Not to meddle in someone else's topic, but would it be a good idea to try to intern for a company when you've been a grad student long ago and already have years of experience in another less-related career? Most people tend to connect internships with recent graduates or college students, but I don't know how open companies are to take someone as an intern as a way of transitioning careers.

1. Not to meddle in someone else's topic,
2. but would it be a good idea to try to intern for a company when you've been a grad student long ago and already have years of experience in another less-related career?
3. Most people tend to connect internships with recent graduates or college students,
4. but I don't know how open companies are to take someone as an intern as a way of transitioning careers.

1. Well, you did. So I split it off into a new thread. Please, when you have a question unrelated to an existing thread, just start a new thread instead of hijacking the thread.
2. "Good idea"? I don't know. You can try it, see how it goes.
3. Yes, we do. Never saw an instance of what you contemplate.
4. I don't either. You can try.

I have experience, but not in game programming. My professional work is in web development in PHP. There haven't been any work going my way that involves creating web games, mobile web apps or anything similar. I do personal work to fill the game programming niche.

I applied to a C# Unity programmer job by an undisclosed company, because I have gotten to use C# in my spare time, with XNA at least. Turns out the person representing the job is a recruiter. After looking over my resume and work history, he steered me in a different direction trying to suggest another web developer position for me. I didn't know what to make of that. Making a career change feels like trying to get your first job. Usually I don't prefer to talk to recruiters but he was the only lead into the job and the only way I would ever know what company was hiring.

My gut feeling tells me companies might be skeptical about this approach.
In your situation it seems to be more appropriate to stick to your job and learn in your spare time.

You might want to expand a bit as with c# as your only entry point you're aiming for a really small pool of game companies.
Pick up c++, get yourself some middleware and start cranking out games for iOS/Android.
The first few may suck and not worthy or release even, but eventually you'll get something half decent you can put out and put on your resume.
Now you're in a good spot to start applying for entry level jobs. You can get there within a few months while keeping your current job if you work hard.

I'm stating mobile games specifically here as games on other platforms take too long to develop on your own. Finishing projects is incredibly important.
It's better to finish and completely polish several games than only get the basics done of 1 large game.
(don't make it easy on yourself either, I know how easy it is to just "I'll just embed a webbrowser for the highscores and use PHP". You're doing this for learning purposes)

Don't rely on recruiters. They're not commonly used in the games industry.
They won't get you the connections you need anyways, go after the companies directly.
Yes, it takes more effort. Yes, it's worth the effort.


As for the internship approach. I personally feel you're not ready for an internship either.
Internships are not about learning programming, they're about industry experience.
Companies will expect you to already be sufficiently experienced so you can be somewhat useful as an intern.
They're obviously more forgiving of interns, but they'll still expect a certain amount of skill in game development.

1. Making a career change feels like trying to get your first job.
2. Usually I don't prefer to talk to recruiters but he was the only lead into the job and the only way I would ever know what company was hiring.

1. Yes. It can be. But read FAQ 41. Your biggest problem right now is that you're being pigeonholed. Have you built a great games portfolio yet?
2. Right. Don't bother with recruiters. Look for entry-level positions (sometimes not advertised). I assume you've already dropped the internship idea.

I've decided to skip the internship part and apply for an entry-level job when I'm ready. Skipping recruiters as well, but I just found this one by chance in a jobs forum.

I do know how to program in C++ and have made some smallish projects using APIs such as Direct3D and SDL. So I will try to flesh out the projects that I feel are more worth showing. One job I looked at has a programming test that includes writing and running a program, and that's something I'm going to try out. But since this program alone is about 90% of the work involved for the entire test anyways, I'm assuming this in particular is how they are trying to pick out the best candidates.

Just good luck!

Access, I think you forgot to say what your question was, or make your comment?
I thought the topic had played out when the OP said he'd come to a conclusion.