hello everyone welcome Alexander good to see you how’s it going good to see you

Harry you know it’s nice warm Sunday morning here in Los Angeles and things are starting to clear up so hoping uh

everything goes well for everyone out in your audience is well yeah we’ve got Global audience today I’ve noticed some

people from around the world so we’ve got I’m from Cypress 7 pm here early morning for you and we have a half stop

at the hour so I’m going to get straight in to what is everyone in for so for

everyone who doesn’t know Alexander co-founder of game design skills over 20 years in game design worked on blizzard

World of Warcraft a lot of the bosses you’ve loved to play as a kid a lot of input from Alexander Riot League of

Legends and more recently Moon Studios for ay and the wheel of the whs built and meant to design de for 10 plus years

and has helped sters ship over 32 projects Alex knows his stuff so today

what we’re going to cover we’re going to cover how to land your first game design job what game Studios want in designers

mistakes new designers must avoid how to build a stand out portfolio ways to gain referrals from industry insiders how a

network smar ways to reapply after rejection break into games without a degree how to prepare for design tested

interviews and some Reflections from the 20 years in Industry all the while Q&A is peppered in throughout so if you have

questions ask them it’s like twitch and we’ll get to as many as we can any that we can’t do we try to facilitate after

the chat with a little Discord group that we got prep amazing okay

so where we start Alexander yeah Drew you to game design oh well I can tell

you the origin story if you want uh back when I was about six years old I was playing this game on the original

Nintendo which is great considering the Nintendo switch announcement literally happened what an hour ago switch 2 um

the uh we were playing Bubble Bobble and we finally again we were like three or four years old he taken us six months to

beat beat this game together and finally after seeing the real ending my brother

got so excited he started flipping the cushions off the couch we were running and screaming and dancing around and I

looked over and I said I wanted to make everyone as happy as he was in that moment right and just as I said that in

my head all this this name of developers just started floating by in Japanese and I’m like whatever the magic is I got to

figure out what that is and what that means so that initially led to me learning Japanese uh as well as you know

thinking that that was what we had to do to get into the games industry right uh and eventually you know I was very

fortunate at the time that my father was one of the first programmers at IBM in Johnson City and so he left programming

texts around the house and I started just reading them and started putting writing random code in the computer and

uh as I did things I realized that well programming was something I was capable of it was really creating experiences

with them that I enjoyed and so worked at a French video game Studio when I was 13 and that just kind of snowballed into

what I do now very cool so

regarding today’s event it will be related to game design but knowing what

I’ve researched on game design skills like a lot of this stuff is very applicable to really anyone looking to

join yes the game is industry but just finding jobs like there’s a lot of Basics I think I love the fact that

you’ve done this for so long so you’ve seen what’s worked and what’s not so I’m excited to get stuck in um very curious

though you’ve worked on three awesome titles the ones that I today and many

more but what’s the most fun project not to play but to work on oh man that’s

torn right um well the leadership at Moon Studios was kind of a disaster uh

building that game I was like this first designer working fulltime on it uh was

uh a noers was no wor for the wicked um so a lot of people know moon for ay but

uh we from 20 gosh about 20 2020 until

May it actually 2019 until no wow it was 2018 doesn’t matter for about five years

I actually wrote the original design doc helped build the initial Pro kind of this first ver upgraded prototype for no

rest of the wicked built a lot of the core mechanics with Robin Hub and Joe Saco and you know really fleshed out

that game into being what is going to be an amazing Cooperative uh top down action RPG um and so at the time when it was

mostly just me Robin Chris Joe uh we just had an amazing time going through and building a game and having the

resources and art style from all his talented people and we a bring that kind of really awesome gameplay experience

together you know um and I I particularly affective because I actually got to Define the initial

stages saying okay we’re going to start with an arena it’s just going to be about enemies then we’re going to do a PVP Arena we’re g to really make PVP

Tite before we roll into this massive Souls like level designed thing because

moon at the end of the day is very much a level designed studio and so having the ability to shape a really PVP

experience with that uh was awesome very cool all right we want

people listening game designers to have that experience too so my first question is understanding what we’re up against

here so in your words why is the first game design job yes but just

gaming job in general so tough well it’s tough for a number of

reasons right um one uh there is a certain factor that feels like I must be

a chosen one that has been part of the design mythology for very long time right um this idea that either you need

to be uniquely talented or that you need to you know have someone take you on as your Protege has been unfortunately very

realistic because of the limited amount of resources around how to actually do game design now there are a million

resources out there on how to program something how to work in unity how to make a tutorial how to make a single

Feature work right G to call out U mix and jam right it’s a phenomenal resource

for people who want to like learn how to build the crunchy bits of games um but when it comes to design thinking uh that

sort of stuff has been basically limited to blog posts the occasional interview with a developer and having lived

through four Studios for bir of really amazing game developers um I’ve realized

that there’s consistent patterns and thinking that exist there so when you’re in that very first stage you first first

off you don’t have the access to those sort of lessons right uh and two you don’t know what to demonstrate on a

portfolio or as content for uh game developers to show the developers you can do what they want you to do for

artists it’s great can you paint in our art style do you have an understanding of fundamentals designed you have a good

process and you can show it visually uh for programming can you bring something out of nothing can you make these

electric rocks talk right uh but for design which is very much a mid-level

role and I I think a lot of people don’t realize getting into design is that design is design Junior design is not

the same kind of Junior as a junior artist or Junior programmer where you can be slotted in and being like hey take care of this right for design

because your role by nature is about directing the actions of others even an

associate design position is actually about the difficulty level of a mid-level position right because you

need to have a certain level of communication and social skills on top of you know the technical ability

execute an engines the ability to make good decisions and to collaborate with others within the design discipline and

so you’re actually training up on two if not three skills uh just to get that first initial job point is super

important and yeah I’ve noticed people kind of go from QA to a lot of roles

when I spoke to people on the podcast so QA is a common path for like production and from my understand game design is

well because you get that like base understanding get the so skills what I want to get into now is the Practical

stuff so what do recruiters look for in the

first 60 seconds sure uh so it’s tough because it depends on the role right

there are so many different flavors of design so many different shapes so just as art can be you know realistic 3D

rendering or graphical anime style uh they’re looking to see what is your design philosophy right do you have a

structured approach to what you do do you show empathy and understanding for the players do you have have you do you

have experience iterating on things and trying multiple ideas not just one and then do you execute to Quality do you

have a consistent approach and then ultimately have you worked in that space before so they’re looking for things

that give signatures of those a given recruit recer may not have the design skills to say oh this decision is good

but they do have the ability to say do you have a stepbystep approach to how you attack things does your portfolio

showcase that you do this type of work do you think about design in your free time are you passionate interested

intrigued and curious um and if so great that least says hey this it this

portfolio this resume is worth the time and attention of a full-time designer who’s going to be stopping their work or

if they’re a lead stopping their leadership of multiple designers to vet and uh you know interact with

you and it’s crazy because that’s in 60 seconds right so like this step-by-step

process outlining that is super important all righty so if I ask you a

question on how to build this resume in portfolio so you’ve had over 500

students now mentored and one thing I want to mention which I forgot to mention before is they’ve kindly given

everyone here a very very nice prize and I’m saving it to the end to get people to listen but please stick around and

everyone who’s attending will receive it and I want to ask you the question when

you look at all the students that managed to get the job what was the biggest common factor yeah um number one is they really

treated it like a job updating their portfolio and building their content right um that doesn’t mean that they

didn’t do what was necessary to sustain their life right uh I always like to think about Michael swedo right Michael

swedo was one of my first students and was literally one of the people who reached out to me before I was ever teaching over Twitter and was like hey

how can I get teaching about what you do and inspired me to put together my very first oh God it was over Skype or was

even before Skype yeah it was like it might even been before Skype um and literally just jumped on calls with me

once a week for eight weeks and I realized oh hey here are the lessons I have here’s how we teach them and um

that guy not only was willing to work in weird and obscure game spaces he was working on a violin classical music

rhythm game and uh but also willing to work on what was incredibly popular interesting and valuable to people

hiring at the time so we also did demos of match three games which led to him getting a job at Jam City and uh he had

that combination between he did the work he loved the he loved the discipline he loved the process of learning how to

design and frankly would not only argue for his ideas but also listen to input and feedback and iterate it based on

that feedback and that’s kind of the magic recipe right um because no matter where we are in life right everyone

thinks of designer is the person who sits down has magical ideas that’s the creative director and he’s kind of a

cluster usually right um designers are about taking the best of the ideas

whether they’re from the creative director or the random programmer or that guy in QA fig filtering them and

then refining them until there’s something people can execute as a team within the game development ecosystem

right and that means that you need to Showcase that that is the type of person you are you’re someone who can bring

people together that you don’t just have good ideas but you can turn ideas into execution and that you love the pl the

process right perfect can I ask a tactical question here you mentioned treating it

like a job and I think it’d be good to paint a picture because I’m sure people

have a different definition of what that looks like for them what would you say is the range here of like I guess hours

effort yeah it depends right uh if you’re executing an engine you want to demonstrate technical skills that could

be you know 50 60 hours a week uh for a few weeks or even a few months on and

off uh building a prototype right wow yeah and if it’s something where it’s

more about you know documentation content that might be much lighter or intermittent right um but even so you

take the you sit down you’re like okay everyone wants to do this master game design document I always been hearing it

since I was a child that’s a bunch of okay do you know how many Master game design documents I’ve done in my life one what was it for no rest

the wicked what did it help with development not really why because really at the end of the day it was

individual feature documents these little bits of like hey’s a piece of the game here’s a piece of the game and at

the end of the day this master game design document was a Google doc that indexed all of these little feature documents and even then it was for the

investors just to prove to them we were thinking through the issues right uh in actual development games development is

messy you don’t get to do these Master plans and then just execute on them you try little bits you iterate you try bits

you iterate and so documentation uh portfolios that showcase that sort of thing are way more interesting uh one of

our guys uh would build an in fundsmith club uh built initially what was literally every week bring in a little

black and white screen with some numbers and texts on it it supposed be a card game we like okay it’s a card game got it you would imagine card games existing

over these blocks of text uh he went away for a couple weeks I came back a month later and um you know what all of

a sudden had a knight fighting mice being controlled by the cards and the card game but he already figured out the

card game and the basics of what he wanted to demonstrate before he went in built the graphical prototype made it

look really cool and all of a sudden people were like when did this become a game and I’m like it was always a game

it’s just that whether you see it as a game in presentation or not is the craft

of game design right and so uh I f up that is one of those stories where literally two months of work transformed

what was already a this is after months of structural work suddenly transformed it into something that the general basic

consumer suddenly saw as a game right and so people need to remember that

there’s so much stuff that goes into before that and that’s type of work work that isn’t as exciting or as sexy and

that’s the structural work that leads to success so that’s the kind of mindset you need to have what are the things I

need to build up to eventually get to this point not I need to jump up here to this impossible wrong and grab on to it

for dear life yeah I mean here in the first example like fundsmith Tavern as

well just to Define that it’s a Discord server right and it’s a part of the Discord server that has a lot of people

sharing this kind of could you do you mind giving a quick rundown cuz I think it’s a very useful resource sure um the

fundsmith club uh which you know I think we have a URL for is effectively a

community where we have both AAA game designers and a lot of people struggling to get in the industry um and we cover

uh narrative design as well as uh game mechanics design and um basically just

give a place for people to sit and get really crunchy on design people will bounce their ideas off there we have uh

we have peer play tests every two weeks where people bring in their game prototypes and seven eight people will

sit there and play test it with you giving feedback and input and ideas uh it’s also where we kind of have the home

to the paid service Community as well right so people who are taking our courses they have private channels they

get direct feedback from me and the other uh designers leading our courses and it gives kind of a a sense of

History right not only do you get to see your answers to your questions but also the answers everyone in the community

has had to the same questions the same assignments the same work and you get to see this variety of inputs and

perspectives that’s a massive resource itself on top of the stuff you learn in the courses perfect so I noticed in one

of the guides you have on the website game design skills you mentioned about

reverse engineering games yes I can imagine that being a rabbit hole which

doesn’t be isn’t that productive if you don’t do it the right way so I guess like how should people approach the

reverse engineering part okay I can answer that so when I say reverse engineering right for a programmer

that’s breaking down how an individual feature works right um how do the inputs work what is the design develop

structure what how does this client server work for a piece of art it’s sitting there and imagining like hey how

would I structure this face how do I make this style stand out how do I render it differently to express it in

this unique way it’s very similar for game design right for game design it’s about hey can you see past the veneer

the illusion of the game itself right can I see past the visuals to see the game mechanics can I see the objects can

I see the hitboxes can I see the shape of the interactions and map that out do I understand that Mario at the end of

the day right let’s take Mario 64 is really a sphere moving around a bunch of spaces right with an amazing set of

presentations and controls based on Dynamic inputs that preserves momentum

or um hey uh the PowerUp system is really just changing what ha changing

the graphic representation of Mario and what happens when you press this button or that button but otherwise the

character controller is basically the same do you understand how a boss fight is broken down that there’s a series of

phases that are triggered by Health do you understand why they do that do you understand how they communicate where

every single lava ball from bouncer is bouncing off do you understand what they do to indicate to the player you can

grab his tail and spin around in circles inste flying sorry pops um and uh right

can you break it down and understand not only what the pieces are presentation wise but what the intention and purpose

was to go step by step through the game and understand it um as an example uh

when I interviewed at Riot games one of the questions that they asked me was like hey um right now uh there are five

rolls but only three lanes um and one jungle is that a mistake and I’m like

well that’s a great question because it goes really really deeply into the game and I knew the reason that they were

asking this is because a competitor it just came out with the game with four lanes and a jungle so everyone had a spot to go and I’m like well um right

now I don’t know that having Lanes where people have two people in it is a

problem but right now if you don’t have a jungler you are dramatically far behind in terms of resources okay so we

have a resourcing problem there second we have a problem that when those two people are in lane together um they’re

leeching off of each other right um the idea but yet despite that playing with a

support in a lane or two characters in a lane is actually a more fun and engaging and and turbulent experience than it is

to be two men smacking each other in the face in Top Lane right um as as a result

even today you still hear the complaint that hey Top Lane is this slow agonizing duel that the jungler shows up and

messes up right and so they’re and so I’m like so can we address those problems while keeping the best

qualities of what makes bot Lane bot Lane and they were intrigued by this like okay great let’s talk about this

and then that actually led to me working uh when I start they were originally hiring me for an action RPG that never

got released uh uh in R&D back at right back in the day but um instead they said

well actually why don’t we have you try to fix this problem in League of Legends so I went in and actually did the support rework with quo low and a few

others and we actually sat there and said how do we solve these problems and I added the items in the game that were

support money generating items I actually was the one who said why don’t supports make as much money as everyone

else they’re like they’d be too powerful and like then that is a support design problem not an economy problem and sure

enough we when we had the conversation with um Mark yetter he was like yeah we should sit down and pull the trigger and

fix all the supports let’s break the game by giving them too much money then fix the supports that are broken

everyone on the design team was scared about this I was even scared about this but I can persuade everyone to get us up

to 80 90% of uh of the adc’s income let’s go that far see how it is see what

breaks game worked game felt better all of a sudden a great diversity of new characters could be played in bot Lane

and and all of a sudden everyone’s lights went on to be like oh this is the root problem that’s been holding us back forever I’m like yeah and then you know

quo and I basically built out things like um the targon Shield that would share last hits or um the frost Queen’s

claim that would allow you to harass enemies in lane or the one that would just passively generate resources mana

and HP but required you to be using them in lane and turned out that players loved it they actually went on to build

a fourth item after I departed as well as shaping up that role to have things like War generation and so on um and

that’s an example of taking a game breaking it down and pointing out hey this is where the problem is now that we

understand where the root problem is let’s not be afraid of the root problem let’s fix that root problem and once

that root problem is solved all this untangling happens where all these things fall apart and you fix the all of

the side effects and all of a sudden nature of the game is improved for everyone love it I’m going to use

this I have questions but we have so much topics it’s super cool I’m going to use this to jump into the interview

process now so I know many people who looking for a long time time they

finally get the interview they do the interview they don’t get feedback so unless you’re in a community where you

can I guess have some practice yep so I want to talk about the interview process now and also uh just a quick highlight

this is like twitch any questions you pop in the chat we will come to so my question is about the interview process

I like this Frame of question what would you say is the biggest mistake people are doing let’s nip that in the about absolutely uh number one the make the

answers all about themselves and showing off rather than showing that they understand the problems right um one of

the times is when you sit down and let’s say um what what genres do you love Harry what genres do I love the most

games I play are currently card games on my phone so like harstone

batro card games okay great uh tell me about a problem in batro um just tell me

what the problem is I don’t understand why some of the Jokers don’t just track

the metrics the do it very nicely I’d love to know how good my Joker is across the Run okay great um great oh that’s an

amazing problem uh go ahead and fix it okay let’s track how much money this jok has made and have it visible and

congratulations you just felt into the first trap of a Jame of a game design interview you immediately R you

immediately rolled into a solution without asking me the interviewer or um

for explanation of my own perspective uh also hey you didn’t actually ask well

well how much time and resources do we have how do we focus on the right things here what are the goals of any changes

I’m about to make here or at least defining it yourself now go ahead continue continue with the

exercise I like that um okay now I’m roasting myself in my head

though so H we can keep moving if you want to but um but that’s the that’s the thing right basically go ahead and ask

me a a similar question cool what games do you love what game genre do you like

oh man um I’ve been playing a lot of Stellaris lately uh if you know if you know that game at all um so if you know

something if you know that game great if not I feel free to pick something more standard best pick Stellaris it’s done

by Paradox I know there’s Resource Management my question as an interviewer

is what is currently wrong with stellar oh that’s a great question well first

off we need to Define what we evaluate as wrong is it things that are cycling people out of the game is it things that

are hard to play and interact with is it things that are inscrutable and hard to understand or is part of that mystery

and Discovery part of the desired experience right um for example if you’d

ask me one of the things that is wrong in Stellaris is that right now there’s a really high effort low reward uh system

known as Espionage right and ESP is a really cool idea right it’s this idea

that hey I can spy another Empire figure out they’re doing and then use that information to make better decisions

with how I engage with them does that seem fair right well um the issues I

have is that right now the amount of time I’m M to put in with my personal time and attention is way too high for

the rewards you get okay great that could be as easy as changing the tuning of the rewards but I don’t think that

would solve the root problem because the inter the core UI interaction with it is really clunky hard to get into right um

and furthermore a lot of these things feel rehashed as opposed to like a really well fought out in-depth

interaction system with counterplay and interactions okay great now in this case har you’re going be playing the

interviewer so I just gave you three different approaches I could take to solving uh this problem with the system

go ahead and pick one of those and then push back on me I want to highlight how you straight away went into to define

the question but in my example I just assumed one version of the question

started answering it I think that’s a very big thing to highlight right so you

mentioned the UI being very clunky that sounds expensive like okay there’s the

interviewer so H let me think of a question so when it comes to the UI problem what would

you tackle first hm that’s a great approach so let’s pretend that we didn’t

have a lot of development resources in in the game engine itself we have to ruthlessly prioritize hint this is

something you have to do all the time as a game designer um and you only get to choose to fix one thing the biggest thing I would fix is that to change from

Empires to go through all the empires you’re spying on you have to go to this little pull down or you have to go to

the zoom across the world map click on that Empire click on a UI click on spy button right you have to like talk to

the Ambassador and then click the Spy button whereas I would much rather have a UI that is the Spy screen and just

block block block block that has a list just of the empires I’m spying on separated from the list of the empires I

might want to spy on get hint there’s plenty of information they they actually have all this information in a sorted

pop down list but get rid of that pop down just make it a UI element when I click on each Empire it then pops the

screen that currently has the existing um you know Espionage UI in place is

that an amazing change no but it immediately reduces the amount of button clicks I have to do add a hot key there

right and go right we can even put it the same hotkey as negotiation and other

things like that but you cannot hide it in the corner under this little fly out because it’s too hard to get to you have

to move your mouse all the way to the screen you’re deal if you’re dealing with uh spying if you’re trying to be a master spy character either through RP

reasons or through PVP reasons you’re trying to keep an eye on all the enemies around you I play a little bit in

weekend Stellaris club and guess what they pack you in 20 people a game right well if I’m watching five people I don’t

want to be going here here here through a four-step process every time so let’s go ahead and figure out a way for me to

get one click Empire one click Empire the second layer to this is that all of these actions often if I’ve done it once

I want to run it a second time or a third time right and not have to go through this UI screen so let’s figure

out a way to say repeat this action three times okay great awesome let me go steal technology back toback as soon as

I can if I can’t throw just give me information about where the enemy fleets are um and so as you kind of see there

right I defined hey if I can’t change the underlying systems I’m going to focus on the presentation I’m going to

focus on the way the player interacts with this UI and that alone would make a huge change there you go I love that the

example you gave directly was the I guess the least resource way to answer that question and

then obviously you highlight we could go deeper but let’s not start with that

yeah very cool so is there one thing you want add on

about interviews before I move on to reapplying oh man um first off I would

say again have multiple answers but first seek understanding of how they’re prioritizing if they ask you to

prioritize explain your process and have a process have a justification for what

you decide when you have a reason behind whatever choice you are making it makes

it questionable it makes it re-evaluate in the future if Let’s Pretend for example Harry um

you go out and you buy a sandwich you make it with we’ll say white bread great and then tomorrow there is evidence that

all white bread in the United States has been poisoned that sandwich is sitting in your fridge do you eat

it I would not eat it right because let’s say all of it 100% we wouldn’t do

it because we understand the criteria at the time I purchased this I believed it

was all good now I believe it is poisoned okay great you will now change

your beliefs based upon the level of evidence now let’s say we believe 1% of the bread in the United States was

poisoned okay we might still choose to throw it away but if we chose not to we’d understand hey um we probably are

going to be okay the majority of the time but if everyone eats the bread a lot of people will die right that allows you to make a better decision based upon

the risks and information it just likewise if I said hey I added a fireball to Mario 7 because I thought

that an inst kill at range ability was fair and reasonable great maybe that was the case when I built the game but now

that we’ve added the cat suit the Tanuki suit and all these things we have to realize oh actually Fireball can only do

one hits worth of damage now you can’t just have the fireball kill Bowser anymore because the universe rules and

understanding of the game have changed so we can re-evaluate our prior decisions whereas if you blindly just do

something like ah seemed cool you don’t have a criteria to undermine your own work in the future and reevaluate it

nice I gave interview prep sessions when I was a recruiter i’ done probably 150

plus the main problem I saw was a lack

of structure when it comes to answering question so I always recommended the star technique situation the task the

action I made and then the result great but even after doing the prep saying we

have to do the star technique don’t make a 20-minute intro yep those are two

things that ended up being the reason a lot of some great candidates as well didn’t get the job because the

introduction was literally 15 minutes even after going over it a lot of times but also the star technique they might

do it once then they forget and then just forget that the answer is to make themselves look better not to answer the

question um any advice for people going into an interview to I guess stick to

those Basics like one thing I wanted to ask it’s a very long question I appreciate is the fact that a lot of

these interviews are now virtual yep is there an argument to have some answers

prepped on one screen like I have my LinkedIn chat here and then the interviewer person here Y what goes into

like a virtual interview prep oh man again a lot of people think

that you have to have some sort of master design that you can sell and convince but most the time if you’ve

gotten to the interview they’ve already looked at your work they already have a sense of you probably can do the job um

what they’re looking for is can I can I do the job with you do I want to do the job with you right and so um this is

unfortunately where both bias and experience come into play right is that hey they’re looking for pattern matches

against experiences they’ve had with designers before um I know one uh really

talented producer who keeps picking some of the worst you know um Partners in the

industry because what he looks for in a creative director is a person who is egotistical and confident to overcome

his own lack of confidence and beliefs as opposed to saying hey what are the things that I need to do or that I need

complemented which is I need decisive choices in uh decision-making I need hey

uh someone who has creative ideas because I my ideas are not all that creative or I just don’t have the time and energy to focus on them but I need

someone I can trust who won’t uh hurt the people around them okay great cool that gives you a set of indexes for

working with you in your game industry context right okay great um so I think

that a lot of people when they sit there in that interview or are getting ready for that interview think there’s master

plan instead you need to basically sus out what they are looking for and say actually is this the job for me right

and having that reframe is very important right for example if I was working with you and you were like

everyone comes to work in white t-shirts every day because I want everyone to feel super chill right it’d be very

reasonable it makes sense in the culture you might establish right but I’ve like actually I feel super uncomfortable in

white t-shirts I don’t feel like I’m self-expressive or creative and so even

though I might have the great skills to work in your team and look I feel like I look like I would fit in that would

actually make me feel like I’d be less effective as a person being who I am that’s a great example of where hey

maybe it’s fine that we that you have those skills it’s not a good match likewise I’m looking for a designer who

is going to sit there and iterate on numbers and uh like combat animations and not really worry about the big

picture stuff got a big picture guy that’s a great job for a certain segment of people right there’s a whole lot of

people who would love just get there in the numbers and then just let other people worry about the chaos of the business then there’s designers like me

who I want a a view of everything and I’m willing to get into the numbers and fix things where it’s necessary but at

this point I am concerned about the big picture of the game okay great I’m the wrong designer to be working in level

design on a specific level I’m a really good designer for need someone to look at your systems and motivation and interactions and says hey is this the

right thing to be doing for the players it’s the same thing when you’re going into interview for a position with a

particular team we’re looking for someone who can do X Y and Z you need to be asking yourself is okay well for me

to be successful in that role I would need a B and C are those things present

here in this company right and then boom you get to know if that context is right

for you and they get to show you they get to understand that hey here are the things that make you work and you can

make treat every interview as a collaborative process of understanding rather than a competitive one of I have

to destroy all of these Anonymous competitors because you don’t know and so as you interact with them and ask

them what they’re looking for you can get a sense for oh is this type of role looking for these con same things

consistently do I have these things can I explain and present those things not just as developing a portfolio is a job

so too is interviewing just as Harry you’ve gotten better at interviewing people as you’ve done what several hundred interviews right um you know you

will get better as you interview with more companies and get a sense for what they want if you can you don’t want your

first interview to be with your dream company because you’re not going to be at the quality of what they are 80% of

the time and so you’ll feel like you’ve lost instead of been like actually I’m gonna build my way way up to that boss battle I’m GNA interview with a bunch of

companies get understanding what they want showcase I can Crush those interviews and then be like you know what I think I’m up to the standards

quality and I understand the philosophies of this company right based on the games that they make and what I

love and here’s how they’re aligned do you know what it was that got me my through my first interview at blizzard

out the gate it was a little bit of that I had worked on mods they knew that I could work inside their engine but more

than that is that I was super aligned with the values of what Blizzard’s culture was right I was willing to push

back on ideas even when the leadership was the one handing it out um there was this little moment with Rob parau who’s

kind of known to be a bit of a bully right uh especially in interviews Dan he liked to push people and so he said hey

what are your thoughts on Shadow the closset and I’m like you know it was really prettyl looking game but I thought the gameplay was kind of dull

kind of just climb up this environment very rote stick The Sword in the head and rinse repeat over and over again

he’s like that got game of the year was considered one of the best games that came out that year I’m like yeah I didn’t think it was all that much it was

visually cool it was thematically lined but for me I’m a mechanics and gameplay person the gameplay was climb hairy

beast stick sword and head and he’s like well I was one of the people who voted for it for game of the year I’m like

that’s great you are totally welcome to have your opinion of it but for me it did not hit any big notes and so I would

never have chosen that as game of the year because it doesn’t align with my values and opinions he was like okay well I guess we disagree and I thought I

washed out of the interview there because you know I’m like oh I didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear he went back and there was then three people Tom

Chilton Rob parau and Jeff Kaplan they all went back and Jeff was like ah I’m not sure and Tom was like ah I think

this guy’s got good mechanic sense and Rob was a deciding vote he was the one who said you know this guy will push

back even when we’re making bad decisions and will offer alternative Solutions and he loves mechanics which

is the kind of shop we were or at the time we were and so he was deciding vote and said yeah uh let’s get this guy in

and Jee to be fair was kind of like I just who’s correct actually that I was young and inexperienced but that

willingness to say hey here’s where I disagree with your values was the thing that brought brought me the value in

their organization right yeah fantastic and it’s the reframe of yes it’s an

interview for them to understand if you can do the job but most of the interview is understanding if they can do it with

you as a person also in the reverse if I can work in this company and if you’re not doing that self filtering then they

might get that red flag like you hear the advice never finish an interview and don’t ask the interviewer questions was

very important because if you didn’t have that kind of understanding like this is how I think about these things

they wouldn’t have then come to the understand okay this guy has at least I mean everyone has guard rails of where

they say oh I wouldn’t work in a situation that doesn’t have this but you don’t have that collaborative process then they won’t get to understand

that yeah let me shout out my friend Sam I see chatting in here Sam amazing designer great seeing you here um we’ve

actually gotten dinner a few times talking about his own experiences in design and Consulting so good to see you

Legend um to have you yeah and you know ultimately it it really is that just as

you go through each interview you’re training yourself on how to interview better and it’s not about just bending and being who they want right you just a

little bit of that you need to Showcase you’re willing to understand what they want you also need to show that you understand yourselves and that goes pretty far now

the issue is as a junior person you don’t know yet what are the things that are important for me to stand up on and

represent that are important to who I am and how my design approach Works versus what is just I don’t know things yet and

my showcasing of it is ignorance and that’s a lot of what we try to train in game design skills right it’s like hey

do you have an understanding of the fundamentals everyone wants to like

learn the really one cool trick that Designer did in that one game that made this animation cooler or made this hit

feel better without understanding well what was the reason that Stinger right a a root motion attack that teleports you

to the Target was the correct choice in May Cry why is was it the wrong choice

in ay and the will of the Wisps right um and then you can be like hey actually here’s why we did this why we didn’t do

this and make the right choices in the right time and place perfect Al righty

we have eight more minutes of Alexander’s kind time so I will use the time to answer the questions we got in

the chat and I see a lot of people have signed up so um yeah everyone you’re

welcome and let’s go to the chat let’s go to the questions so let’s do it

scrolling up three there we go boom we got Luca so

Luca’s question is how to design an action game level without having to work on character movement is it event

possible I.E ledge hanging grappling hook or other mechanics and I will add my little thing on top I’m guessing this

is for the example of a portfolio um like a mini version I guess you could

answer the big version Yeah It’s Tricky right because you generally have a much easier time if you play test the things

you have so but fortunately there are character controller packages that have a lot of these things built in even if

they’re not the greatest um I think of the Corgi 2D package as an example that has jump Jets and grappling hooks and

air Dash and all of these things that is available you just purchase for Unity don’t build a new character controller use that one and then build your level

designs around the constraints of that character controller um I think in unreal there isn’t quite as developed a

asset store space so you might have to build some prototypes there but yes you can build the level design an action

game level without any of the mechanics in there if you showcase you understand the spacing the communication the visual

understanding that said the details of that are even beyond my personal experience right I am not a action game

level designer but someone like Nathan kelman right would be able to say oh yeah we build this think about this can

you showcase so you understand what it is that makes a grappling hook point in Metroid Prime 4 work also announced

recently I actually applied for a job on there didn’t get the interview sadly and that’s okay right the things that I was

like oh man maybe I’ll get to work on a Nintendo game before my day end of days didn’t happen right um because I didn’t

have the skill set they needed right I’m not a person who can basically say here’s all the level design steps in a 3D Metro Vania but doesn’t mean that if

you can’t right if you spend the time to break down their games and content and showcase how their levels are structured

and that you can recreate it and then showcase those pieces and side put them

against here’s an ability video of your character running through the space doing this thing here’s a space where they would be tested in the same way you

don’t need the character controller you can demonstrate you have the challenge for the player brilliant we have a question from

Louise which is a tactical one about portfolio so what are a few efficient ways to show depth of design thinking

and solution iteration especially when recruiters and hire managers spend mere seconds on your website sure uh get the

information they need front and center right um showcase the games you work on what skills you applied and then let

them dig deeper make it intriguing for them to click the link because they want to see what’s underneath it to get to

your process don’t have a web page that is just you know giant column of process teaser image video link skills

demonstrated click here for details we talk about all this in the portfolio uh in the portfolio course Legend nice I

have a few bonus questions from myself and if anyone has any questions you have three minutes to get them in so my

question is on actually you kind of mentioned it right now so you applied to a job and

didn’t get it this happens a lot in the games industry and the games industry is small so what do you advise people when

it comes to reapplying to Studios uh I would say whenever you have

demon demonstrably leveled up your skills apply again um there’s a guy named Dave kosak he was a comic artist

right um or writer over at um foret The Game Spy I think it was he applied seven

times to Blizzard Entertainment every single year on the day every single time he would get he first one round he just

didn’t he got bounced second one he actually got to the someone looked at it third time he got looked at and reviewed

in a little bit of feedback fourth time he actually got a voice call and they were like yeah you’re not skill yet that

guy ended up as the lead uh Quest designer on World of Warcraft he was

persistent resilient and every single time he came back you saw how fast he was leveling up it was like oh this

guy is growing fast and so I think it may have been five years seven applications but he eventually got in

and once he did he skyrocketed through that team by showcasing understanding of the community the product the content

and was a phenomenal human being to work with just straight up love the answer tactical question does itend

how does it depend does it depend on the studio how long you wait between applications you mentioned you would

wait until you leveled up if I felt like I leveled up every three months should I apply every three months I think three

months is pretty fast but let’s say you had a pile of skills and just weren’t showcasing them you could apply again

three months later but I think six months to a year is more reasonable generally companies are not going to

care that you applied again um I do know that a few companies have you know reapplying in a year but mostly that’s

just to keep it from being spammy also apply for all the jobs that you think you fit but make sure that each

application is targeted they’re only going to turn you down shotgunning if you’re literally shotgunning without

purpose yeah but if I gave four different uh four different uh portfolios and contents for four

different jobs they were all really tight No One’s Gonna be upset that you appli again so I’ll give you 60 seconds

to answer this question and then unfortunately cic will have to do that async so

Rick are there aspects of the other disciplines of game development such as programming or art that can transfer into game design absolutely programming

teaches you structural uh organized thinking uh art teaches you emotional expression and visual communication

those are vital to game design oh we have time for the last one hi Alex I have a question when we complete a game

and there is one feature that is not implemented but there’s only one day time what is the right strategy to solve

this you have to cut it you have one day you’re not going to get time iteration or bug testing on it you have to cut it

put it in patch one we did it Bo well mic drop amazing

uh everyone who’s joined on LinkedIn thank you so much for being here live and Alexander thanks again where can

people find you I’m gonna say LinkedIn or yeah um LinkedIn is the best spot uh

I’m also at zelna XL n a on every social media platform possible except Facebook

but I know the guy who who has my username and he Facebook would actually not let him transfer it to me um anyways

uh great it was hey harry really tight interview here I do have a hard out but thank you so much the audience thank you

guys for all your great questions if you have more just start asking them inside our Discord or on LinkedIn uh me and my

team we’ll get back to you as soon as possible and Harry thank you so much bye everyone later Cheers Cheers