Wow Tim, thanks for sharing your Valve rejection story. It was actually shocking to hear that even a person like you, who was at the head of genre-defining games, could be rejected. Makes me feel better about my own rejections.
Once I took part in interviewing a pretty senior guy and he had a great question for us: "How is it like when your team goes for a beer on Friday?" We were a small company with a friendly atmosphere, but we were not a "beer every Friday with the team" kind of team. His previous team had been like that and he wanted it again. He was really skilled and we tried to hire him regardless but he wouldn't bite. I was amazed at how that one question cut right through into the heart of the matter and found the cultural mismatch.
I want to share some I've been asked recently as a junior applying for Unity Dev positions (AA): -Please recreate the Fisher Yates algorithm -What does this code do? Are there any bugs? (Non specific to unity) -You're making assassin's creed and two NPCs want to meet each other, but they're both walking straight in a fixed direction. Their paths will cross at some point, and your job is to modify each of their velocities so they reach that one point at the same time. -Given some collection of X,Y points, draw a circle around them for something like a minimap with points of interest. -And more recently, I was asked to write a game in a C# console app based on a spec sheet, and describe how I'd scale the architecture if they wanted to extend the spec sheet. On a side note, as a tech designer I was given a 1 week task to build an entire game that showed either skill in coding, design, or art, in a proprietary engine (with lua as my language) bug free. This was incredibly challenging, but fun too. But you had to come up with everything, and just use their tools to make it, all in a week. Good luck to all my fellow juniors applying.
@MalikenGD You seem young like me so I wanted to say: be careful. I am 23 years old but started working in software at 16. I had your mentality in the very beginning. I still kind of do because the passion is what makes the career fulfilling. Regardless, don't let yourself get used. People know that young lads will work hard for little and they take advantage of that. Only put 110% effort into projects or companies that value you.
A criticism for that last question you mentioned is that you set people up to lie. Unless they have a friend working at the studio, they have no way of knowing what are the work conditions at your studio. I've worked in studios that made impressive games but were terrible to work at; and I worked at a studio that made unimpressive games, but it was a fun and well-organized place. Saying "I love the types of games you make" serves as nothing but empty platitudes and, because other entrants aren't dumb, they're going to say the exact same thing even if it's a lie.
@@frischifrisch6860 "Can you please compliment my studio before you start working in it?" is not a valid question. The entrant has no way of knowing if your studio is a good place to work at, outside of a weak correlation between "makes good games = is a good workplace". Time and time again, this equation proves to be false. The future employee's job is to say - you are looking for a person with this set of skills, I have this set of skills, let me prove it to you. Its on the employer's side to say - this is why we are a good place to work at, here is why you should consider us. Asking "why do you want to work here" is a bit like the clerk asking the customer "why do you want to buy this item?", when it's their job to sell it. I know I will keep seeing this question is interviews and I will keep answering it dishonestly, because the honest answer is "you posted the job offer for a person with my set of skills". I am literally unable to add more context without having an insider, which is probably the only bit of valuable information an employer can get by asking that question.
It presupposes that connection, familiarity and investment with the product beforehand as an indicator to the care taken with how the product is handled and the effort the employee is willing to give for the product to succeed. Added level of trustworthiness
The point is not to praise the studio in any way, or previous work/games, or to curry favor with the boss. As an interviewer and possibly a department head, I want to find out if the applicant has genuine intentions and where their drive and motivation come from. _Where does the passion come from?_ Such questions provide insight into the character and emotional world of an applicant - you have already recognized that. -- Der Punkt ist nicht irgendwie das Studio zu loben, beziehungsweise vorangegangene Arbeiten / Spiele, oder sich beim Chef einzuschmeicheln. Als Gesprächsführer und möglicherweise Abteilungsleiter möchte ich herausfinden, ob der Bewerber ehrliche Intentionen hat und woher sein Antrieb kommt und woher die Motivation ihren Ursprung hat. Woher stammt die Leidenschaft? Man erhält aus solchen Fragen Einsicht über den Charakter und die Gefühlswelt eines Bewerbers - das hast du doch bereits erkannt. @@yaginku
@@frischifrisch6860 Questions that directly reference the entrant are obviously valid. But the question "Why do you want to work HERE?" is a thinly-veiled question about the studio, rather than the entrant. Unless they answer in a clever way that dodges the question, you are not learning anything about the entrant by asking this question. Another very good example is "have you played our games before?". This one I've heard basically every time and I don't see it going away, but it's basically meaningless. It always leads to "have you made games in the same style as ours", or "do you enjoy playing games in the same style as ours", which is the actual question that's valid (and a slick entrant is basically going to answer these questions in response to the first question).
I remember when one guy created a thread on a programming forum I used to frequent, saying he was quitting his job to join the Peace Corps (of all things) and his employer wanted him to interview his potential replacements, and he needed questions to ask. I think he wanted serious responses, but this was definitely not the place for it. I despise Final Fantasy, but I have to say that "Do you see yourself as a Kefka or as more of a Sephiroth?" was easily the best question donated to his cause. ("Pirates of Silicon Valley" had recently come out, so runner up was the guy who suggested using the various offensive questions Steve Jobs used in that film.)
As I understand it employees at Valve don't have specific roles they expect you to be able to fill multiple, so that's probably why they wanted to know you can program stuff as well as design.
Of course to save money and blame on person easily if they're do something bad. It's just a sick business. I used to be a fullstack engineer and I was doing multiple jobs while being under payed
Oddly, as someone who mostly worked in small startup/specialist teams doing jack-of-all-trades rolls with a constant love of learning; that sounds like a dream job. ^^; Although, I guess, at some point, those roles tend to gravitate elsewhere or to their own startups.
@@sukapow In valve? Valve specified that it's more that everyone needs to be able to develop their own ideas, rather than have their ideas delegated to someone else.
@@SyndicateOperative what? I'm talking about one job that requires multiple different professions but companies believed one person can do the job. It's cheap to hire one person to do the whole job than hire bunch of employees. That's like asking a backend developer to do frontend also. Most backend developers aren't good at art.... Most artists can't code. Companies loves to see someone who can do both. Luckily I can do both good. It's easy to manage one person than manage a group of people. I bet, you never done a manager job before
Oh Valve you silly 😂 Thank you Tim! I know this does not feel like it for the interviewees but "make your crafting system" sounds like such a fun interview question! Have a great day! 😊
This was a very enlightening video for many reasons. As an educator, with multiple years of experience in teaching and working with people, I feel I have nothing to offer to an industry I have found so much entertainment in, but have developed a growing interest in joining. I've been doing art and designing worlds and settings, cultures and magics and stories for years. Yet I have never felt the confidence to dig deeper into what the people doing these jobs and bringing their worlds to life have to go through in order to get to that point. It has been an eye opening video, as well as your other posts. Sincere thanks from me. Maybe this year will be the one to finally make that change.
Cannot thank you enough for this one. Verbal stumbles during phonecalls is a particular curse of mine when it comes to this job search process, and having these kinds of game industry specific "practice questions" can help immensely.
This is such a great topic to hear someone so experienced discuss. Looking for interview information and improvement online is basically a lost cause these days with all the search engine optimized spam websites. I do have a couple tips for people preparing for an interview: 1. Go through the job posting and answers the requirements as questions-think of it like explaining why you're the best person for this position. Again, this isn't about memorizing answers to regurgitate, but to get your brain thinking about relevant situations and draw connections between them. The interviewer is unlikely to ask specific questions from the posting, but will have more general questions that cover multiple requirements. Answering with a strong example that contain multiple relevant situations and resolutions is exactly what interviewers are looking for. 2. Familiarize yourself with the 'STAR' method for answering questions. Write down examples from previous work, because you're pretty much guaranteed to pull a blank if you try and do it on the fly. The goal isn't to memorized answers, but to get you thinking about telling a full story for situation with a logical sequence. 3. Don't be afraid to 'toot your own horn' even if you weren't asked a specific question. If you're super proud of a project your worked on, outcomes of a situation, etc. you may have an opportunity to present this at the end of an interview. Of course you should keep it relevant to the position and company you're applying for, but this will provide additional support for your previous answers. 4. Try not to worry too much leading up to an interview. Interviewers aren't trying to trick you or questions anything you say-and if they are, you probably don't want to work there. Prepare as best you can and remember that you were selected because *they* want to hear more about *you*.
not gonna lie, when you said class-less system. I immediately went to, well, let's use interfaces/protocol-oriented programming instead, it even have huge benefits over OOP. Completely forgetting the context of classes in a rpg lol.
Thanks Tim! Do you have much advice or general stuff to talk about related to game modding? What about game modding as preparation for professional game development? Can working in volunteer mod teams translate well to applying these experiences to professional game careers, such as modding for a game the company you're applying for made, and showing that as a portfolio?
Question from my niece who watches these with me after her being sat on my lap for some of my latest fallout play through, having to pg aspects wasn’t what I planned on until it was a bit late. ‘Hi uncle Tim. Have you worked on tv or film’ and I think to add to it have you thought about it if not
Thank you Tim for this, and for all the content you are offering on this channel! So many of your videos have helped me clarify what video game creation entails, and, how the industry works. In that light, I would love to see a video on video game writing or narrative design. As an aspiring writer who would one day like to create their own video game, I remain uncertain as to what exactly it is that companies look for in a writer's portfolio for video games. I have applied in a number of companies and have been rejected. I am sure one of the reasons is my lack of experience in the industry. However, I cannot but also blame my writing style and content which might not fit the video game format. So it would be nice if we could get some insight into what companies look for in terms of experience and portfolio. Take care :) Byron
I'm a producer and this kind of back-and-forth, Q&A development of systems is one of the greatest ways for understanding how someone thinks of systems and production. However I don't see that as often during interviews. The most common thing is a one-way 'You Ask I Answer' type of interview, with the interviewers not willing or able to go deeper and extend the discussions. As a producer, this interview process would be great to discuss some production struggles and challenges back and forth.
Not asking for a job, I just like to talk about game design: I think that a classless system allows for more flexibility when making a character but because you can control every aspect of the character you end up having a weird mix of main builds that can often be similar and lead to natural "classes" in play style anyways. It's better to use classless systems in single player where you're not constantly being compared to other player's builds but in multiplayer it becomes IMMEDIATELY noticeable. This isn't to say that you can't have a classless MMO, but I would recommend class mods that can only allow 2 attached at a time that opens skill trees up to the player that cannot be unlocked in the normal skill trees. It's not a perfect fix but I think it would still add a good layer of customization while simultaneously allowing for more build varieties. (Especially if you make those class mods as unique as possible!)
Thanks so much for this video! Wish I had mentors at any point in my career, but I appreciate every video you post. It's awesome watching them all and the amazing perspectives, ideas, and thoughts. Love the crafting interview question, would love something like that (especially critiquing it, although I'd have to refrain from getting carried away trying to modify and refine it, or brainstorm new ones). Personally, also love open-ended multiple-solution questions in general just to see the approaches and thought-processes behind a given approach. Thanks again!
Why do I keep failing the coding tests? Is it my personality, is it that algorithms need to be memorized? Am I not using enough modern c++ features? Is it that other people are sniping the jobs by being better? And then... Should I even bother anymore? Some designers were like "make a game and get 1 million downloads." At that point, why wouldn't I start my own business? One horrifying thing I saw is that someone applied to the same company for 6 years and was grateful to finally work for them. Most of the HR people at game companies that interviewed me job hop every 1.5~3 years. Am I cynical? I got rejected from so many companies I added the standard question "what're 3 things wrong with the company?" And I'm not sure if they take offense to that and I'm dodging a bullet because I'm really checking if they're capable of self reflection, able to put up with something that bothers them, and able to identify how to improve something. Long question. Just, a lot of years of finding nothing and hatred for my college that did nothing for me despite being ranked ridiculously high. #college-debt #no-career-and-30-is-in-sight #do they really care that you're working on projects all the time or are they actually looking for something else?
I think it depends on the company and who ends up interviewing you first. It is a well understood problem in tech recruitment that programmers are terrible at interviewing other programmers. I know it is a pain and not often an option, but try to get an interview with any non-programmers at the company (project managers, product owners, sales/business development, etc.), which I find is easier to do at smaller companies. Fundamentally the other programmers aren't the ones employing you, the company is, so try and get an interview with someone where you can prove you understand the real application of programming skills in terms of the business value they provide (i.e. I implemented a user flow to guide users of our website towards our deal of the week, and set up a payment API for them to buy things using Google Pay). If you can do that, you will then at least have someone on your side within the company, before you even get to the technical tests. The rest of the business, and the end users, literally don't care at all about how the sausage is made in terms of code, they just want to make money and have a good time. So look at your projects and decide if they are telling people you like working towards tangible outputs, or if they are just pointless tinkering that amounts to technical masturbation. But yeah, coding tests suck and there is a huge luck aspect to it too, so don't give up. 😐
LLMs add an interesting dynamic to interviews. They often make a candidate seem really good because it can give a good answer quickly. Cracks start to show when you start drilling down into the answer and ask them to do different things with it. If the interviewee didn't actually think through the answer, they quickly can't handle the change.
Your interviews almost sound like fun and I really, really don't like tests and interviews, I'd rather make my work and then show it. But the questions you presented here, I do that for fun and for the later, more private ones I'd had answers for on the top of my hat. Valve's interviews sound scary now... ^^
First of all, thanks for all these quality videos. It's really cool to get these perspectives from someone with as much experience. I'm in a place where I'm trying to figure out how to get into the game industry, but I'm struggling with burnout at my current job and it has negatively impacted my energy and focus to work on side projects. Do you have any advice on resume/portfolio building and career progression during burnout?
Hey Tim, regarding the programming whiteboard test. Would you give people another shot if you knew that they cant handle those whiteboard tests and fail it because of nervousness or whatever and you know they're super experienced but just cant do a whiteboard to save their life?
Even if you did just throw your resume in the pile hoping. There's still probably companies you didn't give your resume to. So you can always use that. "I needed a job relatively quickly and I didn't want to work on F2P microtransaction games". Or "I looked over your site and I liked the fact that you make games for the PC and I hadn't really owned a console since the Wii so I kinda liked that". I mean "Why us?", it's a good question, you should always have an answer too it even if you don't feel particularly strong about it. Unless it's like a grocery store or waiting tables or something. Those things are important but the reasoning is expected to be puddle deep.
Hey Tim! How do you feel about an interviewee asking this as the last question in the interview? " If you were to hire me today, where do you think I would be the most impact inside of the company?"
Thank you for the vid, Tim! I am currently in the process of studying at a uni for game design and want to pursue a career in gameplay design. Considering your extensive experience and success in the field, I was wondering if you could offer some guidance on the key areas or skills I should focus on developing to increase my chances of being hired as a gameplay/combat designer?
apparently according to valve, programming 😅 at least that way if the game dev plan falls through you can still get a job. good luck trying to get anyone outside of game dev to care about a game design degree
The worse job interview question I ever got boiled down to, "What do you do if you get mad at someone at work?". This is a trick question because it contains an assumption that is not very fair to the person being interviewed. The correct answer is "I don't get mad at work". I just said "I'd go home."
Tim, you covered some important points. I have had a few interviews in my time. As an animator I usually get questions that are not unexpected. But there has been a couple of times recently where the group that is interviewing me does not include an animator. That was weird. Unfortunately l did not get the opportunity to ask about that and the interviews ( I had 2 group ones over the internet) went really well. I didn't get either job. There is one other thing that I and other animators (and other artists) have encountered that is really frustrating. We get no feedback as to why we were not chosen. Or it is a vague response such as "not a good fit" or "didn't think I could do the job." After so much effort on both parties there should be a better explanation for not getting the job.
Normally I hate the question of “why do you want to work for THIS company?” For a retail job or something similarly mundane, it seems silly, because obviously one just wants work. In your field though it seems much more appropriate, given the much higher level of creative work.
If for some reason you decided to FULLY come out of retirement, and you wanted to work somewhere other than Obsidian, would you be offended by certain interview questions? Like if they asked you to write more code on a board, or explain a design, whatever. Do you think at this point your reputation and past work should just speak for itself? Or would you be fine with an intricate interview process? like maybe a 25 year old who’s fresh out of college and hasn’t made any large games would go through?
Hi tim sorry for the off topic question but do you think that AI will one day play a role in game dialogue (like that new vegas ai dialogue mod from a couple of months ago)? What would the drawbacks be? ( Video of the mod: ua-cam.com/video/Tv9WxYbo2Io/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared )
from what ive heard and experienced myself... it seems job interview for designers are the most difficult. there is a really awesome gdc talk, that goes into detail why that is and how to improve it. ua-cam.com/video/uUQKbowVsIE/v-deo.html it also tackles your "go design" questions, which after that talk, i also dont really like being asked. what is your stance on interviewing designers specifically?
Wow. Imagine having Tim Cain, literal creator of Fallout, come for an interview, and then rejecting him. I can't even. Maybe with you at Valve they would actually make more games, a shame.
It gets more absurd when you think how the earliest Valve employees were in large part random modders and level designers. Even the programmers who made half life probably wouldn’t get past the interview process at today’s Valve…
@@stipe1615 How can you compare a linear FPS to open-ended RPGs? I would personally vastly prefer to play fallout than half-life, although I appreciate half-life is a great game in it's genre.
The whiteboarding alone would kill it for me.😅 Being someone with autism, I usually keep stuff to myself and avoid saying things straight out loud and (over)think what I "release". The good thing: I usually come up with the (almost, because there is none) perfect solution. Listening to my thoughts is for a non-superhuman also kinda hard, because there are usually 20 at a time, often not connected with each other. Those I have to filter before... see above.😂 Also: saying them out loud would take a while.😅
I thought US had weak employee protections. Why didn’t the liar whip couldn’t do the work get fired? Hardly exist a better fire grounds. Or maybe let go after trial period.
Good video. However, I'd like to push back on your technique of having designers design things on the spot during the interview. I think this is very unfair to ask this of designers because many of us do not operate like this. Many of us are introverted and like to have our ideas worked out before we present them. Good design takes a lot of thought and planning. Being a designer is not like being in a spelling bee competition where you simply regurgitate the correct answer. If you want to ask questions like this have the courtesy to give the designers time to prepare. If you were interviewing music composers you wouldn't ask them to write a hit song for you during an interview. If you asked me to design a mechanic on the spot I would simply politely refuse. Also, why should I give you free design intel during an interview? You could take my idea and run with it and I'd never get compensated. Never ever give your ideas away.
Let me be the first to expose my lack of coding knowledge: "Given an integer return true if the value is even and false if the value is odd". Shouldn't Modulo cover this? return value%2==0 I Come from a C# World Btw.
If performance is the goal and they know how the integers are going to be represented (signed/unsigned, sign and magnitude/two's complement/one's complement) then using a bitwise AND operation can be faster. For example, assume an unsigned integer. Take the number 5 and it's representation in binary 101. Perform a bitwise AND using the mask 001. Value: 101 Mask: 001 Result: 001 And with the value of 6 (binary 110) Value: 110 Mask: 001 Result: 000 return (value & 0x01) == 0 The above should give the same result as if you used modulo but should run faster. Though I imagine most compilers would replace modulo 2 with the bitwise operation anyway if the right optimisation flags were enabled. I mention that they need to know the implementation because this method would fail for negative values if using One's Complement.
@@Gractus Hey Gractus. Thank you for taking your time for shedding some light on this! I would never have dreamt of using a bitwise. :) The understanding of this level of coding was never prioritized by my own mentors so these sort of coding interview questions always baffle me. Once again thank you for this. :)
That Valve story sounds like absolute bullshit on their part. WTF. Talk about setting you up to fail. Seems like their loss tbh. But you probably don't need me to say. Probably made you a better interviewer and better boss, however.
maybe if devs/publishers got some money penalties (no instantly firings) from gaming platforms for being so lazy and slow they'd develop more games at a faster frequency in the company i worked everything had to be perfect or any miss in the order would've been punished w 1000$ each per mistake. the industry bout to die with these streamlined woke melt plastic graphics bad empty games else
im talkin aaa games ofc gen 7 had more marvel games halos gears fallouts elderscrollls than 8 & 9 combined aa old games and indies r boomin while aaa is in the mud playin powerslave exhumed battlefront 2 2005 aliens vs predator forgive me father project warlock huntdown as we speak it gets to a point where ubisoft+ aint even worth it compared to mentioned games above id still get me some gamepass for sum day one games but still it feels lik aaa game development is stagnant and kinda ded take too long for empty maps include wokeness for nothing etc.
there is a weird formula going on lack of content + minority propaganda + mtx + 70$ up = great money cow i think this mindset shd indeed be punished by platform holders like steam xbox nintendo sony and all the others it's not only toxic but also fake and punishing for the developers to work unto something like this i can't imagine somebody actually wants to work on something evil like this it's not only expensive and time diminishing but also it lacks the quality of an actual videogame that's why companies fire devs all the time because they don't even want to work on such craziness and why the developer might become lazy or uninterested in such programs its up to the platform holders to demand what they actually want on their platforms but mostly they just settle down for what publishers executives want not developers this devil's spiral will only bring less effort and less games and maybe even a deep death to aaa publishers / developers
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
Wow Tim, thanks for sharing your Valve rejection story. It was actually shocking to hear that even a person like you, who was at the head of genre-defining games, could be rejected. Makes me feel better about my own rejections.
Once I took part in interviewing a pretty senior guy and he had a great question for us: "How is it like when your team goes for a beer on Friday?" We were a small company with a friendly atmosphere, but we were not a "beer every Friday with the team" kind of team. His previous team had been like that and he wanted it again. He was really skilled and we tried to hire him regardless but he wouldn't bite. I was amazed at how that one question cut right through into the heart of the matter and found the cultural mismatch.
I want to share some I've been asked recently as a junior applying for Unity Dev positions (AA):
-Please recreate the Fisher Yates algorithm
-What does this code do? Are there any bugs? (Non specific to unity)
-You're making assassin's creed and two NPCs want to meet each other, but they're both walking straight in a fixed direction. Their paths will cross at some point, and your job is to modify each of their velocities so they reach that one point at the same time.
-Given some collection of X,Y points, draw a circle around them for something like a minimap with points of interest.
-And more recently, I was asked to write a game in a C# console app based on a spec sheet, and describe how I'd scale the architecture if they wanted to extend the spec sheet.
On a side note, as a tech designer I was given a 1 week task to build an entire game that showed either skill in coding, design, or art, in a proprietary engine (with lua as my language) bug free. This was incredibly challenging, but fun too. But you had to come up with everything, and just use their tools to make it, all in a week.
Good luck to all my fellow juniors applying.
Did they pay you for that one week of work or did you do it for free?
@@smiechu47 Free. It's a lot to ask, sure, but when the jobs are so few and the passion is so great, you hardly notice the abuse :D
@MalikenGD You seem young like me so I wanted to say: be careful. I am 23 years old but started working in software at 16. I had your mentality in the very beginning. I still kind of do because the passion is what makes the career fulfilling. Regardless, don't let yourself get used. People know that young lads will work hard for little and they take advantage of that. Only put 110% effort into projects or companies that value you.
A criticism for that last question you mentioned is that you set people up to lie. Unless they have a friend working at the studio, they have no way of knowing what are the work conditions at your studio. I've worked in studios that made impressive games but were terrible to work at; and I worked at a studio that made unimpressive games, but it was a fun and well-organized place. Saying "I love the types of games you make" serves as nothing but empty platitudes and, because other entrants aren't dumb, they're going to say the exact same thing even if it's a lie.
Die Plattitüden sind doch gerade der Punkt, warum man die Frage stellt?!
The platitudes are precisely the point of why one asks the question?!
@@frischifrisch6860 "Can you please compliment my studio before you start working in it?" is not a valid question. The entrant has no way of knowing if your studio is a good place to work at, outside of a weak correlation between "makes good games = is a good workplace". Time and time again, this equation proves to be false. The future employee's job is to say - you are looking for a person with this set of skills, I have this set of skills, let me prove it to you. Its on the employer's side to say - this is why we are a good place to work at, here is why you should consider us. Asking "why do you want to work here" is a bit like the clerk asking the customer "why do you want to buy this item?", when it's their job to sell it.
I know I will keep seeing this question is interviews and I will keep answering it dishonestly, because the honest answer is "you posted the job offer for a person with my set of skills". I am literally unable to add more context without having an insider, which is probably the only bit of valuable information an employer can get by asking that question.
It presupposes that connection, familiarity and investment with the product beforehand as an indicator to the care taken with how the product is handled and the effort the employee is willing to give for the product to succeed. Added level of trustworthiness
The point is not to praise the studio in any way, or previous work/games, or to curry favor with the boss. As an interviewer and possibly a department head, I want to find out if the applicant has genuine intentions and where their drive and motivation come from. _Where does the passion come from?_ Such questions provide insight into the character and emotional world of an applicant - you have already recognized that.
--
Der Punkt ist nicht irgendwie das Studio zu loben, beziehungsweise vorangegangene Arbeiten / Spiele, oder sich beim Chef einzuschmeicheln. Als Gesprächsführer und möglicherweise Abteilungsleiter möchte ich herausfinden, ob der Bewerber ehrliche Intentionen hat und woher sein Antrieb kommt und woher die Motivation ihren Ursprung hat. Woher stammt die Leidenschaft? Man erhält aus solchen Fragen Einsicht über den Charakter und die Gefühlswelt eines Bewerbers - das hast du doch bereits erkannt. @@yaginku
@@frischifrisch6860 Questions that directly reference the entrant are obviously valid. But the question "Why do you want to work HERE?" is a thinly-veiled question about the studio, rather than the entrant. Unless they answer in a clever way that dodges the question, you are not learning anything about the entrant by asking this question.
Another very good example is "have you played our games before?". This one I've heard basically every time and I don't see it going away, but it's basically meaningless. It always leads to "have you made games in the same style as ours", or "do you enjoy playing games in the same style as ours", which is the actual question that's valid (and a slick entrant is basically going to answer these questions in response to the first question).
Shoutout to the Peter Principle! Blessed are the ones who can step down to work on a spot they are fulfilled and simply rock!
I remember when one guy created a thread on a programming forum I used to frequent, saying he was quitting his job to join the Peace Corps (of all things) and his employer wanted him to interview his potential replacements, and he needed questions to ask. I think he wanted serious responses, but this was definitely not the place for it. I despise Final Fantasy, but I have to say that "Do you see yourself as a Kefka or as more of a Sephiroth?" was easily the best question donated to his cause. ("Pirates of Silicon Valley" had recently come out, so runner up was the guy who suggested using the various offensive questions Steve Jobs used in that film.)
As I understand it employees at Valve don't have specific roles they expect you to be able to fill multiple, so that's probably why they wanted to know you can program stuff as well as design.
Of course to save money and blame on person easily if they're do something bad. It's just a sick business.
I used to be a fullstack engineer and I was doing multiple jobs while being under payed
Oddly, as someone who mostly worked in small startup/specialist teams doing jack-of-all-trades rolls with a constant love of learning; that sounds like a dream job. ^^;
Although, I guess, at some point, those roles tend to gravitate elsewhere or to their own startups.
@@sukapow In valve? Valve specified that it's more that everyone needs to be able to develop their own ideas, rather than have their ideas delegated to someone else.
@@SyndicateOperative what?
I'm talking about one job that requires multiple different professions but companies believed one person can do the job. It's cheap to hire one person to do the whole job than hire bunch of employees.
That's like asking a backend developer to do frontend also. Most backend developers aren't good at art.... Most artists can't code. Companies loves to see someone who can do both. Luckily I can do both good.
It's easy to manage one person than manage a group of people.
I bet, you never done a manager job before
Oh Valve you silly 😂
Thank you Tim! I know this does not feel like it for the interviewees but "make your crafting system" sounds like such a fun interview question!
Have a great day! 😊
This was a very enlightening video for many reasons. As an educator, with multiple years of experience in teaching and working with people, I feel I have nothing to offer to an industry I have found so much entertainment in, but have developed a growing interest in joining. I've been doing art and designing worlds and settings, cultures and magics and stories for years. Yet I have never felt the confidence to dig deeper into what the people doing these jobs and bringing their worlds to life have to go through in order to get to that point. It has been an eye opening video, as well as your other posts. Sincere thanks from me. Maybe this year will be the one to finally make that change.
Cannot thank you enough for this one. Verbal stumbles during phonecalls is a particular curse of mine when it comes to this job search process, and having these kinds of game industry specific "practice questions" can help immensely.
Happy Holidays, Tim. Thanks for all of the vlogs this year, my “go-to” dish washing entertainment!
This is such a great topic to hear someone so experienced discuss. Looking for interview information and improvement online is basically a lost cause these days with all the search engine optimized spam websites. I do have a couple tips for people preparing for an interview:
1. Go through the job posting and answers the requirements as questions-think of it like explaining why you're the best person for this position. Again, this isn't about memorizing answers to regurgitate, but to get your brain thinking about relevant situations and draw connections between them. The interviewer is unlikely to ask specific questions from the posting, but will have more general questions that cover multiple requirements. Answering with a strong example that contain multiple relevant situations and resolutions is exactly what interviewers are looking for.
2. Familiarize yourself with the 'STAR' method for answering questions. Write down examples from previous work, because you're pretty much guaranteed to pull a blank if you try and do it on the fly. The goal isn't to memorized answers, but to get you thinking about telling a full story for situation with a logical sequence.
3. Don't be afraid to 'toot your own horn' even if you weren't asked a specific question. If you're super proud of a project your worked on, outcomes of a situation, etc. you may have an opportunity to present this at the end of an interview. Of course you should keep it relevant to the position and company you're applying for, but this will provide additional support for your previous answers.
4. Try not to worry too much leading up to an interview. Interviewers aren't trying to trick you or questions anything you say-and if they are, you probably don't want to work there. Prepare as best you can and remember that you were selected because *they* want to hear more about *you*.
not gonna lie, when you said class-less system. I immediately went to, well, let's use interfaces/protocol-oriented programming instead, it even have huge benefits over OOP. Completely forgetting the context of classes in a rpg lol.
Thanks Tim! Do you have much advice or general stuff to talk about related to game modding? What about game modding as preparation for professional game development? Can working in volunteer mod teams translate well to applying these experiences to professional game careers, such as modding for a game the company you're applying for made, and showing that as a portfolio?
Question from my niece who watches these with me after her being sat on my lap for some of my latest fallout play through, having to pg aspects wasn’t what I planned on until it was a bit late. ‘Hi uncle Tim. Have you worked on tv or film’ and I think to add to it have you thought about it if not
Thank you Tim for this, and for all the content you are offering on this channel! So many of your videos have helped me clarify what video game creation entails, and, how the industry works. In that light, I would love to see a video on video game writing or narrative design. As an aspiring writer who would one day like to create their own video game, I remain uncertain as to what exactly it is that companies look for in a writer's portfolio for video games.
I have applied in a number of companies and have been rejected. I am sure one of the reasons is my lack of experience in the industry. However, I cannot but also blame my writing style and content which might not fit the video game format. So it would be nice if we could get some insight into what companies look for in terms of experience and portfolio.
Take care :)
Byron
I'm a producer and this kind of back-and-forth, Q&A development of systems is one of the greatest ways for understanding how someone thinks of systems and production. However I don't see that as often during interviews. The most common thing is a one-way 'You Ask I Answer' type of interview, with the interviewers not willing or able to go deeper and extend the discussions.
As a producer, this interview process would be great to discuss some production struggles and challenges back and forth.
Not asking for a job, I just like to talk about game design: I think that a classless system allows for more flexibility when making a character but because you can control every aspect of the character you end up having a weird mix of main builds that can often be similar and lead to natural "classes" in play style anyways. It's better to use classless systems in single player where you're not constantly being compared to other player's builds but in multiplayer it becomes IMMEDIATELY noticeable.
This isn't to say that you can't have a classless MMO, but I would recommend class mods that can only allow 2 attached at a time that opens skill trees up to the player that cannot be unlocked in the normal skill trees. It's not a perfect fix but I think it would still add a good layer of customization while simultaneously allowing for more build varieties. (Especially if you make those class mods as unique as possible!)
Thanks so much for this video! Wish I had mentors at any point in my career, but I appreciate every video you post. It's awesome watching them all and the amazing perspectives, ideas, and thoughts. Love the crafting interview question, would love something like that (especially critiquing it, although I'd have to refrain from getting carried away trying to modify and refine it, or brainstorm new ones). Personally, also love open-ended multiple-solution questions in general just to see the approaches and thought-processes behind a given approach.
Thanks again!
Why do I keep failing the coding tests?
Is it my personality, is it that algorithms need to be memorized? Am I not using enough modern c++ features?
Is it that other people are sniping the jobs by being better?
And then... Should I even bother anymore? Some designers were like "make a game and get 1 million downloads." At that point, why wouldn't I start my own business?
One horrifying thing I saw is that someone applied to the same company for 6 years and was grateful to finally work for them.
Most of the HR people at game companies that interviewed me job hop every 1.5~3 years.
Am I cynical?
I got rejected from so many companies I added the standard question "what're 3 things wrong with the company?" And I'm not sure if they take offense to that and I'm dodging a bullet because I'm really checking if they're capable of self reflection, able to put up with something that bothers them, and able to identify how to improve something.
Long question. Just, a lot of years of finding nothing and hatred for my college that did nothing for me despite being ranked ridiculously high. #college-debt #no-career-and-30-is-in-sight
#do they really care that you're working on projects all the time or are they actually looking for something else?
I think it depends on the company and who ends up interviewing you first. It is a well understood problem in tech recruitment that programmers are terrible at interviewing other programmers. I know it is a pain and not often an option, but try to get an interview with any non-programmers at the company (project managers, product owners, sales/business development, etc.), which I find is easier to do at smaller companies.
Fundamentally the other programmers aren't the ones employing you, the company is, so try and get an interview with someone where you can prove you understand the real application of programming skills in terms of the business value they provide (i.e. I implemented a user flow to guide users of our website towards our deal of the week, and set up a payment API for them to buy things using Google Pay). If you can do that, you will then at least have someone on your side within the company, before you even get to the technical tests.
The rest of the business, and the end users, literally don't care at all about how the sausage is made in terms of code, they just want to make money and have a good time. So look at your projects and decide if they are telling people you like working towards tangible outputs, or if they are just pointless tinkering that amounts to technical masturbation.
But yeah, coding tests suck and there is a huge luck aspect to it too, so don't give up. 😐
So many good stories. So much knowledge to share! Thanks a lot for this. Made me wanna work for ya.
LLMs add an interesting dynamic to interviews. They often make a candidate seem really good because it can give a good answer quickly. Cracks start to show when you start drilling down into the answer and ask them to do different things with it. If the interviewee didn't actually think through the answer, they quickly can't handle the change.
You don't have to ask Tim, I always like your videos
Your interviews almost sound like fun and I really, really don't like tests and interviews, I'd rather make my work and then show it. But the questions you presented here, I do that for fun and for the later, more private ones I'd had answers for on the top of my hat. Valve's interviews sound scary now... ^^
First of all, thanks for all these quality videos. It's really cool to get these perspectives from someone with as much experience.
I'm in a place where I'm trying to figure out how to get into the game industry, but I'm struggling with burnout at my current job and it has negatively impacted my energy and focus to work on side projects. Do you have any advice on resume/portfolio building and career progression during burnout?
Hey Tim, regarding the programming whiteboard test. Would you give people another shot if you knew that they cant handle those whiteboard tests and fail it because of nervousness or whatever and you know they're super experienced but just cant do a whiteboard to save their life?
Would also be great to hear about design tests and how you approach them (the kind you get sent to work on for a week, etc.)
Even if you did just throw your resume in the pile hoping. There's still probably companies you didn't give your resume to. So you can always use that. "I needed a job relatively quickly and I didn't want to work on F2P microtransaction games". Or "I looked over your site and I liked the fact that you make games for the PC and I hadn't really owned a console since the Wii so I kinda liked that". I mean "Why us?", it's a good question, you should always have an answer too it even if you don't feel particularly strong about it. Unless it's like a grocery store or waiting tables or something. Those things are important but the reasoning is expected to be puddle deep.
Valve story was insane. LMAO
Hey Tim! How do you feel about an interviewee asking this as the last question in the interview? " If you were to hire me today, where do you think I would be the most impact inside of the company?"
Thank you for the vid, Tim!
I am currently in the process of studying at a uni for game design and want to pursue a career in gameplay design. Considering your extensive experience and success in the field, I was wondering if you could offer some guidance on the key areas or skills I should focus on developing to increase my chances of being hired as a gameplay/combat designer?
apparently according to valve, programming 😅 at least that way if the game dev plan falls through you can still get a job. good luck trying to get anyone outside of game dev to care about a game design degree
thank you for your infinite wisdom@@arcan762
Now you MUST give us the best answers to theese questions so far.
You really dodged a bullet with Valve, you wouldn't have released ONE game since.
Wonderful insight thank you
The worse job interview question I ever got boiled down to, "What do you do if you get mad at someone at work?". This is a trick question because it contains an assumption that is not very fair to the person being interviewed. The correct answer is "I don't get mad at work". I just said "I'd go home."
Tim, you covered some important points. I have had a few interviews in my time. As an animator I usually get questions that are not unexpected. But there has been a couple of times recently where the group that is interviewing me does not include an animator. That was weird. Unfortunately l did not get the opportunity to ask about that and the interviews ( I had 2 group ones over the internet) went really well. I didn't get either job. There is one other thing that I and other animators (and other artists) have encountered that is really frustrating. We get no feedback as to why we were not chosen. Or it is a vague response such as "not a good fit" or "didn't think I could do the job." After so much effort on both parties there should be a better explanation for not getting the job.
One really good question is "tell me about a past project you really liked".
Mr. Tim, what do you think about radiant quests?
Thank you for answering!
Normally I hate the question of “why do you want to work for THIS company?”
For a retail job or something similarly mundane, it seems silly, because obviously one just wants work.
In your field though it seems much more appropriate, given the much higher level of creative work.
If for some reason you decided to FULLY come out of retirement, and you wanted to work somewhere other than Obsidian, would you be offended by certain interview questions? Like if they asked you to write more code on a board, or explain a design, whatever. Do you think at this point your reputation and past work should just speak for itself? Or would you be fine with an intricate interview process? like maybe a 25 year old who’s fresh out of college and hasn’t made any large games would go through?
What a youtube channel.
I feel better about flubbing my interview with Blizzard knowing Tim flubbed one with Valve. 🖤
Great video!
Hi tim sorry for the off topic question but do you think that AI will one day play a role in game dialogue (like that new vegas ai dialogue mod from a couple of months ago)?
What would the drawbacks be?
( Video of the mod: ua-cam.com/video/Tv9WxYbo2Io/v-deo.htmlfeature=shared )
I cover some of that here: ua-cam.com/video/7MRx_i9gvWw/v-deo.html
@@CainOnGames thank you!! Sorry i didn’t get the notification!
I'm not a coder or anything, but if I could make a quest to teach players a class I would do necromancy. No one has a cool quest for this.
Selfishly I’m happy that Valve didn’t work out. I love The Outer Worlds?
Valve has lost a significant portion of creativity. Love you 🥰
You know in some schools in the south they don't teach trigonometry lol
from what ive heard and experienced myself... it seems job interview for designers are the most difficult.
there is a really awesome gdc talk, that goes into detail why that is and how to improve it. ua-cam.com/video/uUQKbowVsIE/v-deo.html
it also tackles your "go design" questions, which after that talk, i also dont really like being asked.
what is your stance on interviewing designers specifically?
Valve didn't do their homework on the goat
Wow. Imagine having Tim Cain, literal creator of Fallout, come for an interview, and then rejecting him. I can't even. Maybe with you at Valve they would actually make more games, a shame.
Well their first ever game is better than every game he ever worked on.
It gets more absurd when you think how the earliest Valve employees were in large part random modders and level designers. Even the programmers who made half life probably wouldn’t get past the interview process at today’s Valve…
@@stipe1615 How can you compare a linear FPS to open-ended RPGs? I would personally vastly prefer to play fallout than half-life, although I appreciate half-life is a great game in it's genre.
@@stipe1615dubium
@@stipe1615 I love Half Life, but it is nowhere near as good as Fallout (or Arcanum, or Bloodlines)
The whiteboarding alone would kill it for me.😅 Being someone with autism, I usually keep stuff to myself and avoid saying things straight out loud and (over)think what I "release". The good thing: I usually come up with the (almost, because there is none) perfect solution. Listening to my thoughts is for a non-superhuman also kinda hard, because there are usually 20 at a time, often not connected with each other. Those I have to filter before... see above.😂
Also: saying them out loud would take a while.😅
I thought US had weak employee protections. Why didn’t the liar whip couldn’t do the work get fired? Hardly exist a better fire grounds. Or maybe let go after trial period.
Some people are really good at bullsh*tting and getting others to do the work.
Good video. However, I'd like to push back on your technique of having designers design things on the spot during the interview. I think this is very unfair to ask this of designers because many of us do not operate like this. Many of us are introverted and like to have our ideas worked out before we present them. Good design takes a lot of thought and planning. Being a designer is not like being in a spelling bee competition where you simply regurgitate the correct answer. If you want to ask questions like this have the courtesy to give the designers time to prepare. If you were interviewing music composers you wouldn't ask them to write a hit song for you during an interview.
If you asked me to design a mechanic on the spot I would simply politely refuse. Also, why should I give you free design intel during an interview? You could take my idea and run with it and I'd never get compensated. Never ever give your ideas away.
Let me be the first to expose my lack of coding knowledge: "Given an integer return true if the value is even and false if the value is odd". Shouldn't Modulo cover this?
return value%2==0
I Come from a C# World Btw.
If performance is the goal and they know how the integers are going to be represented (signed/unsigned, sign and magnitude/two's complement/one's complement) then using a bitwise AND operation can be faster.
For example, assume an unsigned integer.
Take the number 5 and it's representation in binary 101.
Perform a bitwise AND using the mask 001.
Value: 101
Mask: 001
Result: 001
And with the value of 6 (binary 110)
Value: 110
Mask: 001
Result: 000
return (value & 0x01) == 0
The above should give the same result as if you used modulo but should run faster.
Though I imagine most compilers would replace modulo 2 with the bitwise operation anyway if the right optimisation flags were enabled.
I mention that they need to know the implementation because this method would fail for negative values if using One's Complement.
@@Gractus Hey Gractus. Thank you for taking your time for shedding some light on this! I would never have dreamt of using a bitwise. :)
The understanding of this level of coding was never prioritized by my own mentors so these sort of coding interview questions always baffle me. Once again thank you for this. :)
That Valve story sounds like absolute bullshit on their part. WTF. Talk about setting you up to fail. Seems like their loss tbh. But you probably don't need me to say. Probably made you a better interviewer and better boss, however.
maybe if devs/publishers got some money penalties (no instantly firings) from gaming platforms for being so lazy and slow they'd develop more games at a faster frequency in the company i worked everything had to be perfect or any miss in the order would've been punished w 1000$ each per mistake. the industry bout to die with these streamlined woke melt plastic graphics bad empty games else
ai generated schizo post
@@NINEx7xnah, these people are actually real, sadly
im talkin aaa games ofc gen 7 had more marvel games halos gears fallouts elderscrollls than 8 & 9 combined aa old games and indies r boomin while aaa is in the mud playin powerslave exhumed battlefront 2 2005 aliens vs predator forgive me father project warlock huntdown as we speak it gets to a point where ubisoft+ aint even worth it compared to mentioned games above id still get me some gamepass for sum day one games but still it feels lik aaa game development is stagnant and kinda ded take too long for empty maps include wokeness for nothing etc.
@@alexmihoc3182 please use punctuation
there is a weird formula going on lack of content + minority propaganda + mtx + 70$ up = great money cow i think this mindset shd indeed be punished by platform holders like steam xbox nintendo sony and all the others it's not only toxic but also fake and punishing for the developers to work unto something like this i can't imagine somebody actually wants to work on something evil like this it's not only expensive and time diminishing but also it lacks the quality of an actual videogame that's why companies fire devs all the time because they don't even want to work on such craziness and why the developer might become lazy or uninterested in such programs its up to the platform holders to demand what they actually want on their platforms but mostly they just settle down for what publishers executives want not developers this devil's spiral will only bring less effort and less games and maybe even a deep death to aaa publishers / developers