I want to get into producing music for games (I know, we all do. That's the point). I have loads of experience in broadcast music for TV and film, and a very diverse showreel from that industry, but none from gaming. What would you people in the know suggest as a starting point? should I go for small independents first or approach major developers? What kind of knowledge/experience will these guys be looking for?

I don't think there's much to be said apart from to make it clear in your portfolio how your music applies to games. And if it doesn't, write new music that does.

We get sent a few demo discs a day from composers looking for work so the competition is very tough... but you probably knew that. On the plus side though we do listen to all of them and the difference in quality is remarkable, we get some absolutely terrible stuff sent through which really is quite laughable, but yesterday for example we got a really good one which we all (in the audio department) sat down and listened to. So if you are good you will stand out all the more.

Things that stand out (to us anyway) are: real orchestral recordings (always stands out a mile), varied styles and genres, interesting musical ideas, good production and the ability to play multiple instruments.

Things that suck: just one style, copy-and-paste style music, cheap synth strings (personal pet hate), bad production and sounds... we get so many demos of just dance music, some of it's really good, but it's not proportate to the amount of games that actually use dance music. Also, when you can't tell if something has been created by the composer or just thrown together with some sample CD's it's difficult to evaluate it... which is why recording acoustic instruments is a sure fire way of saying "I DID THIS!".

The industry seems to be moving away from in-house composers though and going contract based. It wouldn't surprise me if we start seeing the whole games industry going like the film industry in that respect. But that's just my take on it.