Xemu's Long-Winded Game Industry Ramblings

I was at the SMU Guildhall today (neat place) representing Ensemble in the recruiting department, talking to programmers about to graduate, that sort of thing. While I think I'm not really enough of a "people person" to be a great recruiter, I do enjoy talking about the Ensemble philosophy and all the very cool things about working here. It was also a lot of fun to just meet some of the students -- ranging from folks just moving on to their Master's degree in a normal sort of collegiate progression, to folks to left their old careers to try and get trained up on gaming.

Proof of why I'm totally awful at recruiting though: I didn't even think to bring business cards so I would up writing my email address, etc on random sheets of paper from a legal pad. At least I didn't have to worry about coming off as overly slick!

Overall I'm still not sure I'm 100% sold on the utility of specialist game schools, even very good ones like Guildhall, versus spending the same time just building indy games on your own and really immersing yourself in all the freely available information out ther. Both require a lot of motivation though, and that's definitely something I admire.

It's hard to think back to when I was just straight out of college, diving into work at Looking Glass. It feels like a lot longer ago than the 14 calendar years of time... ah, nostalgia.

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Re: Hand-Made Business Cards

by Anonymous on Sun 29 Jul 2007 06:11 PM CDT | Permanent Link

As a recent graduate of the Guildhall, I'm inclined to agree with your suggestion that spending 21 months working on your own games or demos is probably just as good--at least on a technical level--as attending a game school, given the proper amount of personal dedication.

Learning to work with other disciplines in large teams on a daily basis is a harder experience to come by in the indie world, but is it really worth fifty grand in school loans? That being said, the Guildhall was my path into the industry, and I did gain a lot of good experience and get to work on a lot of really neat stuff while I was there.

I'm glad to hear Ensemble's recruiting from the Guildhall now. It seems a shame that with such a wealth of new talent being bred there in Dallas, most of the graduates don't stay in the area.

And it's probably a good thing I'd already graduated in March--had I been there, I would have geeked out and talked about System Shock 2 the whole time.

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