How I escaped from the wrong industry

Details: By Andrés Urrutia; 27.Jan

I always wanted to work at a games studio, but it's tough to achieve it for your first job... or the second... or... In Mexico it's quite a challenge to get into the videogames industry especially because it's just starting to be a thing, and just to clarify, I'm talking about solid studios with their own published games and/or collaborations in international games.

Anyway, I'm not writing this to discourage you, by the opposite, I hope this article helps out all of those people that technically do what they like but in the wrong industry, for example a 2D artist that makes characters, but works for an enterprise's internal communication instead of working for a games or tv series studio, or a game designer who designs marketing mini-games limited by their client's desires and branding guidelines, or like I was, a Unity developer who makes boring stuff for training and educational purposes. When you are in this situation you live a bittersweet life, on the one hand you do what you like and what you are good for, so you are comfortable, but on the other hand, you don't actually enjoy it, and I don't know if you agree but for me joy is everything when it comes to that thing you spend most of your time.

How did you ended up there?

6 years ago I graduated with a (sort of) degree in videogames, at that time I had a part-time job of other nature and I lived with my parents, so I wasn't too rushed to get a job, I took my time to look for a good oportunity, and almost 5 months later there it was, a friend and former collegue of mine messaged me because her boss was looking for a Unity developer, it was curious because I didn't learn Unity at school, anyway I said yes and started watching tutorials, I wasn't that crazy I did know basics of POO and made games with other software such as UE4 and the good old Flash (now called Animate). Anyway that's how I got my first job, it was a startup company (now dead) that used to make marketing mini-games for people to install it and contest for prizes, we also made small AR interactions.

After a year and a half I switched to a company that makes VR for training and educational purposes, then I met constant burnout, eternal crunch time and the most toxic environment I've ever seen (in person at least), but this is not a horror story (I can write about it at another time hehe), so I stayed there for almost 3 years, despite everithing I ended up in a good position, I was an engineering lead, project manager and scrum master at the same time, the problem (besides the incredibly low pay) was that I got stucked, professionally speaking, there was no one who I could learn from, I'm starting to sound cocky, but it was true, this company only hired juniors, and when someone who grabbed some experience left, they would recplace them with a recently graduated junior, again, nothing bad about hiring juniors, but balance is important, so I needed to keep growing as a developer, and also I wasn't happy, I was in a confort zone (at that time I felt I was, but nobody should feel confortable there) and I was passively letting go my dreams of working at the videogames industry. My now fiance encouraged me to keep dreaming, I'm so greatful with her for that because for the first time in years I felt motivated again to look for opportunities.

Then you applied and got your job at a videogames studio, right?

Nope, at first I tried to apply for jobs at canadian studios, I applied to Ubisoft, EA Games, Next Level Games, Behaviour Interactive, among others. Now that was crazy, of course I got slapped on the face by reality, one of those studios actually replied and sent me a technical assessment, which I failed, so that was it. I was underestimating the mexican studios, I thought they were at the same level as the company I was working on, I couldn't be more wrong. Then I started applying to mexican studios, I got one failed interview but this time I wasn't giving up. Next I started investigating how the industry works, what technical skills I'm lacking, I dusted off UE4 and began to practice, then I updated my demo reel and my resume to highlight stuff that would matter to a recruiter of the videogames industry. Also I looked into my contacts and found that I had 3 of them working on videogames studios, I contacted them all, sent them my stuff and 2 of them got me an interview.

So, I got interviews, I had to get prepared, I practiced more, saw more tutorials with more advanced stuff, tried to read articles about good practices, and why not, practiced my english. I had the first of those interviews, tried not to be nervous, answered the technical questions, they aked me to share an experience in english, I did, then some soft skill related chatter and they told me "thanks, we'll get in touch". Well, I felt I did good but I couldn't tell by their verbal language if it was enough, but I remember they told me that I should get contacted next wednesday if my application goes to the next phase. I got back to my job, monday, tuesday, wednesday... and nothing, I felt horrible, haven't you got that feeling? Like when you lose the hope of leaving soon and have to get back to your misserable job for an undefined amount of time or until you get another chance? Well it hurts but I still had the hope on that second prospect so I tried to carry on. Then the next day, thursday, I finished my job activities (we were doing home office due to the pandemic) so I closed Unity, opened UE4 and kept practicing for a while, then I get a desktop notification from an email with the title "Following up with your application", I froze, I didn't know what to expect, because it could be a "thank you very much" email, but this time the luck merged with my efforts and the email was for actually continuing with my application, that was one of the happiest days of my life, I ran to wake up my girlfriend and she was pissed because I woke her up, but very happy for me.

I accepted that job offer and now I'm working there for almost 3 years and I am still as happy as the day I started, because lucky me, besides being a solid company nationwide, it's also a really good place to work, I'm now an engineering lead, I have awesome teammates, awesome bosses, a lot of people I learn from every day and now the pride of having my credits on a published game.

By the way, that second interview... that was funny, they called several months later when I was already at this job, but I'm very thankful with my friend for getting it.

Ok, cool story, how does it help anyway?

Like I mentioned at some point, I was in a confort zone, and that can happen to a lot of people, but maybe you or other people can relate to this story and grow again the strength to go chase their dreams, because believe it or not, it's not an easy call. Other than inspiration I want to help through this website, I'll write more articles about both technical and soft skills and hope that what worked for me works for you as well, for now I can tell you to go update your portfolio and/or demo reel, then look if you know someone inside the industry that can provide you feedback and if they are willing to help, send them your stuff, it they are not from your discipline you could ask them to show it to a collegue.

Another important thing is to choose your area of specialtity, most studios hire specialists over generalists. For my next articles I'll write about programming specialities and how to make a good portfolio, I'll try to cover more disciplines with the help of my friends, so thank you for reading and stay tuned for more tips.