This week, Yahtzee succinctly encapsulated my feelings about gaming webcomics. I hate ‘em. They’re occasionally awesome, mostly just craptacular.
In other news, um, I’m speaking at Penny Arcade Expo in late August. I’ll be giving a talk called Breaking In: How to Get Your Foot in the Door. My session description:
So you’ve got skills and you’ve got passion, but you have no idea how you’re going to break into the game industry. You send out resumes, and nobody ever gets back to you. In this session, Darius Kazemi covers exactly how, even as a lowly student, you can make friends at game companies and eventually, maybe, turn those connections into a career.
I am actually incredibly excited about giving this talk. It’ll be the first really widely attended consumer show I’ve spoken at. Usually when I do a talk at a consumer show it’s part of CMP’s Game Career Seminar, but that’s a totally different audience: those attendees have to register way in advance to specifically see the career content. So they tend to be well-prepared, already in a game program at some school or another. I’m expecting a much more casual, “Hey, making games would be cool. I should go to this session” kind of crowd. It should be fun, and as usual I’ll be devoting at least 20 minutes to Q&A, because that’s what my audience usually finds most beneficial.
And if you’re a blog reader and attending PAX, track me down and say hi! You know how to find me.
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Do you have any idea if they record these sessions, or if it can be recorded? I’m interested in hearing this one. It’ll probably be a bit different than the GDC presentation. My birthday is August 26th, and I could use a belated present. ;X
I encourage you to drop a note that making your own hyper-innovative games in hyper-short dev cycles is not only a great way to distinguish yourself, develop a sort of liberal-arts appreciation of games, and get a grueling induction in what crunch time is like while loving it, but it’s also a viable alternative to submitting to the established industry.
Oh, cool. I’m really upset I can’t go to PAX, but maybe if I see you in Waltham sometime during my school year we can talk about it. I’m slowly worming my way into companies, but I’d love to hear what you have to say about that sort of thing. Good luck to you!
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