What can I do to get into the video game industry as a person managing the ideas, stories, and project? [closed]

Question

I have been looking for a job in the gaming industry, but all jobs are for designers and developers. The problem with this is, I would prefer to be in the creating and fleshing out of ideas and stories, as well as managing the project.

I recently watched an episode of 'extra credits' on which you were mentioned.

Why are management job-vacancy positions are so far and few between in the games industry?

I understand that there are things done by the team as a whole, or by certain members of the team, though there are teams with 1 or 2 people who only deal with the story and script (this seems to be the case with Godus).

What can I do to get into the video game industry as a person managing the ideas, stories, and project?

Answer 1

As of right now, Electronic Arts has 69 vacancies for jobs with 'manager' in the title, so such jobs are advertised.

I understand from your question that you haven't any experience in the game industry, but want to be managing the production of a new game. A job like that is almost always going to go to a person who has experience of the industry and the process. If you want to do that job, get yourself into the industry in whatever way you can, and then work towards doing that job.

Developing a game storyline is very close to writing. If that's what you want to do, you might consider building a portfolio of writing work - get some short stories published, or plays, or even make a short movie. Nobody will let you develop a major game storyline without you showing that you can do the job, and do it better than the hundreds or thousands of people who also want to do it.

Answer 2

You say "I would prefer to be in the creating and fleshing out of ideas and stories, as well as managing the project," but those are two very different things.

My game dev experience (admittedly a little dated now - several different studios between 2002 and 2005) was that project management was completely separate from game design (the "fleshing out of ideas and stories").

The project manager took care of schedule tracking, coordinating people whose work relied on each other, ensuring that milestones were met and builds made and tested, keeping an eye on the bug backlog, etc.

The game designers were the guys in charge of ideas, story, gameplay design, etc.

If you don't have any games industry experience, but have solid project management experience in other fields of software development (preferably high pressure, large team, tight budget), I would attempt to parlay that into applying for a project management job.

Game design, though.. that's the tough one. Virtually everyone who has ever played a game fancies that they have great ideas and stories. Ideas are a dime a dozen, because the truly valuable ideas are one in a million. I would say that it is almost impossible to get a game design job from outside the industry with zero experience.

The roads in are: fund and start your own studio (I worked with a guy who did that - it didn't end well), or produce indie games impressive enough to catch the eye. The problem with the latter route is that if you're not a developer, you'd need to hook up with one to get your ideas made into an indie game, and once again, ideas are a dime a dozen and most of the indie game developers have their own ideas that they want to implement.