Hi all,
Im currently doing the second year of my degree course. What i would like to do now is gain some work experience durning next summer between my second and third years (May until the start of september). What I would really like to do is gain experience working for a games company in the US. I would be able to work for free and would be willing to do any work they required from testing to making the coffie! Basically what im looking to do is spend up to 4 months helping out as much as i can somwhere and having somthing to put on my resume at the end of it.
Obviously i am very inexperienced and know quite little about the games industry so i am writing this post to get opinions on the following question;
Is my plan feasible? If I wrote to a lot of companies are any of them likely to take you on as a voulenteer?
Many thanks
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Work Experience
That would be called an internship over here. Some are paid and some are not. The only studio I have heard of having anything like that was Gearbox's Cogs program. Though a quick check of their website doesn't look like they are doing that any more.
Quote: Original post by Mark1989
I would be able to work for free and would be willing to do any work they required from testing to making the coffie!
You want to travel all the way to America to test games and make coffee? Bad idea.
I very much doubt that any US company would be able to get a visa for you to go and work making coffee and testing games. I am sure they can get plenty of local applicants to do that. Especially when they have to go to the cost and effort for just four months.
What you are looking for is an Internship or Work Placement. You will have much better luck if you apply to one of the many UK based developers as they won't have visa issues to worry about. You also need to apply to do work related to whatever it is you are studying for your degree. If you are studying art you need to spend your placement doing art projects - not making coffee. Don't start off by telling them you will work for free and do crap jobs. Phone all the developers you can find, ask if they do placements, and if they do, send a proper application based on what it is you are studying. Leave it to them to tell you if they can/will pay you anything and expect to make the odd cup of coffee while you are there. Just don't start out pitching yourself as worthless or they will likely take someone else instead. Work placement positions are rare. Companies aren't going to waste them on people who are only good for making coffee.
Good luck.
Stick in the UK. There are a good number of game developers in there. It's not like we don't want you here, it's that why go through all the trouble to get a foreigner when there are literally tens of thousands of U.S. students willing to do the same thing.
One option is to get a team together and apply for the Dare to be Digital competition. that ran between June and Aug this year and is fantastic experience.
Quote: Original post by Mark1989There is no such thing as a free worker.
I would be able to work for free ... Is my plan feasible? If I wrote to a lot of companies are any of them likely to take you on as a voulenteer?
Even unpaid internships cost the company time and effort. You will still need equipment and supervision. You will still be a legal liability. You will still be a security concern.
To avoid legal hassles and risks, in the US many companies will still pay interns the federally required minimum wage (or more) and hire interns as an employee or contractor.
Studios don't need volunteers to make drinks. Offer something they actually need. This is probably QA, but can also be script writing, tool writing, or other development tasks.
Quote: What I would really like to do is gain experience working for a games company in the US. I would be ... willing to do any work they required from testing to making the coffie! Basically what im looking to do is spend up to 4 months helping out as much as i can somwhere and having somthing to put on my resume at the end of it.You can try for QA jobs. The hours can be long as projects final, but they are short-term work. Everyone wants to be a game tester (until they realize the work involved), so available jobs are often filled by word-of-mouth advertising and there is serious competition.
If you can't find an internship job, and you don't get a QA job, I'd focus on building a portfolio of games that you can show off. It can at least provide evidence to the employer that you are able to make games.
And as was pointed out, stay local. The supply/demand ratio is bad right now, there is no reason to add the extra complexity of work visas when you can hire unemployed experienced workers at a bargain rate.
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