(Being part 2 of this)
So how do you prepare yourself for working in the games industry? Get in good habits, like these…
Professionalism: The Basics
Forgive me if these tips seem obvious to you but the world of work really does seem to take some people by surprise.
The Team Comes First
The most basic difference between professional game development and university or school is that in academia, it’s not your job to make sure everyone else in your class gets a First or an A.
It’s that simple. It’s a convoy, not a race. It’s not a competition you’re trying to win, you’re working WITH your colleagues to engineer a win for the team.
If you’re only looking out for yourself, if you put your own work ahead of the success of the project, you won’t last long.
Learn To Manage Yourself
This is probably the most important thing: learn to make a thing as a team, organise your time properly, and Finish It. If you can’t manage your deadlines and budgets, they’ll manage you, and that’s not a good place to be.
Leaving work until just before the deadline is for amateurs. Stop doing that NOW, or you’ll be replaced by the people who can organise themselves.
Also, it’s just less work, more efficient, and less drama. Go easy on yourself. And doing the work is always less stressful than thinking about doing the work. I hate starting things. I love having finished them.
If you can do a thing straight away, do it straight away. That way you can’t forget, and you won’t waste energy stressing that you haven’t done it.
Stressing about a thing always takes more mental energy than actually doing it.
Also “Not Choosing Yet” is a choice, it just doesn’t feel like one. Try to make active choices in your life. Don’t let stuff just happen to you.
If In Doubt, Raise A Hand
Also —crucially — if you’re blocked on a task and/or going to be late, you have to be honest with your manager and tell them ASAP. Ideally flag up the potential issue well before the deadline. This is a good thing!
Your managers are there to help you succeed. The last thing they want is you stressing and being afraid to look incapable and suffering in silence when you’ve actually been given an impossible task. If nothing else, that makes them look bad. You are in this together. Prompt communication is key.
They want this.
Not this.
Learn to Prioritise
You need to work out what’s Urgent and what’s Important, and prioritise. If something is easy or fun, but neither Urgent nor Important…you need to not do it.
This took me years to learn and I’m still struggling to accept it: you can’t MAKE time. There are only 24 hours in a day. You certainly can’t MAKE time and maintain any sort of work-life balance.
You can only TAKE Time: choose to leave something undone so you can do something else.
You need to Triage your tasks, make active, conscious choices about what’s high priority, lower priority and what you’re not going to do.
Break down big things into smaller, manageable tasks. Working out what you need to do is as important as getting it done. Ask for help. How do I turn this into a problem I can solve?
I urge, I beseech you, please start using productivity apps for your personal and professional admin. I use Trello. Find what works for you, and use it for everything.
Project Management Tools
I’ll let you in on a secret. No game is better than its Producer. Developers are relatively easy to find. Really good Producers are worth their weight in gold.
Organising Developers and scheduling projects is one of the hardest jobs our species has devised. Production and project management is the highest form of game development.
It’s a huge topic, crammed with jargon, but You Will Need To Know About This Stuff.
Learn just a little bit about the main production methods: Agile, Scrum, Lean, and Waterfall. Try them out for yourselves on your own projects. If in doubt, just use Trello.
Behaviour
How many of you have worked in a professional environment of any kind? It’s worth getting used to.
However much game studios claim to be laid-back cool hang-outs, a studio is a place of work, not a place to hang out. And you need to be able to work in a way that doesn’t stop anyone else from working well. Different studios have different energies, levels of formality, most pretty informal. But that actually makes it harder to tell how to behave. Lawyers, Doctors, Nurses, Hospitality Staff get taught how to behave professionally. Game Developers, not so much.
Main rule: Don’t be an arsehole. You don’t need to love everyone on your team, but you need to work together and understand what they’re going through. You absolutely will cross paths with them again in the future.
Empathy is key. Remember, it’s not “you vs them”, it’s “you and your teammate vs the problem”. Managers notice and promote people who demonstrate this mindset. The brilliant individuals who nobody wants to work with? Not so much.
A place of work is not a YouTube comments section. It might be significantly more or less diverse than you’re used to. Either way, as part of your professional development, you may need to change the way you behave and interact with people, online and off. If this isn’t a thing you’re willing to do, studio game dev is not the right career for you.
Studios are increasingly aware that you can teach skills, but toxic personalities ruin teams and drive off talent.
A big thing is to realise that it’s not you who gets to define what offends or disturbs people, and your intentions don’t matter, but the impact of your words and actions does. It’s just basic manners, really.
So learn what’s appropriate behaviour, because Edgelord Bants can get you fired. UK Employment Law and your first employer’s HR department take this stuff very seriously indeed, and you should too.
Pillars!
I didn’t understand why publishers and producers kept banging on about what a game’s Creative Pillars were. I wish I’d paid more attention. Pillars are vital. They’re how you keep everyone making the same game.
Understand them, and shape your work to them, or someone else will shape your work, un-gently. They’re the reason your work might get cut from the game. In small teams try to have a hand in defining them. If people can’t communicate what your project is and isn’t, they don’t understand it, and they’ll waste your work finding out.
Design Debt
Look up the term “Design Debt”. It will come to haunt you. Bwahaha.
Timekeeping
Don’t ever be late. Not ever. I mean, stuff happens, if it’s a one-off, or there are Actual Reasons, people will understand. But if you’re always late because you just can’t be bothered, it disrespects other people, and it shows you don’t take yourself seriously either.
Make it your business to turn up, on time, at the start of the work day, returning from lunch, for every meeting, every day, and do the best work you know how to do, and work on getting better at it.
Kip Timing
Key to this is getting enough sleep. Boasting of how you stayed up is for kids. Adults need to get stuff done in the morning. No screen time after 10PM. OK, 11. Midnight? You will thank me later. Also, a great hack is to lay out tomorrow’s clothes and bag the night before.
One less thing to think about.
Taking Notes
You’ll be in lots of meetings. You won’t remember it all. Always take notes. Write it all down, and learn to take better notes. On your phone or your laptop or just have a pen and a notepad. I use index cards in a bulldog clip so I can carry them everywhere and easily hand info over as a physical object.
It’s taken me a long time to realise I take better notes by hand than typing. I don’t know why, but writing a thing down creates understanding, and jogs the memory better than typed words on a screen. I re-read my notes, add in any additional thoughts or bits I missed, then take a photo with my phone and back it up. Instant digital back-up AND visual cue.
Taking Feedback
This is a big one. Don’t take it personally. Your ideas don’t matter. Hold them lightly. They’ll change, evolve, and get thrown away. Everyone’s work is going to get binned, and iterated on. It goes with the job. And, like it or not, every bit of criticism is an opportunity to improve.
Deadlines
Your job is to do the best job you can by the deadline. If you’re a perfectionist, or a slow worker, this can drive you frantic. Your goal is to iterate, not get it perfect the first time. You’ll have to get used to not having enough time to do as good a job as you’d like.
Structuring the Team
This won’t be your job for a while, but it’s worth considering why studios place such emphasis on clear chain of command, org charts, and RACI matrices so everyone knows who’s doing what and who signs off on what.
Acquire stamina
Have you worked a full-time job before? Is 9–5, or more, more hours than you’re used to working at a time? If you don’t already have a temporary and/or part time job, maybe try familiarising yourself with that tempo and the world of work in general. You’ll need the money, and you’ll learn lots about yourself by working with and for other people.
If you can afford to do so, I highly recommend doing voluntary work outside the games industry. You’ll learn more than you realise.
Personal Hygiene
Wash your clothes every week, shower every day, wear antiperspirant, and, seriously, not too much deodorant or perfume. A cloud of Lynx isn’t much better than BO.
Little Things
Learn To Cook, Learn To Bake. You’ll save money and it’ll pay off big time with your co-workers.
Learn the keyboard shortcuts.
Learn Shift + Arrow keys to select text for cutting and pasting, and the Shift + Control + Arrow keys, as well as the Home and End keys to highlight word by word and line by line.
Communicate in Person, or via Email?
Yes. Both. People are busy, their Inbox is piled high. Go talk to them in person. THEN write up the conversation you just had, so there’s a paper trail. If you don’t feel confident talking to people senior to you, write down your points first and be brave. It’s a lot easier than you think.
Have one smart outfit
Whoever you are, whatever your body shape, find someone you trust who understands clothes and ask them to help you get something smart that looks good on you. It’ll be good practice asking for help from seniors and experts on your team.
Whether it’s brand new or from a charity shop, have one smart outfit that Really fits, not one that Nearly fits. You can get alterations done at a dry cleaners, it’s cheaper than you think. You’ll look great in it, and one day sooner or later you’ll need it to wear to award events.
OK, so what about these Secret Missions…
