jobs for game designers or idea makers?

[Archangel85]

do they have jobs for idea makers or game makers?

Protip: never ever ever ever ever EVER apply to a game company as an "Idea Person". Everyone here has ideas for a dozen games, and that includes the cleaners. Show that you had an idea and implemented it in a mod, an indie game, a mod for an indie game or something similar.

 

[Pallidum]

As others have said, ideas are plentiful. What we are looking for are people that not only have great ideas, but are also able to take these ideas and expand them into solid game design that can be made into an actual game.

To give you an idea (heh) of the difference between ideas and design, consider this idea: "Let's take two roads and cross them so that people can go in different directions!"

Breaking it into a design gives us several things to consider:

* How do we cross the roads? Should we only do four-way intersections, or do we want to allow three-way, five-way or other types of intersections? What about roundabouts?
* What rules do we need for people driving on the roads?
* How do we explain these rules to the players? What kind of signs or signals do we need?
* What kind of vehicles will use our roads?
* Do we need special rules for special vehicles? Use case: Emergency vehicles.
* What about bikes? Pedestrians?
* Can we have special markings on the roads to indicate the pedestrian feature? How does this feature affect the rules, signs and signals?
* What happens if we have several intersections on the road? How do they interact? Timing issues? How do we solve congestion?
* How do we build the intersection? What kind of work do we need to do to build it? Do we need special equipment? Do we have time and resources?
* Do we need to consider the Winter feature when building this road? What about Rain?
* And so on...

A game designer has to not only do all of this, but they also need to make this work with the Railroads feature, the Buildings feature, the Weather feature and so on. The game designer also needs to document this so that the team knows how to implement it, and to follow up on the work so that it's implemented correctly. If any new questions pop up, they need to help resolving them, so that the idea they originally had ends up as a released product in the end.

Having ideas is the easy part. Making them come to life takes a bit more work.

 

[Archangel85]

Welp, there goes my long-term plans of applying to Paradox at some point in the future. 5 years of experience plus 2 of them in the game branche?
Former, I can do, but latter is near impossible, since there's no gaming branche over here. And giving up a good paying (albeit slightly boring) buisness IT job in order to go to a random badly payed gaming company making puke-worthy browsergames, just in order to get the qualifications to apply to the company I actually want to get to?

Welp, guess I should rather try to go about designing my own game and trying to pitch it to Paradox. But If I need to do that to get into their company, I might as well just pitch it to my current holding and get better conditions at a local place :/

I got this job with 0 experience in the games industry. Being able to show that you have other qualifications that make up for your lack of narrowly defined "game development" experience goes a long way.

Also 5 years experience sounds fairly senior, so that would have been hard to get into in any case.

 

[blackninja9939]

Yeah, I completely forgot the Senior there, by now I should have realized that, if they were to open a position for Junior developer, I might even fit the criteria.

But it's still a pain to be stuck in a country of prudes where the gaming industry is mostly limited to cash games of questionable quality.

To parrot what Archangel said, if you have experience elsewhere that can make up for the lack of structured experience in the games industry then you should give the application a shot, albeit for a more junior position maybe.
I also had no industry experience in my application but did lots of work on modding.
So if you are unlikely to get experience in your current job and getting it in your location would be extremely unpleasant to do then I would say take a shot at making some mods, start small and over time build up to make larger ones with more comprehensive features in them to show you have clear knowledge of designing and implementing gameplay concepts. Or if you would prefer it make your own indie game instead as that shows the exact same skill set just different means of implementation.
Hope that helps!

 

[Trin Tragula]

Going to jump in with the other content designers here as another person who started without gaming industry experience or relevant education (well history I did study but that’s not traditionally considered a game dev background ).
All three of us started out as modders though. I would imagine that can be a useful type of experience for any type of position here.

 

[Archangel85]

Going to jump in with the other content designers here as another person who started without gaming industry experience or relevant education (well history I did study but that’s not traditionally considered a game dev background ).
All three of us started out as modders though. I would imagine that can be a useful type of experience for any type of position here.

"Has experience modding paradox games" is generally considered a plus when applying for a position here, and is often considered "game dev experience" for the purpose of experience requirements (such as what level of seniority you start out at etc.)

 

[Groogy]

Welp, there goes my long-term plans of applying to Paradox at some point in the future. 5 years of experience plus 2 of them in the game branche?
Former, I can do, but latter is near impossible, since there's no gaming branche over here. And giving up a good paying (albeit slightly boring) buisness IT job in order to go to a random badly payed gaming company making puke-worthy browsergames, just in order to get the qualifications to apply to the company I actually want to get to?

Welp, guess I should rather try to go about designing my own game and trying to pitch it to Paradox. But If I need to do that to get into their company, I might as well just pitch it to my current holding and get better conditions at a local place :/

just apply anyway, what is there to lose? Maybe your knowledge as it is is good enough. Of course you'll be at sort of a disadvantage but like I said you lose nothing by just trying.

I applied to a position for Senior programmer position with only very little experience from an indie studio. Didn't even expect a response. And now I've worked here since forever

 

[Meneth]

Let me just join the "no previous game industry experience" train.
When I started at PDS, I was still in university. Still am, for that matter.
When I had my interview for the programming position I currently hold, I had only about two months worth of experience in C++ total, plus another 3.5 years or so of programming in other languages. No game industry experience other than some modding.

 

[Johan]

When I started as a programmer in the industry I was a 19 year old university drop out with no experience.

Programmers with good skills can easily find jobs.

Ideaguys not really.

 

[Archangel85]

Wait, so it is possible to join PDS if I have experience in modding your games and programming, isn't it? And what are age limits

18-65. Throw us an application, worst thing we do is say no.

 

[blackninja9939]

If I lived in Sweden, I would say it's cool
Do you have any staff from other countries?

There are plenty of staff from various countries and of many different ages.
Check out the job applications, some might have relocation packages or be outsourcing.

 

[Archangel85]

If I lived in Sweden, I would say it's cool
Do you have any staff from other countries?

We have plenty of people coming from different countries. I think the HoI 4 teams hails from 8 different countries (although almost everyone works in Stockholm). We have recently become more open about having people work remotely, too.

 

[Archangel85]

I always dreamt of working in the gaming industry, but went into consulting instead due to living in Belgium, which has a very limited game market.
The gaming industry is a harsh business to be in, but I'd love to do it anyway.
Though I've always wondered what kind of net wages a person could make at Paradox.

You won't find anyone discussing this on an open forum. Suffice to say that few people go into the game industry to get rich, and even fewer succeed in getting rich.

 

[Johan]

Though I've always wondered what kind of net wages a person could make at Paradox.

Depends entirely on your role and experience.

 

[Pallidum]

Does Paradox allow multi-role jobs or is it all very focused? From what I saw in the job descriptions it's usually pretty focused

Your skills in the role you are hired for is obviously going to be most important, but if you have other skills that are relevant to the job it's a big plus. A skilled content designer with UI and art experience will be more useful to us than an equally skilled content designer who lacks UI and art skills. It doesn't mean they will do UI and Art on a regular basis, but they'll be able to apply those skills in their content design work, and they'll be able to help out with tasks when needed.

So, yes, we have plenty of room for people who are very good at several skills.

 

[Meneth]

Your skills in the role you are hired for is obviously going to be most important, but if you have other skills that are relevant to the job it's a big plus. A skilled content designer with UI and art experience will be more useful to us than an equally skilled content designer who lacks UI and art skills. It doesn't mean they will do UI and Art on a regular basis, but they'll be able to apply those skills in their content design work, and they'll be able to help out with tasks when needed.

So, yes, we have plenty of room for people who are very good at several skills.

As an example, my experience with scripting from having been a modder often comes of use to me as a programmer. It is especially useful when implementing script functionality, as it means I have a better understanding than I otherwise would have of how that functionality is likely to end up actually used.

Rageair, the designer on CK2, similarly uses his scripting knowledge to prototype systems from time to time to figure out whether the core idea is workable before it is turned into a programming task. He also makes simple icons from time to time for new traits and similar, letting him add those without taking away art time.