I’ve been researching courses and jobs extensively over the past week. I’ve found that getting a job at a big games company making AAA games is a monumental task. They all ask for experience of two or more years, at another big studio with at least one published AAA game. How do you go about getting that experience in the first place though? Having friends in the right place maybe? Luck? More likely the answer is you just have to be so damn good at what you do that they wouldn’t possibly dare to turn you away from a job!

One possible in road to the games industry is getting experience as a games tester initially. While it’s not the greatest task, it does serve as a foot in the door. Other possible routes are working on a successful mod. The purpose of the SPP3 task is that we find jobs however, so the mod route won’t really work as I don’t believe it could be considered a real job.

As for courses, I have found plenty of them, but I don’t believe that post grad courses are the path I’ll be taking after University. I’m pretty certain of my plans, which hopefully involve Escape studios. Below you can see links to the courses and jobs I’ve found which I believe to be realistic (e.g. not applying to work at Bungie in America). These are all E.U based, and don’t require the experience I talked about above.

Jobs
Blitz Junior Environment Artist – http://tinyurl.com/yamlgzh
D Tech – Tester – http://tinyurl.com/ykp9du7
Guerrilla Games – Lighting Artist – http://tinyurl.com/ybqrlwj
Volt – Games Tester – http://tinyurl.com/yhym2ty

Courses
Abertay Uni – Games Development – http://tinyurl.com/yjcan7y
Teeside – Games Art (Environment) – http://tinyurl.com/ycmswoz
Abertay Uni – Game Art and Animation – http://tinyurl.com/yg6dpyb
Bournemouth – Creative Media Practice – http://tinyurl.com/yftdmfa