about the latest and greatest web-gaming technology? Lou’s company has over 100 staff in three arms: TorquePowered.com, which sells Torque game engines. InstantAction.com, which publishes 3D games in browsers and Our Game Studio, which creates games for InstantAction and beyond.The company is constantly on the look-out for new talent in game development, engine marketing, and online project management. They hire both experts in the field and promising up-and-comers who are ready to create high quality games and engines. David Smith of Game Careers caught up with Lou at the Develop conference in Brighton, UK. Lou’s tip is “no matter what you do have some amount of editorializing that you have to do to your portfolio. I really encourage that less is more, pick your absolute best stuff, pick as few things as you possibly can that will really show your talent and abilities. When you go into an interview, go in open minded because every culture and company is different, having recruited both at Westwood and EA which have very different cultures. I see way too many times people are trying to include everything and are very methodical about approaching a job. The most important question I ask when people are coming in is what’s your future look like? Where do you want to be in a couple years and how does your personal aspiration fit in with the company and what kind of positions that company is looking to fill. Going back to why we are a great place to work, one thing we are committed deeply to is growing people and their careers and helping them move up to the next level. It has allowed me to work with some fantastic people and keep working with great talents that grow in the industry.” Successful developer and publisher of browser-based computer games Bigpoint GmbH was among the finalists at this year’s “Develop Industry Excellence Awards”. Bigpoint was nominated in the categories of Publishing Hero and Technical Innovation. Nils-Holger Henning, CCO of Bigpoint spoke to David Smth of GameCareers.BIZ about the expansion of the company. For advice on jobs at Bigpoint, Nils Holger says “To get a job in our company first of all, I think the most important thing, is creativity and of course you must have the ability to achieve something and to touch new ground. What we saw inside the company is very often you are only fixed to a very small limited space of working and you will see a lot of different areas, how games are created, how games are advertised, all of this together in the company which is developing so fast. You must be very creative, very flexible and very open for new inventions.” An entrepreneur, visionary, and ex-programmer, David’s job is to lead the team making Unity, Unity Pro, Asset Server, iPhone and iPhone Pro to stardom, while making sure that each step is taken with love and care. In the past David founded and participated in startups in fields such as news and community integration, music distribution, and consulting. David serves on the boards of several games and technology startups and a day after the interview with David Smith of Game Careers picked up the Develop Magazine’s coveted Grand Prix Award and Technical Innovation Award at the Develop Conference. Based in Denmark, Lithuania, the UK and USA, his advice on those looking to work for Unity: “First, be super good at the technical bits. Second, have a real commitment to the possibilities of good technology made simple. We really want people to take care of the user and have a humble attitude. That is the most important beyond of course the raw skills.” The BBC has gone direct to the games industry and plans to go direct to consumers for its first Doctor Who game. Charles Cecil has been signed up to make Doctor Who: The Adventure Games. The episodic, PC/Mac games are billed as an extra four episodes for the new 13-show series five run which began in the UK during the last Easter weekend. MD of Revolution Software, Charles speaks to GameCareers.BIZ and gives advice on working in the games industry. “Right in the very beginning, if you want to go into programming get good maths. Please, please, please or get good physics. It is really important you have the key core subjects. If you want to go into art, learn to draw first. When I was employing people, if someone could draw a hat I would employ them because you can always take someone that can draw and teach them 3D, but not the other way around. Learn the core subjects please.”
The full statement is reproduced below. “With the likes of Lara Croft, Jill Valentine and Alyx Vance well established on the nation’s consoles there are no shortage of female characters in videogames, but behind the scenes things have for too long been dominated by men – perhaps explaining why the likes of Miss Croft look the way they do! “This is a problem not just for women who want to work in gaming and girls who are given unrealistic expectations about how they should look. It’s a problem for the industry as a whole, as organisations filled with people who look the same, sound the same and have the same life experiences can all too easily end up thinking the same. “Diverse organisations reflect their customers better, are likely to understand them better and offer better products and services as a result. Companies that can’t see the value that women bring to the workplace are extremely short-sighted as they lose out on talent and skills of half the population. “They risk being uncompetitive in a very fast-moving world by not being able to chose from all available employees. Equality is as good for businesses as it is for women and society. “As a government we’re working hard to support women in the workplace, for example looking at making the right to request flexible working available to all and introducing a system of shared parental leave. But this is not something the government can do alone – we need the private sector to do its bit as well. “That’s why I was so pleased to hear about this conference, and I’m really sorry that I’m not able to be there personally. I’m glad you’re also considering what more can be done and I look forward to hearing your conclusions. Best wishes for a successful conference.” More reports from the lunch and conference will follow at Women in Games Jobs. |
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A very successful networking lunch and conference took place in Brighton yesterday at the Develop conference with over 70 women attending to hear Sheri Graner-Ray give an inspirational keynote address. The conference started with David Smith reading out a message from Lynne Featherstone MP, Minister for Equalities. In the letter the Minister warned the industry that its long time domination by men needed to change. “Companies that can’t see the value that women bring to the workplace are extremely short-sighted as they lose out on talent and skills of half the population. They risk being uncompetitive in a very fast-moving world by not being able to choose from all available employees.”