Want to Make Video Games for a Living?
Saturday, September 8th, 2007Haven’t you ever played a game, and thought that it would be the most amazing job to make that game? The other day I ran into a good friend from high school. He was working at a local GameStop and we began talking. We talked about what we were doing since high school, and we got on the topic of jobs. He told me he always wanted to work with video games because he loved them. However, his hopes and aspirations of working with video games was limited to working at GameStop as a clerk.
He called me lucky that I had a job that allowed me to work with games. I thought to myself that there has to be more job opportunities waiting for people, they just don’t know where/how to look. Last time I checked, career day was full of doctors, laywers, accountants, cops, engineers, musicians, software developers… but not once did I have a guy who worked with video games. Thats when I decided that information for working within the video gaming community was not common knowledge, and I knew many of our viewers would benefit from this knowledge.
I contacted Kathy Gehrig at Valve Software, the makers of games like Half-Life, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, Steam, etc. She was more than happy to answer a few questions for us that would hopefully help out future game developers, or just someone who would like a more traditional job inside the gaming industry.
We’d like to thank Kathy for taking time out of her super busy schedule to talk with us!
Justin: Kathy, could you give us little background on you, your job, and how you came to be at your position at Valve?
Kathy: My path here doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense. I have a BA in Music. I worked in the IT department at a law firm for a number of years – nothing in my background translates well to the industry. A collegue of mine (he’s actually the rhythm guitarist in my band) left the firm we were working for and a couple of weeks later I had an interview. Valve’s philosophy is that you create an environment of smart, talented, creative people and give them the tools to make amazing products. Pretty simple really.
Justin: What different type of jobs and careers are available at Valve and in the gaming industry in general? Is there a large variety of careers available or are they all very similar?
Kathy: Yes, even at a relatively small company like Valve (we have 143 people working here presently), there is a good cross section of careers represented – animators, artists, programmers, level designers, support techs, IT, marketing, web design, UI design, UX design – etc. And, each of those disciplines has different areas for people to specialize.
