There are some rare occasions when folks can look behind the curtains of our company in the form of an internship. Some weeks ago, we had a student intern at YAGER who had the chance to speak to a handful of our employees to get insights on all the different jobs a gaming company has to offer.
So let us hear from our student intern Konstantin what he can share about his 2 weeks at YAGER.
Konstantin:
“I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to visit YAGER for 2 weeks as a school project, and in this article, I will try to share my experience through writing about some things I learned: the different, versatile jobs in the gaming industry.
In these 2 weeks, I had the opportunity to talk to many people who work in very different job areas of the games industry. This included the community & player support lead, a game designer, a video producer, someone from QA and production, a programmer, someone from the IT department, someone who works with SFX & audio, and even one of the founders!
In this article, I will write about the interviews I held with each of the different professions.
Community Management: I first sat down with Floh (Florian R.). This “interview” was a super interesting and insightful presentation from him, showing the different tasks and abilities etc. of a community manager. A community manager is responsible to work with the community, whether it’s the community talking to the company or the company talking to the community, it is the community manager’s task to exchange this information so both sides receive news and feedback from each other without hurting each other with harmful/aggressive criticism.
QA: My interview with Oli (Oliver H.) was both about production and QA (Quality Assurance). QA is the combination of functional testing, regression testing, exploratory testing and performance testing. All in all, QA is the testing of the game while it is still work in progress, this testing spreads to every area of a game. The simple functioning of added features and the performance of features are among the most important tasks Oli handled. The QA tests the games in the process of development so the programmers can fix the issues when they are not vital. All this is to ensure the final product is as polished as possible.
Production: A producer manages the team and the projects of the team, removing roadblocks so the individual disciplines can work their best. Additionally, they take care of the information flow from and to the team, making sure the right information reaches the right ears.
Game design: I was able to do my interview about game design with Mando (Armando Gracia). In the interview, I learned that the game designers have the important task of creating the starting ideas for games. What setting should the game have? Which mechanics should the game have? What kind of game do we even want? Or one of the most important ones: what experience should the player have and what emotions should the player have when playing the game?
Art: In my interview with Mathias Wiese, one of the founders, I’ve learned that he is one of the main drivers of the artstyle of all of the games that YAGER produced. Most of the art you can see on the walls in the office went through his hands. He comes up with a lot of art ideas and creates super cool art himself as well. An artist is responsible for the art concepts for everything that you can see in a game or stuff like posters or the box of a game. They make designs and concepts for models in the games like enemies, NPCs, vehicles, environment, and much more.
Programming/Engineering: I actually did 2 interviews about programming/engineering, one with Kristian Dam and one with Eckhard Duken. In these two interviews I learned how engineers work and what difficult challenges they have to face. A programmer has to code every single idea from the game designer into an actual game. On top they must deal with bug-fixing, general issues in the code, and are pretty much the last resort for problems so they must solve just about anything that comes their way.
Engineers are responsible for every single new and already existing feature.
Sound and audio: In the interview about sound and audio with Craig Owen, I learned how sound and audio in a game is created and designed. It was very interesting how the people who work in that field create every single sound you ever hear in a game and especially how it relates to your position/where you’re standing in the game. So, when something is creating sound behind you vs. behind a wall, they will sound very different. Even rooms with echo or reflective surfaces need to be factored into the sound while you play for full immersion in the environments for the player. Someone working in this department is responsible for every aspect of the game that is connected to hearing.
Video production: I did my last interview with Josh (Joshua Bonzheim), he told, and even showed, me the tasks and the work of a video producer in the gaming industry. A video producer creates all of the video content that the company releases, the best examples are trailers or teasers to the release of a game or future updates to the game. They also create videos about the company itself which get uploaded on the website or the YouTube channel. Video producers layer/import the sounds to the videos they create and make sure that the music and the sounds fit the video perfectly, so the video gives off the right feeling/energy.
This was just some of my personal learning about the different jobs, and of course there is so so so much more to each of the jobs that I was unable to cover. These two weeks were a great experience for me personally and I could see myself working here when I grow up. On top of that, YAGER was a great work environment, and I recommend it to anyone interested in working in the gaming industry.”