Video Game Venture Capital

If you’re looking for yet another interesting tactic to use to track down video game employment, here’s a tip – keep on eye on new video game companies that are getting VC funding.  This is fairly easy to do, just keep tabs on a site like www.venturebeat.com.  That’s just an example, I’m sure there’s a dozen more like it out there.  If you’re searching for jobs, looking at places like EA, Activision, Microsoft, etc. is easy.  It’s not nearly as easy to keep tabs on the dozens of new studios that are opening up every year.  And if a new studio has recently raised capital from a VC, odds are they’re going to be looking to spend some of that on new employees.  In the past 2 days, I’ve seen funding announcements from a couple of Facebook game developers, and a quick check showed that at least one of them was hiring – http://www.challengegames.com/ – and yes, I am going to contact them to see if they’ll list on GJH ;) .  I’m sure there are many more to be found by digging through the VentureBeat releases of the last few months – just using that as an example to show how quick and helpful it can be to know where the funding is.

Video Game Conferences

If you’re on a job hunt, conferences are a great place to meet potential employers face-to-face.  And if you’re only thinking GDC, PAX and maybe E3 when you’re thinking conferences, you need to think again.  While some conferences have dedicated job booth areas (the room at GDC is massive), others simply offer you a little informal time meeting with a wide range of industry people who have no choice but to sit and talk with you.  ;)

Here’s just a few that we’ve already had this year that come to mind:

  • Virtual World show – there’s actually been two of these already, and there’s another one coming up in London
  • Casual Connect – show focusing on, you guessed it, casual games
  • Games & Mobile Forum @ LA Games Conference
  • NY Games Conference – this one is coming up on Sept. 25-26th
  • Austin GDC – Sept. 15-17th

This is just a small sampling, I’m sure there’s many more worth adding to the list.  Just another element that’s worth adding to your job hunting arsenal.