Would you consider professional experience in game design to be only for games fully released to the marketplace or would games developed during Game Jams or through collaborations at University or elsewhere be acceptable.

If not, how would you suggest to go about gaining professional experience in game design given that professional experience is already required to work on a game?

Would you consider professional experience in game design to be only for games fully released to the marketplace or would games developed during Game Jams or through collaborations at University or elsewhere be acceptable. If not, how would you suggest to go about gaining professional experience in game design given that professional experience is already required to work on a game?

Well,

I like to say. "people only take you as seriously as you take yourself, never more, sometimes less"

As someone who's technically not in the Industry yet, but who;s interviewed with AAA companies, I've gotten close, and they always ask if you have "professional experience".

That usually means money is on the line somewhere.

Rev share/ indie can be considered as such if you hold yourself and the project to industry standards, same for Modding. (which is what I technically do)

If there is no money/ if your rev share, then the questions are:

1. How professional are the tools? (all tools, from art, to code, to management)

2. How Professional does the product look and play?

4. How professional do the members communicate on all platforms?

4. How long did it take these people?

5.What are their other qualifications?

Money or no money, they want to see you produce something, something different, something long term, something that they've never seen before.

Most people do not consider "game jams" professional experience, for the simple fact that it's by design a very short term project.

It's actually been a huge issue in games staffing for the past few years, that people put game jams on their resume, without identifying it as such.

Sure, your a game designer. but you neglect to mention, it was for 3 days, and the team didn't finish, and the product didn't work.

As for your "school projects", do you mean:

A. they were done for a class.

B. they were done while you were at school

C. A & B

D. Other (please specify)

You need to be careful about listing games on your resume, out of the games industry, most people have no idea what you mean, or what you were doing, unless you have a link to show them. (and sometimes they won't look)

Due to the PR of the games industry, and just the term "games" people will assume your "playing" not "making", so you need to make that distinction as much as you can,in everything you do.

The Activision recruiter asked me in a playful way what I did for fun, and what games I usually play, that's a trap, the correct answer that needs to be true, is "I hardly have time to play games, because I'm working on them." If that's not true for you, your not doing it right.

For some mysterious reason, as my project developed, we never gave anyone the title of "game designer", nor do I, and have I ever put an Ad up looking for specifically "Designers".

It probably has a lot to do with us being technically a mod, but the reason honestly is, all core "design" was done by me, my creative & Art director, and former lead coder years ago during preproduction.

The high level of the full "game design" is done by the person who wrote the GDD, and who plans out all the core mechanics and features, in my case, it was a collaboration between us three, but mostly me, since I wrote out the GDD, and did all the "thrilling" spreadsheets.

Once that is established, and agreed upon, anyone on the team can come up with a "design" feature, but the core design is locked in.

To this day, I don't consider myself a "designer" nor do I give myself another title.

It's just how it turned out.

We'd need an official, "Game designer" once we start our new IP tho, but it's still a high level position.

At the end of the day, a designer's job is to develop, implement, and communicate systems.

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