And did you specifically ask them? No one has ever asked me that question, despite knowing my passion for game development.
I wouldn’t have asked Hodgman had I met him. How do you know?[/quote]

Do you not converse with people? When you work in games it is common to talk about games. I talk to artists and programmers about all kinds of tech, hobby stuff etc. I know what people have done in the past by talking to them.

How many engineers have you met that are really passionate about making games?[/quote]
At a game company? All of them.

Do you not converse with people? When you work in games it is common to talk about games. I talk to artists and programmers about all kinds of tech, hobby stuff etc. I know what people have done in the past by talking to them.

At a game company? All of them.

I wish I had coworkers like that. I don’t even have any gaming friends, coworkers or not (and yes I work at a game company).
But perhaps I soon will.


L. Spiro

Certain companies will hire you based off mostly your modwork, and possibly, based on the mods you have developed using their technologies.

I remember Todd Howard (Bethesda) and John Carmack (ID) expressed that it was a very efficient way to get noticed and catch their attention.



That said, other companies won't really care about your mods.
It all depends what they are looking for.



Chances are if you're interested in modding, do it, and find a company that likes it, because, that means your daily job may feel like modding there (they are using an in-house engine of some kind or something like that).


Don't go against your nature as a developer, otherwise, "breaking in" won't be as rewarding as it seems if you don't enjoy it.

Just want to point out that several major Valve games were created by hiring mod teams: Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Garry's Mod were all external mod teams hired into the company.

I don't know any engineers that actually modded a game.

I don't know any game programmers that hasn't modded a game at some point. (Modding doesn't in any way require that you create large scale mods for the general public)

I can definitly understand that many don't bother working on public mod projects (Why should i improve the work of my competitors or work on a project where all the fun technical challenges have allready been solved ? (This is also why i'm not using a third party engine for most of my game projects, i enjoy solving the lower level and architectual problems, even if my solutions are less than optimal, I still play around with pretty much every tool i can get my hands on just to see how others have done things)) but i can't see how it is possible for anyone with the least bit of interest in games and programming to play a game like for example SC2 and not take the editor and scripting system for a little joyride just to see how they did things. (Doesn't your engineer friends have even the tiniest bit of curiosity in them ?)

If you want to go the route of game/level design then modding is definitly a very viable way into the industry, For programmers more (a degree for example) is usually needed but it can be a very solid portfolio addition. (Being able to work with other peoples code is an extremely valuable skill to have)