I must have interviewed hundreds of people as candidates to work on game development teams: producers, designers, programmers, artists, and all the other disciplines that go into developing and supporting a videogame. So what are the qualities you would need to have to be someone I’d actually want to hire? Here are some of the things I look for.

• Skills needed to do the work required for the position. This may seem obvious, but sometimes I receive job applications for an advertise position that do not possess any of the listed skills needed to do the job. Even if it’s an entry level position, I need candidates to have the skills necessary to start work, unless the job posting says that we’re willing to train new hires in those skills.

  So how do applicants demonstrate they have those skills? The ideal way is for them to have a portfolio of work or school examples that illustrate their capabilities. For a programmer, I’d like to see code samples; for a designer, game design documents; for an artist, art samples, and so on. If a candidate doesn’t have sufficient portfolio samples but otherwise looks like a good candidate, I may have him or her create a work sample, take a proficiency test, or talk about relevant experience in school or past jobs.

• Actual experience doing the work they are interviewing for. Creating samples on your own is one thing, but doing it as an assigned task under a deadline and under specified constraints is ultimately what I’m looking for. However, failing having that actual work or school experience, a candidate needs to show that they’ve done any type of assigned work under a deadline.
• Experience working in a team environment. Game development is a team sport, so I want to hear from candidates about any experience they’ve had working with other people to reach a common goal.
• Attention to detail and the desire to do quality work. It is essential to have quality work from each team member for the game as a whole to be a quality work. However, if I receive a resume from a candidate that is poorly formatted and is full of spelling and grammatical errors, it doesn’t tell me that this person cares enough to always present quality work.
• Good communication skills. Game development is all about communication: publisher to developer, team to boss, boss to team, team member to team member, game to customer. If you don’t have good communication skills, both written and oral, you are going to have a hard time working with others.
• Enthusiasm for games and game development. Game developing is hard, hard work, and you’re going to need that enthusiasm to push you past all the obstacles you’ll face. If you’re just looking for a paycheck, there are easier industries to work in.
• Specific interest in the types of projects I am considering hiring them to do. A candidate may be required to work on a single project for many months — even years — and often the days are long. It helps to have a personal interest in the project they are working on.
• A personality that fits in with my management style, the personalities of the rest of the team, and the company culture. This is perhaps the most requirement of all. No matter what skills and experience you have, if you have personality clashes with your manager or team, the entire project will suffer.

As far as normal education goes, I do expect candidates to have some kind of college degree, if only to show they can make commitments to achieving long-term goals and have experience in doing assigned tasks.

When I ask my incoming game students why they want to work in the videogame industry, they usually say it’s because they like playing games (and presumably, they think that making a game mostly involves playing that game all day long). Or, they tell me that they want to make a lot of money. But what is working in the videogame industry really like?

The game industry is growing at a rate four times faster than the general U.S. economy, but as with most other creative professions, there are more people interested in game careers than there are jobs available. So, there is a lot of competition for jobs — hundreds of people my apply for a single job opening.

While the industry overall is growing, fewer AAA games are being made, because the big game publishers are taking fewer risks and relying more on established game franchises. One game industry recruiter told me that there are only about 26 independent students in the world making AAA games. However, there are many other opportunities than AAA work — mobile games, serious games, educational games, online gambling, advertgames, and, of course, indie games.

However, even if you do find a job, it might not last long. According to the IGDA’s 2014 Employee Satisfaction Survey, the average game developer has worked at 4 jobs in the past 5 years. The majority of games do not make a profit, and when a company has a poor year, it may lay off staff or even go out of business. Even the large publishers are not immune to this — an Activision or Electronic Arts may lay off hundreds of people at a time, and then slowly bring on staff as they get new projects started. Most companies, large or small, cannot afford to maintain staff during the time when there are no projects to work on. Staff may also be laid off when a company changes directions (such as focusing on a different platform), since many companies would rather replace people with others with the right experience rather than retrain them.

Now, let’s say you find a position. It’s very exciting at the start of a new project. People are coming up with ideas, and there’s a feeling of shared creativity that binds people together. As the project shifts from a preproduction planning stage to preproduction, more developers may join the project (especially on big project) and days become very busy. Game development is a team sport, and that means that much of the time is taken up with meetings. While it can be great interacting with other team members, there’s always a gnawing frustration about needing to get back to your workstation and get some “real work” done.

As the project’s deadline increases, everyone starts to become anxious about all the work that’s still left to do. There’s a lot of tension in the office, and if the project isn’t well-managed, frenzy too. Often teams will feel the need for (or be forced into) crunch time — overtime involving working 60, 80, or more hours a week to meet the delivery deadline. This is when tempers can flare or mistakes get made. Fortunately, crunch time is not quite as bad a problem as it used to be a few years ago, but it still happens.

Overall, working in game development can be thrilling, but it’s not all fun and games. It’s serious work, with a lot of pressure, and sometimes, disappointment. The pay and benefits can be good, especially if you are working for a well-established studio or publisher, but for many people, there are also periods where you are out of work.

There are a lot easier ways to make a living, and so I can only recommend it as a career if you, like me, can’t imagine doing anything else. You really need to have a devotion and passion for game development to survive in the industry, as well as a strong work ethic and ability to work as part of a team to achieve a common goal.