It's important to remember that you're still in your early levels and there's a lot of the tech tree you haven't yet explored. In the ideal scenario, you'll manage to find a job in the industry and use it to level up your skills. You'll be able to earn the skills and experience needed to make your dream game real while building other games and seeing some best practices in action.

Outside of the ideal scenario, I think that finding a job that can pay the bills and leave you with enough free time to spend on your passion is a worthwhile endeavor. The amount of crossover from regular software engineering and game development is not nil, and leveling up in software engineering is a net positive towards making your dream game work out too... and programming generally pays a lot better than indie dev work. You can even consider the day job as a means to earn some funding to build a demo that you can use to shop around for investors and further funding.

I would caution against starting off with streaming too - these are two entirely separate pastimes and require different sets of skills. I don't know how you operate - maybe you're naturally gifted at juggling multiple things at once or perhaps you have the gift of the gab so that you can keep an audience engaged while speaking into the void and also concentrating at the same time. I just know that it's difficult enough getting started without a lot of experience in one thing, let alone multiple things at once.

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Summer 2025 Game Development Student Internship Roundup, Part 1

Internship recruiting season has begun for some large game publishers and developers. This means that a number of internship opportunities for summer 2025 have been posted and will be collecting applicants. Internships are a great way to earn some experience in a professional environment and to get mentorship from those of us in the trenches. If you're a student and you have an interest in game development as a career, you should absolutely look into these.

If you know of any game development internships that aren't listed here, please tell me! I'll try to collect another batch when EA posts theirs as a follow-up.

At time of writing, Electronic Arts was performing maintenance on their recruiting site and should have new openings posted on November 12th 2024. I'll do a second round of internship opportunities once they post, along with Ubisoft and any others I missed.

Brush up your resume and focus on any game dev work you've done. Amateur game dev work counts! Tabletop game mastering counts! Amateur board and card game design counts! Making your own CCG fan sets or draft cube counts! Game jam work counts! These make a bigger difference when it comes to hiring than most other kinds of work experience.

If you need assistance with your resume/CV, cover letter, or have other questions, join our discord and ask. The server is full of experienced developers who can help review your materials and give you suggestions. I also suggest taking a look at my Game Career FAQ. There's a lot of answers in there already. Best of luck out there.

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Most of leveling up from junior to senior is about becoming more autonomous. We do this by growing our ability to recognize work that needs to be done and our ability to do that work. This is a two-step process - we start to see work we need to do, and then we figure out how to do that work. Then the cycle repeats on a larger and larger scale.

Most internal indicators of growth come from self-reflection. I noticed growth when I started anticipating and pre-emptively fixing my code because I'd internalized the feedback I'd gotten from previous code reviews. I noticed growth when I would look back at my old code and see all kinds of ways I could improve it if I had the opportunity to do it again. I noticed growth when I started predicting the kind of edge cases and troublesome bits that I would have to address before I started working on the assignment.

There are also external indicators that will suggest you're leveling up - if your boss starts assigning you tasks with larger scope than before or if other junior devs start asking you for advice on how to do things too, for example, it's a good indicator that your coworkers believe that your skills have improved.

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There's some major questions that you need to answer for yourself.

First and foremost, I think it really depends on what your own goals and responsibilities are. What is it you want to do with your life? Do you have any other major goals outside of your career? Is doing game design professionally what you really want, or would doing game design as an amateur hobbyist be enough? You need to be sure that this is something you want to commit to for years, not just the studying and learning, but also the doing. Remember, getting an entry-level job in the game industry isn't the end of the road but the beginning. Once you get hired, you don't just ride off into the sunset while the credits roll. There's a whole career after that first offer letter, and that kind of career really isn't for everyone.

The second major question you need to ask yourself is "Do I really need to go to school to study game design?" I'll tell you now that I never went to school for game design. The majority of designers I work with didn't go to school for game design. Game design is a field where being self-taught still works just fine, especially if you engage with the game dev community. You can build a game or mod yourself, get it out in front of people, learn from it, iterate on it, and use that as experience to get yourself a job doing it. It is fully possible to learn game design without significant school debt (which will have a large effect on your life as well).

I could go on, but I think this should be enough food for thought to chew on for a bit. Take some time to consider your answer to these questions and about your life. Consider the tradeoffs from making these choices - what you are giving up to move forward with this, especially if you have to take on several thousands of dollars in school debt. If you have further questions, my inbox is always open. I wish you good fortune.

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Let's consider things from the hiring manager's perspective. As a hiring manager, I have a bunch of specific tasks I need to hire and pay someone to do for me. My ideal candidate will have the necessary skills to do these tasks in a timely fashion and be able to work with and communicate with the rest of the dev team. I am looking for candidates who can show me that they can do the work. The most persuasive way to do that is to show me that they've done that kind of work already.

It is obviously most persuasive if a candidate has demonstrated those skills in a professional environment - it means another company was willing to pay them to do that kind of work. However, it is still pretty persuasive (if not most persuasive) if the candidate can demonstrate those skills elsewhere - in an amateur environment, on a volunteer basis, etc. If you have work experience to show - by all means show it. If you have hobbyist experience to show - show me that too. Relevant hobbyist experience (e.g. building your own mod) is still much more persuasive than irrelevant work experience (e.g. two years as a barista).

If you're aiming for a mid-level position, you need to understand the difference between junior and mid-level. Junior positions are usually technically proficient but do not have the understanding to do things on their own. Juniors need direction and mentorship. We rarely leave them to their own devices. Mid-level programmers need to have more autonomy and less oversight. This means that your lead can assign you a task and you'll generally be able to solve the problem through code without a lot of direction. An ideal mid-level gameplay programmer candidate has built at least one or two robust gameplay systems on their own and can talk at length about the problems they had to solve, the benefits and drawbacks of code solutions they wrote, and the things they would do differently if they had the chance. Those gameplay systems should be performant, self-contained, and stable at the minimum. Gameplay systems that are data-driven and have built-in extensibility for adding new functionality are even better - that's starting to creep into senior dev territory.

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There are some various theories on this floating around and they seem like they could be reasonable, but I am genuinely not sure.

Theory A: Hiring Entry Level is more of a gamble

When you promote someone, you leave a lower-level position empty that needs filling. Hiring for entry level is often a much bigger gamble than hiring mid- or senior-level with a proven track record and work history, and it takes significantly longer to see whether the gamble on an entry level hire pays off.

Theory B: Promoting internally means two (or more) employees need training, instead of one

When you promote someone internally, they will probably need some training and ramp-up time for their new responsibilities. The new person hired to replace the promoted dev will also need ramp up time. This can take longer and can cost significant overall productivity, and that's not a luxury a lot of studios can afford.

Theory C: Tech doesn't relax hiring standards until after internal candidates have been rejected already

One thing tech companies tends to favor when hiring (game dev being no exception) is trying to find the "perfect" candidate - someone who hits every job requirement and has experience doing it all. Unfortunately, most candidates (internal or external) won't have 100% qualifications for any given job. The unfortunate thing is that internal candidates get considered first and none pass, then external candidates get considered and none pass, and only then do the requirements get loosened. When this happens, however, all of those who were already rejected don't get re-considered. Thus we've DQed most internal candidates for being imperfect, leaving only the hunt for external candidates.

Theory D: The game industry is volatile and there's a lot of attrition

The game industry is pretty rough. Crunch, lower pay compared to other kinds of tech, rough working conditions, and historic employer volatility churns out a lot of our experienced devs. We have a huge number of entry level dev hopefuls but most of them will leave the industry within five years. Promoting internally might not be feasible because there's just too much history of promoting people only for them to quit or get laid off anyway.

Overall, I think that there's probably some complex multi-variate reason why internal promotions are generally more difficult to source than external ones. It's probably some combination of all of these and more. As always, it also varies with the studio, the leadership, the culture, and the financial situation. I wish there was a simple and easy answer but, if one exists, I sure as heck don't know it.

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Getting a promotion in the game industry usually requires the designer to take two steps.

The first step is to level up one's skill set to the next level. This means taking on more difficult responsibilities and tasks, the sort that the mid or senior level devs are doing. In order to do this, one needs to increase her understanding of the way the systems and content interact by guarding against future possible edge cases and issues that she foresees others on the team bringing up, and being able to articulate all of the elements needed to craft the experience she's trying to create. I gauge the level of my ability by predicting the kind of feedback that I will get from my design work from the experienced designers and then going through the reviews to see how accurate my predictions were. I figured I was ready to move up when my predictions were right most of the time.

The second step is to find an opportunity and go for it - usually by taking a new job at another studio. If you want to try to get an internal promotion, you need to talk to your supervisor during your one-on-one meetings and make sure she knows what you want and will take steps to help you realize your career goals. If your supervisor can't or won't help you do that, you should consider looking for employment elsewhere instead of waiting. In career terms, waiting is stagnating.

In my experience, most promotions in a game design career don't happen internally. I've never had an internal title change during my career. All of my title promotions (e.g. junior to mid-level, mid-level to senior) came from finding a new job at a new employer, by showing that I could shoulder the responsibilities of the new role. Many of my industry friends and compatriots have similar stories - getting promoted internally is a lot harder than finding a new job elsewhere that starts you in the role you wanted to grow into. Even if you really like your current employer, leaving on good terms to level up elsewhere means you'll be welcomed back later with a better title with more responsibility and pay.

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The honest truth is that 3D won a long time ago. We aren't "moving" towards 3D, we firmly set up shop there years ago and have been here for the past four console generations. The fact that [we can change camera angles without needing new versions of all character art in the game] is too valuable.

You are correct in that 2D development has a lower bar to entry - many things are much simpler in two dimensions than they are in three. This makes 2D development easier for hobbyists and indies to get something stood up and working. However, since you ask about opportunities, I will assume that you're not looking for a hobby but a career. If that's the case, learning the ins and outs of 3D will serve you a lot better long term. The number of job opportunities for 2D work is limited relative to 3D work in many disciplines.

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A shipped game's reception really only affects the job prospects of the top leadership that made the biggest decisions about the game. If you weren't the executive producer or one of the top leads for a game, then your personal ability to affect the game's overall reception is actually very small - you do the best you can, but those kind of game-directing decisions are generally above your pay grade. The things a particular candidate worked on might not have anything to do with the bad reception a game got.

What is much more valuable is the experience you earned while building the badly-received game and how those lessons made you a better game dev. At an interview, the hiring manager will typically ask the key questions about your past game dev experience - what kind of work you did, what kind of difficult challenges you faced, what solutions you came up with to circumvent those challenges, and what you do differently if you had the opportunity to do it again. It speaks well of a candidate if they can show that they've learned their lessons and can apply those lessons to future projects.

Many of us veterans have badly-reviewed games on our resume. I've certainly got my share of stinkers on mine. I am actually proud of the work I did on the badly-reviewed games I worked on because I know that the work I did was well-done and that the quality of my work was absolutely not the reason the game was badly reviewed. If you ask me about any of them, I could tell you exactly what I did on that game, why I did it, how well it worked out, what worked and what didn't, and what I would do differently if I had a do-over opportunity. That's what I look for as a hiring manager too - I want to know whether candidates can overcome the challenges I expect them to face if I hire them. Most of this has very little to do with the reception a particular game got, especially for a candidate who isn't being considered for a leadership position.

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It mostly depends on what kind of design career your friend wishes to pursue. Generally speaking, having at least some understanding of other disciplines is very helpful for a designer. If a designer doesn't understand the technical and asset constraints she's working with, it can make for a lot of wasted work. My grand idea of a huge battle between massive armies is mostly impossible if the engine can only handle 12 models animating on screen before the frame rate drops.

If he wants a career in AAA games, he will need specialized expertise. That might mean working on combat, quests, cinematics, narrative, itemization, UX, enemies, levels/environments, or any of a number of other specialties. These specializations don't necessarily require external disciplines like programming or artistic skills, but they do require some pretty specific skills all their own. A cinematic designer doesn't need to understand how to code but does need to learn how to use tools like Source Filmmaker to stage and block cinematics. A level designer doesn't need to create the individual assets, but will need a rock-solid understanding of how the placement of objects and division of space can create places that are intuitive for players to navigate.

If he wants to go into the indie space and work with an extremely small team, he's going to need to wear a lot of hats. Indie devs can't just come up with the ideas for the rest of the team to build them out; there just aren't enough people to handle that kind of workload. At the very least he'll need to create his own assets and/or write his own code. Small teams generally can't afford to have single-discipline specialists, so multidisciplinary generalists tend to succeed in this space. If you look at any indie game, you'll generally see a small team of a handful of devs who are each responsible for a huge amount of different kinds of work.

If your friend is looking at a career in game design, he only needs to be multidisciplinary if he's going the indie/small team route. There's just too much work to be done without enough hands to do it within a small team. If he wants to work in AAA game dev, he will need to demonstrate that he has significant expertise in his chosen design specialty in order to put himself ahead of the hundreds of other candidates competing for the same job. In both cases, employers will want to see examples, either professional or amateur, of game design work that the candidate has done. I wish him (and you) the best of luck.

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The short answer is "practice".

Game development is not a talent that people have, it is a skill that people learn. People have different amounts of talent that may make a skill more easy or difficult to learn, but skill matters far more than talent does. You don't earn skill overnight, you earn it by repeating a pretty standard process many, many times:

If someone wants to improve at level design, then the best course of action is to make levels. Build a level, get some players to play it, internalize what worked and what didn't about the level you built, and then use what you learned to build a new level. If you want to improve at system design, build a game system like a level-up system or a power-up system. If you want to improve at cinematic design, build cinematics. Write quests if you want to be a quest designer.

After repeating the build-play-internalize-learn cycle a few times, you'll start noticing the mistakes you made on your earlier attempts. They might be all you can see when you look back and you might even feel a bit embarrassed you ever made them. This is totally normal! It's actually a good thing! It means you're leveling up and improving - you're able to recognize and avoid mistakes that you weren't before. The ability to differentiate good and bad ideas is one of the abilities you gain from practice. As Bruce Lee said once, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." The best way to improve any skill is to practice.

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I've probably learned enough lessons over the course of my career to write an entire book, and then some. In fact, thanks to your question I think I might try writing a series of "lessons learned" posts when the fancy strikes me. Today, I will answer both of your questions with the same lesson:

Everybody - player, artist, designer, engineer, QA, musician, writer, director, producer, executive, publisher, marketer, brand manager, influencer, interviewer, whatever - has a different perspective and different needs. If you want their buy-in, you need to show them the value in what you're proposing and you need to do so in a way they understand.

The same general principle applies across the board. Over the course of your career, you will need to convince others to agree with your line of thinking. You might need to show a player how the content you're creating is something they'll enjoy. You might need to explain to your lead why your chosen plan is a good one. You might need to persuade a brand manager why your ideas will work with the license. You might need to convey the specifics of a character to the character artist so they can figure out the visuals for that character. You might need to convince an interviewer that you're the right person to hire for the job.

Each of these people is looking for something of value to them within the context of the situation. Sometimes it is just about explaining the situation to them in a way that they understand, like how I often rely on using visual aids and diagrams to explain concepts at meetings to help the artists, producers, QA etc. understand the issues I am solving so they recognize it as a problem that needs solving. Sometimes it is about persuading the decisionmaker (e.g. a player, a licensor, or an interviewer) that your proposal is the best one. In those situations, you need to figure out what your audience wants and the best framing for how your proposal hits those notes. The better you are at figuring out how to do so and presenting it in a way that the audience understands, the more likely that you'll succeed in getting their buy-in.

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Job titles in the game industry certainly can be confusing. The game industry really lacks a strongly defined central lexicon for terminology. I've held many different titles over the course of my career - scripter, technical designer, system designer, combat designer, game designer, gameplay engineer/programmer, client engineer/programmer, and software engineer/programmer. All that said, I've been doing the same general thing no matter what kind of title I held - creating game systems and content. That's what the hiring managers are really looking for when they ask me for an interview - they have a set of tasks they need somebody to do, and they're looking to hire someone who wants to and is able to do those tasks.

As for whether an open role is an exact fit... well, it depends on the individual. A lot part of career and personal growth is leveling up in various ways. That can be specializing in one specific field or it can be learning to be proficient in multiple related fields, or both. I'm very much a generalist - I've got a working knowledge of a bunch of different fields of gameplay, so I can slot in just about any team as a strong utility player to help out wherever it's needed. If that's what they're looking for, they'll see it in my resume and give me a call back. If it isn't, they'll probably ghost me or politely decline if I apply.

Finding a job is a lot like dating - you should look a partner who is looking for what you have to offer and who can offer what you're looking for in return. If I don't feel like the role is a good fit based on the job description (e.g. they want a super specialist in something), I move on. If I don't think that the company can meet my needs as an employee, I move on. Trying to get a job that isn't a good fit for both sides is a waste of everyone's time. If you feel confident in your ability to perform an open role's responsibilities at a shippable level, I encourage you to apply.

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Once upon a time, I used to have dream projects and franchises I wanted to work on. I desperately wanted to work on the next game in the franchises I played and loved growing up. I had all these ideas and passion for them. Eventually I actually got my chance. I went to work on some of them. I got hired by one of the most well-known studios in the world. I was pleased as punch to clock in, work on an enormously famous IP and project, enjoy all the perks of the studio, and go home. It felt super duper awesome to be working on the thing players were excitedly talking about on the internet.

Then I was let go in a big layoff. All of that self-worth I had tied to my job and the project I was working on evaporated in an instant. I had to find another job. So I did. It wasn't as glamorous as the one I had been let go from, but it paid the bills. Then another opportunity came along and I changed jobs again.... and then again, and then again. I worked at studios that were big and well-known and I worked at studios that were much smaller. I worked with some real amazing people that I remain friends with years later, and I worked with some real jerks.

Over time, I came to the realization that the project I was on and the studio I was at didn't actually matter all that much. What mattered far more to me were the people I worked with. I care far more about having a legit dependable team that I can trust to challenge my ideas and work with me. I care far more about having a boss that I can trust to have my back and respects me. These are worth far more to me than any dream franchise or studio with amazing perks.

Today, I find myself again working on an enormously famous IP at a studio with some pretty great perks but, in the end, a job is still only a job. I'm a little older, a little wiser, and no longer putting as much of my self-worth into the name of the game I'm working on or the studio I'm working for. Make no mistake, they're quite nice and I do appreciate them... but my priorities have changed. I like the team I'm working with and I like my boss, but I also know that we're probably heading into a global recession and there are tech layoffs happening all over the place. I'm no longer chasing the dream project or the dream studio anymore... now what I value is more realistic - some stability with a team that respects me and I can respect in return.

But if you must have an answer from me for what my dream studio is... I think I'd like to go work for Atlus on the Persona franchise.

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Leaving a company on bad terms can be difficult to recover from, especially if you don't take steps beforehand. What hiring managers typically look for in addition to the skills needed are the candidate's professionalism and genuine interest in doing the job. As a candidate, you need to present potential employers with a narrative that is both factually accurate and portrays you as a professional who wants to do the job.

This can be difficult, especially if you were emotionally hurt. A toxic work environment can cause emotional damage that won't heal overnight. Most people need time to grieve and heal from this loss. Make sure that you take this time if you need it. Remember, employers are looking for is professionalism. That means being bale to keep your emotions in check during the interview process. It's usually better to take some time after leaving a toxic job to recover mentally and emotionally before starting a new job search. If you don't, you might not be ready for the interview process and lose opportunities to unforced errors.

Prepare a diplomatic way of describing the circumstances under which you left. If it was because of discrimination, you could say that you did not feel like you were given the kind of growth opportunities you needed for your career at your previous employer. If it was because you hated your boss, you can say that you felt that you felt your growth as a developer wasn't a good fit for your previous employer's management style. If you badmouth your former employer at an interview, your interviewer is probably going to think that you'll also badmouth them if you ever leave. Keep it professional.

Keep the focus of the interview about you, your experiences, and how they've made you a better developer. That shouldn't be hard - your interviewer isn't evaluating your old employer, they're evaluating you. Remember, you own your story. Establish a good narrative and focus on the positive - the skills you learned and the growth you underwent at the previous employer. Don't dwell on the negative for too long. You want to show that you can do good work and level up even in the face of adversity. Remember, you also control your own references - you choose who to put them in contact with, so you don't have to pass them the contact info of your behated old boss if you don't think it will be a good reference for you.

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Your answer depends a lot on what you mean by "little sense of creativity" and your chosen career path. A producer, for example, doesn't necessarily need a lot of creative chops as long as she can handle creating and tracking tasks, manage a schedule, coordinate meetings, and handle a variety of other smaller tasks.

Doing more direct hands-on development work like engineering, design, or art will likely require some form of creativity. Any of those roles is going to need to come up with solutions for problems. If you lack the kind of creativity to solve problems in those fields or require significant amounts of direction to solve those problems, you're probably going to hit a glass ceiling for your career pretty quickly. If your creativity is sufficient to come up with solutions for the appropriate problems within your field, you're probably fine. We don't really penalize too much if you aren't some kind of cross-discipline savant.

In an interview, you want to talk about and present your strengths. If you're really good at solving software problems, talk about that - maybe you're not great at designing solutions, but maybe you can take any design no matter how tricky and turn it into performant code. If you're interviewing for a producer role, focus on telling us how great your organizational skills are within a team. If you're looking for a QA role, you can talk about how methodical you are in your approach to solving problems and how great you are at writing reports.

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Most people choose to leave a job when their needs aren't being met for some reason. These reasons tend to fall into one of four broad categories:

We'll set aside personal reasons here because those aren't really something that the working environment can really affect too much. These other three categories - compensation, satisfaction, and security - are all things that the employer can affect. As long as a worker feels like their needs are being met - i.e. they have enough job satisfaction, compensation, and security to feel comfortable - they are quite likely to stay at their job. As long as that situation remains true for 10+ years, some employees will choose to stay there for 10+ years.

Amusingly enough, my current studio employer collaborates with other studios on a well-known AAA franchise. I actually used to work at one of these other studios 10+ years ago. I was reunited in cross-studio meetings with some of my former coworkers who are still at that same studio 10+ years later. It does happen!

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