How to Get Your 1st Game Design Job without Trying to “Get Lucky”

At the same time, “game design” is a nebulous craft, which means many of the applicants are underqualified enthusiasts.

(Later, I cover the exact skillset studios vet for and how you can acquire them.)

Now we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s take a look at

How does the studio hiring process work for game designers?

Let’s first get a clear understanding of each talent filtering phase work in this process, so the strategies I’ll cover next will actually make sense.

The entire process can be broken down into these 3 phases, with minor varying differences depending on the studio:

Phase 1: Source opportunities

In order for you to apply, you have to first find the opportunities, which come in the form of job posts.

You can find these job posts from 2 types of sources: public and private.

[Source 1] Public job posts: These are the ones available on public job boards that everyone has access to.

Pros: These are easy to find, and there are many places to source them.

Cons: Since everyone has access to these, you have more competition, so there is a lower probability to get noticed.

Here are all the places to find public game design job posts:

• Industry location based databases:
  • GameDevMap
  • Global Game Studio Map

• Specialized industry job boards:
  • Gamedeveloper
  • Hitmaker
  • Remote Game Jobs
  • Gamejobs.co
  • Work with Indies
  • Grackle Hq

• General job boards & search engines: Indeed, Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Monster, ZipRecruiter, Simply Hired, and CareerBuilder.

[Source 2] Private job posts: These are posts that are available only through people you know via their personal social media or communities.

Pros: They are less competitive and those who shared the posts are insiders who know you and can vouch for you.

Especially if you can showcase your skills to them ahead of the time, they can directly refer you to a hiring manager, so you don’t have to compete just to get noticed.

Cons: These are harder to source, because they come through word of mouth, which means you can only access them through networking.

Keep in mind that it’s a common practice for studios to source talents from their teams’ network before opening them up to public job boards, which means you get first dibs.

This is especially true for entry-level positions, so make sure you take networking seriously.

The person might also put in a good word in for you if he believes you’re a good fit.

Disclaimer: This only works if you have the skills, because the referrer’s reputation is on the line.

I will cover which skills you need and how to acquire them in a bit.

By the way, I’m finishing up a guide on how to network effectively in the industry – you can get notified here when it’s finished.

Once you source the opportunities, time to apply, which leads us to the next phase.

Phase 2: Mass Talent Filtering

This is the phase where the recruiters spend an average of 45 to 60 seconds to roughly skim through each of the hundreds and thousands of applications at scale before deciding whether to pass your application to the hiring manager.

Note: The reason hiring managers don’t do the initial review is that they’re often the studios’ lead game designers, which means their time is expensive and valuable.

Here is some great advice on how to stand out in a sea of candidates by my colleague Greg Street, the head of Creative Development at Riot Games:

Your app can stand out because you run a popular fan site. It can stand out because you made a game with your friends. It can stand out because of a great portfolio. It can stand out because of an advanced degree. But it has to stand out.

— Greg Street (@Ghostcrawler) February 6, 2020

It all boils down to your ability to effectively communicate, present, and demonstrate your design skills through your design cover letter, resume, and portfolio.

If you’re one of the final candidates, you will receive an automated design skill test contextual to the project for the position to see if you qualify to go to the next phase.

Phase 3: Detailed Skills & Cultural Fit Filtering

If you made it to this phase, then congrats, you’re the 10% who passed the mass filters of recruiters and ATS systems.

(The hiring manager and lead designer can be the same or separate roles depending on the size of the studio)

This is where your soft skills, hard skills, and personality will be put to scrutiny under a magnifying glass by your future teammates.

Here is what the interview process to look like (the exact sequence can vary from studio to studio):

Interview 1: Prep call

Format: 1-on-1 over Zoom or phone

Interviewer: Recruiter

Purpose: The call is to prepare you for your initial interaction with the hiring manager. This one is optional, which means it depends on the recruiter.

Interview 2: Background & experience confirmation

Format: 1-on-1 over Zoom or phone

Interviewer: Hiring manager and/or lead game designer

Purpose: To verbally confirm the following in detail:

1. 1. Background and experience – Expect to articulate the impact of your role, responsibilities, contributions to the projects on your portfolio, and how these experiences align with the studio’s needs.→ You can prepare using these background & experience questions.
   2. Soft skills – Expect to articulate your ability to communicate and resolve conflicts to symbiotically collaborate with other game devs on the team to contribute to a single cohesive player experience.

Here are some soft skills questions to help you practice for these.

Interview 3: Live mock design session to demonstrate your design skills (hard to fake).

Format: 1-on-1 or group (depending on the studio)

Interviewer: Hiring manager and/or lead game designer

Purpose: You’ll be presented with scenario(s) with a design problem live within the context of an already shipped game by the studio to assess:

1. 1. How you process and approach identifying problems and make design decisions in real time
   2. To check how familiar you are with the studio’s games (and whether you’ve played them.

Here is an example scenario former Ubisoft lead game designer Richard Carillo use:

The better you can showcase your thought process and understanding of game systems, the higher the chances of securing the position.

And make sure you play the studio’s games; most studios will disqualify you if you don’t play their games.

For example, I know that Riot automatically disqualified any applicants who didn’t play their games until recently.

Here are 28 example skill tests for you to practice for this part of the interview.

Interview 4: Assess your hard skills (to project fit)

Format: Group interview on-site or over Zoom

Interviewers: Panel of game developers involved in the project your position will contribute to.

Purpose: Have those who are most qualified to assess your skills, expertise, and technical knowledge to determine if you are a good fit for the specific context of the game they’re working on.

Here are some hard (design) skills questions for you to practice.

Interview 5: Cultural fit interview

Format: Group interview (or multiple micro 1-on-1 interviews) on-site or over Zoom

Interviewers: Game developers involved in the project your position will contribute to.

Purpose: Evaluate whether your personality, work style, and values align with the studio’s culture and the team dynamics. In a nutshell, if the team can see themselves enjoy working with you.

Outside of not being an a**hole, just be true to yourself and what you believe in.

Feel free to practice with these cultural-fit questions.

Your turn: You vet the studio and team

Format & Interviewers: This will happen in various stages of the interview with both the hiring manager / lead designer and the team mates.

Purpose: For you to assess whether the studio’s culture and team is good for you to prevent a lose-lose situation.

Keep in mind that it’s a 2-way street, which means as much as the studios are vetting you, you’re also vetting them.

Here are some questions you can ask the studio.

Now that you have a better understanding on how the studio will assess you as a candidate, let’s go over how you can get your first gig faster.

Here are the 3 strategies to get you hired (without betting on luck):

Over the years, my senior colleagues and I have had many conversations about how to help a beginner become a better designer and be a more desirable candidate for hire.

Which lead to these strategies, where each one builds on top of the other.

If I had applied this when I first got started, I could’ve saved a significant amount of time and headache to get hired for my first design gig.

Think of these strategies as reading walkthroughs for a game before you play it.

By implementing these and putting in the work, getting hired for you will be only a matter of “when” not “if.”

Strategy #1: Apply, reapply, and keep applying to the same studios (and don’t stop)

I noticed that the majority of people who apply to their favorite studios, get rejected once, and never again try to reapply, thinking the door is forever closed.

This very limiting belief may prevent you from working in your dream job at your favorite studio.

This strategy is based on simple math and here is how it works:

Step 1: Keep applying to the next available entry-level (internship, assistant, associate, or junior) game design job post of the same studio.

Let’s check how the math works out: To keep it easy to calculate, let’s assume you have a 10% chance of getting a reply:

As you can see even if your odds are low, the more times you apply, the more likely you’ll get replies.

Step 2: Keep iterating, don’t just keep applying the same way.

Make sure you iterate and improve both for the following:

1. Game design skills
2. Get hired skills and assets:
   
   1. Cover letter
   2. Resume
   3. Portfolio
   4. Interview skills

This will increase the probabilities of receiving more design test replies, ultimately help you get more interviews, which results in more job offers.

Also the more you get to later phases, the more opportunities for you to practice as well, which in-turn increases the conversion % from the previous step.

Let’s use the same example: Now imagine 5 iterations in, you’ve increased your reply rates from 10% to 15%.

As you can see, if you increase the # of iteration in addition to increasing volume from Step 1, there is an even higher chance of you getting replies.

Here are 4 guides to help increase the number of replies:

1. How to create a design cover letter that captures attention
2. How to create design resume that’ll get you interviews
3. How to build a design portfolio that’ll get you hired
4. How to pass game design skill tests (with 28 practice tests)

(We’ll get to improving your game design skills part in a bit)

Step 3: Now multiply that volume by replicating steps 1 and 2 for as many studios as you can manage.

Using the same example again: Let’s say you applied this step for 10 of your favorite studios at 15% response rate.

When you do this long enough, you’ll get hired. The growth curve looks like this:

Keep in mind: It’s a numbers game at the end of the day and you have limited control.

There are 100 reasons why you don't get the job and only one of those reasons is 'you're not good enough.' My advice is keep applying, don’t stop applying. And until they tell you like ‘hey STOP’ I would just keep doing it. – @candacerthomas, Principal… Share on X

Our mutual colleague Paul Kubit applied to Blizzard 8 times before he got in, then quickly out-leveled many more experienced designers (including me).

Strategy #2: Setup a process to track and automate strategy #1

The job hunting process is no different than sales reps sourcing for customers (studios in your case).

The only difference is that job hunting is way easier since you only need to get hired once. For sales, you have to hit a monthly quota in order to keep your job.

Effective sales reps track their results and manage their follow ups using CRM in order to:

1. See what’s working (or not), so they can iterate and improve the process.
2. Consistently follow up on all potential customers without taking up their mental space.
3. Focus on actions with a higher return on time invested by reducing unnecessary data entry tasks.

The best part is, you can track and manage your job hunting process the same way using any Kanban board such as Trello, Notion or Huntr.co (highly recommended by many junior designers).

Here is the simple setup you can model after:

Currently, I’m in the process of putting together a tutorial including plug n’ play templates on how to set up your job application management system.

You can get notified here when it’s finished.

Strategy #3: Approach strategies 1 and 2 like a professional

One of my mentors once told me:

If you want professional results, then execute like a professional. Share on X

When I truly understood and applied this, my career trajectory changed.

Here are 6 main differences that separates professionals from amateurs:

Now let’s see how this translates to job hunting:

• Expect to be bad at it first before you become good at it (just like learning any other new skill). So start applying today, when you’re not 100% ready.
• Don’t take the rejections personally, in fact, always ask for feedback (even though you may not alway get a reply).
• Approach this systematically instead of gambling. You can do this by applying strategies 1 and 2.
• Don’t expect initial outlier results. Know that if you apply strategies 1 and 2 long enough, getting hired is inevitable.

Disclaimer: These strategies won’t matter if you don’t have the core design skills the studio wants.

What do studios look for in an ideal candidate?

For entry-level positions, the overall ‘game design skill set’ studios hire for can be broken into these 3 skill components:

Design skill 1: Analysis skill, which is your ability to…

1. Step out of your own player archetype.
2. Recognize design patterns from player feedback.
3. Identify the root player experience problem.

Design skill 2: Problem solving skill, which is your ability to…

1. Have productive design discussions with other game devs on the team.
2. Come up with practical design solutions that work.
3. Make design decisions that are meaningfully impactful.

Design skill 3: Implementation skill, which is your ability to…

1. Clearly communicate and pitch your ideas to the lead designer and the rest of the team.
2. Prove your idea through low-cost rapid prototyping.
3. Be the glue between the other game devs (artists, programmers, other designers) to ensure your idea is implemented cohesively with others.

The entire talent filtering process is designed to weed the enthusiast from the professional designer.

By the way, since game dev is a team sport where the end result depends on how well you work with others, make sure to hone your collaborative skill set which includes the following:

1. Communication skill – Be able to clearly articulate (write + verbalize) and demonstrate (visualize + prototype) your ideas clearly.
2. Listen skill – Be able to understand your team’s ideas and feedback so you can adjust to or build on top of accordingly.
3. Conflict resolution skill – Be able to drop your ego and disagree productively and respectfully with your team mates and resolve conflicts.

Use these resources to improve the skills above:

• • Crucial Conversations
  • Active Listening
  • Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Keep in mind that for junior design positions, studios will vet these soft skills even harder, because you’re not expected to be very good at design yet.

Therefore, you need to be coachable and moldable to learn.

How do you acquire this skill set?

Obviously, you can figure out what works for you through trial and error, but that’ll take forever.

If it’s your style of learning, go for it.

Here is a much more efficient approach

Step 1: Learn existing frameworks from established game designers so you don’t try to reinvent the wheel.

Here are 3 sets of proven frameworks that sprouted from different schools of design thoughts and approaches:

1. [Book] Clockwork Game Design – It’s a design system built around a core mechanism, with nothing but the necessary supporting mechanisms and a carefully chosen goal.
2. [Book] Art of Game Design – A Book of Lenses – This is a classic that provides you with 100 psychology driven lenses (aka insightful questions) that will help make your game better.
3. [Free Guide] Player Centric Game Design Framework – These 7 principles work cohesively to put you in the players’ perspective, identify what’s missing the mark, and improve the gameplay.
   
   I built this framework throughout my 20+ year game design career based on the legacy Blizzard and Riot Games schools of thought mentored by devs like Tom Cadwell, Michael Heiberg, and Wyatt Cheng.
   • Here is the list of games I’ve personally applied this framework on throughout my career.
   • Here is a list of my Post Mortems where I share first-hand experience on how I applied this.

I encourage you to check out all 3 frameworks and use what works best for your context.

If you have any questions about these frameworks, you can ask me in our Discord.

Step 2: Turn these frameworks into analysis skills

You can do this by playing games and reverse-engineering how these principles are implemented.

First, start with the games used as examples in the resources from step 1, so you can experience these frameworks first hand as a player.

Then, repeat this with the games you enjoy and are already familiar with. This way your attention won’t split between learning the game and pattern recognizing frameworks.

Once you get good at seeing the implementation of the underlying principles in the games you’re familiar with, now you can finally repeat this with games you haven’t played yet.