Hi everyone,

I'll graduate soon with a BS in game programming and development specializing in gameplay programming. I wondered what skills companies look at the most when picking potential hiring candidates. I've been applying to jobs for a couple of years now and have only been invited to a couple of interviews so far. Any advice and/or resources used for the technical interviews would be greatly appreciated as well.

Thank you for your time.

I'd like to understand what people consider the fundamental skills for any gameplay programmer. I'm not talking about engine-specific skills like Unity or Unreal, but more general skills. Like if you get a job working with a proprietary game engine, you'd need to know the basics because you can't rely on Unity/Unreal knowledge.

For example, do you need to understand how things like game loops, input processing, audio processing, rendering etc work, or is that more in the realm of a game engine programmer?

Do you need a good understanding of state machines, pathfinding, AI?

What sort of math skills do you need if you have to implement things from scratch that you would take for granted in Unity/Unreal https://1921681001.id/?

If anybody can shed some light on this or talk about their own experience as a gameplay programmer that would be great.

I always did things in the opposite way. I explored everything I could get my hands on or looked interesting to improve my understanding of it. I never worried whether it would fit in any future job. I tinkered with small problems, trying to explain to the computer to solve them. If that didn't work, doing lots of thinking to get an angle that would work, until I cracked it. Even if you never actually use it ever again, you at least are aware of how stuff works there, with a somewhat informed idea of its limitations.

Another good move for me was to join an open source game community and start improving the game. Lots of fun, and learning many new things. New skills like using issue trackers, VCS, patches, review process, and code refactoring. Helping others that struggled with new problems, or explaining solutions to others. Lots of fun, and lots of learning.

imageazer said:
I wondered what skills companies look at the most when picking potential hiring candidates.

Brains and a demonstrated ability to do the job.

You can choose part of that. You can choose how to present yourself, and your application with your resume / CV and other information makes a huge difference, so that's something people can review.

You cannot choose part of that. Each company is looking for specific roles, specific abilities, specific histories, and temperaments that complement the studio. One may be using Unreal (C++), another using Unity (C#), another making web games requiring JavaScript, another doing a ton of gameplay development using Lua. They may be hoping for specific tools and technologies which they didn't mention that give you bonus points against other candidates. They may share some amount of information but you don't know exactly what they're looking for — and many times they're not entirely sure what they're looking for — do they want a generalist, do they want someone with game AI (not machine learning) background, do they want someone with precise simulation background, someone with strong statistics, someone with more advanced mathematics, someone with networking chops, someone who has solved a specific problem they happen to be facing? Other than looking over their job listing, you can't do much to improve your odds with any of them, you either match or you don't. And they may be looking for other factors, one may be drawn to a bubbly and upbeat personalities, another one may be drawn to serious and stoic personalities. Often interviewers may discover you fill a gap they didn't know they had, or they may feel like you overlap in areas they didn't realize they were already overstaffed with. These are actually a tremendous part of hiring, and many employers look over the pool of applicants and evaluate how the person fits rather than knowing in advance.

imageazer said:
Any advice and/or resources used for the technical interviews

You cannot realistically cram for them, but you can practice them. Search the web for common programming questions used in interviews, there are a few hundred to choose from.

If possible have friends and family quiz you on assorted interview topics. You should have your introduction and replies like “tell me about yourself” as a canned response. You should be able to talk about various life experiences, past jobs, and anything technical you've worked on. You shouldn't need to memorize them, but you should be able to implement basic algorithms and data structures easily in your chosen languages. String manipulation, loops and flow control, tree manipulation (especially on web / DOM related projects), simple conversions, simple searching/sorting, list and array manipulation, performance and optimization questions, language-specific questions, they're all fair game and there are sites with long lists of questions on each topic.

Don't try to memorize or cram for specific questions, but do practice writing code on a whiteboard (although that's less common post-COVID with most people remote), and also practice talking your way through writing code in an editor. Your friends or family should be able to follow along as you implement simple tasks on video chat.

You also don't compete for jobs in a vacuum. Even if you're a great candidate there can be an even more amazing candidate that you don't know about.