been talking to a lot of new grads and even high schoolers recently and realizing how stark the generational divide is on breaking into games. things really have changed so much over the last 20 years. it's all so much more competitive than it was when i started out. (cont'd)

i remember trying to job hunt circa 2009 when i was trying to land my first internship. indie games were barely a thing. like, the peak of indie games discourse was Limbo and Braid and Passage. indie *careers* were rare too, mobile almost nonexistent. it was predominantly AAA/AA.

a bunch of the breaking-in advice i could find back then was by devs 10-15 yrs my senior with stories like "i answered a newspaper ad" or "i called the studio and asked to interview" or "a dev team member bummed a cigarette off me in a bathroom and then asked if i wanted a job."

needless to say, even in 2010 that breaking in path was no longer actionable. so i did what i saw the "rockstar" kids my age who were getting hired did. i made a portfolio website. i learned to write code and made some subpar indie games. i kept a blog. i emailed pros for advice.

for a while i gave that advice to others, too. but these days, i see waves of new grads with excellent & polished portfolios from top-tier uni programs that didn't exist when i was their age. their stuff looks *way* better than my stuff ever did. and they still can't find work.

so it gets harder. perhaps you need at least 1 semi-polished 3D thing. or you need to have a public itch portfolio. or know UE4/unity. or you need to already live in one of the "most hireable" cities: LA, Seattle, SF, Austin. or you go to a feeder school like SMU Guildhall.

and if you're an international candidate trying to get hired entry level in the US? good luck. i don't know how some folks manage to work miracles and pull it off, but there are already a lot of talented kids job hunting here in the states. the odds are slim. it sucks. it sucks!

i got my first DM last week from someone who was 18 (!!) and was worried they were thinking about starting to get into games too late. holy shit. at 18 i didn't even know what game dev WAS. i certainly wasn't concerned about being "behind the curve," i'll tell ya that much

i don't know where the bar is eventually going to end up. but what i do know is that it raises every year because there are more and more people growing up playing games who realize they can make games for a living. that's a beautiful thing in many ways but it also scares me.

if you are trying to break into games now & thinking "what can i do?" my advice: make sure you aren't staking your entire life/security on finding a games job. form your Plan B. i did, even back then. it gives you the power to say no if you're mistreated or can't find work.

don't be afraid to fall back on that Plan B if Plan A isn't working out and you are worried about your security. you aren't a failure. you are just experiencing the late stage capitalism phenomenon of "many great candidates, few jobs." it's not your fault & you did nothing wrong.