Tuesday 15 March 2011

Square Enix Europe

Today i found out something which could be a great help. I found out that there is a Square Enix here in England, and they are based in Wimbledon, which is only about 30 minutes from where i live, i was amazed to find this out. Sadly there are no job openings for the job role i am looking to go into. Three out of the five jobs currently going you have to be able to speak German and French and the other two are related to web design which i do not have any skills in. I know i would not be currently able to apply for any of these jobs, but now that i know there is one base in Wimbledon, there is a higher chance to be able to get into Square Enix, without having to try and learn another language or move home.

Now to be able to try and get a job, i will roughly need at least four years experience within a games company, i will need to have been involved in at least two games which will have been realised. I need to know how to work with a team and individually, be able to lead a team, know problem solving and time management. I have lots to experiment with and learn from trail and error but i am sure within time, i will have all of the above and be able to apply for my dream job.

Thursday 3 March 2011

Searching

I have recently been trying to research for game companies around London which i may be able to try and apply for some work experience and after some searching i found a online social networking site where someone asked if anyone knew any gaming companies around London and was given this link:
http://www.gamedevmap.com/index.php?query=London&Submit=Search

This this found i was pretty shocked on how many there were in London, most of which i had never heard of but now i know that there are more companies out there then what i ever thought.

My next step is to find out about some information about a few different companies and then try to apply for some work experience. This all sounds easy but i know it wont go a smooth as to what i am hoping.
The one which is most local to me is in Croydon called "CoyoteDev" but once i done some research into them, i had found out that they do not exist anymore and that they are trying to sell there domain name. This is a shame because this may have been a company close to home which would have made life a little easier but sadly not, there is no contact details either as i was hoping to contact them to see what happened, but it seems to be a dead end.

So moving on the next closest to home is a company called "Splash Damage" who are located in Bromley. They are currently working on a game called "Brink"which will be there first game to be realised. They are currently only a small company but some of there staff have worked on previous games called "Quake" and "Mass Effect". The game trailers look very interesting and they look like a company i would be interested working for. With there contact details online, i decided to give them a call, i can get the information direct and i will not have to wait around for a reply from an email, which may never even happen. So, i gave them a call and they were very kind yet formal about how they are currently not doing work experience because they are only a small company, but they are hoping to be able to do so in the future and that i should keep trying.
This was a little disappointing but i understood as they have not even realised there first game, so they are not a big company as of yet and they probably do not have the money to do any resources.


Here are a few images from the Splash Damage website where i found out most of the information i needed. I shall keep this company in mind for the future and hope that they will start to do work experience in the near future.

Time to research into more companies.