Professional Skills for the Digital Age The Ultimate Guide to Success in the Game Industry & Life
“So really for me it was anything I could be involved in that would expand my circle of people. It could be as simple as going to watch a movie and talking to people, or going to talks and talking to the people on the panel as well as the other students there that I didn’t know.”
I’ve been making games since I was 12 years old when I thought I could design a game for Sony to top Pokemon; the game was entitled Pokemon Killer, it never came to market. After high school I went to Full Sail University where I got a Bachelors degree in Game Design and Development. Right out of school I started working as a programmer for Megatouch Games, a casual game studio in Philadelphia. After a year I became a designer at the company, eventually ending up as Lead Designer shipping 50+ titles at the company. While in Philly, I helped run the IGDA chapter, as well as co-founding VGI Philly and Philly Game Dev. I then accepted a job as a Technical Producer at id Software in Dallas. Where I helped finish up Rage, and am currently working on the next big thing. I also help run the Dallas Chapter of the IGDA as well as GameDevDrinkUp. I’m also a rugby nut, so if you see a guy at a game conference with a rugby jersey on, that is probably me.
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Although Grant used his networking skills to great success when launching his career he will be the first to tell you it doesn’t stop once you get your first job, it’s only beginning. Although He has achieved success in a short period of time he continues to be involved as a Conference Associate at GDC as well as being active in his local IGDA and Game Dev Drink Up events. All of us here at Networking Nerds applaud his efforts and admire his willingness to give back to his industry aswell as his support and enthusiasm in encouraging others to reach for their dreams.
The following are excerpts from an Interview Grant gave NN in 2013 –
NN: So you decided to get into the game industry by learning to program, and you’re now producing games. Tell me, is that where you expected to end up in the long run? Was the programming just a means to an end, is what you do now what you envisioned yourself doing in games when you set out to become a part of the industry?
GS: I’m doing more of what I originally envisioned. I’ve only been in the industry for four and a half years, still getting credits, but to me it’s all experience working towards the ultimate goal – having done everything, I’m a well-rounded person, so if I want to start my own studio or whatever, I can.
It’s funny, the first business card I had – I think it was a conversation I had with you, and you had said make sure you put what you want to do on your business card, don’t put that you’re a student. I remember sitting there going ‘Well I want to be a programmer, I want to be a designer, and I want to be a producer.’ So I put programmer, designer, and producer on there, and I’ve been lucky to have done all those jobs. To me, programming wasn’t so much just an in, but I understood that it was the main language for creating video games over any other form.
Obviously there’s art and music and, but I knew that I had the design chops to make games, but I didn’t think I could get in that way. But I had a passion for programming, and I wanted to learn more, and I knew if I could speak the language of programmers it would only help me in my career. So in some ways, yes, it was a means to an end, but more importantly it was something I considered necessary. Pretty much anybody that tells me they want to make games I tell them they should learn to program, at least at a scripting level, because without programming you don’t have games.
NN: That totally makes sense. The more you know about the process and how things fit together, the easier it’s going to be for you to do your job. You were a pretty active student on campus, I knew you long before you graduated, and you did a good job of establishing a good reputation for yourself up front. What sort of things were important to you as a student that you tried to do outside of the curriculum in order to st yourself up for success when you graduated?
GS: I’m a huge history buff, and one thing that’s always fascinated me is magnetic personalities and how they stand out. In high school I realized that a lot of these generals and presidents all had something that made them stick out. They were charismatic. A lot of guys had weird features, they’d carry riding crops or things like that. Actually in high school I carried some things that made people remember me. That kind of set up in my mindset how to get people to know who I am and get people to help me professionally in my career.
So things that were really important to me while I was at Full Sail was getting to know students that were really in all programs, especially in programs that I knew that would eventually benefit me and my team in final project, and myself in my career. So there were several recording students that I got in good with that were really interested in game music, and now currently working in gaming. There were artists I got to know, and really just anybody that had an interest or passion for games – I wanted to have something to do with those people. Regardless of if they were a teacher or student.
That was a great thing for me. Any way I could find a way to get to know people that were outside of my class, I would latch onto. So I would go to the LAN parties, the IGDA meetings, the simulation club meetings. I would work with the people from different departments on Invisible Children when it first came around, and getting people involved with that. And then I balanced it by playing rugby while I was there, to balance myself away from getting to know people that were just involved in the industry and the school.
So really for me it was anything I could be involved in that would expand my circle of people. It could be as simple as going to watch a movie and talking to people, or going to talks and talking to the people on the panel as well as the other students there that I didn’t know. That allowed us at the end of final project, me and my group were able to go into classes and recruit people to be testers that we had met. I think that was what made me know on campus, the fact that I dedicated myself wholeheartedly to the game industry while I was there.
NN: What was your key to your success in meeting these people, what was your approach?
GS: I would say luck is a big one, being in the right place at the right time. I’ll share a story from my first GDC, which kind of encompasses all of these things. One of the main reasons I wanted to get into the industry was after I played a game called Deus Ex, it had a huge impact on me as a person. I started making games and taking games more seriously after I played Deus Ex. The mind behind Deus Ex was Warren Spector, and my first GDC I had read that he was going to be a part of an all day session where speakers just come out of the crowd and speak.
I knew he was going to be in that room, so I went to the session and set down and was looking at something in the booklet, and somebody sat down next to me and it was Warren Spector. I was just trying to figure out how to approach the situation, but you know it was just like meeting anybody. So I just introduced myself, and said ‘Hi I’m Grant Shonkwiler, I’m a student at Full Sail, and I wanted to let you know that the games you’ve worked on have had a huge impact on my life, and I wanted to thank you for that, and if you have a few minutes I wanted to talk to you about some stuff.’I was lucky that he is one of the nicest people I’ve ever met in the industry, and someone who I still consider a friend, and talks to me whenever I have a question – he’ll answer me pretty quickly. That kind of bolstered me instantly to realize everyone that works in the game industry is just another person, and they’re as excited about the industry as you should be. If you can approach with your passion and obviously be civil and talk to them about themselves, that’s usually my opening thing – if someone is an industry luminary is I’ll ask them a question about themselves, not necessarily about their games but maybe about their career or life or family. If you say thank you, and ‘I appreciate what you’ve done,’ or ‘your game had an impact on me in this way,’ or start discussing a mechanic with them, generally they’ll be pretty open to talking to you. So that was my approach, if I see somebody I’ll just go up and introduce myself, regardless of if I know who they are or not.NN: That’s great, and it sounds like you did your homework too though. You knew who Warren Spector was by sight because you took the time to research him.GS: Yeah, I would say there’s always people in this industry that you’ll run into at conferences, and you should know who these people are and their careers. I just approach them as human, part of that comes from my music background where I’d work with bands who were a lot bigger than the small town bands that I was used to – and they were just people. If you treated like they were people and not just Gods, they’d treat you like a person.
NN: I say that all the time, if you carry yourself like a professional, people will treat you like that too.
GS: Yeah, you always need to be professional. Imagine how you would want to be treated in that situation. I’ve talked to guys who are clearly very busy people, and you need to be conscious of when to leave a conversation as well. You never want a conversation to end by their publicist or PR person or them wanting to leave. You want to say your things and then let them move on. That’s how I approach it.