Guild Wars 2

Dear Guild Wars 2 community,

First i would like to say, Sorry if i posted this in the wrong section. But there wasnt really a place to post this except for the help section.
I am struggling with a few questions, and i dont know if this is very helpfull.
But i will give it a shot!
Next year i will finish my school, and i am interested in a job at a gaming company.
Now i dont know if it is allowed to talk about other company’s, so i am not doing so.
But i have a few questions, and i hope that they could be answerd by either Arenanet or the players from the community. Thanks in advance.

I am interested in working at the customer support from a company which will suit me in the future. There are different kind of requirements. Like having a advanced level of English and being experienced in online gaming before.
When i am done with school, i want to follow a course so i can get a diploma of advanced English. Currently i am going to succeed my school with 89% of the basic English language. What else is required to work for a gaming company?
I live in Europe, the USA offers way more then Europe does. But moving to USA will cost me alot.

I know that many people out there dream to be a part of a gaming society.
But this is really a big dream of mine, and i’d like to ask around and see what the options are.

Thank you in advance.

Your Sincerly,
Timo

You will need to go to College & University first.

Is that the same for people in the Netherlands?
College and University is different here in the Netherlands.

University is the highest level you can get after your high school, and with high i mean the dutch university will teach you the very very advanced parts of Science and Maths and Economics and such. So i highly doubt that you will need to follow that in Holland?

Actually (and I keep on speaking English, so others can follow), college and university isn’t different. College-degree is awarded after 3 years of university or 4 years of college (HBO). University or master degree is awarded after the 4th year of university (The year you write your Thesis).

I don’t believe you need to have either though. MBO (apprenticeship) in IT should be ok enough for basic customer support. But depending on what level of high school you followed I would really advise your to talk to a school counselor bout this. The reason is that alsmot all customer support jobs aren’t very romantic, Anet has mostly to deal with angry customers and they are not always friendly. You could ask Gaile Gray for more info as well. she normally stalks account issues section

I would love to join the level designer group for any game company. However no funds for school :/

All I can do is mess around in google sketch 3D and other level designer programs like Far Cry 3 Map editor and Stronghold 3 MAp editor, both pretty good editor’s being an add-on feature and not the core of the game.

Anyone know a really good level designer program I can look up?

mercury ranique.2170:

Actually (and I keep on speaking English, so others can follow), college and university isn’t different. College-degree is awarded after 3 years of university or 4 years of college (HBO). University or master degree is awarded after the 4th year of university (The year you write your Thesis).

I don’t believe you need to have either though. MBO (apprenticeship) in IT should be ok enough for basic customer support. But depending on what level of high school you followed I would really advise your to talk to a school counselor bout this. The reason is that alsmot all customer support jobs aren’t very romantic, Anet has mostly to deal with angry customers and they are not always friendly. You could ask Gaile Gray for more info as well. she normally stalks account issues section

Thanks alot for the information,
I am currently going to finish the havo and i have plans following the ICT.
I will stalk Gaile and ask her aswell, thanks for your information

I don’t know how far you live from Breda but this might interest you: http://www.nhtv.nl/landingspaginas/opleiding/gamekittenml?gclid=CMrYqP_frrYCFeXKtAodB3oA6A

mercury ranique.2170:

I don’t know how far you live from Breda but this might interest you: http://www.nhtv.nl/landingspaginas/opleiding/gamekittenml?gclid=CMrYqP_frrYCFeXKtAodB3oA6A

When i click it, it says that the link is broken?

Yeah, sorry, should have tested the link try this one:
http://tinyurl.com/cxlfoey

The first one was damaged cause the url-text was in dutch but in English it was part of a foul word so it was censored.

Timo, you actually don’t need college/uni for the position you are asking about, and that is actually kind of a problem. Customer support is an entry level job, doesn’t pay much, and has little or no involvement in the actual game production (it will not teach you anything to advance in the industry nor give you the work history to do so). All you would be responsible for is helping customers with whatever problems they have related to the game. The position you seem to describe, specifically, is a game master position for an MMO or similar. These also tend to be contract jobs, IMO a blight on the current US business culture wherein companies knowingly hire long-term workers while classifying them as temporary in order to avoid paying benefits. It’s a loophole in the labor code and unfortunately abused to great effect all across the tech industry.

You probably don’t want to hear this, but going overseas (at your own cost) to take a customer support job is a huge waste, frankly I don’t even know if this kind of job would even qualify you to get a US work visa, which are generally reserved for more skilled positions.

It’s good that you’ve at least taken this step to find some answers before you commit to the plan. I highly recommend you consider other options, for example you could take a local job to support yourself while you work on a mod that you could then submit to various companies who are looking for people with your particular skill set. Or if you are more service oriented you could try making a useful fansite as others have done at gw2lfg, spidy, etc. These would all give you a better footing than doing customer service to get a decent job in the industry.

In any case, good luck with your efforts.

Unfortunately, Jeff, I think the days of getting a good job with any reputable gaming company without a college degree are long gone. Standards have risen quite a bit since 20 years ago, and with how the industry has boomed, you definitely need “that extra bit” to outshine others rushing for the jobs you’re after.

As an aside, I will say this about myself: If I didn’t enjoy space systems design so much, I probably would’ve pursued an employment opportunity in the gaming industry.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

What’s your end goal? As stated by others above, Customer Support isn’t often a pathway to development. A more typical path for people interested in development is to start in Quality Assurance (testing) and demonstrate that you have solid technical skill and game knowledge. This can often get you started in basic design—usually doing low level “grunt work” that can lead to more advanced design work.

Speaking for myself, I started 20 years ago at “that other MMO company” in technical support, worked on the web site, started doing technical art and design, and eventually was made an official designer. Since then I’ve worked at multiple companies, and eventually moved to Seattle to do design work for Arena.net. So working your way up DOES work, and I don’t have a college degree, but I have been gaming for 30+ years and I’m always willing to tackle whatever tasks come up.

I dont know if it is possible at all, but what i tried to mention after searching and looking around. The job that will suit me in the future is being a game master over a game.

I would like to test documents and bugs, Run events for players ingame, and keeping the site up to date. Now i dont know if there is any connection between being a game master and updating the web site. Because it would be logical if there is another person to keep the website up to date and make a design for it.
So is there any opportunity being a game master in the future?
Or is it a dream and do i need to stay realistic and whipe it away?

Im not in the designing of content, but i would like to test it and develop it.

The point is, i want to do something with development/ testing bugs and such.
Thanks for your answer,
This really helps me. Because i need to make a decision this end of the summer.
And i dont want to be late, and i would like to know any ’’available’’ option in the gaming industry. And sorry if i sound a little bit dumb here and there. But i just want to know everything, and be sure i dont miss any chances out.

Kind Regards,
Timo

I agree with Rising Dusk here, a degree does give you the edge even if other applicants are practically (as in opposite to theoritcally) better. Nowadays theory gets you further up the ladder than the practical know-how.
In response to the OP, you mentioned you want to be in support, a good communication skill is needed and a good knowledge of the product. Not necessarily a technical understanding. You need to know what should work and what not, not why and how. That is for the designer, programmer, engineer etc.
Maybe I am just echoing Leablo here,regarding support being low-level, however you are describing two different types of positions with two totally different sets of subject requirements. But I do wish you all the best as we all need a dream to hang on to.
p.s Not to nit-pick but in English we write I (as in me) as a capital, not like “ik” or “ich” in Dutch and German

MoggyLXIX.2891:

I agree with Rising Dusk here, a degree does give you the edge even if other applicants are practically (as in opposite to theoritcally) better. Nowadays theory gets you further up the ladder than the practical know-how.
In response to the OP, you mentioned you want to be in support, a good communication skill is needed and a good knowledge of the product. Not necessarily a technical understanding. You need to know what should work and what not, not why and how. That is for the designer, programmer, engineer etc.
Maybe I am just echoing Leablo here,regarding support being low-level, however you are describing two different types of positions with two totally different sets of subject requirements. But I do wish you all the best as we all need a dream to hang on to.
p.s Not to nit-pick but in English we write I (as in me) as a capital, not like “ik” or “ich” in Dutch and German

Im definetly continueing my study. I would like to follow an English study to begin with. I can notice in my own grammar that I make alot of typo’s here and there. And the build of my sentence’s arent always up to date. Thanks for correcting me on writing I as a capital letter.

Anyways, thanks for all the feedback that i have gotten.
More things are clear to me, I’ll wait for a reply from Jeffrey.
I just want a clear view on how to start, and ofcourse you need a clear view on what i want to be. Which i tried to explain in my post earlier.

Sorry for all those questions, but thanks in advance.
I Really REALLY! appreciate all your help and comments and I read them all very carefully.

@Timo, your English is very good for a non-native speaker, I never noticed any grammar mistakes, it was just i was predominant. Plus I live in Germany so I noticed the little I.
I wish the best for you in your studies and your future endeavours

TimoFTW.8017:

I would like to test documents and bugs, Run events for players ingame, and keeping the site up to date.

Those are actually three distinct functions, unless you’re looking at a REALLY small company.

Testing documents and bugs is quality assurance. Most gaming companies have their own internal QA team, but some will outsource a portion of QA to a third-party and/or bring in short-term employees as development ramps up. Some companies only treat QA as an entry-level position, and it can be hard to develop a career around it. Larger companies will have dedicated QA groups and you can work your way up to a lead QA engineer position over time. If you want to build a career around quality assurance and not use QA as a stepping stone to something “bigger and better”, look to a larger company and be sure to ask in your interviews whether QA can be a viable career path in that company.

Keeping the website up to date… well, from a technical standpoint that’s the web development team. Although producing the content that’s posted (dev diaries, patch notes, lore, game overview information, etc) would be done by other groups — typically producers, designers, developers, marketing and community relations. In many companies, the website is developed or even hosted by a third-party, so there may not even be an opportunity to do much more that write some articles that someone else will integrate into the website.

Running events for players in-game… well, a lot of MMO companies aren’t even doing “live” events anymore. And when they do, it’s often entirely scripted. The early days of Ultima Online where you’d have a live person playing the part of an NPC in real-time and directly interacting with players are long gone. Nowadays, a “GM” is usually just a senior customer support agent, and he often has some pretty tight constraints on what he can do. Smaller companies may allow more latitude in what their GMs are allowed, but it’s getting incredibly rare to see “live GM run events” in any MMO. I’ve heard that in GW2 they don’t even have the ability to log in as a GM on the live servers, for security reasons.

Ironically, I’ve just finished speaking with a college (Fullsail University for those who live in NA) to acquire a Masters degree in game design. I’ve a few questions if someone doesn’t mind..

• Is an online degree in Game Design frowned upon? Does it put me at a disadvantage against people with an on-campus degree?

• Is an MBA (Masters Degree) even necessary? I’m going to go for it regardless, but it’d be good to know if I HAVE to before I start looking for jobs.

and perhaps the scariest question…

• What does the job market look like for someone who wants to get into game design? I’ve been hearing that the game industry on a whole is in decline.

Any informative answers would help GREATLY. This is the year I trudge towards my future.

One thing you could try is finding adverts for the job you want, or similar jobs, and looking at their requirements.

If they want you to have experience in a particular kind of job or task, or require specific qualifications find out what you need to get that.

Keep working backwards until you reach the point you’re at now (ie until you find a job or course you’re completely qualified to do) and you’ve got your path to follow.

Although you should also bear in mind that career paths are very rarely linear. There’s usually many different options for reaching your goal, and many more points where you’ll suddenly find your goal has shifted and you actually want to do something slighly different.

But I found the approach above very helpful. I was trying to get into something quite specific but unfamiliar to a lot of career advisors and similar people (UK wildlife conservation). I got a lot of different advice, a lot of which proved to be useless to me so it was hard to know what I should do until I started looking at what was required for the jobs I wanted.

Mainly degrees are pre-req for programmers, a BS or whatnot. BA, AA or even a Cert for artists, if even that. It’s a poor economy so you see higher qualifications + job exp. I think the best alt is indie, that’s mostly my thing anyway including exp in indie development tools and a number of games. Beware though, a lot of “I don’t know what I’m doing” groups making vaporware after vaporware and never seeing a penny for your efforts. But then again, you won’t find a big demand for support jobs on indie projects.

Try browsing this page: http://ncsoft.com/en/jobs/arenanet.php and check out the descriptions and requirements. This will tell you what you should be pursuing.

I work as support engineer for a very large industrial company, which is completely different from customer support. I do not intend any offense but I don’t like people calling me because their internet doesn’t work and they can’t access their favourite 18+ website. When people call me, it’s about problems that have to be solved yesterday and involve 10 000+ euros per hour.

My job sure is a pathway to development, but just as much can be done for decades on end. I learn every day. I’m fluent in 4 languages now because I serve the world, and I’ve learned over a dozen programming languages, multiple communication protocols and several ways to design an interface, all in the course of helping customers. All that in only 1.5 years of experience. Some of those customers are featured in every home, every office, every kitchen. Some of them make sure your PC works. It is very gratifying to drink a beer and say “I helped make this”.

If your interests are in the direction of support + development, you should do electronics which is a blend of hardware and software. Neither stands on its own, working with any form of IT requires experiences with hardware imho. The best university in the Netherlands would be Eindhoven.

Feel free to PM you your linkedin or skype account. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. I’m from Flanders so dutch won’t be the problem.

Honestly, if I didn’t have either a killer job or fiancée right now, Arena.net would be among the first to receive my resumé (after obligatory interview practice).

marnick.4305:

I work as support engineer for a very large industrial company, which is completely different from customer support. I do not intend any offense but I don’t like people calling me because their internet doesn’t work and they can’t access their favourite 18+ website. When people call me, it’s about problems that have to be solved yesterday and involve 10 000+ euros per hour.

My job sure is a pathway to development, but just as much can be done for decades on end. I learn every day. I’m fluent in 4 languages now because I serve the world, and I’ve learned over a dozen programming languages, multiple communication protocols and several ways to design an interface, all in the course of helping customers. All that in only 1.5 years of experience. Some of those customers are featured in every home, every office, every kitchen. Some of them make sure your PC works. It is very gratifying to drink a beer and say “I helped make this”.

If your interests are in the direction of support + development, you should do electronics which is a blend of hardware and software. Neither stands on its own, working with any form of IT requires experiences with hardware imho. The best university in the Netherlands would be Eindhoven.

Feel free to PM you your linkedin or skype account. I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. I’m from Flanders so dutch won’t be the problem.

Honestly, if I didn’t have either a killer job or fiancée right now, Arena.net would be among the first to receive my resumé (after obligatory interview practice).

Thanks alot,
I did send my information in a PM

marnick.4305:

I work as support engineer for a very large industrial company, which is completely different from customer support. I do not intend any offense but I don’t like people calling me because their internet doesn’t work and they can’t access their favourite 18+ website. When people call me, it’s about problems that have to be solved yesterday and involve 10 000+ euros per hour.

I don’t think that’s offensive, I’m in a comparable position and if somebody somehow managed to bypass first and second level support I’d of course be willing to help with any minor problems said person had – if he/she paid for it. Shouldn’t happen though because of how the system is designed: customers call first level support, if those guys can’t help, the problem is escalated to second level support. Second level support cannot be called directly, but they may call customers. If they can’t solve the problem, it will be forwarded to us. Third level support, last line of defense, voodoo department, “not your salary level” kind of stuff. Nobody, including second level support, can call us. Greatest job I ever had, most of the time I’m either nerding or doing magic stuff nobody understands and when it gets too boring, we have our own paintball arena in the bunker we’re working from.

PS: and I’m not one of those CyberBunker dorks.

From what I have heard, because it is a HUGE dream of mine (I am a extremely talented developer and dreamer, but a bigger dream of mine is a wife and family).

Join a AAA company and you simply can’t have a family. It may vary from place to place, but that’s your status quo for AAA game development.

If you want to do game development and have a life rather look at starting or joining an indie dev company, especially if your wife/husband/partner is able to support you until you get going.

It can vary from company to company, as I said, status quo. You might strike it lucky; so don’t give up on AAA – just don’t sell your soul to them. Please.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Ironically, I’ve just finished speaking with a college (Fullsail University for those who live in NA) to acquire a Masters degree in game design. I’ve a few questions if someone doesn’t mind..

• Is an online degree in Game Design frowned upon? Does it put me at a disadvantage against people with an on-campus degree?

• Is an MBA (Masters Degree) even necessary? I’m going to go for it regardless, but it’d be good to know if I HAVE to before I start looking for jobs.

A Master’s Degree is commonly called MA or MS depending on the field, MBA is specifically for business administration.

I don’t know of many companies that directly hires game designers, and such degrees aren’t well-tested in the field because they’re relatively new. Especially if you are going to claim an “online Master’s” I’d be very skeptical about this degree being taken seriously by hiring managers, especially if it is not from a reputable state university or ivy league caliber of school.

A Master’s isn’t necessary and probably doesn’t help too much for people who have no actual work experience. But if you can get relevant work experience as an intern while you study, the Master’s would help set you apart from other candidates when applying for a real job.

• What does the job market look like for someone who wants to get into game design? I’ve been hearing that the game industry on a whole is in decline.

Understand that pretty much everyone wants to be a game designer. To me personally, getting a degree in game design is like getting a degree in being the US President. It’s not really something that you can teach at a school because it’s a combination of many disciplines, natural instinct, and ultimately politics, and degrees that claim somebody learned game desigkittenchool come off as fraudulent. In short, there is basically no market for game designers – people usually get put in that position after building up a solid work record and trust at the company while they do other things like programming or production or art. If you want to be a designer from the get-go then you have to start your own indie project or be somebody’s cousin.

The industry as a whole isn’t really in decline AFAIK, but it is shifting from traditional boxed sales to more digital and more agile revenue models (like the gem store). Many of the big companies who relied on retail are hurting because they haven’t adapted quickly enough, and more of that money is ending up at small studios and indies. This is both a good and a bad thing at the same time, depending on the kind of games you want to make.

I live near FullSail. It’s a very nice university and it has many different degrees you can get. When I visited them, I believe they said about 90% of their graduates are hired by large companies (Disney, Pixar, etc) within a year of graduation. They weren’t all hired as what they probably wanted to be (like a game designer), but they did get hired and can work their way to their “game deisgner” title.They have nice classrooms and all of the latest technology. It’s an extremely reputable university, especially here in Florida. Costs about $56,000 for a bachelor’s degree there.

I would very strongly recommend against “game design” courses and instead go for more programming oriented stuff. Any programming course has games as example projects because they’re just so clear to make As such, anyone graduating in IT is expected to have basic knowledge of game design. A master in game design therefor shows a lot of redundancy (imho)