Did you ever try bladeinteractive?



[edited by - OklyDokly on May 29, 2003 10:45:42 AM]

1) Rare have had recruitment adverts in Edge every month (apart from two notable occasions) since ~1993 with pretty similar wording (I had an interview with them around then before I had any in-house experience).

2) The advert doesn't necessarily mean there ARE actual vacancies at the moment. It lets them stockpile CVs so that they can get people in for interview as soon as there are actual vacancies rather than them having to wait the usual 1-2 month lead time between the vacancy arising, the design of the advert, the publication of the magazine and people applying.

3) Talent, enthusiasm and a good demo is enough for most companies. With previous industry experience being required for the less junior roles and smaller companies.

4) The development part of the industry is in a bad way at the moment (publishing is ok, and retail is great). The publishers' fate is directly linked to the stock market which isn't in such a good state at the moment and developers' fate is directly related to publishers.
Unhappy/Risk averse shareholders results in cutbacks at the publisher which turns into canned titles (e.g. two of the top 10 publishers each canned around 20 titles this year). Each title equates to a development company recieving advances each month to pay the wage bill (developers aren't able to grow with the current business models used in the industry). A canned title results in termination of advance, which usually ends up with a whole team redundant and in the case of smaller companies (particularly those with single teams) a complete destabilisation of the company.

5) That does mean there's a lot of competition for development vacancies from industry experienced people. That does mean less junior positions AND the salaries being driven down.

6) I'd seriously advise against bitching about individual companies or even giving specific details of discussions with them on a public forum (that they might be reading).
The industry is tiny, and very close knit - people move from company to company regularly, talk on industry mailing lists/private newsgroups, get together at conferences etc - i.e. everyone knows everyone else. If you get a bad name or piss someone off, your name WILL spread, and it will affect you in a "don't employ him, he'll slag you off on message boards" kinda way.

7) If you're going for a design position you'd better be DAMN good. Those jobs are much rarer than tester, programmer, artist, producer jobs. Game Designer jobs are also the ones that everyone (in and out of the industry) thinks they can do easily, and the one that requires a lot more than just "thinking up ideas for games".

--
Simon O'Connor
Creative Asylum Ltd
www.creative-asylum.com

[edited by - S1CA on May 29, 2003 10:42:40 AM]

OK thx Simon, I''ll be careful.

You''re probably right as well, best to stick with the programming position.

I am normally very diplomatic when posting, but i do feel company X were dishonest.
I would have much prefered 'sorry your not good enough' or 'we don't currently have vacency right now'
Warthog rejected me with 48 hours with a very nice letter.


[edited by - Defcom on May 30, 2003 2:51:31 PM]

Here''s some blabber on Rare. YMMV.

I''m sure they are looking for a lot of industry experience also (assuming they are even hiring right now)... That seems to be the key in getting jobs these days.

I doubt they are looking for someone right out of school.

-- Steve --
Blue Fang Games

lol that''s ok, I have a degree, and one freeware published title.

Only a 2.2 though although it is an excellent university I went to, among the top ten in the country. Still I''m quite worried about the 2.2, should have worked harder in uni....

Rare are very talented people but also complete arseholes. I''ve thought that since about 1984 when they allowed their ''Ulimatelay the game'' name to be used to flog a load of inferior products to the game buying public. The last actual game that was made by the real Ultimate (now Rare) team and released under the Ultimate name was ''Gunfight'' in 1984, however they had to wring as much money out of the name as possible by selling the name off. The buying public were very effectively hoodwinked.

Yes, their recruitment policy sux ass too. Goldeneye was good tho.

most of the Rare talent left halfway through perfect dark (many beleive this is the reason the laster part of the game is weak in comparison to the first half) - some of them set up a company - free radical and made the timesplitters games.

also the goldeneye project leader Kartin hollis has also left and started a new company names Zoonami, currently working on a gamecube title for nintendo - but not a fps.

also there were reports of 25% of rare staff leaving at the time the were sold to Microsoft.

also i been told that they get there staff turnover is terrible, they get people right out of college and work them like dogs until they quit, probably why they have been constantly advertising for staff for ages.

doesnt sound like a nice place to work does it.

quote: Original post by OklyDokly
one freeware published title

That is, of course, an oxymoron...

Hmm. Are your teamwork and communication skills as good as your programming skills? After all, you''ll probably spend at least 25% of your time in meetings. Is your CV slick, does your demo portfolio autorun with a ''portfolio browser?'' Is it clearly an advantage to them to hire you?

Oh, and never mention salary until they do.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.
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