Do employers like games?

Question

I'm going to be graduating in August, and I have a portfolio of projects that I have worked on, either in my spare time, or for class assignments. Most of these projects are games, which I either wrote entirely, or acted as the graphics/engine programmer for a team. I'm a bit concerned that a potential employer might not take me seriously because of this. Would any of you have any insight on this?

Answer 1

Any experience developing non-trivial software projects is bound to be beneficial when applying for an entry-level software engineering/programming job.

Answer 2

Ahhhhhhh!!!! That website just destroyed my eyes. Clean up that site a little. Consider some different colors. Use a different font and smaller screenshots that can be blown up.

Answer 3

What is much more important than the nature of the projects that you have worked on is your ability to speak intelligently, passionately and at-length about them. If you can give an in-depth description of the architecture of an application, of the decisions that were made in its design, of the pros and cons of the choices that you made, you will go a very long way towards landing the job that you want.

Confidence and passion are very desirable traits. No one wants to hire a lump who will need to be lead and given explicit instructions. Demonstrate that you have already made many good decisions. Show that you have learned from your bad ones. If you can do that, it won't matter if you have written games or an operating system or a spreadsheet.

And as @buckbova noted elsewhere, your website needs to be a little bit more martini and a little bit less LSD.

Answer 4

Even if it doesnt help , I am sure its not going to hurt you . And AFAIK , developing games would definitely be seen as a bonus .

Answer 5

Yes, as long as you programmed them.

Answer 6

Many times I am the hiring agent for the company I work for. I don't care if you have made web apps, mobile device apps, games, or what, so long as you know what you're doing or at least demonstrate a decent level of competency. If your software doesn't work, maybe you should leave it off. I tend to think much less of half complete websites, or poorly constructed demo type programs. Working projects can be impressive. Like running your own self coded site, for example. If it is live and functional - user base a plus - then it will look like you have a grasp on your code and will probably work well with us. It's rare that I get far enough into someone's interview where I care about their graduate credentials. You can be a graduate and still not know anything about real programming. I would say your work should be your first point of focus. Your degree will speak for itself, but you have to look like it backs you up and is not just something you did cause you had to go to school for something.

Good luck. And don't think moving to a place like mountain view or San Francisco will automatically lead to a programming job. I did that once and ended up repairing commercial buildings.

Answer 7

You didn't mention what type of jobs/industry you are looking for. Obviously for the gaming industry they'd prefer such a portfolio. For business/web it doesn't really hurt that you made games as games are alot harder to make than anything business/web oriented. I worked in the game industry for 5 years and now I'm in the web/corporate industry all I can say is web programming is easier by a significant amount.

Answer 8

Assuming the job isn't game development, the applicant with game experience will lose to the applicant with other application experience, all else being equal. So, avoid the word "game" as much as possible. Eg, you designed and implemented a "graphics engine", or "collision detection", or "physics library". Anything but "game".