Get in the Game! Book Review

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Get in the Game! Careers in the Game Industry

Book Review by SteerpikeMarch 2003

Way Better than Taco Bell

People who love games seem to devote a good deal of time to thinking about making them. This is somewhat singular among entertainment media—there are plenty of movie buffs, but only a few who seriously consider filmmaking; the same is true for fans of television, comics, music, and so on—and is at least partly responsible for the meteoric growth of the industry over the past several years. More and more young people are seeing the game industry as a real career opportunity, and though they still have to deal with those ignorant folk out there who truly believe that making games = playing games all day, for the most part career opportunities in the biz are looking up.

But at the same time, those who look seriously for jobs in the industry rarely want to start at “the bottom,” because The Bottom almost always sucks. I began my post-college career in advertising, an industry where The Bottom is an unspeakably torturous six-to-eighteen-month stint in a tiny department called Traffic.  As a Traffic coordinator, you order lunch, wash the V.P.’s car, type scripts, perform miserable tasks like gluing pieces of paper to foamcore backings, and generally are required to work 100+ hour weeks and be treated as the higher-ups’ punch monkey. For this you receive $15,000 per year and the promise that eventually you will be promoted to a slightly less degrading position. It’s a good example of why no one wants to start at The Bottom—it can make you hate something you love.

Enter Marc Mencher’s Get in the Game! Careers in the Game Industry.  It’s not the first, doubtless not the last, and one of the better guidebooks for getting your foot in the door of the game business.  And while the book described (in detail) how to start at The Bottom (in the case of gaming, that would be QA/testing), it also describes (in detail) pretty much all of the other careers available and what you need to know in order to get them.

Mencher is no stranger to the game biz, having made a few himself for Spectrum HoloByte, Microprose, and others. He now runs GameRecruiter.com, a free (for candidates) headhunting service that helps newbies and veterans alike find jobs in the business—because despite the growth of the industry, it’s not always easy to do.

“It Must Be Nice to Play Games All Day”

Some people have always equated making games with playing games, and nothing on earth can change their minds. In my experience, these people are almost always aunts, acquaintances with lousy jobs, older people, and those who think that enjoying one’s work means one isn’t working hard enough.

Get in the Game! doesn’t address this issue head on; rather, it takes the more practical approach of assuming that only serious applicants will read the book, and it describes (in detail) the literally dozens of potential positions that a worker bee in the development industry might hold. These range, naturally, from programming troll to artist to writer to producer, and Mencher makes it painfully clear that there is no quality that everyone must have—except a passion for games. Contrary to popular belief, for example, it’s not necessary to know how to code unless you want to be a programmer.  It might help, but it’s not necessary.

The book lays out careers in the industry (in detail), each position getting 2+ pages that describe the role, responsibilities, required skills, job environment, and compensation. It’s incredibly useful, especially for those who have a basic knowledge of how games are made but are unclear on the roles and responsibilities of each individual listed in a game’s credits.

Get in the Game! also goes a long way toward dispelling rumors about how hard it is to get in the door. The aforementioned “must know how to code,” for example, is usually listed as a “requirement” by developers because they don’t want to deal with people who know nothing at all about the business—specifically, those people who really do believe that making games is the same as playing them all day. Mencher is careful to tell his readers what sorts of things they will need to know, but he’s equally careful to point out that once you’ve got a job, you’re going to be learning a lot no matter what position you take.

Actually, I Wanted to Work in Advertising

Possibly the best chunks of this book are the final chapters, which deal with resume deployment, interview tactics, salary negotiation, and so forth. In fact, nearly a third of the book covers skills that are worth knowing even if you’re not looking for a job in the game industry. A shockingly large group of people really have no idea how to go about finding a job—it’s one of the many skills that they don’t bother to teach in school but should—and Get in the Game! covers (in detail) information that everyone should know.

There is nothing about Get in the Game! that is, so far as I can tell, misleading or inaccurate. As such it’s difficult to find much fault with this book. There are, however, two negative issues that potential readers may want to know about before they fork over their $21+. One is practical, the other a matter of quality.

First, you may note that I have used the term “(in detail)” somewhat more than common English usage would indicate is appropriate in a piece of this length. The reason for this is not an attempt at some witty turn of phrase, but rather to state the startlingly obvious fact that a whole book has been written on getting a job in the game development industry, and I’m quite frankly not convinced that we need such a book. Sites such as Gamasutra.com and IGDA.org, along with the Interactive Digital Software Association, various publications, and of course all game company websites, do a pretty good job of telling interested parties how to get jobs in the industry. Even Mencher’s own company, GameRecruiter.com, does a fine job of headhunting in what is thought to be a notoriously difficult space to get into. It’s worth noting that the best parts of the book are about job hunting skills in general, and one wonders whether or not the game-specific stuff is really all that necessary.

Secondly, the book is riddled with punctuation and minor grammar errors. It’s nothing significant—in fact, the errors would qualify as “common usage” mistakes, the equivalent of people mixing up “its” and “it’s” and spelling “a lot” “alot” or “all right” “alright.”  But they bother me, and it’s not the sort of thing that we should see in mass-market publications. There’s already a generation of kids who believe that “relief” is spelled R-O-L-A-I-D-S, so misusing the comma is only going to make general grammar worse.

All in all, however, Get in the Game! is a useful handbook for those embarking on a journey into careers in this complicated and exciting business. Mencher might have made his book all the better by adding some material about professions corollary to but not within the development biz (the gaming press, for example), but there’s no question that it will help people who want to make games but aren’t sure how to begin.

It’s also a generally fun read, peppered with sidebar quotes from Mencher himself and from various friends and colleagues including Will Wright of Sim games fame, representatives from schools such as Full Sail that provide complete curricula on the making of games, and other heavyweights in the industry.

On a personal note, I would like to complain that Mencher doesn’t really discuss one issue that I consider critical to anyone mulling a career in the game industry. To put it bluntly, once something becomes your work, it automatically ceases to be something that is a hobby or pastime. Football is a job to pro ball players; it may be fun, but it’s also their livelihood. That changes things drastically. To most people football is something fun to do when you’ve got free time. Remember this if you’re considering taking a role in the industry: games can suddenly stop being fun when you live, breathe, and eat them—when you have to play them, and many gamers, no matter how rabid they think they are, could find the ruination of their beloved hobby if they blindly leap into the decision to tie it to their livelihoods.

If you want to make games and don’t know how to get a job, or if you want to get a job and could use some helpful general tips, or if you’re curious what sorts of roles are required to make a game, then Get in the Game! is a good buy. But it’s certainly possible to break into the business, even elsewhere than at The Bottom, without it. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Author: Marc Mencher Publisher: New Riders Published: October 2002

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Amazon.com 20.99

Prices/links current as of 03/02/03Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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14 Responses to Fear Factor

  • Fear Factor | Tap-Repeatedly.com | Reality Topics Blog

    […] nobody@flickr.com (graftedno1) wrote a very interesting post today.   Here’s a quick excerpt:My greatest fear is to be trapped alone in a confined space with a blind human, in total darkness. They have a heightened sense of smell and hearing, and. […]

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Lewis, you made me think of the scariest moments I’ve experienced in gaming, and we’re very similar people.

    Bioshock had two moments – the dentist and the flooded room filled with mannequins.

    Thief had Return to the Cathedral, which was terrifying to me. Thief 3 had Shalebridge Cradle, which is so scary it ought to be fined.

    System Shock 2 kept me on the edge of my seat, but it was more lonely panic than true fear.

    Korsakovia was so scary that I uninstalled it.

    And STALKER. Oh, god, the haunted labs in STALKER. The latter two games don’t have scares like that. Few games do.

    It’s especially rare for a game to have more than mere “moments” – for a game to be scary from beginning to end, that’s a triumph.

    Wonderful article. As if Gregg’s review wasn’t enough to convince me that Penumbra is not something I have the courage to play!

  • DPenn

    I’m with you Lewis … I’m a bit of a puss. I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of dread as entertainment.

    Still, I’m drawn to dark stories when they have something interesting to say, whether it’s a game like Thief or a film like, say, Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible. So I’ll push through, sometimes peering through my fingers.

    The trouble with games, though, is that if you look through your fingers, you’re probably just going to have to play through the scenario again. :~)

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    I wanted to play this game. I downloaded the demo but the controls were just too wonky for me to get my head around. I liked the atmospheric vibe a lot. I think I’m a bit desensitized from an overdose of horror movies in my youth so I don’t so much get the dread thing from these games as a nice creepy vibration. If only the controls were better…

  • Lewis B

    @ Mike, what’s wrong with the controls bud? As someone who despises poor control schemes, Penumbra’s is just like any other FPS, except to examine things you right click on them.  To use things you left click.  I’m not sure that can be considered difficult 🙂

  • Gregg B

    @Steerpike: Yeah my greatest shit-scared moments were with those games too. A few spoilers below people, so beware.

    Bioshock – Haha, I remember the dentist. I didn’t really find the game that scary overall but the bit where you go into the wine cellar and notice a mannequin facing the wall and after upgrading your weapon it’s stood directly behind you motionless and quiet just for a moment before attacking you. I shat a brick. I also missed that bit originally until Lew told me about it.

    System Shock 2 – same as you really, more unremitting tension all the way through rather than specific terrifying moments. Oh actually, theres a bit where you call a lift and it breaks then you realise a service droid is coming to fix it… I do remember having sleep issues after my first encounter with the cyborg ninjas though.

    Thief: The Dark Project – The Sword and Return to the Cathedral and Down in the Bonehoard and well, loads of them. The Sword made me break out into goosebumps though because there was a bit where you could hear this creepy giggling which seemed like it was following me about then it suddenly changed to this horrible throaty noise. What made matters worse was that the EAX (bless you Creative) made my foot steps sound like somebody else was there with me. That level was incredible, a bit too incredible as it seems I missed great chunks of it because I was so eager to leave.

    Thief II: The Metal Age – Trail of Blood where you end up in that opening with those damn tree beasts. God the first time I saw one of those hurtling towards me I actually died shortly afterward. Do you remember that Mechanist child walking around on one of the levels? That was a little creepy.

    Then there’s Penumbra: Overture – quite a few bits but I’m not mentioning them here.

    Oh and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – The brain scorcher lab just because it was so damn quiet. My imagination seriously got the better of me there. Those stuffed animals and heads I’d seen in various buildings led me to believe that those creatures were lurking somewhere in the Zone, specifically that lab.

    @Mike: My control setup was perfect after some tweaking (as well as the simple weapon swing fix). If you ever fancy giving it another go, give me a shout and I’ll let you know my setup.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not sure why guys, but one of my starting paragraphs had gone missing, even though I copied it straight from the original source, and It was fine earlier. 

    Incase you missed it due to some technical issue you might want to re-read just after “Well no she wouldn’t in truth, but in Penumbra: Overture you don’t want to move anyway.” at the very start for those who’ve already read the article. Apologies 🙂

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Lewis, it was the weapon swing. It had this terrible, unresponsive feel to it, like trying to hit through molasses. I couldn’t stand using it. I tried the .ini fix as mentioned in the review but it didn’t seem to help. Of course this was the demo…but that shouldn’t have made any difference. I might try the second game instead as I guess they did away with the weapons thing.

    I’m see your first paragraph just fine. It’s the dialogue, right?

  • jdeuel

    I like the argument that weapons can remove fear, but even loaded to the teeth with ammo in AVP’99 the Marine missions were frightful because the enemy was anywhere at any time.

    As for Penumbra Overture, if the controls are anything like the original Penumbra they need to hack in some Wii-Remote 3d controls. I did not like using my mouse for 3d movements.

  • Gregg B

    @Mike: I’ve read that many people avoided conflict altogether in Overture which incidentally is something forced upon you in Black Plague. As somebody who has been renovating a house over the last 6 months with no DIY experience I can safely say that swinging a hammer is significantly easier in real life than it is in Overture without the fix. The fix balanced that for me.

    I’d highly recommend completing the first Penumbra because it’s one big build up to Black Plague which spoils the ending to Overture in the intro. And it’s a great ending too. Just so you know!

  • Lewis B

    @ Steerpike, those moments you mention are all my worst too!!  Do you remember the Robot labs in SS2? Absolutely terrifying, waiting for robots to burst out on you! 🙁 oh and have you ever player Condemned?

    @ Mike, The use of weapons in Penumbra is different to say HL2, where the player is physically holding the weapon, as in Penumbra it floats slightly infront of you.  However, if you change the control method to normal weapon swing, it’s no different!  Speak to Greggi and he’ll tell you what to do 🙂

    @ jdeuel, AVP the original and its sequal were scary however what type of fear do you think it is? I don’t think it’s anything more than sheer tension.  Having a Smart Gun makes you feel incredibly powerful.  I can honestly say in Penumbra the fear is sheer unrivalled terror, where you actually have to force yourself to play on.  It genuinly is that scary! 🙂

  • Jason Dobry

    It’s so true, an arsenal of weapons and ammo rapidly deflates any sense of horror or uneasiness in any game for reasons you already mentioned. Sakey, I thought Bioshock was more “lonely panic,” while I was pretty much always terrified in System Shock 2. I really, really, REALLY did not want to enter The Many’s nursery, and my weapons were so unreliable and ammo so scarce that I never felt safe.

    Silent Hill was terrifying for the same reasons. Ammo was rare and I frequently had to rely on my pipe for self-defense.  Even when I had ammo, the game mechanics prevented my character from being anything other than marginal with any firearm.

    Fear had one moment for me: I was climbing up a ladder, and as I reached the upper platform, my guy briefly looked down as he climbed off. As my perspective looked up again, that Ring-esque little girl was RIGHT THERE, reaching for me. I screamed and she was gone.

    What else…the original Aliens vs. Predator sent me into a locker room and I could only hear the facehuggers scurrying about somewhere within. I had to go in there. I advanced about three steps before the damn thing screamed and filled up my screen with its repulsive underside as it implanted me with its spawn. My roommate made fun of me for weeks for screaming like a girl child.

    Korsakovia–meh.  I was too annoyed and frustrated by the box rearrangement/jumping puzzles to be scared. I uninstalled it after an hour of play, I think. Maybe the scary parts were later, but I doubt it.

    As for Penumbra, I did play through about half of it before other games distracted me. I remember unease and creepiness, but no sweaty fear. I think I’m to blame here, or, more precisely, my daughter, who was still an infant at the time and generally allowed me only to play during the day for 45 minutes at a time. I was denied total immersion and the fear effect suffered. Maybe I should give it another go after I finish Call of Pripyat since she sleeps through the night now. With any luck, Penumbra will keep me from doing the same.

  • Gregg B

    I played the demo of F.E.A.R. but that ladder scare is the only bit I remember. Christ, that made me jump. I’m not too good with cat scares.

    Also I felt exactly the same about Korsakovia. It was creepy at first but then it began to irritate me far too much and it just soured the experience. I stopped playing as a result. Not to mention, when I realised I could bash those smoke-things with my crowbar they didn’t bother me nearly as much.

  • Online Up

    Great article. I look forward to reading more in the future.

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