What Game Developers Look for in a New Graduate

Interviews and Surveys at One Game Company

Michael Hewnerhewner@gatech.edu

Mark Guzdialguzdial@cc.gatech.edu

“I want to be a game programmer.”

The Game Company I Worked With

• Develops 1st person shooters for mainstream game consoles

• Has 100+ employees• Does pretty much everything in-house –

programming, art, testing

What do game companies look for in a new graduate?

Related Work

• International Game Developers Association Curriculum framework

• McGill. “Weighted game developer qualifications for consideration in curriculum development.” SIGCSE 2009

• Trauth, Farwell, Lee. “The IS expectation gap.” MIS Quarterly 1993.

Step 1: Interviews to Define Qualifications

• Focused on what qualifications they looked for in an incoming college graduate

• Interviewed nine participants: developers, managers and artists

• In the second rounds of interviews, participants could see the qualification list we had created and use that to revise our wording or generate new ideas

Step 2: Online Survey

http://bit.ly/sigcse2010

• Emailed to whole company• 32 people responded• 5 level Likert-type scale

The Scale

Not Useful

Sometimes useful but not required or evaluated in interviews

Important, has an impact on the hiring decision

Very Important, has a large impact on a hiring decision

Essential, would not hire without good skills in this area

Programming

19.4

51.6 29

Proficiency with C++

3.1 15.6

43.8

37.5

Knowledge about data structures

31.3

53.1

15.6

Solving algorithmically challenging problems

Optimization

3.1 25 40.6 25 6.3

Using Big O

19.4

51.6 29

Proficiency with C++

25 43.8

18.8 9.4

Understanding performance; Optimization

Design

19.4

51.6 29

Proficiency with C++

6.3 37.5

46.9 9.4

Build a object oriented design for a large system

12.5

59.4 25 3.1

Willingness to write a "good enough" solution

15.6

65.6

18.8

Writing clean code

Specializations

19.4

51.6 29

Proficiency with C++

34.4

46.9 9.4 9.4

Implementation of renderers and graphics pipeline

12.5

40.6 25 21.

9

Linear Algebra

15.6

62.5

18.8 3.1

Assembly Language Programming

People Skills

19.4

51.6 29

Proficiency with C++

15.6 9.4 75

Work with others and check your ego at the door

15.6

31.3

37.4

15.6

Communicate to technical and nontechnical people

Other Stuff

19.4

51.6 29

Proficiency with C++

6.3 28.1

37.5

28.1

Enthusiasm for building video games

37.5

43.8

18.8

Willingness to put in extra hours

3.1 25 43.8

18.8 9.4

A bachelor's degree in computer science

Things to Remember

• This is the opinion of one game company• Social skills are critical• Fundamentals of algorithms, design, and C++

programming rated more important than specialized game-specific topics

Questions?

Michael Hewnerhewner@gatech.edu

Mark Guzdialguzdial@cc.gatech.edu

Special thanks to all the game developers who participated in our interviews and surveys.

Thanks to the CSL Lab for their feedback on the paper and this talk.

Summary and slides for this talk at http://bit.ly/sigcse2010