A WILD YAGAHA APPEARS!

I already know what you’re all thinking. Who needs another YAGAHA? Related, what’s a YAGAHA? Well, my friend, if you haven’t already made that connection based on the title of this article, then I’ll tell you now: YAGAHA stands for Yet Another Game Audio Hiring Article, and I chose that acronym due to it being just familiar enough to audio people by its similarity to the ubiquitous audio brand, Yamaha.

Way back in the vine-ripened and tender year of 2012, I wrote an article for a website called AltDevBlogADay titled “A Big Jumbled Blog About Joining Team Audio.” I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it became one of the most popular articles I’d written. To this day, five years later, I still get an occasional email from someone about that article. Which is awesome! But the world, and my perception of it, has changed quite a bit in the last five years, so I wanted to take another crack at it.

There are articles aplenty about what it takes to get a job in game audio, but each different perspective can help someone persevere through the turbulent quest of attempting to join the ranks of game audio.

This article is primarily aimed at people who want to get an in-house game audio gig. The job listing might go by a few different names, but the most common seem to be Sound Designer, Audio Designer, and Audio Artist. Sometimes it’s preceded with “Technical,” as in Technical Sound Designer, which usually implies something a bit different, but the principles here will still apply. The principles might apply to any job, really.

PREPARE TO QUALIFY

First of all, you should understand what you’re getting into. Setting your expectations going into this marathon is important. Otherwise, you’ll start panicking and crying hysterically while flailing your arms haphazardly and you’ll knock over my coffee and scald my thighs and a hiring manager with burnt red thighs is less likely to hire you FACT.

Game Audio is an absurdly competitive field. Even though there seem to be more game audio jobs than ever, there are still fewer available gigs than capable and talented people to fill them. There are literally quadrillions of people applying for every single game audio job that’s posted. That might be a slight rounding error, but I can’t overstate how many people are going for these jobs, and many of the candidates have equal or better qualifications than you do.

It’s probably going to feel like you’re sending your resume into black holes, often hearing nothing for weeks. Sometimes you’ll receive a form rejection letter six weeks after submitting your application. Meanwhile, you’ll just be sitting there waiting, scratching your head, making your scalp all bloody and scarred, wondering if you’re real, if you even exist.

It won’t just be your emotional and mental fortitude that is tested. You will likely receive actual tests that take enormous amounts of time and effort if you want to compete with the other candidates. You’re going to do this while you continue to work whatever job or attend whatever classes, which will leave you feeling like a rubbery, deflated balloon by the time you’re done. And make no mistake that rubbery, deflated balloons still get rejected with impunity.

You’ll interview with people that will ask you questions that you have no idea how to answer, and after you stumble your way through your response, you will be rewarded with dubious silence and/or increasingly difficult questions. You’ll have to solve complicated problems on the spot, problems that you’ve never considered before, and you’ll have to pull clever solutions from thin air and draw analogies that will make you feel like you’re connecting strings between conspiracy theories.

You’ll show up for an on-site interview and feel like you’re getting a glimpse into Shangri-La, only to be hurriedly stuffed into a conference room and interrogated by people with titles that you’ve never heard of before. Why are these people even interested in talking with me? Why did they leave me in this room alone for six minutes? Why did someone draw a glowing banana wrapped in bacon on the whiteboard?

You’ll enter into compensation negotiations that will make you question your own worth. People will be telling you to negotiate, but you’ll want to just take the offer, but then you'll second guess yourself. You’ll be worried that you’ll say the wrong number and the offer will be rescinded and you'll be blacklisted forever and mightily thwapped on the back of the head

But then, if you persevere, if you keep learning and growing from each experience, you may find yourself being greeted by the endless sodas and pop tarts that you've always known to be your destiny, and it will be worth it. It’s worth it!

LLLET’S GET READY TO GET READYYY!

You’ve decided that you want to join Team Audio. You position your mouse cursor above the “Apply Now” button, and just as you're about to click, a ghostly hand reaches out from your peripheral vision and yanks the mouse away and thwaps you mightily on the back of your head. That's me. That's my ghostly hand. Wait!

Before you press that button, peruse this handy list of things-to-consider. Don't worry, I'm gonna give you sweet deets about each.

You might think that the job process starts with the application. It doesn't. It starts long before that point. Recall that I used the word marathon earlier to describe this process. Not sprint or dash or even frolic, and believe you me, I love a good frolic. But no. It’s a marathon.

WHAT DO YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO DO?

Hey, most of us are merely human, and sometimes we don’t know what we want, and that’s okay. But if you don’t have an idea of what you want out of your life, then the universe might decide for you. Whose plan for your life, yours or the universe’s, do you think will take your best interests into account? (Hint: Yours.)

So, even though you may not know today, or even if you think you know, I’d like to give you a couple experiments to try that might help you focus your aim.

DESCRIBE WHAT YOU WANT TO DO

Take your favorite notebook and pen and find a place that you can think. Maybe go somewhere slightly outside your element. Maybe a shady picnic table at a park, a quiet room at a nearby library, or a quiet coffee shop. I’d recommend somewhere generally free of distractions.

Once you’re settled in, close your eyes and imagine yourself doing what you want to be doing at work. Don’t think about companies you want to work at, the projects you’d like to work on, or the title you want to have. Those thoughts may creep in, and you can acknowledge them, but keep trying to refocus to what it is you’re actually doing, actions that will make you really happy and excited. No need to rush it. Let your imagination go for a little bit.

What are you physically doing? What do your surroundings look like? There’s no right or wrong, no rules about what it should or shouldn’t look like, and it doesn’t need to be one single thing. Maybe you picture a few different things. As these things come into focus and you catch yourself thinking something like, “Yep, that would be awesome and I want to be doing that,” then jot it down in your notebook.

It might feel weird and corny writing this stuff down. Maybe what you’re imagining is really grand, or maybe it’s very simple. Maybe it doesn’t conform to what you expect, or what you’ve been told to expect, of your future career. Doesn’t matter. Just write it down the best you can.

After you’ve finished writing the things that you imagined, try to sum it up into one concise sentence. My goal is to x, y, and z.

STUDY UP

Now it’s time to search the internet for those things and figure out how people are doing it. Google x, y, and z, and see what sorts of content comes up. For example, if one of your results is “I’m designing sound effects for a badass cinematic for a game I love,” then google things like “cinematic sound design interview” and “game audio cinematics article” and “game audio sound design tutorial” and see what comes up. Toss it into YouTube as well. Look at publicly available GDC talks. Scour Twitter and Facebook. Let yourself go down the rabbit hole and challenge yourself to find and consume as much information as you can stomach on each of your goals.

Start a document to keep track of these articles and videos. Document your search terms. Pretend like you’re in school and jot down notes as you’re reading or watching the content. Copy/paste links to all of the relevant materials that you find on the internet, and make bullet lists below them with your notes. Make notes about techniques that you’d like to try on your own sometime, or interesting tools that are being discussed, or people in the industry that are doing great work that you admire. Google those techniques, tools, and people. Keep going.

WRITE DOWN A STRATEGY

Hopefully by this point, you have some ideas about how you get from who you are today to become who you want to be. You’ve watched a bunch of videos, read a bunch of articles, and by now you’re probably inspired to get going! That’s great! But if you just start doing stuff, you may not do the right stuff. There are only so many hours in the day and you want to spend them wisely.

Your next task is to write down some steps that can take you where you want to go. Imagine a timeline with “who I am today” as the starting point and “who I want to be” as the ending point. What are all the steps in between that would move your starting dot towards your ending dot?

You may or may not know what those dots should be. Maybe by the end of this article, you’ll have a better idea. Regardless, just do your best and write it all down. This is all an exercise and none of it is chiseled in stone. Wait, you’ve been chiseling this into stone tablets? Bold move! Pen and paper next time.

Once you’ve got some steps in there, do a cut session. For each step, ask yourself if you truly believe that this step is critical to getting to where you want to be. If it’s not, write it again somewhere else under a different heading (e.g. wishlist, stretch, cut, save for later, etc.) and then cross it out. You should cut at least one thing, if not more, so that you’re left with what you believe are the essential steps that you need to take.

Again, you may not know what the steps are. That’s okay. Think about the content you've been consuming and give it your best guess. Keep track of everything so you can evaluate it again later.

GET FEEDBACK FROM SOMEONE

This one will be tough for some people, but it can be immensely helpful and save you time.

Now that you have some plans and ideas on how you get from where you are today to where you want to be, it’s time to bounce it off someone you trust.

You want to share your strategy with someone that has already achieved something close to what you ultimately want to do. I know people struggle with this. If you’re an aspiring developer and you haven’t worked in the industry yet, you may not know how to engage with someone that’s already doing it. If you’ve been in the industry for a little while, you may feel vulnerable sharing this sort of personal stuff. But it’s important to get some outside perspective from someone that’s been doing it already.

Here are the questions you want to ask your special friend:

If you’re in school and you don’t know anyone employed in your field of choice, start with a teacher that you trust and respect. Show them your summary statement and your timeline of steps and ask the questions above. Then ask them if they know anyone that is already doing the thing you want to do. If they do, ask if they’d be willing to pass your plan along for review.

You can also engage in social media. Ask on Twitter or Facebook or whatever forums you’re active on if there is anyone that would be willing to take a few minutes to give feedback on a high-level career plan. It should only take a few minutes and would help a lot. Even though you’re not asking for much, don’t expect a response right away.

If you don’t get any help after a week or so, try again, but this time just pick one step that you’d really like to start on, and ask the question to someone or on social media. If one of your steps is “try to reproduce a sound effect I really love from scratch,” then go to your social media outlet of choice (in the following example, Twitter) and ask something like, “I’m thinking of trying to reproduce a sound I love from scratch. Seem like a worthy effort to prepare for a #gameaudio job?” or what have you.

And if all else fails, reach out to me! The first thing I’m going to ask you is what you’ve already done to try to get someone to review your plan, and if it’s nothing/nobody, then expect me to tell you to go do something/anything first. But if all else fails, you can always ask me. I’m easy to find out there on the internet and I always want to help as best I can. Give me a week or so between follow up emails.

ALWAYS KEEP MOVING

These steps are designed to mirror good practices in game development, and just like you can't wait around forever when working on a game, you don't want your career to be frozen in time while waiting on something you can't necessarily control. So, even if you haven't received feedback on your plan, keep moving forward! Go start the first thing on your timeline.

RESEARCH EACH COMPANY

Before you apply for any jobs, you want to build as deep an understanding of the companies that you're interested in as possible. Trust me, you need to do your homework. If I had a nickel for every time I thought I was applying at a game dev but it turned out to be a slaughterhouse, I'd have fifteen cents.

If you don't have a top ten of companies you'd like to work for, make that list right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait for you here... Awesome! Nice list! Aiming high, I see! Good on ya.

There are three primary aspects of a company that I typically look into: The history, the team, and the products.

Depending on the company, finding the history might be as straightforward as reading a Wikipedia page, or it may take a little more detective work than that. Ultimately, you just want to gather as much about the company history as possible so that you are conversant if it comes up. Also, it can expose red flags. If the company has a history of layoffs or lawsuits, that may change the priority of applying there.