From Game Development To Marketing, How I Found My Place In The Games Industry
I’ve been approached many times both offline and online with the question “How do I get into the games industry?". This is a very interesting question because it’s different for everyone. For me, working with games has always been a lifelong dream and that question was something I thought about a lot during my childhood.
Recently it’s gotten both easier and more difficult in a way to get into the games industry. Twenty years ago, there wasn’t a clear path and you basically had to create your own opportunities to work with games. Now you still have to create those opportunities, but there’s a lot more of them, and many ways to go about it than being on obscure forums or hacking hardware.
I got into this industry by stumbling into the newly made game design bachelor’s degree program at Södertörns University. I naturally believed that, due to my lack of skill in programming and making art, that game design would be my thing since I had been thinking about games basically my entire life. What became evident now - in hindsight - is that I was more drawn to actually presenting the games we made, and connecting with the people in the team. I struggled a lot with scripting, but did my best since designers are required to deploy their ideas.
The insecurity of my skill with design eventually led me to look outside of Sweden for internships, since I believed Sweden to be too competitive for me. Due to my interest in Japan, I naively applied to many companies there. By complete surprise I woke up one day to an email saying that I had been accepted to intern at a small indie dev studio in Tokyo. I worked there under suboptimal conditions for almost two years before I admitted to myself that I had taken too big of a challenge in learning the language and furthering my career in the country.
While I started out as a game designer, at the tail end of my tenure I was doing almost all of the tasks for a mobile title called X-Tactics. I designed and balanced characters, wrote missions, set up collaborations, tested, ran social media and attempted to build a community for the game.
When I returned to Sweden, I failed to get a game design job several times, but eventually landed a role as QA at Toca Boca. This wasn’t what I dreamed of, but it gave me enough space to figure out what I really wanted to do in this industry. I also realized that the thing I excelled at the most was making content and building communities around games.
During the day, I tested apps for kids. At night I made graphics and videos, hosted tournaments and award ceremonies and travelled to different parts of the world to connect with the communities I curated. I also participated in esports competitions.
While I’ve always dreamed of developing games, competing in them has been my true underlying passion. Putting one and two together eventually led me to work at an esports company called G-Loot as a content manager.
Eventually I started to miss working with communities that stem from the love of a game, rather than those that focus on winning prize money. Once more, a perfect opportunity presented itself. Resolution Games was looking for someone who had organizational skills in marketing and knowledge of competitive games and building communities. I am currently a community manager at Resolution working on Blaston and Ultimechs, and I couldn’t be happier. I love being able to build communities for these games as well as work with emerging technologies. I’m excited to have a chance to help build something new with VR esports, but also be a part of the journey that Resolution Games is on.
Some of the learnings I’ve had throughout this journey are:
Realize your own abilities, talents and skills, and find a way to turn them into something fun and useful.
Push yourself to learn new things, but be honest with yourself and know your limitations.
Try to treat experiences as learnings because you’ll never know when those learnings can become useful.
If you steer yourself into one direction with drive and ambition, you’ll eventually find your spot in the industry that fits you.
There are many paths to get into this industry and if you’re reading this I hope you find your perfect path soon. To learn more about our current openings click here.