Business Skills In the Game Industry
Will Writes:
Good evening. I currently work as a Senior Process Manager for a top 10 financial institution. In my current role, I am responsible for ensuring that our institution (over 80 million accounts) complies with multiple forms of USA Patriot Act legislation, including Office of Foreign Assets requirements and Bank Secrecy Act requirements. I manage a direct team of four Process Managers and an indirect team of over 20 Operations/Process Managers across our company, including across 6 different geographic locations and multiple business types. This is all well and good, but I am extremely bored of my job. My true passion is playing video games, which I have done since I was old enough to hold a joystick or to stick a cassette tape in a Commodore 64 and type “Load, 8, 1”. I’ve always felt that the ideal role in life would be one in which you do what you love and you love what you do. I am not in that role today. While my gaming experience goes only as deep as to have played them for countless years, I do have a number of skills that I believe are applicable to just about any business environment. I am trained and certified as a Green Belt in Six Sigma, which is a process management methodology, possess an associate’s degree in Project Management, and bring a wide array of functional skills to the table, including multi-tasking, people management, requirements definition, process analysis, leadership and a strong knowledge of regulations and legal affairs. I am not sure what the right positon would be for someone like me at a gaming company, but I do know that I would be happy with just about any position that let me help an industry I enjoyed rather than one that simply paid the bills. Any ideas on where I should start and whether or not I might find a home at EA Games with a skills et as described above?
My Reply:
I suggest you start looking on the business side of EA. I dont know what the numbers are, but EA probably employs more than half its people in areas other than game production. IT, marketing, publishing, licensing, and all other manner of job skills have a home here. The key is getting in in any role you can–from the inside youll learn about the different possibilities that interest you and what paths are best to take to become involved with the work you most enjoy.