This post is aimed at game dev students to help them secure an internship in the game industry. It’s a collection of do’s and don’ts on a few topics like portfolio, interviews, internship fairs, business cards and emails. I compiled it from a series of posts I did on our own website.
Portfolio
This is the most important asset you have as a student to showcase your skills. Since it is likely that you don’t have any previous job experience or references, it is the tool game studios will use to judge your application. Your portfolio is the collection of (hard) work you’ve done over the years. Make it shine.
General
Don’t wait until the last minute to make your portfolio. It shows. Put in some effort. A nice design, complete with bells and whistles will make you stand out.
Put the work that best showcases your skills first.
Focus your portfolio on what you actually want to do; don’t show us your 3D art if you want to be a programmer. It’s nice to include it in your profile simply to show that you have those skills, but put all of that stuff on a separate page.
It’s better to have a few stellar pieces than 200 average ones. If you still want to show them, keep them separate from your main portfolio. It helps us assess your progression compared to your older work. But be careful with this; it can be both an advantage and a disadvantage.
Don’t make excuses for your school projects. We see the same project executed in a myriad of different ways. It’s a good way to gauge your skill level against your fellow students.
Tell us if a project was a group project and what your role was, what features you programmed, or assets you made. How did you work together?
Don’t just tell us what you did. Show us. If you made the models, add some images solely of these and explain how they were made. Wrote the code? Give us some code samples.
Show us your personal projects too. We want to know what you are interested in.
Please actually have some personal projects. It shows that you work on your skills besides what you’ve been told to do at school.
Portfolio tips for artists
Don’t be a one trick pony. Add in different styles, some 3D models, 2D art, concept sketches … We want to know what range you have.
Do not put manga in your portfolio. Seriously.
We often see shots of the whole project without closeups of the work you made. Saying you did A or B doesn’t really tell us much if you don’t show it. Show the details. If you are a texture artist, a level shot is good, but we also want to see the texture up close.
Show your work in-engine. It’s great that you can create a fancy VRay render but we want to see how your work holds up when implemented in a game engine.
When showing 3D models for games we want to see more than an in-engine shot of the asset. We also want to see a wireframe of the model. Your modelling could be amazing but if its built horribly we want to be able to see that.
While wireframes are important, it’s more crucial to see whether or not you understand the principles of art (or 3D art) rather than that you know how to be as efficient as possible with the model, as the former is harder to learn in an internship than the latter. Obviously though, having both is best.
Don’t do the sliced texture overview shots. We cannot see if you understand proper texturing if you only show the corner of your roughness map, another corner of your normal map and a little slice of your albedo.
Portfolio tips for coders
If you are a programmer, don’t make excuses for your programmer art. We understand and we don’t care. It’s your code that is important.
Which brings me to: show your goddamn code. We can learn a lot from looking at a few lines of C#.
Explain to us why you chose a certain solution.
Run us through your code. If you can explain it so our producer understands, we know you can defend your choices in a production environment.
Portfolio tips for level designers
We want to see your level flow. Either supply map overviews or a video in which we can clearly see how the level is constructed.
Show us some editor shots so we can see how your entity placement and lighting setup is structured.
Interview and Internship fairs
Interviews can be a daunting experience for some, while others might tread too lightly. It’s a bit like the first time you meet the parents of your partner. You need to show that you are a good fit and be on your best behaviour. It’s serious now.
First impressions are important.
You do not get a redo.
Remember, this is actually a job interview. Take it seriously. You are applying for a job at our studio. Act and dress accordingly.
Be confident about your skills. If you make excuses for your work, ask yourself why would we hire you?
