Question: Can you tell us anything about the interview process at Rainbow Studios?
Mark: Yes I can.
Question: Is it pretty scary?
Mark: It depends on your perspective. It’s actually very similar everywhere. For a non intern position, typically what happens is you make an application through our system. You have to apply online through our system or it doesn’t get into the database and there are issues. So you can’t just send your resume to me because I’ll tell you “no, you have to apply through the whole system”. So it comes through there then the HR / recruiter filters it and sends it to the hiring manager (someone like me) and I look at it and maybe I pass it around to a couple of my tech guys and they say “oh, yeah this guy looks pretty good” That’s the first step.
If you’re local, there is a reasonable chance we’ll bring you in and you’ll have essentially a whole day of interviews. You’ll interview with coders, you’ll interview with designers, you’ll interview with managers, you’ll interview with what could be 15 people over the course of 6-8 hours.
If you’re not local then we’ll probably call you first and you’ll get questions similar to what our programming test has. We’ll ask you about 3D math, we’ll ask you about C++, we’ll ask you these things and see how you do. If you get by that, then we’ll fly you to our location and we’ll do the same thing, the 6-8 hour on-site interview.
Question: What is the best thing you can do when trying to apply for a position in the game industry?
Mark: The best thing you can do is get solid technical skills, essentially programming - C++, graphics, whatever you want to do though. Could be graphics, AI, UI or physics – there is a spectrum of stuff. Being a skilled programmer is your best chance of getting in.
People have a hard time getting top technical talent and retaining top technical talent. So if you are top technical talent you will have opportunities at different locations in the country. We want the best coders just like anybody else. The trouble is entry level positions don’t open as often as I’d like them to. This is a bad time in the industry. If you look at the job listings right now you’ll see senior this and that or senior so and so. Has to have shipped atleast 2 titles. All this kind of stuff. And it’s a little bit discouraging but your still best chance is to be a good coder, have a good demo, have a good resume, have a good cover letter, be able to talk and answer questions on all of this kind of stuff I’ve been talking about. You know C, C++, matrix / 3D math, calculus, some understanding of physics wouldn’t hurt anything.
Question: Are there usually any open positions for writers or story boarders in the game industry?
Mark: I usually say the writing position is probably the hardest job to get in the industry because usually, what happens is, a lot of the designers themselves will have writing skills. So if the game needs some writing a designer will do it. You can be a free lance writer and you can sometimes get script writing jobs for games such as, for example, we did some games based on the movie Cars. In working with Pixar, they are really concerned about their property, about their characters, about their story line and that’s what’s really what most important to them. They could care less really about the game play. They want their characters to show well, their worlds to show well, to be consistent with the universe they’ve created. So we had to write a script for our game for this. However, we happened to have a guy who is a designer who is also a script writer by trade on our staff. So he wrote the script.
So that’s why it’s hard to get a job as a writer because so many people can do some writing on the side and a lot of games don’t require a lot of writing. Sometimes you’ll get a big ticket property or a game based on a movie that might require some sophisticated writing but I wouldn’t hold your breath for writing jobs in games – it’s tough.
As far as story boards go, that’s more of what I consider a concept art kind of position where your basically a 2D artist an illustrator almost. We have a concept group – I think it’s 4 guys right now. Positions there come open every now and then. As you can image there is a lot of applicants because the technical skill required is not that high. It’s basically drawing, right? I joke that those guys have the best job in the company because all they do is sit there and draw all day long. They don’t really have to deal with the technical restrictions of the platform. They’ll do things like posters, a lot of 2D illustrations, backgrounds, that kind of stuff. They’ll do a lot of concept art which is where you’re trying to get an idea of what things look like. So the art director works directly with them trying to come up with the color, the shapes, the forms, and just the environment so to speak.
As far as story boards go, we do some of those, but again it’s going to be picked up by some of the artists on the team that have big varied backgrounds. So you can’t just come out and say “I’m a story board artists give me a job”. Really as an artist, the best thing is to have good 3D skills and really as much technical as possible.
To be continued...
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