Hi folks, my name is Kevin Veale. I'm a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies and fiction author.

https://wheretofind.me/@krveale

"He/Him." Tangata Tiriti. Pakeha.

I'm into a wide variety of popular culture stuff in lots of different media forms, some of which I write about academically. I reshare stuff that amuses me, post random thoughts or resources, and generally hang out.


RYS
@RYS

I have often seen folks who get denied for jobs a few times think less of themselves. I’ll try and explain why you shouldn’t.

  1. Companies can sometimes not agree on what the title of a role is, and what its responsibilities are. Are they looking for a level designer, environment artist, or world designer? Depending on who you talk to, those are all different, or all the same.

That’s not your fault.

  1. There is always a push and pull on the salary. Some companies want unicorns for pennies. Technical roles with hugely expanded responsibilities are prone to this. To try and hire 1 person to fill 3 workloads. You can’t ever fill all those needs at once.

That’s not your fault.

  1. You can’t always be a good cultural fit. Every single company, culture, country, and team, operates in their own unique ways. Some are good, some less so. If you try and push through it anyway, one of you will end up deeply unhappy.

That’s not your fault.

  1. There can be rules for hiring internationally. For example a required amount of experience in years, or shipped products. Moving folks over is risky, and the company can have had bad experiences before that created those rules.

That’s not your fault.

  1. They literally don’t know what they want, or it has changed mid interview. The company has an issue, and hope that hiring the right person will solve that issue, but instead the whole team is restructured. Be glad you didn’t get hired right before that.

That’s not your fault.

There are things you can do that are your fault. Like not playing their games beforehand, not reading the job listing, not having questions ready, etc.

But everyone gets denied for jobs. Even highly successful folks! Rarely do people talk about that in public though.

So I hope you don’t feel bad. There are so many reasons to get denied that are not your fault. A good place to work can be hard to find! The journey to find that place can feel terrible, but that doesn’t mean you are terrible. You might just be totally fine elsewhere.


panicattheopticon
@panicattheopticon

playing their games beforehand. sorry, I'm a developer, not a gamer, i can establish a familiarity and research - if you're making a shooter I'm sure a trailer + reading about it will fill me in.

pay me if you want play tests.


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in reply to @RYS's post:

in reply to @panicattheopticon's post:

I think this may highly depend on the job. If you are a level designer, an artist, or gameplay programmer, then having played the projects of the studio a little bit can give you a lot of information on what kind of experiences they create, and how those experiences need to feel. That then gives you a lot of great information on what kind of person they are looking for, which then helps during the interviews. Trailers and reading can only do so much, and not give the real experience of what it is like to for example learn, discover, and use the gameplay mechanics as they are presented in-game.

Maybe a case can also be built that this is for any job. Even those who may seem far removed, like server engineers, because in the end all bits and pieces of an entire game intermingle to create the experience. Lag, download time, ping, etc, are a part of that too. So having played the game you may get a better understanding of what parts of your job are more important than others. I'll have to think about this some more.

What I regret is buying and playing games by competitors beforehand, as a prerequisite for an interview. Being familiar with direct competitors doesn't require playing each of them, nor will it necessarily contribute to work for the company.