I make games for a hobby and find that the skills I've learned can be useful in my day job but I never thought that they would actually help me get a job.
I’ve been a mechanical engineer for 14 years and have been looking for a new job and a change of industries and recently had a second interview where I had to give a presentation of my achievements. During the first interview I had already done a kind of mini-presentation of my prior work so decided to do a presentation on my hobby of making video games, focusing on my game Purple Complex.
I started by talking about the game in very broad terms and then narrowed it down to some very specific details of how the enemy artificial intelligence behaves. I also talked about creating and animating CGI models but stopped short of demonstrating the sound effects as I didn’t think it would be appropriate to fill the meeting room with the sound of gunfire.
I finished the presentation by listing what I think of as the key skills that are required to make a game: imagination, problem solving, ability to learn, planning, dealing with critique and feedback, determination and motivation – which I think is a pretty good set of skills to cultivate.
This was a risk, it could have all gone horribly wrong and I hate doing presentations, but I’d put a lot of effort into the presentation and spoke with confidence and clarity. I was pleasantly surprised that the technical director was genuinely interested in the process and impressed at the effort as he had no idea of what was involved in making video games.
I was offered the job and accepted.
