Hello, I am currently a graduate student doing my MBA (Master of Business Administraation) in Intnertional Business with an empahsis in marketing and Management. Upon gruaduating though, i want to pursue a job in the gaming industry. However, I want to be in the business aspect NOT the technical side of programming or any of that. More spcifically, i want to be either work in a maerketing capacity or ideally work as a (asst.) producer since I want to do product and project managaement and business negotiation as well. However, I am fairly young at 24 years old and I relaize the majority of gaming comapnies want vets with experience. what can I do to give myself an edge or at least what can I do to get my foot in the door and work my way up to that position?? Any help and advcie would be greatly appreciates. Thanks for your time! Sonno Joi! MYD!

I know exactly what you mean. I was in your position 5 years ago, and now, I''m proud to say, I''ve made it. I''ll outline the top 10 things you should do below:

You should definately start by...oh wait, you cross-posted. Well, good luck then. I hope I helped out.

I really wish the forum moderators would disable anon posting across all the forums.

But you did cross post, in no less than three different forums.

I deleted the other posts, sorry!

Sonno Joi!

MYD!

Why don''t you try building up a practice portfolio in your spare time?

- Get some screenshots of random games and put together a press kit with made-up information. Create a story, technical requirements, etc.
- Find a team working on a mod and offer to do their marketing. Help out with their web-site, send press releases to news sites, etc.
- Find another team and become their producer. Organize the team members and create a schedule and try to get them to stick to it.
- If there''s a game company near your college try to get an internship.

Random thoughts at 2AM to make up for AP assholes.

I''ll tell you what I did, I learned it. I got every book on it I could, read every article on it I could, compared everybody''s version of the truth and found my own precepts. I joined this community and the IGDA, scourged the newsgroups and sites and built a database from which emerged approaches to the title I was envisualizing.

Everything I''ve learned I''ve applied to the game I''ve been designing, and, like you, I am on the business and design side, not the technical side, so I work with both advantages and disadvantages with that, but, you have to go with your strengths.

Were I in possession of skills like yours, an MBA, I would focus on the marketing aspects if I wanted to get in as quickly as possible in the corporate side (but bear in mind this is also an independent game developer''s community website, and some people want to go work for BigCo, but many want to be entirely responsible and have their own enterprise like me), simply because I know having learned marketing from some really successful people, most people get marketing wrong, even established companies.

However, in this industry, marketing seems to be fairly structured in the number or channels for distribution and the kinds of messages and demographics you can reach successfully in terms of ROI.

That will change as our industry does in it''s focus over the next few years, and there will more opportunity for creativity in marketing and less structured advertising channels as games become more mainstream. Reuters just reported a unit of Time Warner Inc. (nyse: TWX - news - people), released a study on Tuesday showing that U.S. women over the age of 40 spend nearly 50 percent more time each week playing online games than men and are more likely to play online games daily than men or teens.

Another strategy I am persuing with some success is directly forming my own company, creating the techical relationships I require to produce a title, and taking responsibility for the marketing and business administration in exchange, while still sharing fairly in the intellectual property rights, responsibilities and rewards.

There are a lot of programmers and software engineers out there who are inclined to work on a smaller project that has good design (which can translate into good market) prospects in exchange for ownership in the organization instead of the salary they are used to settling for in light of the outsourcing scare that rippled through this class of intelligence worker last year.

You''d better have a darn good design though, cause these people are plenty smart, and very experienced, even at the age of some of the people I work with. They see it all, hear it all, are amazingly resourceful and networked, and have amazing analytical and deductive, and often great creative skills as well. I believe you will find, like I have, yourself lucky to be associated with them.

Another thing that you can do is write the business plan that gets funding and go into this yourself in a cart before the horse strategy often used in real estate. You hang out your shingle as a small producer and start interviewing talent of requisite disciplines. Be open with them that you are interested in producting titles of all kinds, or, in a specific area or genre your research has shown would be most lucrative to enter. Tell them their designs are just as viable as anyone''s.

A lot of these guys are carrying around in their minds great intellectual property concepts that could very well be your first sucessful title along with some sequels, and will often not tell you what they are becuase they want the big title to their credit. But, you should entertain their ideas, sign an NDA that protects you both, so if you use it you have to pay fairly for the concept to produce it, and if you don''t they know that they can move on pitching it elsewhere comfortably.

And there are various persons I have met yet in the game programming and subspecialization areas in it that don''t want to be a designer today, but have a great design concept anyway. So you could actually harvest twice from the same applicant. The bottom line here is that if the person does not totally dig the project you are outlining, they are the wrong person for the project, so there is some weeding as well as harvesting to do.

Others are all about graphics programming, or AI, or engine programming, each having their own sort of ownership/stewardship in the process. But most of them have amazing concept vetting skills, and I am speaking as a creative professional with thirty years of experience excluding my game design journey. An amazing team in this business is a thing to marvel at, and you want to buy them lots of pizza, but don''t spoil them at the same time.

Once through the interview process, and this can take some time, because of the preponderance of ideas you get pitched to you may take some time to sort out before the reasons why you should not select to back it become appearant, you can then dovetail the design concept into your business plan and go get your funding then.

Programmers remind me of working people in a way, they work hard, take pride in the quality of their code, and are generally easygoing people to manage. Of course, every industry has it''s impossible to deal with prima donnas as well as two faces, but you can weed them out as well.

A lot of programmers and software engineers and software architects don''t want to be involved with the business side, code and software are what they like to do, and they will produce amazing stuff just to preserve the opportunity to keep doing what they like and avoid what we know are glaring market truths and administrative nightmares dealing with vendors and accounts and such. They are amazingly pragmatic and practical, honest and the really super smart and talented ones are as easy to work with as it is as easy for them to see a solution to a implementation problem.

I worked with show business professionals for almost fifteen years, and was glad to be able to start working with the game industry people, and, with the type of player demographics changing, the types of titles more likely to become successful other than FPS''s.

Artists and animators, sound designers and writers, your other core competency human resources, they all have their own way to be worked with, but, like all working folks from whatever discipline, everyone likes to be associated with, and strongly contributive to, a successful, renouwn garnering project.

Good luck, and welcome to one of the most fun, challenging and rewarding businesses on the planet.

Adventuredesign