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For those who have chosen, or been chosen, to look for employment outside of the game industry, please remember one thing: People outside the game industry have no idea how difficult it is to make games. They often think it’s easy, and that as such you have little skill You have to show them you do

Most of them, even technical engineering folks, don’t even know it is possible to have thousands of players playing simultaneously across the world, while rendering that world at 60 frames per second on each players’ personal unique hardware configuration. Their minds get blown when you tell them.

This may be hard to believe, but I have had to tell experts in other computer fields that Unreal was a thing that existed. And that it runs beautifully, real time. Want to know why the LED walls in the Mandelorian were such a shock to Hollywood? Because they literally didn’t know it existed. Nuts!

This has happened super recently to me as well, with Godot. Folks outside the game industry think it is some small open source thing that has a niche impact. Then you tell them Slay the Spire 2 sold 3 million copies in their first week. Again, minds get blown.

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That isn't to say it is bad that those folks do not know. There are dozens of things I do not know about from other industries! I love learning about them. But, it is on you to tell those folks outside the game industry what your skillset is. Because they have no idea of your capabilities.

I recently had a conversation about this with someone who works in telecom. They hadn't even seen Fortnite's in-game concerts, and so they had no idea how incredibly technically demanding such game events are.

I've been hitting this wall looking for Project & Program Management roles outside of games. I can't convince anyone that if I can herd a group of crazy-brained creatives to collectively build something more complex than the software needed to go to space, that I am capable of managing their web app

Game engines and realtime experiences are more difficult than rocket science, and I once worked with folks from NASA so I think I'm allowed to say that.