Ask HN: Thinking about Applying for a Gamedev Job, Any Tips about My Portfolio? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Thinking about Applying for a Gamedev Job, Any Tips about My Portfolio?

11 pointsaurelwu7 comments

I have a sort of messy CV (multiple studies without degree), been self-employed for the past years working on a super niché project (Energy Market Simulations) and some other small projects, and now consider applying for a junior position at a german game developer working on an RTS (I'm german myself). I put together a quick portfolio. I never applied anywhere before so could you please give me some feedback, I'm a bit at a loss - I obviously could improve the design of it but for now I'm not even sure if I should include all those small not-very polished side projects or not.

Aurelwu.github.io/portfolio.html

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It's good and you'll be fine if you leave it as is. IF you have extra time to mess with it, read on.

Be aware that on average the people interviewing you will look at your portfolio for ~60 seconds. Show off the stuff you're proud of and think is interesting.

Show your games in action: use gifs. It'll make people more likely to try the actual games. They still almost certainly won't, but that's not a strike on you, it's just that there's literally no time.

Tell us why the project is cool. "Random terrain generation in ShaderGraph!..A unique twist on Sokoban with procedural puzzle generation! An Excel add-on that visualizes energy market futures using realtime data!"

If this is used instead of a CV, I'd want to know what languages and tech are involved with each project too.

List the relevant companies for the playtesting experience. Knowing which QA operation you were in is more important than the specific game.

Finally, I'd encourage you to do a little bit more styling of the webpage. Let's get some margins to center up the content. Use complete sentences with correct grammar, but keep things as brief as possible. Let the gifs and screenshots speak for themselves when they can.

This is good advice. I had to interview a few people while I was in the game industry that I was given about 10 minutes notice about before I had to go in there. It was just long enough to look through their resume and glance through their portfolio. I doubt I'd have the time to try more than one of your game examples (although it's good that they're there).

Lots of good advice, thanks a lot. As they are a rather small company and they posted the position a few months ago I think they might spend a bit more than 60 seconds but gifs are still more telling than still images.

There will be a CV, list of languages/tech I am experienced with and cover letter as well, so I omitted that here, might add it to the work projects for clarity.

Improving the styling - not my strong point but I should definitely do it.

> including 1st Place in Supreme Commander with my brother Dario who now is professional Starcraft 2 Player (LiquidTLO)

As someone who has watched TLO play, that's pretty awesome.

I think your portfolio looks pretty good! I think the trick is really a good cover letter or way to get attention before they look at your portfolio. If you say why you're a good fit, and how you would like to work for them, and why, and how you can help them with your skills, then they look at your portfolio, I think you'll have a better chance. I personally think the hardest step is the first one, because if a company has a lot of people applying, the manager might only look over your resume/portfolio for a minute or two, and might not even be fully paying attention when they do.

Building something and showing it off is still way ahead of most people, even if you are a bit embarrassed about a lack of polish. That's what the artists are for! Good luck!

Looked briefly and saw a typo. "A word typing game a friend and me created during LD 42." Should be "a friend and I".

thanks :-)

(At last! the perfect occasion to link to one of my favourite cartoons... "THRAK AND I")

http://explosm.net/comics/2830/

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