Week 73: Starting my job search

tl;dr: Last week I didn't get much work done, because I started preparing for job interviews!

Wait, I thought you were going back to Google??

That was my plan! But I've recently been thinking I should instead get some experience in a real gameplay engineering role with a team of folks I can learn from. I actually have quite a bit of gameplay experience at this point, but I'm not sure how biased it is, since I've been mostly doing solo work. I think I'd regret it if I went back to Google right now. But I still might go back at some point!

It feels very weird for me to be applying to gameplay jobs right now. In some ways, I'm not sure if I have enough qualifications, because most companies expect a great deal of recent experience developing in C++, 3D games, and whatever game engine they use (usually Unreal). Most of my recent experience has been in 2D games, the scripting language GDScript, and the not-very-common Godot game engine. But then again, in some ways, I am certainly over-qualified with all of my tech-lead and senior-level software-engineering experience at Google.

But I've been talking to friends in the game-dev industry, and potential teams at companies that might want me to join them, and it seems like my mix of experience should be good enough!

So now I'm cramming to refresh my C++ and 3D math knowledge! It's exciting.

What happened last week?

• I created a showreel video to highlight the more interesting bits in my gameplay experience.
• Apparently this is a pretty common thing for people to have in the game industry.
• I assume it's more common for artists and design folks to have showreels, but it seems like something that might be useful for me.
• I did a tiny bit of work on concept art for new Meteor Power bot characters.
• Worked with a person who wants to get my Surfacer framework working in their game.
• https://github.com/SnoringCatGames/surfacer/issues/4
• I applied to some "senior gameplay engineer" positions.
• I studied for technical interviews.

What's next?

• I am still going to finish and release Meteor Power!
• But I'm going to put it on pause for another week or two.
• I'll spend the next couple weeks studying and interviewing.

🎉 Cheers!