Game studios want you have to have commercial game experience before you apply.  You can’t get commercial game experience without working at a game studio.  What do you do?

First, there are other options.  It’s not as hopeless as it seems.  Most of these ideas came from a couple of friends of mine that are in the games industry already.  I’m sure they’ve all been published on the internet before; I’m going to share how I intend to approach the problem as well.

One option is to write your own game, in your off time, and market/sell it.  It’s critical to sell the game, or at least attempt to, since that requires a higher level of polish and completeness than giving the game away.  Showing that you can manage a game from inception through to maintenance shows your dedication to the industry.

Another option is to join a studio as a non-games dev.  Join as the tools dev.  Or join a team that works with game teams, but isn’t actually producing games.  The idea here is to get closer to the studios, so you can get to know folks, and learn more about the game development process.  If you do get one of these jobs, make sure you are networking with the devs and managers, all the time.  You should also be doing everything you can to learn more about game development.

My approach is going to be to do all of these in parallel.  I wrote a game once, an asteroids clone, and it was ok. I wrote it in Managed DirectX, which has gone away, replaced by the XNA Framework and XNA Game Studio.  I’m going to rewrite the game in C++, using DirectX10, and then port it to XNA, and the XBox.  I’m going to use the XNA Indie Games channel as a sales/marketing channel, and I’m going to market the windows version separately. 

If I were doing this strictly as a business, I would skip the C++ version, and just make the XNA version work well on both XBox and Windows.  Since I’m primarily doing this as a way to show my games development chops, I need the C++ version to exist.  It’s going to be headache maintaining two completely different versions, but that is life.

In addition to my game, I’m going to write several other ‘games’ that highlight a specific area or technique.  For instance, my first one is going to be used to study shadowing and lighting.  I’m going to generate a terrain, and then model the sun and moon, and their light.  I will have realistic shadows, which move when the sun & moon move.  This should help me learn about shadows and lighting, and can only help my appeal to a games shop.

The last thing I’m doing is applying for those tools dev and other game-related jobs.  In fact, I have an informational in 30 minutes (from when I’m writing this, not when it gets posted) with a team who works closely with game devs, even though they don’t write games.  I think it’s an excellent opportunity to get closer to the industry, and meet a bunch of folks that could help me out for my next position.

Wish me luck :)