Does anyone work at a gaming company that can tell me about the pitfalls of working on the non-development side?
The reason I ask is that I am interviewing with a big name gaming company to work in an IT analyst type of role. The job itself sounds right up my alley, but I have two concerns. One, the only games I play are Words With Friend and sometimes Solitaire and Mah Jong so not exactly the stereotypical gamer. The second, is gender - everything I’ve read talks either about men or the attempts to find women programmers. A quick LinkedIn search shows me that women do work for this company so I wouldn’t be the first, but I don’t want to land myself in an ocean of misogyny. Honestly, I think the fact that I am not a gamer is a bigger concern than my gender… Thoughts
Wizards of the Coast talks pretty openly about how their Games are designed and developed and one thing they have discussed is about how they make use of people who work for the company but are unfamiliar with the product to get the opinions of inexperienced players so I would imagine it is not that unusual for someone to be working there with not much gaming experience.
I’ve never worked at a gaming company but I suspect that, whatever your role, you may be asked for feedback on games in development, participate in focus groups or do game testing.
I would venture to say that it has no bearing on your job.
As long as your job isn’t surrounding the gaming itself, then it doesn’t matter if you do or do not play their games, as long as you do your job well.
Although the more important question is: What’s the game company, where are they located, and when can I start?
I’ve worked for a number of large game publishers over the years. I can pretty much guarantee that you won’t be the only non-gamer working there. These companies look for experienced gamers when they’re hiring developers, or designers, or QA. HR? Sales? Facilities? Not so much. The worst worry you have there is some boring lunch breaks where the only thing your co-workers want to talk about is Call of Duty 10[sup]10[/sup].
As for games being an ocean of misogyny, well, a lot’s going to depend on the corporate culture of where ever you end up, same as any other job. I’m a guy, so I don’t exactly have direct personal experience to share, here. But I’ve also never worked at a gaming company where casual sexism or misogyny was considered okay. I’ve been in a lot of meeting rooms with only guys, and nobody ever took that as an excuse to start demeaning women.
In my past, I’ve interviewed with a couple of “gaming” companies.
In both cases it turned out to be online gambling; the “gaming” description was, I suppose, some form of ruse to pretend that they were not in the very ethically dubious business of ripping off the rubes.
As I have little in the way of ethics, I took both jobs, and they put me in a good place professionally: online gambling, like porn, needs to be on the cutting edge of innovation and security because the competition is so fierce. I learnt a huge amount.
As for gender: female developers are rare in any dev industry; but there was a 50/50 mix of employees across the board in the bigger company. I (as a male) didn’t notice any sexism levels greater than the average office.
You’re in a non-games-related role. My Dad was the Purchaser for a hospital for 15 years and didn’t know a word about medicine; he did pick up a few things, such as that a bag full of lentils is a good, flexible weight to help women recover from childbirth. Before that, he worked in an electronics manufacturer; again, he did learn to tell a capacitor from a resistor, but he learned it on the job.
I’m in an IT firm and our “IT guy” (the one who provides computers for everybody else) knows how to set up a network and which specs to aim for, but there is no reason for him to know a thing about ATM programming, ERP systems or how to interface Salesforce with the IR guns. All of these are things other people in the company does, not him.
My guess, based on zero experience except reading the stories (not the comics) here: http://trenchescomic.com/, is that the biggest problem might be a corporate culture that assumes everyone is just dying to work for a game company, so the company can get away with treating their workers horribly --particularly the workers without clear creative talent.
Make sure they’re willing to pay you in real money and benefits.
Thanks everyone. The feed back here and from a few gamer friends has me feeling better.
Some industries are more insular than others, and to me, the gaming industry appears to be that way.
I am going for my onsite interview soon, and then I will decide if the job is worth the relocation.