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Career Advice for New Devs - The WoW Diary by John Staats
WotLK
Publié
13/02/2023 à 17:13
par
Rokman
John Staats published The WoW Diary, a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of vanilla World of Warcraft back in 2018.
A campaign on BackerKit
is currently in progress, for a second printing of the beloved WoW Diary. We're excited to highlight excerpts written by John Staats during the campaign.
If you find this article interesting, consider backing The WoW Diary --
The WoW Diary on BackerKit
Below is an excerpt from The WoW Diary on Career Advice for New Devs, written by John Staats --
Career Advice for New Devs
In my book,
The World of Warcraft Diary
, and its supplementary articles, I’ve extensively written about game development, studio management, and business strategies. Still, most queries come from people trying to break into the computer games industry or questioning if their job is right for them.
Getting Your First Job
As I reflect on my highs and lows, my unhappiest moments were the months before I found my first job. My senior year in college would have been less stressful if I realized I was competing with candidates who seemed ambivalent about where they worked. I would have told myself that my eagerness had made me a shoo-in. Enthusiasm about working is rare, even in the computer games industry.
If your portfolio shows polish and you know how to use the latest software, no one cares where you went to college—or if you went. Employers are looking for passion if your portfolio and resume meet their requirements. It seems like a strange word to use until you step into the shoes of your average studio manager.
Complainers and unmotivated employees plague employers everywhere. Eagerness to learn and improve is rare. The first person I interviewed for WoW’s level design crew had only one question—he wanted to know if Blizzard had a 401k plan. I couldn’t lure him into discussions about level design theory. He couldn’t explain why he built his levels. He wasn’t shy but coolly detached and content to let his work speak for itself. His samples weren’t very good, but I still remember considering him for WoW because we had difficulty enticing level designers onto our unannounced project. He was one of the few candidates with a professional background.
Prepare yourself for the interview. Be ready to explain your inspirations and philosophy. Try to describe what you’re trying to achieve. Review your portfolio and memorize things you want to say to people. Give interviewers a context to your samples and summarize the difficulties you overcame.
Question Authority
If interviewing makes you nervous, ask open-ended questions. Ask about their commute. Where do employees go for lunchtime? Ask about the corporate culture. Are work hours flexible? Who are the local gurus on software? Ask them about their design, art, or programming philosophies. How heavy is the department’s workload, and what are the project’s challenges? People enjoy talking about their job because it allows them opportunities to sound like experts. Remember, you’re interviewing employers as much as they’re interviewing you. The more they talk, the better you’ll know if the company is a good fit. Softball questions about day-to-day operations are inside an employer’s comfort zone. Interviewees who ask questions appear proactive. Questions turn a scary interview into a personable conversation, giving employers better insight into your personality and making you more memorable.
Inquisitiveness implies a willingness to learn. Employees who want to reach professional standards without constant supervision are every employer’s dream.
The most remarkable part of working on team 2, the developers who built WoW, wasn’t the project’s success, the game’s features, or learning about Blizzard—it was how many superstars were on the development team.
Blizzard is careful about hiring, and I had firsthand experience with the difficulties of finding level designers. In fact, it was the most surprising part about working at Blizzard. In my years on WoW, we solicited well over 50 people. Almost none wanted to work for the salaries we could afford, and fewer wanted to move to Southern California. As someone from Akron, Ohio—the rust belt—I couldn’t believe no one wanted to move to Orange County.
Dev teams search for a willingness to redo work until it reaches professional standards. Art directors don’t have time to stand over artists, telling them to correct things they should have fixed on their own. One polished piece is much more appealing than a wide range of lackluster samples. One of WoW’s dungeon designers was a student with only one level in his portfolio. He polished it to professional standards, which was all we needed to see. We hired him on the spot. Two other level designers didn’t work out, leaving the team before the game shipped.
The success rate was higher on the programming team. I think the programming team remains one of Mark Kern’s single greatest contributions to the project—hiring what might have been the best engineering team in the world. John Cash, the team’s tech lead and perhaps the best hire on team 2, considered his five-question programming test essential. He says it screened out most of the candidates not worth interviewing. “Anyone who’s been to a decent engineering school should be able to answer them, but most applicants can’t—and that saves us a lot of money in plane tickets, hotel rooms, and time.”
Nearly all of WoW’s designers came from the QA department—bug testers and customer support employees. Working in QA gave them a chance to establish their communication skills. People with reputations for having strong design vocabularies who dissect the strengths and weaknesses of popular games became frontrunners in the interview process.
Art and engineering applicants need only show proficiency in a few disciplines. The worst thing to do is try to show you can do everything. Unless you’re applying to a small studio, few employers are looking for someone who can do anything. It’s damaging to your chances in the review process. If you want to be a concept artist or if that’s your area of strength, downplay animation samples, sculpts, and texturing. Employers will wonder if being a concept artist is enough to hold your interest. It’s hard to manage employees who get bored with doing the same thing every day. Show the work you want to do, not everything you’ve done. Focus on only a few samples and polish them to perfection.
Designers and producers should show their communication skills more than anything else. Organize your ideas into concise pitches, and hone your vocabulary so you can express yourself with precision and brevity. Designers should prepare a list of favorite games, explaining why they’re fun and what they would do to improve them.
Surviving Your First Job
I’ve received emails from young professionals trying to determine if the tumultuous entertainment industry is for them. Many of them are unhappy.
One of the dirty secrets young professionals need to learn is it’s often okay to be unhappy with entry- level jobs. They are supposed to suck. So many want to work in the entertainment sector that the only way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to see who has the most determination. Studios typically delegate the exciting work to more experienced people who prove they have staying power. And since entry-level jobs aren’t mission-critical, low salaries compound the issue—especially when compensation doesn’t improve after a few years.
I’ve given career advice long enough to hear the results of my philosophy. Aside from my own experiences, I’ve fielded questions from students and junior professionals who find their careers unrewarding. I even spoke to a medical professional who’d lost enthusiasm for their job. He said his work was tedious, and he wasn’t making nearly as much as he thought.
I told him a dirty secret I had learned about business. Employees in their low twenties usually won’t make much money. That’s just the way it is. It changes in your upper twenties, but salaries for juniors will remain modest for a while. Until you’ve proven your lasting power, few companies will invest in someone without another employee vouching for your character.
When I was in advertising in NYC, I made the mistake of stressing about my salary, cultivating my resume, and accumulating portfolio pieces. I don’t regret my ambition, but in hindsight I regard these pursuits as folly.
Schools commonly teach students the importance of portfolios and resumes, as they serve as an inexperienced person’s first foot in the door. Once students have their first job, their focus should be on learning about the industry and working on their reputation—which usually means a willingness to redo work and commit to working extra hours. Many young professionals might roll their eyes at this, but let me make my case.
By going the extra distance, bosses will typically reciprocate in every way except salary. They might reward you with high-profile tasks later down the road. Employees eager to redo their work without being asked or to stay late without complaints are rare, and even the most callous managers know it’s wise to keep these unicorns happy. If your boss isn’t savvy, that’s another story.
You’ll learn things after hours that you won’t pick up during the daily routine. Bosses often do their work after everyone goes home. There are no interruptions, and they have time to think. They might do accounting or prepare for an upcoming pitch meeting. If you’re the only one sitting there, they’ll bounce ideas off you. You get one-on-one time, and learning your manager’s view of your industry is invaluable.
Working longer hours makes everything more enjoyable in the long term. By volunteering to work longer hours, you have more ownership of your position on the team. Your opinions matter more. Employers don’t nitpick little things. They’ll cut you slack when you want flexible hours or other quality- of-life improvements.
Ironically, going the extra distance is less about impressing the boss and more about making an impression on your peers. Don’t limit your altruism to your boss. Offering to help your fellow worker bees will pay higher dividends than brown-nosing employers, and it’s more emotionally rewarding. Coworkers will eventually move on to other companies, and you’ll quickly learn that industries are incestuous and full of gossip. As witnesses to your endeavors, this cross-pollination works for you if they admire your work ethic.
Whenever coworkers leave, send them a congratulatory email after they start their new job. They’ll be eager to talk to someone they know about their latest gig, providing intel and possibly a new foot in the door. They’ll recommend ex-coworkers only if they’re sure you won’t embarrass them. The more they respect you, the more they’ll evangelize your character. Recommendations are gold, opening doors that mere portfolio pieces never could.
Recommendations are everything. They’re why you shouldn’t worry about salaries in your first job. Employers will usually only bump junior salaries by five or ten percent. The most significant jump in compensation will always come from moving to another company—if you can do that with a recommendation, you can expect increases between twenty-five to one hundred percent. That’s why you shouldn’t stress about what your first employer pays. One recommendation from an ex-coworker
will more than compensate in the long run.
Other professionals will offer wildly different perspectives and experiences. The trick is finding something you enjoy. Enjoying a job makes it easy to learn, grow, and achieve success.
If you enjoyed this article, there are many more like it in my book,
The World of Warcraft Diary
, written from the lessons learned while making WoW.
I am crowdfunding the printing of its second edition.
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