Being Pro at Being a Noob

[Music] all right it's probably right about time to get started so let's go ahead and uh and do that how's everyone doing today so good right yeah you made it it's friday you're still alive you should be proud right um hopefully we'll do you proud as well i'm roger altizer i'm moderating this panel with actually talented people um it'll start with introductions going from my right hi my name is rachel leicher i am the uiux lead at hard suit labs hey i'm chris i'm a content designer on the world of warcraft team at blizzard hi i'm viviane wong i'm a technical designer at atwat as i call it andrew witts i'm leading multiplayer modes and systems uh at 343 industries you guys announced the game last night didn't you rachel we did bloodlines too thank you everyone you know it's a good game when you get another one all right so um introductions let's talk real quick about that so you

all have these great jobs how did you get to bu let's do a real short one on that uh my background is in marketing and sort of content design and really i just kind of got bored with that so i decided to look into ui ux i went to school i got my master's degree at the university of utah entertainment arts and engineering program and from there i sort of stumbled into a few jobs indy programs things like that and then landed my first real gig at boss key productions via networking and then moved to seattle and applied out of the blue for hard hard suit um and landed that gig so um i actually started off doing games press early on for a couple different websites one of them was destructoid many years ago for about a year and then i'd always wanted to get into game development so the cards kind of aligned i went to digipen uh got a bachelor's there did a couple internships uh went at blizzard on wow and uh one at

bosque as well i turned into like a full-time gig ship lawbreakers rest in peace and then now i'm back working on wow blizzard hey chris how'd you fall into those internships people always ask me um so when i was in my junior year at uh digipen um we were all sort of hustling to try to figure out like how we were going to get real big boy game design jobs uh after we graduated so uh my team and i we all just started kind of working together to put out as many applications as we could i also was attending gdc tried to talk to as many people as i could um i think it's helpful to try to sneak into parties if you can and you don't know anyone just um you know don't be afraid to to make friends while you're standing in line even though you know you don't have the invite um and uh that that actually did work out um for me uh but your your mileage may vary so be careful um and then same thing for boss key is uh

i just kind of applied for the internship got a design test back um i did everything i could to like research uh the role i wanted to go for and um and it managed to work out okay sweet sweet yeah so i went to uc santa cruz's program for game design and nice that's a great program right it's pretty good it's very cs focused so that's kind of the background i come from i struggled a little bit to get a job in the industry i kept coming back to gdc though as a volunteer and eventually i got a design test out of that and kind of became a content designer and then a level designer and then a tutorial designer and now i'm a technical designer that's a lot of designer roles yeah for me uh i pretty much was making games uh on my own i'd have got i have a bachelor's in creative writing uh which is uh which was great it helped me kind of think uh differently from from umass amherst uh and um

i kind of was uh working in startup tech in boston and uh while making games on the side and learning how to program a bit more and uh finally i was a digital uh media specialist and i just really wanted to make games professionally i just like really want to make games my hope is that somehow i would end up making games professionally through being a digital media employee didn't really see that immediately i was just so hungry to kind of make my own games and get paid for them the dream uh and uh i went to uh university of utah at the eie program and i was there for about a year and i was hired by ubisoft after a year and that was just four that was the year of making five games simultaneously and i ended up getting my first uh gig as an internship at ubisoft montreal and then uh joined the uh rainbow six siege team when it was just starting up yeah i've heard of this game yeah yeah

awesome so we also want to talk not just about breaking in but what it's like to have a successful early career so rather than talking about like how you built your portfolio and got a job i'd like to talk about how your portfolio is now and what it does for you uh vivian you want to lead us off on that uh yeah so i have a very minimalist portfolio uh i basically just have my website and it has the four most recent games i've worked on my role what technologies i use to make those games and a brief description of the game i usually try and fit in a video that's about it i like it right nice and small yeah it's it's very i try to basically create as less the least amount of friction as possible so people can really just high level get an idea of my skills and what games i've worked on no i actually think it's right i am never happy with my portfolio i am never happy i feel as though even if i like just nailed it and i'm like yeah this is me i'm just always like this is not at all me at the same time um it's just

i don't know i i'm always struggled uh with kind of assembling my work and kind of showing it off because especially design showing off the different stages and different things it's kind of a really difficult thing to do because you kind of end up talking about it and gdc ends being really great spot to kind of do that we all kind of travel here to hey how did you do this thing how did you make this experience how are you thinking about things and uh you kind of want to do that in portfolio across the board it's like what is your process and and stuff and i feel as though it's uh it's hard to do that in a snapshot for me so i kind of struggle to make them and best practice i kind of do is just start from the finished part and work the way it worked my way back which is kind of different from how you see things where you go from your original idea and see how you failed till you got that thing uh so it's kind of an inverse thing for me i kind of helps me i still struggle with them though i don't know if i'll ever kind of like be like yeah i'm an expert at portfolios right yeah fair enough i was kind of in the um in the same boat a bit too and like we actually had an assignment in school it was just like build a portfolio i'm like hmm i i don't know that i've ever seen

really like what a design portfolio looks like not sure how to structure that started asking people like hey what do you look for in a design portfolio got a lot of like that's a good question what do we look like we'll look for in a design portfolio so like clearly like i was lost people that were like hiring for the roles were also like unclear on what uh advice to offer so i started thinking about like i don't even know what an interview is like for a design position oh god like i'm out of my depth what do i do um so i i kind of um structured my portfolio as like uh um like what how would i want to experience an interview like if i can give someone content to basically like have questions to ask me that i i've already thought like answers through for um then that's how i wanted to set my portfolio up so i just kind of put like all my digital analog games writing whatever that i thought was relevant um kind of set it up into different categories and i've never actually culled any of my work from the portfolio so i like to

have my home page sort of set up as like a linear progression of like here's where i was like x amount of years ago versus like my most recent shipped products and i kind of try to include some stuff that yeah yeah problems i solved so if i if i get asked about him like i'm not floundering to uh come up with things to talk about um i like flounder portfolios and social media yeah so social media can actually enhance your portfolio experience quite a bit because you can uh shoot out your your pieces in a very succinct manner and people typically can grab onto those things a lot easier than your a traditional portfolio website so if you have an instagram if you have a facebook if you're on twitter just throw your stuff out there and you can make some some nice color commentary about the piece kind of what you learned your process things like that and that can be both both invaluable to employers but also to other people who are kind of in the industry or looking to get into the industry they can learn a lot from things like that andrew what are you doing social media these days talking about wrestling nice nice actually it's important though

right to talk about that personal stuff yeah i think so uh i think uh who you are is uh is i mean if you're comfortable with it right it's a big level of comfort uh of uh when you want to talk about things that you think about in your interests i think that's really good uh it kind of helps develop uh i think it helps uh build soft skills with your kind of with yourself uh and so when you start collaborating with people uh you can kind of know how to start those conversations and get common ground with people you work with which i think is super important for building like kind of that family aspect of a dev team and uh that's kind of how i've always worked is just kind of sitting down with people and what are you interested in what do you do what games are you playing is all kind of the it seems really easy this is like a very like it's common uh advice but i feel as though it's really the best advice is just you know talking to people and then doing that for yourself of talk about things online that you're interested in and really kind of elaborate on them and share those things i mean that's why i kind of talk about wrestling a lot is because i like it a lot and i think about it a lot and it actually does help me in my game design

but we'll talk with it yeah one thing to keep in mind with social media though is that when you do land your job with a studio or a company is to check their social media policies um because sometimes they have rules about those kinds of things but also it's good to kind of learn what the the company stands on certain things are so that you can either mirror those or they can provide resources for you to talk about them and that makes your job super easy yeah a lot of companies have policies about that professional personal social media thing that governs both sides of that right they do very much so um you using social media at all i i do sort of on occasion on occasion yeah i i um i used to talk about twitter tuesday i used to be more active on twitter and i really just like uh retweet cool stuff that i see other people tweeting about i i kind of backed off of it a lot and again it's one of those things like your mileage may vary i think it's cool to build up your circle of um people that are doing things that like inspire you and try to connect with them in that way it makes breaking the ice if you want to

meet somebody who you look up to at gdc a lot easier so that's kind of what i um i try to use it for now more than anything else that's a perfect segue into our talk about networking vivian he sets you up you want to talk about networking and how you do it uh i for the longest time still actually have a terrible time networking uh the thing that was really a breakthrough for me though was realizing that networking is a skill all in itself i used to think that you were either just good at networking or you're bad at networking and that's just not true so that's another thing that coming to gdc every year has been so helpful because you just get in the practice of kind of making those connections making those small talk uh conversations happen and then once you know what games like you have in common you've played you can talk about like hey did you see this like cool event they designed how do you think they did that why do you think they did that and you can make a lot of friends that way yeah yeah i actually i i was not always

i don't even think i'm really a good networker now i mean i think i just i like to talk about games a lot especially games that i'm playing uh anywhere i've worked i kind of always just walk around the studio kind of asking people like are they playing the new game that just released or any or what are people trying to talking about and or there's anything that someone is playing and then if i don't know what it is i immediately start playing at home or something just kind of talk about it i think that's a great way to start uh i'm i think there's always ways to improve uh being on uh being a good networker and uh especially inside of your own organization uh collaboration is really easy when you kind of know people and you get to know people and you have a shared connection andrew got a personal story about that uh yeah yeah sure uh so um i would say uh probably on rainbow i was like and i'm like number one moving to a new a new country canada's not like super far away but montreal uh being an english speaker as well i'm not a good french speaker at all uh and so it was at first i thought it was really daunting my first year in the industry of you know this is my first aaa gig and

also like i don't i'm really worried about communication and i was kind of really nervous about that and um i was uh really surprised my dev that my my um team around me actually reached out to me really well and like you know really talking to me about hey what are you playing and i would say i don't really play new games lately because you know i'm just starting i've been a student for a while but i am playing this mobile game and then all of a sudden like my whole team was kind of playing the mobile game we were all playing it together uh and then we started playing games a lot together as breaks you know like lunch breaks and stuff and then like after work and like celebratory moments a lot of samurai gun was played uh by the rainbow six dev team a lot of simrad guns that's awesome that's awesome so this next topic could be like its own talk right applying interviewing and landing a job so we're gonna do like a little bit of a lightning round i want each of you to tell your best story or worst story about applying for and landing a job who's brave enough to go first i i certainly will so uh when i first interviewed at heartsuit labs and they told me what the project was which was bloodlines too i fangirled out really hard

like to the point where i was convinced i was not going to get that job because they were just like we cannot trust this person and but hey i got the job and it was fine because they were looking for passionate people so so that's not just a bumper sticker they says oh we want passionate people yes they actually did and so i'm actually kind of glad that i didn't tone myself down during that interview did you show them your fanfic no [Music] i was unprepared to show it they know about it now though i think the interview that was most awkward for me was it was a lunch interview i landed a lunch interview and i was just i uh i actually spent the majority of the lunch to be elected to eating and not talking and so it was a lot of just like it was just a really big waste of time for that person i felt really bad but i ate a lot because i was a student and i was really hungry i was really hungry that day so that's actually a really good pro tip i actually had uh a recruiter once tell me he's all tell all of your students to order

salads foods that you can eat and still talk i'm so tired of people drinking soup during meetings right never get the sandwich never trust the same never trust the family it's nothing that's you got one for us uh my best interview was probably uh i was you know hustling at gdc on the expo floor and this company called carbine was like hey we desperately need new content designers and this is a friday at gdc i'd been volunteering the whole week and i was deliriously tired so like everything he said i was just like yes absolutely i can do that whatever it's cool and uh i guess i was just so tired that i became confident exhausted he was he was so impressed he was like i'm not even gonna give you the design test i'm just gonna like send you an offer later wow all right so so you ca you're well into a job huh you just work hard get exhausted i um i was trying to think of like a

story that would be uh kind of in line with what you guys are talking about but i'll take it from a different angle um so something as i uh i've done more interviews i've started to realize that i didn't realize early on in my career was um interview them as much as they're interviewing you and don't be afraid to do that when you're like starting out and you're really like hungry about like i just really want to get this job it's my first job this would be awesome um you don't really think about all the things that might be important to you once you're doing that job and like what could be deal breakers for you and what may might make your life miserable and kind of rob you of uh all that like passion it's it's a hard job to get into so don't don't discount yourself and so uh i had an interview where i got through the whole thing and um kind of halfway through i realized hey this job's not really for me like i don't i don't want this role um i don't think i would drive with the team i don't think i would be passionate about doing the work and i still went through the interview like i wanted to see like how

everything unfolded and at the end of it like uh you know my my initial suspicions were pretty much like confirmed when we talked later and it was it was cool because i didn't feel bad to get the um the like rejection letter it was just like nope this this all makes sense and so that's something that i would um like strongly urge you to always keep in mind as you are dealing with interviewing is don't just um kind of grab the first thing that like comes back to you uh really sort of think carefully about it before you dive into something that could be a multiple year endeavor in your life what's it like now so you're not first jobbers now right you're all like seasoned and hardened and like rough and tumble veterans right so what's it like looking around now like some of you have changed jobs some of you haven't for those of you who have what's that process what's the difference in the process i think the i think going off of like what chris just said i mean that's something that i think uh thinking about how you end up like going stick on interviewing but i think it goes with everything else

is that uh think about what you want but also uh be be okay to ask questions i feel as though that's one of the best things that ended up in my maturity in this industry was uh just wanting to ask questions because it seems really scary because asking a question in a lot of ways it kind of it already tells somebody or your brain kind of tells you that oh if you're asked a question then they know you don't know something so that's why you're asking it and so the premise is really terrifying right asking questions like immediately terrifying right if you normalize that and kind of you know just you know the terror is always going to be there but always be comfortable asking questions because when you ask questions that's when you learn you learn a lot easier and always ask questions to your teammates and interview uh anytime they always ask questions if you want to know the answer something if you don't know something acknowledging you don't know something i think is probably one of the most powerful things in being more mature in this industry whether it's with tools or just you don't even understand a new genre design anything that's just like it just helps

you learn a lot faster because the premise of the question is like i want to learn this thing and you seek out that information what's a scary question you've had to ask like what's an example something like that i would say one of the scariest questions is you know when you don't know how to implement something i would say for a designer like for me i think the hardest question i had was there was something that i was just like i was assigned a feature and you're like and you kind of know what you want to do and you go all right i want to build this thing and then your next step is you kind of want to say how do i how do i build this yeah right because it's almost just like all right am i not the person to build it but i'm excited about it i want to do it but just kind of saying i'm being comfortable saying i don't know how to do this yeah and saying that to your team is a very terrifying thing and but you know when you when you when you say that and you explain what you do know about it and you explain your design that becomes a collaboration a collaborative moment between you and your team and you know if if you're you and your team are close and you'll find that everybody people want to support you because you're a team together uh that they will actually you know they'll work they'll work with you and

they'll uh work through that problem with you and they'll and you'll educate each other on the way and so i think like that's the most terrifying thing for me is just saying i i have a great idea great what is it it's this oh that's a good idea yeah i have no idea how to do this it's awesome that's awesome yeah i don't have an idea how do most of things i do um all right so let's talk a little bit about surviving and thriving that was intended to trip me up wasn't it um so you know we uh how's it going we live to work or we work to live right that's the tension right so you're doing this thing and you want to be happy right what are some keys to being happy in this career like specific ones like like not general advice like what are things that you are doing so that you are happy in your job uh one thing that i like to do um and i also express this to my team is be really explicit about where you would like to be in the future either at a company or just personally professionally and articulate those things to your leadership because a lot of the times to them it indicates

that you are willing to stay on and that you are comfortable here and you want to proceed um and it also gives them a chance to help you develop your tool set help you you know learn software help you with interpersonal skills whatever your particular dream or progression wants to be there they will be invested in you and that is a very important thing yeah your managers want to mentor you yes they want to hear that you're hungry to grow yes yeah very much so well help the rest of you what's something you're doing right now to make this career something you enjoy doing that you want to thrive in uh i i would say uh it's easy if like you you dive in headfirst and you're you're kind of fresh and you're not sure like where you want to end up with your role if you're like a designer there's so many different like ways that you can go with that there are lots of sub disciplines so it's helpful to kind of identify early not just like maybe what work you need to do but also what work like you really enjoy doing that um gets you fired up so if you're really

uh look at you fired up what's an example that for you like so uh so for me like i think uh solving really challenging problems uh in systems and gameplay in particular is super cool i think uh that sort of stuff is what pushes our medium forward and so if you can like find an opportunity to grab on to something that you're like oh man i really want to work on that and you can express that to other people on your team and find a way to collaborate on that thing you're going to do some of your best possible work if you can put yourself into that situation and and you're going to feel more confident in your skill set after you've like successfully completed that thing you're going to have like learned a lot and you're going to have seen the the end result of your action and in players hands and you're like oh okay like i feel better as like a designer a programmer or whatever now that i've like completed this thing and that just continues to build upon itself like the longer that you uh

you're doing your job for awesome we're gonna do three minutes so we're gonna go to the next slide then we'll get to it okay unless you got a story right you got a burning story i would just add to that as just learning how to give good feedback is a really big thing on how to survive and thrive i would say learning how to give feedback uh really shows uh where you are um learning just always assume people are coming from the best position and then asking them where are they coming from and then when you give feedback you can kind of give that as a razor whether or not that feature or thing is kind of at the bar that they you want that they do expect it to be so that's one of the it could be a whole talk but like what's the secret sauce if you're giving feedback real quick like are you really mean like you kick them and give them feedback no no never no not that at all so i would say that one of the the best things just have a conversation with somebody and ask somebody if you're playing something and or if you if you're working a feature at what do you think is the best scenario for this feature because then you you you get educated about where that feature is going to go and then what are the what are the goals for that feature then when you give that feedback you can give it in alignment with that versus

uh this is i just don't like this this is just i don't why would i why why is this in the game like you know that's kind of this feedback loop that we call as players we all kind of wonder these things and go back to be a player not as a dev right it's really good to maintain that that dev perspective yeah and not lose the player perspective it's always good to say i don't understand something yeah and fair enough vivian i got one for you ready oh yeah it's the big one right plotting your career looking at where you are and planning your future what do you do so uh i'm a notorious meanderer i didn't really know what i wanted to do which might be obvious based on my career trajectory i was kind of just happy to do whatever came across my plate um and i think that's kind of the one thing that's changed recently in my career is i found technical design and i think it's really clicked with me especially when it like makes sense i used to do tech in theater and i love

solving problems for people and uh i also used to make a lot of macros when i played wow so that i didn't have to press as many scary buttons so it kind of all oh and also this is my favorite one uh when i played dragon age origins and in combat you could program your allies to do certain things at certain points in the battle i just didn't play combat anymore because i just programmed my allies to be perfect yeah you're a technology that sounds about right who else has a so we've got like a minute left before we open it up to questions who else has a tip on plotting your career look at taking stock of where you are and planning for the future i think i have one um and i'll be short one thing that i like to do with pretty much every aspect of my life is learn as much as i can about something that is not my discipline um and it doesn't have i don't have to go into in in-depth about like ai planning or anything like that but just having base knowledge of those around

you really helps with pretty much everything so get involved yeah i couldn't agree i mean we should always be learning but always learning on the job is yeah it's it's pretty valuable all right we want you to keep in touch with us we're going to open up for questions we have like a couple of minutes to answer some questions so we don't run over but you can also reach out to any of us we are all happy to chat with you at any time this community is all about that networking and so we are all about that as well if you would like to ask the panel a question please step up to the mic bonus points if it is a question and not a speech um triple bonus points if it's a short question and not a question that requires you to give your resume before asking it all right who's got the first one we're gonna go over here all right uh okay that's good distance so i'm a first year student and i always hear this word networking networking networking yeah can you give me an example of what a short simple hi my name is blank and i'm trying to network with you but not be obvious about it can you try and give me an example of that that is a great question oh man can you even

answer it honestly i would just be explicit about it like i i think that networking shouldn't just be about like hey i really love 343 what jobs can you offer me like that's the only in my opinion that's the only wrong thing you could do in networking but if you just say like hey i'm trying to network make connections in the industry i think people who are interested in making those connections with you are like more than happy to keep talking it should be organic like uh don't like brute force networking right i hate the term networking in and of itself because it just sounds bad just go to game related things and make friends with people and if you have a tough time doing that figure out like what your social lubricant is people often suggest alcohol but it does not have to be that at all don't like think that it does i i think that's like probably not great advice um so if it's like hey you're at like a smash bros tournament or something or you see somebody wearing a t-shirt that's a game that you like

that's you're in and then if the conversation isn't working out then you know learn how to gracefully exit it and and if um and if it does work out then keep in touch and those relationships will build up over time and i think that's kind of like what a lot of us have experienced as we worked at different studios as well um yeah like don't don't brute force it dude i literally had a student land his first job by walking up to somebody and say i know i'm blowing this moment can you help me not blow the next one any any tips at all you don't need to remember me and then they went to lunch right so i i think that trying is also a big part of it it's a great question thank you so chris i'm in exactly the position that you were a few years ago when you described i'm a junior at digipen trying to make finish and refine my portfolio and i don't know what people want on a design portfolio for the for all of you what do they want to see on a design portfolio more specifically a systems design portfolio oh man i would say so uh

there's no great answer for this obviously uh but i would say what i look for um you know whenever i'm hiring uh designers or a system designer is uh i usually like seeing the uh like the most recent projects and uh a short description of the project and then exactly what you did and some anything that can breadcrumb me to kind of find out what that project is because then there's some common ground for me to ask some questions right you kind of like i it's common ground for me to kind of go oh this game's really cool okay they've had a lot of experience in this kind of game or this kind of game but they'd be great for this this seems like this is a strong suit those are all opportunities for me to ask you questions about what you know am i right and this is kind of what you want to do what you like the systems you want to design are you an expert in this do you want to be an expert in something else it's more of a call to action for uh me to ask questions to you about what you want and so if it's a great fit then awesome uh and so i would say start there like

of think about uh of breadcrumb there if you have a really great system that you have a really great prototype uh having a video or a playable or anything like that is definitely bonus points like absolutely bonus points i would also say that a lot of these things there's it's sort of a great lie where people say these are the tips to do the thing that's not how dev works either right we iterate and we test and we iterate and we test so he's talked about system designer so the best advice is actually to pull out your phone and after this talk meet him across the hall and show him your portfolio and have him tell you what's wrong with your portfolio rather than saying this abstract principle to this to my portfolio show people and people are receptive to what's wrong with my portfolio and they'll straight tell you we have one minute left if you have the world's quickest question we can do it uh what can students and young developers do while they're still growing their skills to kind of plant the seeds for their career when they actually have them ship games make them small the biggest mistake that

students make is they make things too big right if you the first games you should be making you should be getting them done in a week right and then you can grow to a month and then you can grow to a year but get some things done who else has stuff yeah i definitely agree with that my first game that i made uh collectively was about a uh sentient piece of cheese that ran around a railroad and we made that in a week and it was a 2d game and it was ridiculous but uh that was really hard and we made it and it was a playable we had like two levels and it was and it was and that that was the pains of making that game uh actually set me up for how i wanted to get better and learn more things so show off a really polished like core mechanic or system or something that's like defines your game and makes it fun and just end it there right don't try to like blow it out of the water yeah we're here so we don't get railroaded out of here railroad cheese that's great we're going to be across the hall and we're happy to answer any questions you might have hey thank you so much for coming we really appreciate it remember to fill

out the form and vote on those things it's radically important you're beautiful and awesome bye