The secret behind good luck
It's a weird time to be talking about getting a job in the games industry.
With nearly 60,000 layoffs since 2022, I couldn't help but feel a bit conflicted when I was invited to our local gamedev meetup to give advice on how to get a job in the games industry. Is now really a good time to encourage people to try to get into game development professionally?
Then again, it made all the sense in the world to invite me: I just got a job at a well-regarded AAA publisher!
I can't deny that I was extremely lucky to land this job. When I say luck though, I don't just mean random chance - I do think there is an amount of luck one can I actually control, and that's the kind of luck I decided to talk about in my lecture.
Here are the fully annotated slides on what I talked about.
Hey everyone! I'm Alonso, and I'm here to talk to you about good luck.
"Good luck? Wasn't this supposed to be about getting a job in the industry?", you may be wondering.
Well... it's an incredibly tough time in the industry. With a record breaking high of layoffs, advancements in AI threatening to replace entry-level jobs, and even industry analysts agreeing that there is not enough jobs for everyone, you'd be hard pressed not to feel as if you need luck on your side to find a job.
I also want to talk about luck because I've been extremely lucky in my career.
Even if I did not study game development for my undergrad, I had the chance to be part of a great game development club during university where I met other students who I'm lucky to call co-workers today.
I was lucky to meet a publisher early in my career that funded my first professional game development project, and allowed my to start a company called Smarto Club which has thrived for 6 years now already.
I was lucky to get a scholarship that allowed me to study game design at the NYU Game Center in United States, which broadened my horizons and gave me the chance to attend conference such as GDC.
And a couple of months ago, I was lucky to be selected for a position at 2K working with the team that has published titles such as Civilization, Mafia and Borderlands.
So, based on all that luck, I wanted to share my secret with you all. Are you ready?
OK. I need you to close your eyes for a few seconds... really concentrate for a moment there... and then open them.
Now, if you did that right, you should see a menu in the upper left corner of your vision. These are you character stats, and you will notice that the last one is your luck stat. I highly recommend you invest any skill points you get from leveling up here, as it's a great return on investment.
In addition to raising your luck skill, I recommend you equip items that increase your luck. Some popular options are four leave clovers and those cats that can't stop waving their hand.
If that doesn't work though... your best option might be to just stop playing and create a new character. Who knows, you might get dealt a better hand!
And that's all I have for today folks. Thanks for listening, hope it helps! I think we have a lot of time for questions now so go ahead.
Or maybe not... sorry all, could not resist making a joke.
Let me get serious now. I do believe there is a kind of luck we cannot control -- if you're going to ask my advice on how to improve you chances at winning the lottery or getting the characters you want in a gacha pull, I can't really help you there.
But, I do think there is a kind of luck we can control, and that's what I want to talk about today.
So what is this "luck we can control"? There's a couple of variations on this phrase, but my personal favorite is that luck is when preparation meets opportunity.
Another way of putting this is you have to be the right person at the right time. You can prepare all you want to be the "right" person, but it'll be worthless if it's never the right time. You can be able to identify the "right" time, but if you're not prepared for these opportunities when they appear then you will not be able to capitalize on it.
So if we view luck as a combination of preparation and opportunity, it does begin to feel like something we can control, doesn't it? How can we be better prepared? How can we encounter more opportunities?
Let me share a couple of personal stories that might give you some ideas.
Let's talk about preparation first.
As I mentioned earlier, I did the graduate game design program at NYU. It's a great program with a generalist approach that covers topics such as design, programming, art, narrative and more.
But... all that said, once of my classmates loved writing. She was good at it, and really, really loved writing.
Whenever I saw her on a project, she'd try to do as much writing as possible or finding a way to add more narrative to the concept. She had multiple side-projects that were writing related, and you'd often see her in one class or the other just sitting in the back, concentrated on typing her next story.
Eventually, the internship application period came and went, and not many of my classmates heard back from the companies they applied to. But this classmate of mine?
Well, she ended up in this little company you may know of called Insomniac, working on a game based on this relatively unknown IP called Wolverine. After her internship ended, she got a return offer and continued to write for the game.
One of the reasons I wanted to bring up this story is because I've been on the other side of the fence - as someone who runs an indie company, I get a lot of emails from people looking for a job or internship.
I get a lot students who highlight their variety of skills; Programming! Design! Art! UI/UX! But the truth is that if you look at their portfolios, they generally do not stand out in any of these areas.
There's this expression in Spanish that goes "el que mucho abarca, poco aprieta". If you can humor me with a literal translation, it means something along the lines of "he who grasps at too much, squeezes softly" and refers to how it's hard to excel in one thing you try to do too much.
I still think it's valuable to learn about a variety of subjects! And I understand why most college programs have this generalist approach as game development is incredibly collaborative and interdisciplinary.
But at the same time, I think it's best to be a "T-shaped" developer as you can see in this graphic from Valve's (old?) employee handbook. It's great to understand a wide variety of disciplines, but you need to identify your unique strength. What is something you can be passionate about and work hard to be great at?
This is also incredibly important when presenting yourself to others, because that is how people will remember you! It's easier to remember someone who was really into making chiptune audio for example, versus just being someone who does a bit of everything.
Even if I'm being critical to the people who've sent me this emails, I've struggled with this too!
As someone who worked in a small indie company, I had to wear multiple hats such as programmer, designer, producer, business person, etc. and it was hard to define myself as just one of them.
Eventually though, as I began to look for a job I realized that I had to choose which part of my skill set I want to emphasize, and I began to present myself as a producer.
Because other people recognized me as a producer, I started to see more opportunities to meet other producers, talk about my experience as producer and eventually be prepared for the opportunity to apply to the producer role at 2K.
So that's some advice on preparation. But how do you actually find opportunities where you can apply your preparation?
I guess the answer is kinda simple:
Networking! Going to events like these, talking to people, connecting online on platforms like LinkedIn...
But it's more than just that, isn't it? Let me share a story.
Here's an old photo.
That's me, by that way. This is a photo from one time I participated in Global Game Jam and worked with a team of cool, talented developers, but there's one I wanted to highlight: Renato. While I had a great time at this at this game jam, nothing really special came out of it and life continued as usual afterwards.
Oh, and by the way? This photo is from 10 years ago.
Fast fowarding to the present... I had kept in touch with Renato by connecting on LinkedIn and occasionally talked a few times at events where we ran into each other.
This was around the time I was really getting into my "producer" persona, and looking hard for opportunities on LinkedIn.
Since I was connected to Renato on LinkedIn, I saw when he reposted this post looking for a producer, and I was one of the first people who applied.
And well... this role was the 2K position I currently have.
I think that story is nice example of preparation meeting opportunity. But I want to use it to highlight two harsh truths about opportunities.
First of all, opportunities can take a long time to appear! While "10 years" is a bit of an extreme, I do think it's true that the impact of networking is usually measured in months and years rather than days and weeks.
If you knew beforehand where to invest though, that would make things easier! But the other harsh truth I want to highlight is that it's usually impossible to know what networking will actually lead to an opportunity. When I met Renato, I never expected that to lead to a job, much less 10 years later.
These two truths are pretty disheartening and not particularly actionable though, so let me try to give you some actual advice you can use. And to do so, I will share an analogy inspired by gardening... but I actually don't know anything about gardening so bear with me if you do.
Let's say somebody gives you a bag of different seeds. If you knew about gardening, you might actually be able to recognize the plants by their seeds, but to make the analogy work let's say that you cannot, and decide that only way to figure out what plant each seed is by planting them.
Plant do not grow on their own though! So you have to put the effort to water and take care of them.
If you care of these seeds, they will grow into little green sprouts and start to show promise... but you can't stop taking care of them yet! And eventually, they will grow into a recognizable plant.
You might realize that despite your best efforts, some promising seeds ended up being plants that died.
Maybe another seed will turn into a beautiful flower - it's wonderful and you cherish it! But it might not be something practical that you actually needed.
And just maybe... if you're lucky, one of the seeds will turn out to be a bountiful fruit tree that gives you the harvest you need.
OK, I might have been forcing that analogy a bit. But the point I want to convey is that the best opportunities are a result of good relationships built over time. You might not know initially where a relationship will lead, but the only way to get somewhere is by putting in the care and effort, and that will take time.
So to bring this over to actionable advice, let me give you some tips on building good relationships.
The basic step is to be consistent and keep in touch. If you talk to somebody only once, it'll be really hard for them to remember you and for any meaningful relation to form. If you met at a i.e. local gamedev meetup, then continuing to go to the same meetup and talking to them again if you see them is the best way to actually start getting to know them better. Of course, this can be tough if you met at a less frequent event such as GDC, but there many options to keep in touch nowadays whether it be Discord or LinkedIn.
The next step is to try new things! Since you never really know what connection will lead to which result, the best you can do is being open to going to different events or joining new Discord servers. Sometimes you might run into people you've already met before at other events and this becomes a great opportunity to grow your relationship with them, but it also may be a chance to meet somebody new and hit it off.
And my last tip is to be authentic. It might feel weird to talk about being authentic, especially in the context of trying to get a job, but I think it's something that actually isn't too hard if you remember a couple of ideas.
First of all, it's really easy to tell when people talk to you only because they're interested in job and not interested in you as a person. At the end of the day, game developers are also people with passions and interests and you're more likely to create an authentic connection if you focus on these elements rather than just asking them about the company they work at.
I also want to point out that quality is more important than quantity (like that one SpongeBob episode where he faces off against King Neptune). Especially when talking to people online, it's easy to tell when someone has sent a generic, superficial copy-pasted message versus something they actually where they took the time to read your profile and tailor the message.
So that's preparation and opportunity covered! But there's one last tip I want to share with you.
As I mentioned at the start, I was part of my university's game development club. While I initially joined as a club member, I eventually became an organizer when the senior members of our team finished their studies.
As the main organizer, I tried to keep the legacy of the club going with events like workshops, talks and game jams, while also innovating with a few activities such as weekly meetups and group projects.
After a few years of organizing Global Game Jam, I met France, a really talented artist who was also a student at my university. She was interested in game development but did not feel experienced enough to participate in the game jam itself, so she joined us as a volunteer to help with the organization on the day of the event.
After the event finished, we went our separate ways. But France was now familiar with the club, and was able to point her friend Dani in the club's direction when she said she wanted to make a videogame as part of her final year art school project. Both of them ended up participating in the weekly meetings I had recently begun to organize, and we slowly became friends.
And that friendship is how we eventually decided to start a studio together. Now, why am I sharing this story? It's one detail in particular: I organized the events were we met!
So this brings me to my last tip: create your own opportunities. If there is something you are passionate about and feel prepared to talk about with others, no one is stopping you from organizing related activities, and these activities can become the space where new opportunities happen.
Maybe you're passionate about chiptune audio in games? Or maybe you really like indie JRPGs? I can bet you're not the only one, and one thing I can say for sure after multiple years of experience with events is that game developers are a friendly bunch, and will jump at the opportunity to connect and learn from each other.
So with all that said, there is just one last thing to say before I wrap it up:
