Man.  The site has been busy, but the activity on the blog….not so much.  Apologies, and we’ll do our best to break this unintentional vow of silence.  We’ve had a lot of activity from new companies so far this summer, and I think it’s time I extended a belated welcome to the following companies:

Trion Worlds, Inc. – they’re working on a bunch of MMO properties, and they’re looking for a bunch of people to work on those games!  They’ve got a big selection of job ads for their San Diego and Redwood Shores locations.

Naugty Dog – have I welcomed them before?  I can’t remember.  Even if I have, I think they’ve earned welcomes x2.

Toy Studio Games – these guys are very cool, and they’re working on a variety of social networking games from their new location in Chicago.

2015 - this is our first studio from Oklahoma to post jobs on GJH.  They’ve got several ex-EA vets running the shop, and they’re looking to expand.

If you’re searching for a job, we want to know how it’s been going.  The rash of layoffs seems to have died down (Rockstar San Diego notwithstanding) – it seems things have settled a bit.  Are you finding it easier to land an interview?

We’ll keep trying to get more companies to post their jobs with us.  If you’ve had success scoring an interview or a job from an ad you saw on our site, let us know!  More importantly, let that company know you saw the ad at GJH. 

Happy hunting, everyone.

We’ve had a busy 6 weeks since the holiday break.  Lots of new jobs are popping up, and we’ve had several new game companies start to use our site.  That’s good news if you’re looking for a video game job – people are hiring if you know where to look.  I love the variety of companies that have posted on GameJobHunter, and this batch of new companies is no exception.  Check out their openings, and if you apply, let them know you saw them on GameJobHunter!

• Say Design – A developer of Flash and web-based games
• MTV Networks – MTV needs no introduction.  They’ve been branching into the video game world over the last few years.
• TimeGate Studios – TimeGate has been behind some very innovative FPS titles over the last few years.  I’ve always appreciated their willingness to try new ideas.
• Snail Games USA – Snail Games is working on bringing Asian MMOs to the US market.  Their first US title is Heroes of Gaia

Melissa Heidrich of PassionFruit Games conducted an interview with GameJobHunter to talk about her experience with being victim to a layoff in the video game industry, and how she and her team have started up their own video game studio.

GJH: What are some of the most important things to start thinking about if you’re laid off? What were the first steps you took?

Melissa Heidrich: I’d say if you’re laid off, the most important thing is to stay positive – instead of viewing the situation as an ending, you have to see it as a new beginning. I’ve been laid off three times now, and each time, it’s opened the door to fresh and exciting new opportunities that weren’t possible with prior companies. It’s a cliché, but a positive attitude really does get you farther in life! When I was called into the conference room to receive the news of my company’s layoff, it was probably a couple of minutes into the big we’re sorry to inform you speech when my mind started racing, thinking of what to do next. I’m not the type to dwell on things. I’d had this idea for a new type of romance-casual game and thought that this could be the perfect opportunity to accomplish that vision. Besides, my team was the best I’d ever worked with, and it would be a shame to split up a group that had such great dynamics and so much talent. The next day, after we all cleaned out our desks, I had the team gather outside the building to hand out NDAs, and PassionFruit Games was born. The fact is, you never know what’s going to happen in life, and keeping a few what if plans in the back of your brain never hurts.

GJH: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered that you didn’t anticipate when starting your own video game studio?

Melissa Heidrich: We’re probably still going to run into a host of challenges that have yet to rear their heads, but the ones we’ve come across so far have mostly been related to legal or financial issues. We had to decide what kind of company to set up given our size, we decided an LLC was best, and we needed to work with a lawyer to help us create a legal agreement between all the members. Forming the agreement was a much more complicated and time-consuming process than any of us had anticipated, mostly because there were so many possible scenarios that had to be covered. By the way, I’ve heard horror stories about other startups that didn’t set up legalities from the start – NOT a good idea! And, all that legal stuff cost a lot more money than anticipated expect to pay a few thousand dollars, which we had to squeeze from our self-funded budget. Another challenge we’ve faced is the problem of self-motivation. We felt like it was a lot of fun going rogue and starting our own studio without the “(wo)man” telling us what to do – but sometimes the temptation to goof off together caused our productivity to plummet. It’s helped that we’ve broken the development cycle into milestones that all culminate in public focus testing – the thought of an outside eye scrutinizing our game adds a lot of pressure to get work done on time!

GJH: What sacrifices if any did the team members have to make when you decided to band together as a new studio? Did it take any convincing of anyone?

Melissa Heidrich: Because we had all gotten along so well, everyone on the team was really excited about the prospect of starting a company together… but there were definitely doubts. I remember in the beginning having to convince people that making a romance game was a great idea with profit potential. The most difficult part is that we’re self-funded, so we’ve all had to sacrifice a lot in terms of our basic standard of living!  Yes, we survive off Costco snacks, mooching food from others, and mastering the art of stuffing 3 meals’ worth of food into a takeout container from an amazing Indian restaurant that offers $5 buffet lunch! And due to financial woes, we’ve actually had a couple sad stories – the worst was when one team member had to give his three-legged cat away because he could no longer afford vet bills. But amazingly, spirits haven’t been too low, since we’re going through all this together, and we have high hopes for the game we’re creating.

GJH: Do you think that the success of the studio will lead to new video game jobs with Passion Fruit Games?

Melissa Heidrich: I will have a much better answer for you in April, when our first game comes out! We’re counting on Tiger Eye to do well in order to continue making games together as a studio. Our goal is to sell enough copies to at least be able to say okay, I can survive on this amount of income – let’s keep going and shoot for more success with our next title. But if our game does better than that and we have extra cash flow – you bet we’ll want to hire additional team members so we can produce future games faster. Regardless of the outcome, I think everyone on the team would agree that the experience we’ve gained over the last six months has been worth it.

You can learn more about PassionFruit Games by visiting http://www.passionfruitgames.com/- their first game, Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box, is now available for pre-order.

The Wall Street Journal published an article earlier this month about how to get ahead in a time where promotions are hard to come by and new job openings are scarce.

When asked about making a lateral move, EA’s VP of Talent Acquisition, Cindy Nicola, was quoted as saying “you’re still learning and growing,” and “broad-based experience can ultimately position you to move up.”

So, if a move to a new company or a promotion just seem like dreams, consider taking advantage of opportunities to work in other departments or move to a new position internally to get some additional experience. Though this can move you outside of your comfort zone, this experience can be what give you a leg up on the competition.

Read the full WSJ article

Check out some of the jobs EA Mobile and EA’s Pogo.com have posted on GameJobHunter.com

We’ve gotten off to a busy start this week – the turkey-induced comas have started to wear off, and companies are once again posting new job ads.  I’ve said many times that one of the main reasons that we started this site was to help smaller/newer/unique/etc. studios get their jobs posted and seen by job hunters.  We love having the major players post, too, but it’s nice to learn about new companies as they pop up on GJH.  There are always a LOT of jobs open in the game industry, but they can be tricky to find if you’re not sure where to look.  It’s been very rewarding to see a steady stream of new sign-ups, especially when I’m learning about that company for the first time!  I feel like it’s given us a very unique mix of small/medium/large company job postings that you just don’t see at other sites.

Here’s a quick rundown of the new companies we’ve had post in the past few weeks:

• Scientifically Proven Studios – they’re looking for a gameplay programmer in Detroit, MI.
• Arkadium – creators of a variety of casual games and a casual game platform.  They’re in NYC, and they’re looking for a senior designer.
• 360ED – I actually know the founders here – several EA vets that are now working on educational and virtual classroom titles.
• Nikitova LLC – an art outsourcing group who is looking for an art director.

I’ve got a good friend who is about to go into job hunt mode, and I’m looking to help spread the word that he’s available.  I’ve worked with him personally, and he’s got my highest recommendation.  He’s got almost 20 years of experience in the UI, 2D, 3D and effects fields.

He’s keeping his search slightly under wraps for now – if you’re interested, ping me and I can get you in touch.  This is NOT for any type of referral fee, any introduction will be free of charge.  Here’s a brief rundown of his skillset:

• High level UI design
• Usability guidelines and direction
• Establishing corporate branding and styleguides
• Photoshop ninja
• Website wireframing and mockups
• Profociency in Maya, Adobe suite including After Effects, zBrush, Mudbox, Sketchup
• Texture and shader design
• Experience managing staff of animators and other designers

Ping me at pteall(at)gamejobhunter(dot)com if you’re interested!

Paul

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in the game industry.  First, we had the news last week that EA was laying off 1500 of its employees worldwide.  Then, we had the news today that EA was shutting down Pandemic.  If you’re an industry veteran, I’d almost bet money that you knew someone that was affected – I’ve worked at EA in the past, and I had a few friends that were let go.  If you’re a job hunter, it means that there is suddenly a lot more people looking for jobs.  This can definitely be worrisome, but there ARE still a lot of people hiring.  With EA’s acquisition of Playfish, the obvious question is whether or not a lot of jobs are just getting shuffled around to casual/social media/mobile game developers.  I had a quick look at Playfish, Playdom and Zynga, and they seem to be hiring for a LOT of positions.  I know, I need to get them to post here.    They obviously don’t have 1500+ jobs listed, sooooo…I’m not sayin’….I’m just sayin’.

We’ve also had a bunch of new ads and several new companies posting at GameJobHunter over the past few weeks. Here’s a list of some recent activity:

• EA Mobile – Even with the layoffs, EA is still hiring
• CCP – The Eve Online developer signed up to GJH this week
• Longtail Studios – A few new jobs from Longtail went up
• Harmonix – They’re keeping busy with the posting (follow @HMXkfan on Twitter)
• SlateXP – New company that posted their first ad recently
• Total Immersion Software - Another first time poster

Good luck to everyone that’s looking!

Paul

Austin is next up in my series on local video game developer profiles, and it has more companies than any of the cities I’ve done so far.  I’ve actually tried to focus on less well-known hubs with previous profiles, but I figured it was time to hit one of the major cities.

As always, I’m using gamedevmap as a starting point.  I filter out anyone with a dead link,  and then dig around to see what other companies I can find that they don’t have.  Because the list is so long, I’m going to split this into 2 posts.  On to part 1…

Game Studios

• Arkane Studios – Arkane got its start in Lyon, France, and opened their Austin branch in 2006.  Their focus is “first-person immersive games with depth.”
• Armature Studios - Armature was founded by 3 Retro Studios veterans.
• Aspyr – Aspyr has worked on a large number of licensed and original titles over the years, and they’ve been involved with porting several titles to the Mac.
• Bioware Austin – The Austin division of Bioware has been hard at work on the upcoming Star Wars – The Old Republic title.
• Black Lantern Studios – Black Lantern is an independent developer with studios in both Austin and Springfield, MO.
• Blizzard Entertainment – The Austin office is a customer service center, and doesn’t actually handle any internal development.
• Certain Affinity – Founded by an ex-Bungie employee in 2006, Certain Affinity got their start working on new maps for Halo 2.  They’ve grown to 35 FT employees, according to their site.
• Challenge Games – Developers of Facebook titles, including a recently released 3D football game.
• Critical Mass Interactive – Contract developer who has worked on a variety of UE3 related projects.
• Edge of Reality – Looks like they recently wrapped up some work with Bioware on Dragon Age.  Nice!
• EA Pogo – One of the original casual game sites.
• Ghostfire Games – They’re working on an upcoming WiiWare title.
• Heatwave Interactive – New developer that received VC backing in 2008.  They’re working on an upcoming title called Platinum Life.
• Junction Point (Disney Interactive) – Warren Spector’s studio, and developers of the upcoming Epic Mickey title.  This Mickey Mouse reboot looks very cool.
• KingsIsle Entertainment – Creators of online titles, including their first release, Wizard 101.
• Semi Secret Software – I’m going out of order for now, but I found these guys while looking at Last Chance Media.  It looks like Last Chance is now part of Semi Secret – they released the awesome iPhone game Canabalt.
• Midnight Studios – not sure what they’re working on, but it looks like they moved into new office space in early 09.
• Mock Science – They’ve been helping out with some social network games lately.  A few of us at GJH used to work with one of the co-founders, so it’s great to see them achieving success.

That’s it for part 1 – I’ll get to work on part 2 some time in the very near future.  Stay tuned….

If you’re in the Orlando area this week, make sure and head downtown for the October IGDA meeting.  You need not be a member to attend, you just need to be willing to eat/drink/stand around and talk games with people from the industry.  The events are (almost) always held at the Wai Tiki Lounge on Wall Street.  Stop by and say hi!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=158730536219&ref=ts

We just had two jobs go up from studios within the Foundation 9 Family!

Double Helix, located in Irvince, Ca, is looking for a Network Programmer. They do a better job than me at explaining what they do, so here’s a direct quote:

“Specializing in large-scale action games based on blockbuster franchises, Double Helix, a division of Foundation 9 Entertainment, develops for all major home console platforms and has worked with a variety of high-profile properties including Star Wars, The Matrix, Indiana Jones, Silent Hill: Homecoming and GI JOE.”

ImaginEngine, located in Boston, is looking for a Creative Manager to work with the studio’s Art department.

“ImaginEngine is a leading brand in the development of children’s titles and value software. We are best known for our award-winning, commercially successful CD-ROMs, online, and casual games. ImaginEngine strives to give kids and adults entertaining tools and experiences to enjoy and express themselves in software and the online world. A small, closely-knit studio, we strategically utilize technology and resources from sister studios in Foundation 9, in order to create great games on time and on budget. As part of Backbone Entertainment, ImaginEngine was one of the founding studios of Foundation 9.”

Make sure and check out all the new jobs!