name says it all. I have about 1year left in college so I'm kind of wondering where to go from here. Did you need to get an internship before they would even consider you for an entry level position. What type of questions do they ask you, did you have any previous experience, etc. Any advice you guys have is always appreciated.

You should check out Tom Sloper's page as well as Obscure's page. I'm also moving you to the business forum, where these sorts of questions are generally dealt with.

To quickly answer your questions:
a) If you can get an internship, it will certainly help. It's still entirely possible to get a full-time entry level job without having previously been an intern anywhere, though. Whether or not you can depends on your abilities and how you present yourself during the interview process.

b) They ask you questions that they think will tell them what they need to know about you. Every studio is different, there are few hard-and-fast rules or always-asked questions.

c) The definition of entry-level job is one requiring little or no prior experience.

As for advice, ask better questions. What you've posed so far are fairly vague, general, questions that don't have particularly focused, concrete answers.

I splattered my CV over a bunch of job sites and someone finally picked up on it. I taught myself C++, Win32 and DirectX and made several apps and games. In my interview, the questions were mainly pretty straightforward; what's the point in virtual functions, what design patterns I knew, how was my STL knowledge, etc.

The key thing is that you need to show initative by working on your own projects, a games company isn't going to take you on and then teach you C++ or 3D graphics concepts, you'll be expected to know that before you start.

I had completed close to a year of college in game programming & design (for the most part not really worth the tuition costs), when I noticed a QA/tech support position with a local game company. I applied and got the job.

Now...I'm somewhat close to being promoted for a second time in the short two years I've been with the company. And, I only had to endure 1 year of tech support... boy, am I glad that's over with.

Just remain flexible and eager to learn. Also, I had some hobbyist experience with programming and making my own games, which has definitely paid off in the long run, and I believe will continue to.

Hang in there and good luck!

The following will all help you to get a foot in the door.
a great portfolio
the best education you can get
a well presented CV
the ability to interview well

Instead of retyping everything, or cut and pasting, take a peek at my journal. I just landed a game designer job a couple of weeks ago (started last week), and I'm using my journal to chronicle my experiences.

Also, one good interview technique I learned recently was to ask them at the very end "What do you think is my weakest qualification?" and then you get one last chance to address their worst concern before you leave the interview.

If you are a coder, it helps if people can see what kind of code you write. If you have made significant contributions to an open source project, that's an easy way to share the results of your efforts.

Otherwise, it will be hard for them to really know what its like to work with you. One idea I heard of recently that I like is to pair program with an interviewee for a couple hours to find out how good they are at coding. The interviewee drives the keyboard while the interviewer acts as navigator.

Whilst we are at it.

I quite often see suggestions that you should show some of your best code and applications. I would like to know, what does that really mean? Best code as in prettiest? Best design? Best outcome?

Any examples of applications that are good to show would be appreciated :).

I sent (using email, which apparently is bad form) my CV to a company, and was lucky enough to get a phone call from them.

I showed off an engine I was building at the time, and all my game modding work.

The engine was what I considered some of my "best work" - it was full of undocumented macros and reinvented wheels, but I was able to explain how it worked and why I chose for it to work the way it did, which I think was more important than the actual code itself.

I had been modding games forever, but I showed them a recently released mod which had been in development for 4 years. I think they were as equally impressed by the technology in the mod as they were with the social/team skills and dedication needed to keep a mod alive for 4 years ;)


I think the catch-22 is that nearly all games companies will only hire people with experience - if you're not already in the industry how are you supposed to get enough experience to get into the industry!?
So my advice would be, if you're not already working on an extra-curricular project, such as a mod or something, then find something to work on! Preferably games related (but coding is coding), and preferably with a team (otherwise you might turn into a maverick).

I applied for a job (programming) via a friend at a games company, sent a CV and demo and got the job. The rest is, as they say, history.