In 2004 I gave a lecture on the history of game development at one of our local universities as a favor because my wife works there. It was in the computing department, delivered to digital business students, though some other computing students came along -- hardly rich pickings for a game developer.

Roll on 2006, and a guy called Ash starts chatting to me at the bar during a local IGDA meeting. Ash says he was in my lecture two years previous, is interested in becoming a games programmer and would love to work at Rare, so I get him to apply. Roll on to 2007 and he's developing Global Illumination solutions as part of Rare's Shared Technology Group and giving lectures on this subject too, the last one of which was at the British Computer Society. Result!

Kieran, our Head of Software, visits his old university as an alumnus lecturer a couple of times a year, as we have a long-standing relationship with them. In the audience in 2006 is Kostas, who knows about Rare through this relationship -- so much so that he's holding a completed application form which he thrusts into Kieran's hand at the end of the lecture. Kostas is now one of our Shared Technology developers doing some very complex code cutting for game engine components. Result!

We do internships at Rare, and the first time we tried these was in 2004 when Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero were in production. Tom is in his second year at another university we visit, and attends one of our lectures where it's mentioned that we're doing internships, which is just what he's looking for, so he applies and is successful. Tom then finds himself working on PDZ for a several months before he returns to complete his studies. Tom completes his degree in 2006, returns to us and is now one of the key members of our Build Lab team. Result!

Obviously Ash, Kostas and Tom had their own reasons for applying to Rare, but one of the overriding factors for anyone should be what it's like to work at any given studio. If you're applying to work somewhere, make sure you want to work with the people already there.

One bit of advice I always give to graduates looking for work, is that if you meet someone from a studio or get interviewed and they give you a hard time or have the big "I am" attitude, you probably don't want to work there.

At Rare we have a particular interest in making everyone we meet see what makes us tick and that we are nice, normal people. We're right in the middle of the English countryside, which makes our facility a wonderful place to work, but it does have the drawback that our staff needs to commute -- so we need that little extra touch.

Fortunately we are within easy driving distance of four major cities and several large towns, many of which have very good universities, but it still means we have to work that bit harder to promote the very nice working conditions and surroundings that you don't get in urban areas. Another advantage of this "quieter" working life is that it encourages teamwork and creativity, but wherever your studio is, if it's a nice place to work -- tell people about it, show them.

Cherry Picking

As you can see, the long-term view does pay off -- not immediately, but it only takes one or two years to bear some very nice fruit. So why not get out there today, next week, next month? Don't wait until you're ramping up that next project in 18 months' time and then panic. Do some planning now.

If you don't, this often leads to what I term "cherry picking" -- which is something we see all too often, especially from other high-profile developers. Developers arriving at the end of the academic year, or at one of the many student game development competitions or conferences, and taking the line "we're great, come and work for us", does our industry a disservice and often makes us seem aloof and self important -- but it's all too common.

Typically we see this with the most well respected universities, where many developers are fighting over just a few graduates -- but what about the rest? And what about the problems this causes? Surely every university has some great graduates, even if they're at the bottom of the league tables?

Think about it -- if you go to only the best establishments you can get into a bidding war with other developers, which often leads to inflated salaries and inflated graduate egos. Both are quite obviously bad for your team. Which is better, cherry picking and grooming, or nurturing and attracting?