How I became a Game Developer with ZERO Coding & Design Experience + Tips

hi welcome to my channel my name is morgan and i'm here to share my story of how i went from selling candy to making video games for those that are new here i'll give a quick background about myself i'm a game developer based in california and i've been in the industry now for almost three years two and a half of those years were with riot games and i got to work on uh titles such as the ruined king hex mayhem convergence i will link them below in case you're interested and you don't know what they are and then most recently i'm a senior product manager at amazon games working on one of their unannounced live ops titles one of the most popular questions i get on my tick tock is how did you become a game dev especially since i'm somebody who like didn't have a coding background didn't have a design background and i came from a completely different industry i've structured this video into four main topics and time stamped them in the description below just in case that you want to like skip around or you're particularly interested about a specific topic but the first thing i'll talk about is my background because i think that context is really helpful then i'll touch on how i figured out the best way for me to break into the industry then i'll talk through my overall prep and my interview experience throughout each topic i'll make sure to weave in some of my learnings and some advice that i have to give so my story is not about someone who went out and tried to make her own indie game or something like that it's more of like breaking into the industry breaking into companies that are quite well known uh because that that's what i wanted to do and i felt that that was best for me okay let's start with my origin story and cover what i did before becoming a game developer i went to state school go rutgers and graduated with a degree in general physics and economics and you might be like morgan what do those two majors have in common and you know what my answer would be they don't have that much in common and so you could clearly tell that i didn't know what i want to do in college i did grow up playing lots of video games mostly on the pc but i didn't know that like working in games was like a realistic or viable option after my junior year i actually ended up interning at a candy company known as mars wrigley they're known for like some of the biggest candy brands globally eminem skittles snickers and then ended up returning full-time once i graduated in what was essentially like a sales analyst role and i worked a couple different roles at that company while i did enjoy it there like i enjoyed my time there i enjoyed the people there i realized that this was probably not somewhere i wanted to be or specifically that industry somewhere i wanted to be long-term so i decided to explore what other career options were available and this is like where i thought of riot games i had played league of legends for many years like i think dating back to like season four and so riot games was always a company that i was really aware of when i was a junior i even applied for an internship and they didn't like bat an eye on me and so i kind of just forgot about it till again i was like revisiting hey what do i want to do with my life when it comes to like my career based on what i could find like blogs postings on the internet i was like okay i still think this is a really cool company to work for it kind of almost seems like my dream company and so i started to explore more seriously like ways that maybe someone like me could get into riot games and i felt like in order to do that i needed to have like a better understanding of the games industry as a whole and like what it really meant to be a game developer i definitely had some preconceived notions of what a game developer was i initially thought it was like somebody who designed the game and then somebody who built the game which often like required coding experience or experience with certain type of technical tools skills i clearly did not have now those people are definitely still game developers but like what i didn't realize is that term is quite an umbrella and captures like a lot of different roles that are integral to game development and some are technical in nature and some aren't since i've been in the game industry a few years now i can give you a breakdown of the different type of like roles in job families within game development that way you can be better informed about like what types of game dev roles might interest you or like what types of roles might already be a pretty good match and like you didn't even know it i'm gonna loosely define a game developer as someone who is integral to the development of the game and they help transform a game or feature concept into a playable reality now you'll find that each gaming company is a little bit different but but typically you can group game developer roles into five job families that's design engineering art production and publishing that's design engineering art production and publishing and so i'll quickly touch on each of the job families and give you a couple of examples of actual specific roles that fall within that job family generally design roles are responsible for the look feel and story of the game and they decide how the game will actually play you have roles like gameplay designer that design the mechanics of the game like how high a character can jump or how many points they accrue for doing certain things another example is a narrative designer that creates the actual story behind the game engineering roles are basically tasked with implementing the game designer's vision into an actual product examples may include engine designers who are responsible for developing the actual engine in which the game will run and you'll have roles like gameplay engineers that actually write the code for the interactions that make the game fun art and animation is usually tasked with creating the actual artwork for characters and their environments as well as the illusion of movement for these characters and objects classic examples is like an environmental artist who will actually create the world in which like your game takes place or a technical animator who often acts as like a bridge between the engineering team and the animation team and is often tasked with like developing tools in order to make their jobs on both sides easier generally production roles are responsible for organizing the actual creation of the game making sure things happen on time and also within budget probably the most common title that you see fall under this job family is producer the term producer specifically is pretty broadly used in the games industry and it can honestly vary from company to company producers are the main driver in development like the main driver to get done historically and you honestly still might find this to be true especially in smaller companies like producers basically owned like the how and the why behind a game today especially in triple a game development you actually now have like product managers that are owning the y and usually producers and sometimes project managers who are owning the how within publishing you're directly supporting the studio or the actual development of a game specifically around things like describing and communicating the vision or the game strategy or dealing with complexities in other countries a lot of these roles actually have the word publisher in the title but you'll also find roles like qa or quality assurance that typically fall into this bucket where they're actually testing certain parts or features of a game sometimes product management also falls here instead of production sometimes publishing is a sub-family of production it could be confusing it's okay keep in mind there are plenty of other roles that are still really important that don't necessarily work on one specific game you know hr finance insights like analytics and user research honestly the list goes on hopefully you find this helpful it's something that i wish that i understood more before going into the games industry and i still always recommend like you doing research on your own i read articles blog posts looked at a bunch of open positions and i also reached out to a bunch of people on linkedin uh my success rate doing that was very low so if you decide to reach out to people industry just keep in mind they often get asked to chat a lot don't get butt hurt if they don't respond just be super respectful about how you reach out and now i definitely was not ignorant to the fact that the games industry as a whole was dealing with issues related to sexism misogyny bro culture like much like the tech industry was i was actually lucky enough to talk to someone who was also an alum from the same school that i went to who was really open and transparent about their experiences the changes that was going on so yeah you know again i did that research i talked to people i was okay with whatever potential risks there were and you know if i can get an interview then i'll use that to further evaluate whether i actually think this place would be a good culture fit for me but again i gotta land that first interview which actually leads me to my next topic [Music] i didn't think the right next step for me was to jump in and be like oh my god i need to take a boot camp get certificates like really build out my portfolio and i'm not saying that those are not the right next steps either there's a lot of like investment that's put in from definitely a time perspective but also probably a monetary perspective so if i were to go down that route i wanted to be super intentional about it i also definitely didn't want to just go in and like mass apply to a bunch of different roles especially if they were all at the same company because hr folks do talk to each other and i didn't want to give them a sense that i like didn't have an understanding of like the type of skill sets that were needed or that i didn't know what i truly wanted to do so i decided to use what i now call the skill set to interest framework which i know sounds super corporate and like unsexy but it's literally just like a structured but simple approach to figuring out the best way for me to break into the industry there are a few inputs that are needed which is why that exploration stage that i just talked about is actually really important you basically look at your provable skill sets and experiences so if you're a student these often come from internships relevant coursework maybe personal projects if you've been in the workforce this is going to come from your past work experience maybe like through certifications and then any personal projects that you've done then you list all the game developer roles that you think you're interested in and the associated skill sets that you think are needed to do the job well which again you can kind of get a sense of this by doing your own research and reading a bunch of job postings and some of the types of roles that i was interested in was revenue strategist which is actually a little bit unique to riot where it's like a mix of product management analytics and monetization design analyst producer and then actually for the sake of just running through a good example i will add on like a systems engineer then you just throw them into the framework so on your x-axis deals with skill set where the closer you are to zero means like your current skill sets don't really align there's a pretty big gap there and then the more to the right you go means like they do a line the y-axis deals with interest where the closer to zero you are means that you're less interested and the higher up you go means like oh you're you're super interested in this role this basically forms four quadrants for you and each rule will fall into one of these quadrants i'll start with the bottom left quadrant which means like hey you're not that interested in it compared to the other roles and you don't really have the skill sets for it like it would require a lot of effort to get those skill sets and so this is like the ignore these bucket the top left means i'm super interested but i don't have the skill set for it this is basically your will require investment bucket and it's up to you to figure out if that investment is worth it the top right here means like oh you're super interested in it and you think you have a really decent skill set match and this one is clearly like the best way to break into the industry bucket the bottom right here represents lower interest but you have a pretty good skill set match and so this could be like the getting my foot through the door bucket so for me the analyst role would sit somewhere here producer here revenue strategist here and then i'll throw systems engineer in this bottom left quadrant i was pretty lucky that i had a role in mind that clearly fit into that like top right quadrant so it was kind of a no-brainer for me what to do next the challenge for me though which i'll actually elaborate a little bit more on the next topic was crafting a strong enough application that could clearly convince like a recruiter and a hiring manager that i did have the relevant skill sets it was just in a different industry i bet though that most of you will actually have more roles that fall into the will require investment bucket or the get my foot in the door bucket and honestly from there you need to decide your best steps because say you want to be an engineer or a programmer and like i mentioned before that could take time it could take money and it's never guaranteed that you're gonna get a role even if you do go through the hoops of learning the skills taking a boot camp and things like that but to be fair nothing is guaranteed like you can find roles that are in the best way to break into the industry bucket and still find it hard to break into the industry because honestly it's like still quite small and so it's highly competitive i think it's just really about how much you want to do it and then how much time and effort that you're willing to spend into it some people like to take the other route where they'll find roles that they kind of already have a good skill set match for or they think it's like a lot easier to build the skill sets needed and then they'll try to like get their foot in through the door that way it's definitely a viable strategy i've seen many people do it like if you come from an hr background like why not try to get an hr role at a gaming company qa again quality assurance is also a popular position that i've seen that people try to get in the industry through but honestly because of that i've been seeing it become more and more competitive and so to continue on with my story i had found like a role or a couple roles that i was interested in and i felt like i already had a decent skill set match for that's when i decided to take the leap and told myself i want to apply [Music] i ended up applying to two roles and associate review strategy manager position and then an insights analyst position like i mentioned before i saw my biggest challenge to be whether or not i can craft a compelling enough application that convinced a hiring manager that what i did with candy i could do with virtual content there are a lot of nuances here that are honestly really dependent on the type of game dev role you are applying to someone applying to be an artist will have a different application from somebody applying to be an engineer i'll just talk through some of the things that i did and try to keep like the tips as broad as possible my application for riot consisted of a resume a cover letter and then a few short answers for some of their open-ended questions when it comes to your resume which is often the most important piece of your application there are actually lots of great resources out there that can help you craft a really strong one i recommend watching my friend chloe's resume tips video i'm just gonna cover a few of the main things that i focused on i actually borrowed verbiage from a lot of different job postings that i saw were that were like very similar in title or clearly within that job family and then use that within my own resume and i don't mean that i copied verbatim by the way use terms and phrasings that are common for that type of role not just at the company that you're applying to but like make sure to look at similar roles at all types of companies in order to do this i also actually really leveraged my cover letter now i'll say like it really depends on the companies because a lot of companies honestly don't even look at it arguably like is it worth to do one maybe um if it's a role that you're super super passionate about like you definitely want this one i always recommend like adding a cover letter to it i felt like the cover letter was actually a chance for me not just to you know provide that additional context about my experiences but also to show them that i could be quite creative i also wanted to show them that i was great at communication that i was great at storytelling and so the way that i actually crafted my cover letter at the time was to write the letter as if someone else was writing it and someone else was talking about me morgan as a champion rising in runeterra so runterra is actually the world in which league of legends takes place in but it was like hey this morgan is dope like she's the next champion that's coming out she'll be on the fields of justice it's a little corny i remember actually a couple of my interviewers mentioned my cover letter and they said that they really enjoyed it i actually heard back in a couple days asking about if i had available time slots for the associate revenue strategy manager position by the way if you don't hear back about a role in a couple days that's totally normal a lot of times like recruiters don't get back to you for weeks sometimes even months after you apply i don't want to go into too much detail here about riot's interview process because i'm not here to expose like exactly what questions that they're asking in terms of like the types of questioning that i got it definitely varied i got quant questions case studies behavioral questions some design questions um so yeah it was intense the one big thing i recommend and i think this can apply to basically all of the game dev roles is to take a critical eye when you're playing games so ask yourself like when you're playing a game like why do you enjoy this certain part of it the certain feature or why don't you like why did you think it was done really well or why not or honestly even ask your friends about it and so yes i did end up getting a role at riot games and then at the end of 2019 i packed my bags i left new jersey where i was born raised and i had my first job and flew all the way to la for my first game dev roll i hope you guys enjoy this video if you want to stay tuned with my life and want to see more videos feel free to hit that like and subscribe button and then you can also follow my tic tocs and my instagram for more my day-to-day stuff thank you so much for watching and i will see you next time bye [Music]

Channel: Morgan Ling

Views: 290,218

Keywords: How I became a game developer, morgan ling, game development, game dev, how to become a game developer, day in the life of a game developer, how to be a game developer, game dev log, gamedev, game design for beginners, game design, working at riot, unity, unity game dev, league of legends, game dev diaries, amazon games, unity game development, devlog, software engineer, working at riot games, product manager, how i became a game developer, indie devlog

Id: aWr95b6e73I

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022