Possible to get a job with my current game development experience?

So some background - I'm a freshman in community college right now trying to transfer to a university in a couple of years. I have been developing mobile games with Unity and C# since the start of high school. I've made almost everything in my projects from scratch (art and code) except for some plugins and whatnot. I have published a total of 5 full games on the Google Play store that took me at least 4-6 months to finish each. None of the games really got that many downloads until my fourth game. It was a multiplayer game I made with the Photon Unity plugin and has over half a million downloads to date. My 5th game after that was also multiplayer but has only gotten a few thousand downloads so far. I've been working on my 6th game now for almost a year and I'm planning to make it the best thing I have ever made.

I'm really passionate about game developing and design and using art and technology to make my visions come to life. I'm planning on pursuing a degree in graphic communication or liberal arts and engineering studies. I was going to do computer science but I find myself not really motivated because I'm more interested in the art side of things and making art through my coding which is why I want to do a major that combines the arts and technology.

So I guess my question is if it's possible to get a job or internship without having completed my degree yet just solely based on my achievements in game development? And also from what kind of companies? I'm not sure if 'mobile games' is a recognized achievement by many companies because a lot of internships that I have been looking into are things like web development internships and they probably want to see a web development portfolio not a game development portfolio? I'm just worried about my future and I'm really hoping I haven't wasted all these years developing my games when I could have been I don't know... making websites?

 

Nothing that gives you any kind of experience is wasted time. There are different kind of companies that would be interested in many different kind of portfolios. It's a matter of finding the correct one for gaming and even better if it's for mobile gaming. Having at least 1 published game gives you a head start since you already went on the full process. As for if any company would be interested without a degree, that is hard to say and even harder without knowing what country you are targeting for.

I would suggest you to keep on your studies and don't let your current findings discourage you. Look at the other side, you have a successful game with half a million downloads. Just keep at it and you will eventually find a good fit for a job or internship.

 

Generally you need a degree to be hired as a programmer. Other departments like Art and Design and Audio are more about portfolio.

If you're a jack of all trades, then focus on one that you think you're best at to get your foot in the door.

Other than that, just make sure you bring the skills required for the job you are applying for to the forefront of any application. There's not much point telling a potential employer how good your animation skills are when they're looking for a texture artist.

 

I don't really know since I've never worked in the industry (besides a bit of freelancing, although I found that writing pays better for freelancing).

However, shipping a multiplayer game that gets half a million downloads is no mean feat. If I was thinking of hiring somebody, this would definitely factor in in a big way. Without having seen your games, I would certainly think this gives you enough to start taking your CV around.

 

A successfully published game will easily get you in the door at a small game studio. For regular development, it will help, but you probably want to finish your degree.

 

It is possible, however it will entirely depend on quality of your portfolio (games). There is no barrier to publishing games on the play store and virtually no curation. Anyone can do it and they don’t have to be any good. Publishing alone is no indication of ability. If they are impressive enough it could land you an interview.

 

A lot of hiring departments I know don't even use degrees as application filters anymore.

 

The self taught people I have met while they can get things done they often lack the engineer skills you gain from a master of science degree. Off course a master of science degree does not automatically mean they are a perfect match, but I always react when I hear someone that have not studied at a proper higher education. And I know for a fact that many of my colleagues that hire think the same.

 

Most of what gets you in is how you portray yourself, if you are able to portray your achievements in a way that matches what the company are looking for, then you will get a position (assuming you also have the equivalent skill to pass any tests etc).

You could pitch yourself quite easily in an interview as you could talk about your skills and hopefully for an entry level positon you would look like good value for money.

That said, you will be competing against many as this is a very saturated market. You wont be the only developer with a game with half a mil downloads, but you likely will be one of the few without a degree at time of application.

Also, it really depends on the job and what those games are. If the game is a flappy bird clone, you will unlikely get a positon anywhere based on it.

Likewise, if your game is uniquely designed but crappily implemented, you may get an entry level designer job but unlikely any technical role such as a programmer.

And again, if your game is a rip off a design, but well implemented with code you can show, you will struggle to get a design job but may get a technical role.

Ultimately, if you know the job you want and what they want from the applicants, you should be able to align your portfolio and interview "pitch" to what they want and look like a good person to bring on board. If your unable to do that, then it doesnt matter how skilled you are or how many downloads you get unfortunately.

Ive seen a ton of people get jobs alongside me who have no skill but are good talkers. And I have seen people get jobs beneath me who are arguably more skilled than the former, but not good at talking about their skills and portraying themselves.

 

Here we go again. Finish your game and stop bragging about how effing elite you are. Your colleagues are enterprise programmers not game engine mechanics..

 

The industry as a whole depends on where you are located. Where I am, you can easily find development jobs without a degree, provided you have good experience. Which means you need to build your portfolio up.

There will always be people that look down on those without a degree as not being a complete programmer, and you will never be able to stop that. I have been in the industry for 26 years, and while I have a degree, some of the best people I have ever worked with did not have one, and some of the worst people that were absolutely worthless at their job had masters degrees.

 

Definitely not a pattern I experienced in the game industry (and somewhat beyond). Higher academic degrees show up in the corners of BI/analytics/etc but even Sr Eng & Eng Manager tend to be self taught and basic degrees. High degree academic programmers are good for stuff that lacks creativity and not time sensitive. A good buddy of mine Is a Sr. Eng Manager heading up large R&D division at Google, one of the best engineers I know. (one of best many people know). He has fine arts degree in traditional animation. If fact you will find that many of the folks, in those top roles, and well recognized people don't have degrees or advanced degrees because they are older than decent degrees or too busy pioneering instead of trying impress academics. In fact, in my 20+ years professionally I have known only a handful of high degree CS folks, and few of those were high level professionally. Oddly I do know a lot of top engineers with other degrees like art/design/math/etc. (one with MFA in pottery).

 

The best people I know are those with a degree in for example master of science but also are passionate programmers, they have open source git repos etc. 9-5 programmers are never good

edit: hmm, well not degree, most of them got headhunted before they got the degree

 

What happened to them after they became enterprise programmers?

 

Rich?

edit: I dont care what the domain is. The code is whats sexy in any domain. If you make it that.

 

That sounds like something my doctor would tell me to get me to go on a diet.

 

Well... the best people I know are 9-5 programmers (professional)... heads in the top studios, written games you have played, tools you use (ironically, including one of the early key devs of GIT), academy award winners, engine developers (and creators). Few are academics. With the big boys, an advanced degree doesn't count for much unless you are in analytics/BI or narrow band research. In games certainly, a masters is nothing compared to successful shipped games. (or kick ass references). And tech in general, experience/history always trump certs/degrees.

 

Totally agree, but the very best have both experience and higher education. Self thaughts are missing that engineer like approuch to problems etc.

 

maybe engineers are missing that "think outside the box" approach self-taughts have. Application of the scientific method doesn't change how high you go. Once you know how to conduct experiments and minimize human error, what special magic is happening?

What is an engineer-like approach? What is a masters degree engineer doing that a self-learner isn't? Some people are more clever than others, but it seems to me that the cleverest usually don't waste time doing pointless BS like excess schooling (beyond what they need to perform well in their role.) I think the smartest people weigh their unique situations carefully and make decisions based on what they know at the time... and variability will just make it so that some smart people will see the most benefit in finishing school, others will drop out to make money, some will never go in the first place.... but is there any evidence beyond anecdotal experience to suggest top performers in this field have any correlation with high level engineering degrees?

 

In my experience, self-taught programmers are perfectly good at writing code, but struggle with more abstract problem solving. So for example, they can implement a path-finding algorithm with good efficiency to get their units moving in a game, but struggle to understand how such algorithms can be applied to solve problems that don't involve a literal, spatial path (e.g. applying such an algorithm to a GOAP AI). They understand how the code works, but don't really understand how the solution works.

 

in a game environment, what kind of application does that deeper level of understanding have?

and why do you think self-taught professionals lack this certain degree of understanding? If they can make things work without it, would that suggest that that level of knowledge isn't necessary, or redundant?

 

I gave an example involving pathing.

IMHO, because most self-taught programmers learn by taking the shortest route to solve a problem. For example by copying and pasting a solution from Stack Overflow. They adapt the solution to work with their language and code, but don't really understand how the solution solves the problem.

There is also the whole "being lazy as a virtue" thing that causes some developers to avoid spending any more effort then the bare minimum required to solve a problem. I think seeing lazy programming as a good thing is harmful. You should always be looking for an opportunity to improve your skills and understanding, even if that means spending a bit more effort than is strictly necessary to make the program compile.

This is, of course, most certainly not universal. There is no reason a self taught programmer can't gain this deeper level of understanding. All the information is out there on the internet. It just seems to be taught more reliably in higher education.

I imagine a lot of developers work around it by just not working on software they don't have the skill to develop. Not all software requires these kinds of skills. At the end of the day, if you can produce funcional software, you can provide value, and you don't need a degree to do that. But there is plenty of nontrivial software out there that requires developers to solve new problems in original ways. If you can't do it, somebody else will.

 

I think I missed that example because I don't know what GOAP AI means. I guess you meant that any programmer can make basic AI follow a path but you've got to have more than a mental library of solutions to design a new AI system or something along those lines.

Well that was all very illuminating. I guess I could understand how higher education could -- if they are making it a priority -- reliably teach students to understand principles more than memorize solutions, and always strive to do more than the bare minimum.

But really I expect it just comes down to your individual values. Some people just want to get the job done. Others want to get it done as well as possible and then find an even better way after that. Great teachers can do their best to instill that kind of mindset but, I dunno I think it is mostly a matter of personality. JMO of course, but I've spent a lot of time trying to motivate people to do their best and you can usually predict how a persons going to work pretty reliably just from the first impression. In my experience, even in "elite" organizations most people aren't willing to do more than they have to on a usual daily basis.

 

The problem with education is not the content itself, but that it's taught in a way that makes sure you never remember anything about it.

Nobody needs higher education to design an AI system. They would certainly benefit from access to a good textbook (or, if they are willing to trawl the internet, there are a lot of good resources out there, many in the form of educational media and research papers). But in school/university, practical stuff tends to be too basic, and complex stuff tends to be taught in terms of theory and memorization, which is doomed to fail in producing any real or lasting capability.

One really only needs to a) be able to analyze a problem and formulate the right questions and b) learn how to recognize an answer to those questions (which is easy when you've done a) properly). Academia can never teach someone anything close to comprehensive knowledge (not least because there is too much stuff out there) and not least either because it would mean that too many people would find out too quickly that they either aren't interested or are not able to do it, which is not what large parts of academia wants.

It's a shame that things are this way, because academia has a real place for primarily teaching people how to approach problem solving and secondly, providing a way for people to get up to speed on a particular topic. But the first thing is something that a person can teach themselves (though it's hard and requires a lot of self-control and determination to do it alone), and the second requires only a library membership or the ability to find the right information on the internet (or, if you are getting into a job, the ability to listen and learn from a good mentor).

 

my formal education doesn't go beyond alabama public high school -- but yeah it was certainly taught in a way that didn't exactly stick with me. Haha.

In truth, I didn't learn how to learn until I was 26 and moved into the middle of nowhere in Alaska and lived alone off -grid for a couple years. All it takes to just relying on yourself to solve a problem, improvise some solution, and boom, you understand that you can actually learn. All those effing years in school and even in the army I always had this impression that I was just an ordinary dummy... once I learned how to learn, now I don't imagine there is a single thing I couldn't learn if I just put the time into it.

Well, there's another off topic ramble. Stay motivated people.

 

Goal Orientated Action Planning is an AI that works by planning out actions to satisfy some end goal. The problem of planning the actions is very similar to a pathfinding problem, since you are effectively finding the shortest path through actions that reach a goal.

Of course at the end of the day, someone who has no interest in learning anything isn't going to learn anything, regardless of how they go about their education.

 

Ah, I think I actuall watched a GDC overview of something like GOAP. Can't remember hte game but basically enemy AI in a shooter sends out a series of search parameters in order to make decisions about whether to attack, stay put, or fall back. Also some other considerations like what weapon they have versus what they know player to have (or not know.) Also took into account cover and concealment. All this was done just basically the way I did things in the Unity tutorials. Assign tags or layers to things, have something else looking for those things and making a decision based on that. Of course the more rules you got the more you need to keep things smartly organized.

But to me, that doesn't seem like something that requires any special education to figure out. I mean the implementation you got to know your trade but just breaking it down into either/or rules doesn't seem to require any feat of engineering. From perusing thes eforums I get an idea that there is a matter of elegance in code. Whereas me as a beginner would have a massive chain of if:then's a good programmer will reduce and simplify.

Of course, I don't know anything about this stuff so maybe I'm way off or oversimplifying.

 

Special education is not required to do anything. It has just been my experience that people with a degree generally benefit from the more theoretical mindset that tends to come with a formal higher education. A degree does not magically make anyone a good developer, but it still has value.

 

I was just rambling. I'm still bitter against my teachers (well not so much the players, but the game). But thanks for elaborating and teaching me a little more about programmers work.

 

Because someone has a higher degree, doesn't mean that are any good problem solving or creative problem solving. Self-taught doesn't mean they lack anything. Neither is indicative of actual skill set. Also bear in mind that there are differences in the history of the industry. Someone in the last several years, (in games) who is "self-taught" may just be someone who has a limited experience. Someone from 2-3 decades ago (who is professional/current today) is a different story. There wasn't other options. But even then depends on the person. How "good" someone is on paper is irrelevant, solving the problem is all that means anything.

 

From the name of this I was able to figure out what it was and the implications, but I googled to make sure. I read through some breakdowns of the process, and I looked up examples of what I didn't understand. None of what I'm reading in any of this seems to be anything I couldn't easily teach myself if necessary. I have no higher education in programming, I am entirely self taught. You can not become self taught without being able to teach yourself.

 

Its not something you notice yourself, it's we that notice it when we work with you.

 

What does this even mean? You notice that I can expand my skillset?

 

I seldom see it in self taught, its the little things, like doing a logical matrix. Or red/green unit testing, or actually following proper gitflow methodology. Or just design your code on paper. Here is my ballistics penetration logic on paper, often not understandable for anyone else But its a world of difference on the resulting code

 

So?

 

If a company has a specific approach to doing things, it's their job to train an employee in it, not the university's. Everybody has a different idea of what is 'proper' and what's not.

But the real question is, were self taught programmers worse at getting stuff done?

 

Depends on the definition of done. If we do not count values like maintainability etc they get the job done. The feature is implemented no question about that.

edit: Engineer mindsets are not taught at the companies no. (You might pick some up from your higher education colleagues though )

edit: Again though dont get me wrong. There are plenty of engineers that are crap

 

That seems like a question of lack skill to me, rather than the wrong mindset. Even self taught programmers have experienced maintaining their own code.

I meant workflow more than mindset. But I'm not saying academia does not have a role in cultivating an engineering mindset. I'm saying they don't do much of it, and an honest learner can do it themselves if they want to.

 

I can just say that over the 20 years I have been in the software industry and met self taughts I have often seen a attitude and mindset difference. Though here in sweden most have higher education so I have met more bad educated people than self taught, none relatively speaking

 

It may come down to how much a person has been challenged. Whether academia has challenged them or they challenge themselves.

Again, I am doing 3d art, not programming, but one thing I hear a lot from professional artist is that newcomers usually suck at using naming conventions, being organized, delivering work properly with dependencies neatly organized for maintainability by a team, etc. Basic stuff you'd think, but the self-taught basement dweller simply has no circumstance to enforce these kind of habits, unless....they take on a challenging project.

For instance, I am working on a very complex 3d project for the last 6 months, and whether I want to or not there is simply no way to get the project done without being meticulously organized. It would fall apart if it wasn't. So just the fact that I took on a big challenge is forcing me to develop these skills. When I go to some studio, of course they will have their own methodology to conform to, but the understanding is there so nobodies gonna have to bust my balls about that.

I could definitely see how higher education may give people a bigger challenge than they might take on their own. Not everybody wants to voluntarily torture themselves but certainly if they are thrust into a demanding circumstance they'll adapt. And peer pressure is the greatest motivator of all.

 

Is there a "love" button somewhere in this forum I could use? "Like" just doesn't seem to cut it in some cases.

 

You are violating hogwashing regulations. Yer gonna throw that shoulder out patting yerself on the back in such a round handed manner. I do like your Freudian slip misspelling though... "self thaught "and "approuch".. They are a hoot.

 

I don't think the OP is reading this anymore. The poor guy just wanted to know if he was employable...

 

well they got some good discussion about how different people value degrees.

 

HAHA, no I'm definitely still lurking. Not really posting because obviously since I'm the one who asked the question I don't know much myself to be able to contribute effectively, but I'm loving this discussion and I feel like I'm learning a lot listening to all the different perspectives. Thanks for your help and contributions everyone!

 

F***ing autocorrect, if you misspelled it once you need to remove it, which I never do

Well it's my experience with self taughts in the industry over 20 years. They do miss something that you get from higher education. And again higher education is not a guarantee you will be an awesome developer, but combined with a keen interest and passion it does a difference.

I was pretty old when I started my master, 24 years old. And already a experienced self taught developer and entrepreneur . I decided to start studying after the big IT crash in the early 2000s. Do not regret it, very good to combine your partial experience as a self taught with the more theoretical side of academia

 

I dont have a degree, I'm a drop out. Got headhunted

 

Can you clarify which industry you're talking about (I may have missed it). Have you been in the game dev industry for twenty years, or are we talking about something else in this thread now? I'm in crunch mode right now so not keeping up fully.

 

i thought he was an enterprise programmer who came into game dev as a hobby somewhat recently.

 

The software industry, but yeah enterprise business. But it holds to any software.