UGGGGGGGG!! Morello really?

First off i have to get this out of the way. Sejuani says "winter is coming" during champion select. Varus is a char in GoT (the spider). Someone on your staff like the books/show!

Any way Jeoffry is poorly done??? WAT? First off we are supposed to hate him! So Mr Martin +1 (everyone hates him)

Has no redeeming qualities? Howa bout the fact that HE'S A BOY! It's not his fault he's the way he is. It's Cerce's and Roberts! Robert never payed any attention to "his" kids. Cerce spoiled the **** out of him and told him how soon he'll be king and everything would be as he wanted. In season one (tv show) there is a scene where Cerce is talking to her son after the fight with bakers boy and Aria's direwolf....

Spoiler: (if you're still on book 1)
Also the kid is inbred, and it's known that inbreeding in this world can cause craziness. The mad king was inbred....

Also, You know nothing John Snow!

Just you guys wait....it gets soooo good.

I'm glad Riot is hiring someone to do balancing...

Er but it seems to be getting better lately...maybe?

...I don't think you are reading the same series as the rest of us.

To Morello
Hopefully you will actually get to see this and I will actually get a reply.
I was wondering if Riot keeps records of those who have applied for jobs. The reason I am asking this is because i personally remember either last year, or perhaps two years ago writing up an application for a position with Riot Games and shooting it off with little thought to the consequences. I'm pretty sure it was at the time a hopeful attempt, but it definitely wasn't a full hearted one. I am worried because after reading your replies to this subject, and the fact I will soon graduate university and want to work in the video game industry in some capacity, I have started debating this issue of "standing out" with sincerity, as i know my first attempt definitely did not stand out and i would not want that to count against me.

So does Riot keep track of applications?

Someone who's already designed games. Again, you don't need anything to get into game design.

Let's say you're someone who wanted to make boss encounters in MMO's. Guess what? There are great engines called Unity and Unreal that let you make the raid zone, script the encounter, and ta-da! You're at a boss encounter. Make a YouTube video, get 7-8 of your friends to play it, throw in some basic melee/ranged/heals, and iterate. Anyone can come up with ideas for a boss encounter, and anyone can draw maps or write out mechanics, but it takes someone truly skilled to iterate on those encounters to make them really fun.

Let's say you're someone who wanted to get involved in systems design. Guess what? A lot of MMO's expose an add-on API, and most MMO's have hundreds of thousands of active players. Go learn how to make an add-on. Throw it up on a community site and iterate. If it's good, you can smack on your resume "I authored XYZ add-on, which as over 100,000 downloads." Anyone can come up with a better way to implement game systems, but it takes someone truly skilled to think about how you take that idea, implement it, and make it feel great for a huge variety of players.

Let's say you're someone who wanted to design levels for an FPS game. Guess what? There's a great level-editor for Counter Strike and TF2 called the Hammer, and it's completely free! And if you make a map that's good enough, Valve will work with you to polish it up and put it in their official map set. Anyone can get out a pen and paper and draw a cool map, but it takes someone truly skilled to create a map from scratch that's actually more fun and more enjoyable than the current maps out there.

Let's say you're someone who wanted to make a puzzle game. Guess what? You can start designing great puzzle games on the iPhone and Android using fairly basic packages, and all of it will cost you less than $1000. And if you make a good one, you'll get paid tens of thousands of dollars for doing so. Anyone can sketch a puzzle game and create basic rules, but it takes someone truly skilled to actually implement those rules, gather data and feedback from players, and tweak them to arrive at something truly special.

Let's say you're someone who wanted to design a champion in a MOBA. Guess what? There are some fantastic level editors out there with powerful scripting capabilities, ranging from Blizzard's RTS level editors to games like Age of Empires 2. There are tons of MOBA communities that play their own variations and versions. And all of the code is completely open. So if you want to make a champion, go out and make one. Anyone can submit an idea for a champion or design unique/cool mechanics, but it takes someone truly skilled to bring that champion from concept to awesome.





If you want to get involved in game design, then go design games. And if it turns out you're good at it, you'll get hired. But it's not going to be the other way around. You wouldn't expect an investment firm to hire someone who's never actually invested money. You wouldn't expect a movie studio to hire a director who's never actually made a movie. You wouldn't expect a school to hire a teacher who's never mastered the material themselves. And you can't expect game companies to hire a game designer who's never actually designed games.

Mmm in many cases, yes. There are, however, rare exceptions, but they are quite rare.

The best known method of governing a body to this point is... is... get ready for this...

Communism with an enlightened despot in charge.

No, really, s'tru. Of course, there's strict limitations upon that. The largest group it's ever been known to work with was of a self contained research group of scientists, and only had a total population of about 40 people. Problem with both communism and an enlightened despot, is they assume zero corruption, and if one person starts to abuse the system, everything falls apart.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, which sadly means that giving one person all the authority in the world, no matter how good their intentions are, eventually turns nasty.

There are reasons why there are limitations on how long someone can stay in term in most democracies, and reasons why dictatorships can sometimes work.

Iraq was held together because it needed one person to rule over a bunch of different tribes who hated each others guts with a burning passion and refuse to accept the authority of each other, and giving them a democracy simply isn't going to work, because they'll just keep killing each others elected officials. There are hatreds that go back hundreds, and sometimes thousands of years at work, and those don't magically poof overnight just because you asked people to play nicely.

As such, sometimes you have to hold them at gunpoint and tell them that if they don't play nice, they're all screwed.

It's not a nice world we live in sometimes, and people really do go out of their way to fight each other over the smallest excuses. Sometimes the exertion of power is the only way to force people to stop killing each other, as bad as that sounds. It's why there is such a thing as a "peacekeeper missile", and why nuclear weapons are used as a deterrent, and are probably what saved the USA and the Soviet Union from all out war. If they didn't have nukes hanging over their heads, that would have been an absolute mess.

Still, you control people to get them to put aside their standard tendencies to be cruel to each other. Sometimes this comes in the form of religion, other times it shows up in the form of a common goal, or a cultural icon.

The real trick, is to ensure they don't realize that they're being led, and make them think they behave nicely of their own volition. As soon as they feel boxed in or caged, that they have no choice in the matter, they get upset, and begin to lash out for some odd perceived sense of "freedom".

Go read through some history textbooks, there's some really creepy stuff in there, especially like what led up to the first world war, and subsequently the second. The causes of what made these events happen in the first place are likely even more interesting than the events that took place during them, at least for me, since you get to see examples of mob mentality and leader's minds at work.

Sacrifice the world and let it all burn, just to win an election year.

In any case, you're right, to a degree. Justice is rarely just, Honour is rarely honourable, and Order that's imposed at gunpoint isn't really order at all.

Well then, keep working at it! =D

No, seriously, I'm not joking! One person's benefit does not necessitate that another fails in their place. Riot's swelling in size faster than most any other game company in the world right now, and they could use good writers still, I'm sure =3

Keep in mind that I'm also more qualified for being a Creative Writer, but it doesn't mean I'm limited to such. Use the information you have from one thing to broaden your capabilities.

Grab a teach yourself C++ or Python handbook, get a copy of Maya or Mudbox and toy around with it until you get good at it, find a sound editing program and come up with new music. Most of these things are skills, rather than just talents. Talent can help you learn things more quickly, but skills are still able to be taught, and learned, even if you're not particularly talented in them, it just takes longer.

Regardless of what you do, keep working on something you love doing. Whether I get a job at Riot, or not, is irrelevant to my pet projects. I'm still going to keep working on my writing, I'll still keep working on my guide to help other people design their own champion concepts better than they're capable of right now.

Expand your horizons to give you extra tools to do something you want to do. Personally, I wanted to do world design, and then I discovered that it's a rather complex road to get there. They suggest level design, first, and character design. These also suggest 3D modeling, animation and so on, which involves 2D animation, which involves a dozen other smaller things down the line.

So... I took a course in 3D animation to get started on things. It blew through a year and a half of my life, and a good $40,000 in debt, but I've found my life to be richer because of it, because I'm now actually capable of working in multiple fields outside of just "Creative Writing", which, although it's needed in the games industry, it's not exactly valued or prized, as it's hard to put a price tag on how much money good writing rakes in to a game.

Most indie developers won't even touch a writer, and will just throw up stuff that would make even preteen fangirls writing steamy Twilight fanfics cringe at how bad it is, and even the larger companies often gloss over it because it's not something that really screams out "Cha-ching!" like a cash register or fancy graphics are known to do.

Anyway, keep your passion in your heart, but be willing to expand to other, related areas, in order to work your way into it.

Don't give up on something you love doing, no matter how many times you get rejected. The games industry has a nasty-high rejection level for new entry level positions, and the chances are you're going to get told "No" a lot of times, and no reply at all, even more, long before you get to hear a single "Yes".

If you're not busy doing work, work on being busy at getting better at doing something you'd like to do for work for a living, even if it's in a round about manner.

If my current aspirations fall though, no biggie, I'm still working on redoing my animation demo reel from scratch, and I'll try again with a new set of tools at my disposal.

The... lack of money kind of sucks until then... and you may need to compromise in the meantime, but whatever you do, don't give up! =3

If it's worth doing, it's worth suffering through a great deal of hardship to do it. Fight for what you want, and keep racking up additional skills, or perfecting the ones you have further, until you get something that can wedge your foot in the door ^.^

Anyway, if you're really looking at creative writing, hop down to the fan fiction forum and start helping them out there. They could use more good writers to aid them in their works, and I've been distracted with an ear infection the last few days so haven't been there to lend that much support as of late, which is unfortunate, since I'd like to help out more than I have.

If you have the capacity to write well, then put it to use showing someone else how to do so as well; after all, the quickest way to learn, is to teach.

Also... the fan fiction form moves very, very slowly, with the front page only cycling every few days or so. That should help you get a bit more attention, if nothing else ^.~

You'll do fine if you try, so don't give up. Or I will send bloody ninjas. That's right. NINJAS. Wait, inverse law of ninjas... alright. I will send A NINJA. Singular. And they will garotte you with your cordless mouse (don't ask how, it's a freaking ninja) until you accept to follow your dreams.

Remember.

Ninjaaaaaa.

Psst, you missed one ^.~

Go make an indie game. There's a few places out there that are little niche corners that you can get in on a small design team of 3-5 people to work on a low budget game.

One I worked on used unity to create a simplified MMORPG. The gameplay's a bit grindy, but at least I can guarantee the writing's good XD

Low budget doesn't necessarily mean bad, it just means you won't get paid much. You likely will get to work from home, however, and it's a good way to get some experience, and most of them don't even care so much if you don't have experience to start with.

It's unfortunate, then, that I'm not currently in a position to work from home right now, or I'd be working on another indie game or three to ensure I had more experience under my belt, but, given the situation I'm in, I've been forced to attempt to move things along quicker than I had first intended.

For most other people, you probably won't have the same set of ridiculous circumstances I have to wade through, so can probably spend a good year or two on indie development to get all the experience you could ever want.

Just be careful, indie game developers are also notorious for not paying, be cautious during contract negotiations and avoid anyone who hasn't at least talked to a bank or investors to get some sort of start up funding. If they say "You'll get paid off our profits", then it's probably never going to ship in the first place, and if it does... well, make sure you have it in writing, and signed, that they owe you for it.

Anyway, it's a good place to start, to go along with all the other wonderful information that RiotVeonneth provided!



EDIT: Oh, derp! I forgot one too!

Another good place to start is... Youtube! If you're looking at writing scripts, voice acting, or anything along those lines, you can set up a youtube channel and do just that. And unlike many options, they pay you to do it.

I've got a friend who does this themselves, and as soon as my ear clears up enough to put headphones on, I'm planning on collaborating with them on a project they're working on. It should help them get some needed attention to their channel, and I'll be able to point at it and say "Yep, 300,000 views, right there, that I wrote.".




Note also that experience is defined as such:

In short, you get it by getting your hands dirty and making some messy mistakes. Generally companies prefer you to have made the majority of your worst mistakes in college (I know I did... eep!) and in smaller projects, before they trust you with something big.

There's a big difference between knowing how to do something, and actually going through the motions of doing it when working with other people.

Regardless, hopefully that helps someone out here a little more ^.^

Actually Varus is a knee deformity..and an archer. So he's a meme reference. Varys is the character in the show (minor spelling difference, yes, but I believe it was the first one being referenced).

As someone who was told that I was qualified for the position I applied for, but due the the sheer number of applicants was cut. (Two weeks ago)

(Side note: Funny enough, my resume has actually improved quite a bit since it was submitted a couple months ago, with a few points I neglected to bring up as additions during the interview, since I was caught up in this sweet interview.)

Anyway, the question.

Any idea what kind of time frame I should wait before reapplying? I'm planning on two months, so 5 more seven more weeks.