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Academic Expansion - How Rare Recruits Graduates
[In this in-depth piece, senior Rare developer Nick Burton explains how the Viva Pinata and Perfect Dark developer works with academia to nurture graduates, warning against 'cherry picking' and explaining how your developer can grow the pool of skilled game creators.]
With ever-present discussion on skills
shortages in the game business, experienced game developers leaving the industry and the question
"are specialized game development courses the right direction for
education?", staffing is always in the spotlight.
Historically,
the company I work for, Rare, has always targeted new graduates rather than experienced hires,
and our current ratio of 90% graduates to 10% experienced staff is proof
of this.
I think it's safe to say we have plenty of experience in this
area, and I'm no exception as I came straight out of postgraduate research
to work at Rare almost 10 years ago. But getting good graduates today
is much more than advertising for positions vacant.
For many years Rare, together with
Microsoft's UK Academic Team and a few other interested organizations,
has been forging links with many UK universities, trying to help and
support them so that they can help and support us. Over the next few
pages I want to give you a flavor of the work we do, together with some
guidelines that I believe will help the whole industry be more successful
in addressing its staffing needs.
Why We Aim At Graduates
Rare has always aimed recruitment activities
towards graduates as they are often more accepting of new ideas and
able to think outside the box more easily; this is not always the case
with experienced hires. It's true that lack of experience can lead to
problems with graduates pursuing crazy development ideas, which is why
they have to be managed carefully and mentored by more experienced staff
to ensure things go smoothly.
However, sometimes experienced developers
get tunnel vision. How many times have we heard "that will never
work, I tried it once and I'm not trying it again"? This sort of
preconception can be bad for so many reasons, but if you get the right
kind of graduates who can argue their case, they can help drive improvements
in even the most experienced of us.
We find our teams need to be a mix
of both. I guess what I'm getting at is that you can train a graduate
to become a key part of your studio, in our case to become a Rare-type
developer, the team player who's like a close friend that you trust
and respect. Yes, you get experienced hires like this too, but they
are much harder to find, so it's easier to make them most of the time.
So fresh graduates are good, but some
recruiters in our industry take the very cynical view that they are
cheap labor -- and you can quote me on this one, graduates are NOT cheap
labor and should NEVER be treated as such or we risk hemorrhaging talent
while it is still embryonic. Consider this, you employ Mr. X. He's the
greatest graphics programmer you've ever seen, but he's a bit green
and so you get to pay him peanuts and work him to the bone. Eventually
he will wise up and leave, and when he does he'll probably move out
of the industry that burned him. The industry has then lost him forever
-- not just your studio.
Why We Work With Academia
It's true that Rare works with academia
to generate great hires, but it's more than just that, and certainly
more long-term. If our industry is to grow and remain at the forefront
of creativity, we must help the educators in their work, nurturing new
talent and ensuring they have a steady input of students to teach. Every
university exists to teach students skills that can be applied to gain
employment, but sometimes universities either don't know what these
skills should be or just get it wrong!
We're seeing this problem a lot at
present as "Computer Game Programming" and "Computer
Game Design" courses proliferate and seem to be flavor of the month.
Have you ever wondered why these courses are becoming so popular? It's
for two reasons: 1) our industry needs people and where there is demand
the market follows, and 2) computing in universities is in trouble,
and as with the other sciences, course numbers are way down. Attaching
"games" to the title helps stimulate more applications, as
it's something the young can relate to.
Obviously there are also the pure courses
in the arts and sciences, which should not be ignored. Remember, there
are good students on all courses at all universities,
so the way you target them is purely down to your requirements. For
example, what Rare needs at any one time can be surprisingly different
from Lionhead Studios' needs.
So what do we actually do in terms
of working with academia? This can be split into two categories, nurturing
talent both directly and indirectly.
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Comments
Historically I came back to college to study games as a new skill. I worked in I.T and technology for many years and one of the things you said rings very true.
I am 30, I think the industry might drop me for that as well so I do not put my date of birth on my CV. I get the feeling they want young code monkeys. Some one that can burn out, and I feel that this might not be the industry for me. Having worked in technology I know the difference between a good and a bad place to work, and can feel the company culture from interviews. This whole area scares me. I do not want to leave college to be overworked and underpaid, as I am already doing this in the college :)
This is why I am looking into getting back into web technology and looking at gaming from a social networking perspective. My Final year project is pretty much about this, and the problem is that the companies I have been interviewed by generally pass over my final year project , I have no portfolio as the college never nurtured the creation of any such thing.
I feel I am onto a losing streak here , and its pretty depressing , I think all of this article should be taken as the new recruitment gospel in the Industry. Thanks Nick for having the guts to point this stuff out.
You don't have to believe me, just use logic and life experience: Hire someone out of school. Watch as the people hired 3 years ago in the company begin to feel old, or no longer feel they are the shining apple of their boss's eye. Observe as the older engineers form cliques, and feel threatened by the new hire. Soon, they say "screw it, they give the new guy the stuff they used to give me before I became valuable at memory management/network coding/mundane but important task", and leave the company. Rinse, and repeat.
What you are left with are has-been mentors who are too insecure to strike out on their own, so they power trip the wide-eyed callow young hires who will eventually become envious of the cracker-jack kid right out of school who they will say "has not paid his dues yet, why should he design/have input/not make coffee???" Again, rinse and repeat.
In closing, I beseech the young people reading this to heed my warning: do not follow the path the author has laid out in this article. Rare wants the best people to "mold"? Read: The best people to use. They have a bottom line and rent to pay, just like everyone else.
They want young people who don't have families of their own so they can work you 60-70 hours a week because that's what all your peers will do. At least, the ones without families. Those with kids/wife/life are called "managers", and are not truly necessary to the end goal: making money.
It steams me to no end that Gamasutra would not advocate getting together with your friends/classmates, getting day jobs, and working on your dreams at night. That's what I do. Way more payoff, and I never feel like I am getting screwed.
RARE may be a great company but the fact is that the industry as a whole is really screwed up. If you have any involvement with the actual production and development of the game then expect to be working weekends and putting in 60+ hours a week.
I currently work on high profile console titles and what I'm saying comes from 5 years of experience. Do yourself, your family, and your friends a favor and get a different gig coming out of college. Work for a company or two that are very stable and offer you a decent salary and plenty of free time. Use some of that free time to work with other people in your boat on a decent portfolio and the other part of that free time sewing your oats and getting a steady partner for life.
ONLY THEN would I advise you to get into the gaming industry. At this point you will have:
- enough real world working experience under your belt to allow you to negotiate your salary and schedule.
- game development experience (outside of school) that has proven you have the drive and the know how
- a spouse / would-be spouse that will be there to support you and stand by you through the *crunch* times
people to use', when you have no idea about what working at Rare is like. Nick does explictly warn against doing this very thing, and I can tell you from experience that Rare does not treat employees the way you describe. Maybe Rare is a minority on this issue, and maybe that was one of the reasons why Nick wanted to write this article?
I came to Rare straight out of school. We work 9-5 except in crunch (which is a very rare occurnce, no pun intended - I've only been here for two years yet, but I've yet to be asked to stay late), except when I *choose* to stay longer. There's no pressure here, most of the time people really do leave around five - but occasionally you may want to stay late and finish something off.
I agree that treating employees the way you describe is horrible, and hurts the industry as a whole, but I do think that we should encourage the few companies that do treat their employees well and hope that others follow suit, rather than just blindly spew bile all over the industry.
On the last programming project I managed, i had a team of 18 programmers, of which around 10 were raw graduates or equivalent when
they were hired. Whilst this isn't as high as Rare's 90% graduate to experienced develop stat, it's my belief that it's a more useful recruitment mix.
One of the things i find far more concerning is the belief from companies that they only need to recruit fresh graduates as experienced developers are somehow tarnished through their experiences.
From my experiences, I found that experienced staff have got a colossal amount to offer, usually far in excess of graduates. The issue with some staff is that it can take a while to break down the issues that have been built up from previous jobs, but once you can get though that, you normally end up with staff with a burning desire to create great stuff
and the experience to get round most of the issues that often fox new programmers.
I think it's great the Rare is building links with academia to create and interest in their company and in the games industry in general, but please recruiters, don't overlook the colossal benefits of experienced staff.
I'd much rather want some young guy that thought I was a god and a buddy who took care of him and his dreams. I do like helping other people and feeling their gratitude towards me, don't get me wrong. It is satisfying and would probably drive me into the Uni's to do lectures. It would also remind me of my early days and their youthful enthusiasm for games makes me feel for a second that my work might have had some meaning. I need to stop kidding myself that doing good things and being nice is purely because I'm such a nice guy.
The reality is that running a games company is bloody hard and competitive so I wouldn't expect any charity. I'm not imagining or expecting that any of my staff would come to my aid if things go bad either. If you want to be in control of your own destiny then create your own or do something else. I have my dream too, which is to drive a Ferrari and/or a DB7 and I'd need to balance that against your needs. I might be able to save 10k per person per year and if I exclude the agency fees which I might be able to if I write articles and get direct hires then that's a 100k per 10 staff members per year probably.
I'd also try to make sure that my studio was somewhere that wasn't too easy to get to, as that would hopefully keep people longer at work, it also creates a sense of isolation and peacefulness which reminds me of what the middle ages were like in monasteries. They didn't have kids either there or they were frowned upon, but worked together in silent brotherly love and appreciation for a higher common goal. Any suffering just made them feel closer. If someone got cynical and said god didn't exist, they had to go as well so lots of parallels there.
I might consider providing new recruits with a version which is the glossy sob story with the violins or the harsh truth of the matter. I'd probably feel gratitude towards someone that had worked for me for a while and would hope they wouldn't feel bad if I had to let them go, but life is life and a company has to watch the bottom line or it won't exist or make decent profits.
I've been reading Gamasutra for 10+ years regularly and have not commented on a single article because no other article sounded alarms in my brain as much as this one. And if my voice is shrill, well...shouldn't an alarm be shrill for people to react to it?
Sadly, companies prey, and will continue to prey on the wide eyed exuberant fresh graduate who is darned lucky to be working in the games industry.
Tell me, Rare employee, do you get a piece of the action if the game does well? Do you suffer if the game pans out? Probably not. My opinion, and I'll reiterate it, is for any young graduate thinking of getting into the gaming business. You will be better served learning the subtle office politics, general business lessons, and professional nuances of working with highly engineered or creative types in a regular 9-5 software shop.
There, you'll learn about egos, both easily bruised and "how does that guy get his head thru the door each morning?", deadlines, teamwork, etc. without the headaches of 50 starving students pretty much wanting to kill for your job because they think it will be glamorous.
Unless you hire on as a game developer, and you have proven properties that sell, the most you are going to have input on is what color your cog is, or how many teeth it will have. And that's about it. It becomes a job like any other, only now you have a car payment, and your friends want you to party every Friday night after work...only you have to turn them down because you have to work a "half day" on Saturday, but how's about Sat. night? Well, along comes Mr. Monday morning, and you got bills to pay, and a friendly boss who kindly reminds you about free dinners until you get your cog built, cuz you're really good at building that one shiny cog. The grind of making a living , and you thought doing something you love would be great.
Call me cynical, or bitter, or whatever, because what I AM...and what I write, are two different things. I have since taken the road of developing games in my own time, with my own cash, and working a steady 9-5 job that I like, and I am infinitely happier. Rather then judge me, just follow your dreams, or better still, the dreams that Rare says they can help you fulfill...and then get back to me in about 3-5 years.
I see that you're bitter, but understand that your experience is not everyone's experience, and I think you're projecting your own bad experience on the rest of the industry which paints a highly inaccurate picture.
Exactly. 90% graduates means only that they were graduates when hired, not that 90% of the present staff is just off the university campus. (Nick says right at the beginning that he himself was an example, and he's been at Rare for ten years! Hardly a rookie...)
Shigeru Miyamoto is a game creator. Will Wright is a game creator. David Perry is a game creator.
Recent grad being wooed by Rare : NOT A GAME CREATOR.
Getting a degree in game making, or computer science, or whatever and then hiring on into a game company will not get you this COVETED title. I'll just submit an article to Gamasutra to explain this to you. Either Gamasutra or the author is trying to mislead people, and the record needs to be set straight.
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