This week I will be playing a little catch up, I feel behind on my blog due to school as well as person life and I am terrible sorry about that.
Networking is a very important part to any career, but more so in the video game industry. Networking is how you are able to get wind of new jobs as well as getting your foot in the door. In the past getting a job heavily relied on your experience, well this is true but with social media growing so fast you are recommended to be active in a social community and normally some game board. Now when I mean a game board, I mean a video game's online forum, posting relevant and constructive comments. For me I have been pretty active on Red 5's game forum, FireFall.
You can find me on there as "Shift`", feel free to add me!
Now back to forums and networking, well-being on a game developer’s
forum gives you a limited way to contact the development team. I use the term
limited because they are not required to use the forum or to respond to you.
But it is a great way to connect with other gamers like your-self, and maybe just maybe catch the eye of a developer. This is one way to start your own connections; another is to attend game conferences and community events. These are normally gold mines for business cards, but just getting a business card doesn't mean that they are okay with you contacting them; it's just a formality really. Which means that you should go out and get business cards of your own! Be sure to include your name, email, and a link to your portfolio. Which I will go ahead and cover in the next post.
Well, I'm gonna go over my word limit here but... As promised here is my LinkedIn profile:
Unfortunately, my connections were not comfortable with giving their contact information open on the web but I can make specific contacts if requested.
So just a recap for next time we will cover the basics of portfolio making as well as a special request about the process of actually creating level design documents and what programs to use to draw out the designs.
Networking is so, so important not only for prospective designers and what-not trying to break into the field, but also for companies trying to keep in touch with their user base. A great example would be Riot Games of League of Legends. They frequently are in touch with their players on major forums. Here they find out what people like and don't like about their game as well as bugs and issues. Networking is a fantastic way to keep in touch with the gaming world on both sides of the screen.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree! I actually had a case in which I was offered a job as a forum moderator for being so active on the forums as well as bein up todate on information and friendly to the rest of the users. I actually ended up meeting the VP of development from the same kind of thing!
DeleteI also have had positive experiences with networking when using the forums on different gaming websites. Before I even started PC gaming, I was taught how to make my gaming pc just by communicating with the community and the game dvelopers. I have also noticed a rise in developers responding to their customers on forums and sometimes giving advice on how to get into the video game industry.
ReplyDeleteI have also received help from online communities, I was having issues finding some web hosting for my personal website while I was working on a community server and ended up being given a free cloud account on an unlimited UK cloud server. It's amazing what people will do for you if you help them!
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