👋 Hello Jimmy! Thank you so much for being here and sharing your insights with the Work With Indies community!
Hello everyone I’m Jimmy and I’m the Community Manager for nDreams. We’re an award-winning VR developer and publisher behind titles such as Shooty Fruity, Phantom: Covert Ops, Far Cry VR, and the upcoming PlayStation VR exclusive, Fracked.
I’m probably the best evidence you could hope for that ANYONE can work in games. I made the transition from a Vehicle Technician for Ford to an in-studio Community Manager (without any formal marketing training). I’m really happy to be here to answer your questions!
Personal links:
☑️ CV That Got Me Shortlisted for the Role
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🤔 Okay, to start things off, how have the past three months with nDreams felt so far?Would you say, like a dream 👀 ? - Katherine
It has honestly been really great. I've joined during a very strange time in the world. I thought being onboarded remotely, and working almost exclusively remotely for the whole three months, would be weird. But it just hasn't been. I've been working closely with Kerry, who is our Head of Communications, and from interview to onboarding, to my three-month appraisal, I've only actually seen her in person once.
🤔 Hi, Jimmy! I do community management for the Virtual Athletics League server. You might be familiar with us—we’re an esports league that hosts the Summer and Winter Games for the VR community. Right now, I am a Communications Intern—but when I look into community management roles at other companies, they usually require 3+ years of experience. Should I still apply if I have limited experience? How did you transition to a Community Manager from being a technician at Ford? - Beckita
Hey Beckita! I am familiar with Virtual Athletics, nice of you to stop by! I would definitely still apply, regardless of the years of experience they ask for.
I personally spent a lot of my free time (and a lot of unpaid work) doing little projects that helped me build up a portfolio for about a year before I got this role. I actually worked a lot through Twitter connections to get freelance and part-time positions helping out an indie studio that was pre-funding. Having that on my CV helped SO MUCH. It showed I was willing to put work in on my own time to achieve my goals.
Of course, freelance or volunteer work isn't for everyone, but you're already getting that experience where you are in a way. Keep your eyes out for more opportunities as they come up and don't second guess what you can offer. [.c-highlight]If you've got the skills, studios will quickly overlook the box-ticking exercise of "have they got x years behind them."[.c-highlight] I know some of the people nDreams were interviewing and I honestly don't know how I won out in the end. [.c-highlight]Sometimes culture fit is more important than years served.[.c-highlight]
You also don't have to go in at the Community Manager level. A lot of bigger studios have both Junior and Associate Community Manager positions which are more tailored made as entry-level positions. You might just be responsible for focusing on a singular title, working under a Community Manager or Communications Manager. Keep your options open!
🤔 To follow up with this, how'd you know it was the right role (and company) for you? - Katherine
I'd always been interested in working in games but left school without any real idea of how I could make that happen. It took ten years, but most of that time was writing games careers off as a pipe dream. I first started in freelance games journalism and content marketing (making videos, podcasts, editorials, etc).
The thing that made me focus on Community Management was taking part in a community event for 505 Games back when CONTROL launched. The Brand Community Manager reached out to me at the time and basically, the event was all about cosplay. We ended up meeting at London Comic-Con to take photos for their social channel, and it was just a brilliant experience of feeling valued as a player, especially because I was a relative nobody. I wanted to give people that feeling. I wanted to be in a position where I could make players feel listened to.
So we kept in touch, and over the next few years, I worked in the background to try and make that happen. When I actually got the role, she reached out to me and we spent about four hours on the phone (she gave SO MUCH great advice for my first few months in the role - from what tools and reporting software to use, to how to handle player feedback).
I can't stress the importance of networking enough! Most, and I'll say that with an asterisk, people in the games industry are SO DAMN THANKFUL to work in the industry. We know how much of a lottery it can seem and how impossible it can be. If we can help people break-in, we will. My personal CM senpai was Antonela Pounder– amazing lady, look her up on Twitter.
You can also read a recap of her career path to the Director of Community at 505 Games. There is a lot of useful info here about their journey into the industry.
In terms of why nDreams seemed the best fit, I was working at an industry recruiter at the time (Aardvark Swift) and nDreams were a client. I was able to see how positive their culture was, not just for work/life balance but also for mental wellness and personal development. I just fell in love with what they were offering. I couldn't believe I even got shortlisted, to be honest.
Not only the culture but VR as a technology and as an outlet for entertainment I find so fascinating. It's one of the very few areas of video games that is still considered a niche and there's so much innovation happening. In my eyes, nDreams are right at the forefront of that (and I wanted to be too).
[.c-insight]💡 Editor's Note: Got it! Work for a recruiter (or an indie job board 😉) to get to meet and know the people and culture to identify great places to work, then jump in on their opportunities as soon as they present them. - Nate[.c-insight]
🤔 Do you think LinkedIn is an effective platform for networking with devs in the game industry? I have been told that Twitter is a better platform for connecting with people from game dev companies—do you agree? I don’t have a personal Twitter account, but I do have a LinkedIn. It’s pretty tough to get people to respond to you though, which is understandable. - Beckita
I would 100% (and others might disagree) promote networking on Twitter over LinkedIn as a comms professional. LinkedIn is much more prominent for senior staff members and game dev such as programming, but I've never really found it valuable as a way to network for specific marketing-related purposes. LinkedIn is more the playground of recruiters and department heads.
Twitter on the other hand has given me a direct route to many of my freelance games journalism gigs (by reaching out to Feature Editors), and it was also how I managed to network with other CMs and marketing people. We love Twitter, and you can guarantee it's always open in at least one of our windows.
I actually worked a lot through Twitter connections to get a freelance and part-time position helping out an indie studio that was pre-funding. [.c-highlight]Having that on my CV helped SO MUCH. It showed I was willing to put work in on my own time to achieve my goals.[.c-highlight]
[.c-insight]💡 Editor's Note: LinkedIn is a must from my perspective. While it may not be utilized as much or be a great networking tool in indie games, you'll want to have a profile and keep it up to date as it is the #1 destination recruiters and hiring managers go to after reviewing your application materials to learn more about you.[.c-insight]
🤔 Love this. But, can you give us a little more detail on how you worked through Twitter connections? What was that actually like? What were your tactics? Maybe, can you walk us through a successful example? - Nate
So I basically cleansed my personal Twitter account, getting rid of all of the brands and celebrities and other related pages that wouldn't help me achieve my career goals (if this is too daunting, you could always make a second alt account). I just found that I'd open Twitter and get lost doom-scrolling. None of it was helpful. Knowing David Beckham was going to the beach was of no direct benefit. To get my foot in the door of comms and games journalism, I started searching studios I liked, publishers, news outlets, and just started following the brand accounts, as well as cross-referencing with LinkedIn to get the names of people who worked at those studios/publishers.
If you go to a brand/company page on LinkedIn, you can go to 'people' and get a list of registered employees. I got the names of people who had the job titles CM, Senior Marketing Manager, Communications Manager, etc., and just bulked out my following with people who were doing the job I wanted to do. I took note of what they posted, the content they were sharing, etc. It was by following our Head of Communications on Twitter that I heard about the vacancy for my role!
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[.c-insight]💡 I would also like to note to people that if you visit someone's LinkedIn page, they will get a notification that you did haha so if you don't want that to happen, don't go directly to their pages 😉 - Shelby[.c-insight]
🤔 Hey Jimmy, thank you for sharing your experience with us! For the past 6 years, I have been working as player support lead in the gaming industry, covering some CM duties but I've never had the title of 'CM' before. It really is my dream to make that switch, where would you suggest I start? Do you feel a portfolio is a must? Also, were you proactively reaching out to companies or how did you find these freelance projects? - Morgenrotten
Hey Morgenrotten! You have already got more direct industry experience than I had, so this is an amazing start! I honestly don't think never having the role of 'CM' will hamper your chances, as long as you can show from your CV that you have the skills to do the role. If you look at my intro post at the top of this thread, I've attached the CV that got me shortlisted. It opens with a breakdown of skills, so before a recruiter even gets to my work history, they know what I can do technically which ticks off the requirements on their job description.
As for portfolios, I think they can be really helpful, especially if you're joining a smaller studio whereas CM you'll be expected to also know some content marketing or asset creation. Having somewhere online to showcase that podcast you made, or that video you edited will make you stand out.
My content marketing and editing (video/image/audio) are entirely self-taught just from spending time with YouTube videos. Adobe products like PhotoShop and Premiere Pro are pretty much universally accepted as industry-standard software, but they are expensive. If you're in education, take advantage of student pricing, or use alternatives.
Free Alternatives
As for CM roles, I was actively reaching out when I saw vacancies. Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of "no, we're going with someone else," conversations, but each interview made me better prepared for the next one. As they were for the same roles at different studios, the questions didn't really vary. [.c-highlight]I went from being a nervous wreck in my first interview to being pretty confident (not natural for me) in the latter few.[.c-highlight] The role I got through Twitter at the indie studio was through networking. It was a volunteer role that had been mentioned to a mutual connection (who was already in the industry) who passed on my details. NETWORKING! Can't recommend that enough.
🤔 Can you share 2-3 bullet points of those Antonela tips that have proven valuable to you in the role so far? - Nate
The advice I got from Antonela I probably couldn't condense into a few words. I took A LOT of notes. But I will do my best. The first bit of advice was "don't block people." There are of course exceptions to this rule and please don't feel bad or concerned about reporting an abusive or toxic account, but in most cases, muting is just as effective. She had a specific incident where someone she had blocked early on in her career saw they were getting a reaction, and they decided to take it on themselves to ruin all the brand channels across every social platform for the next month. It got personal and was escalated to HR. Sometimes, people just need to be put in the quiet corner.
The second was don't worry about doing the math. A lot of people think the CM role is just spending your day on social media. It's not. A lot of the time is spent thinking about marketing strategy, writing sentiment reports to share with the rest of the team so we can see "what are players talking about" "what do we need to make clearer in the next marketing beat.". Your reports influence marketing decisions like what ends up in the next trailer, what do people want to see. You'll be spending just as much time in PowerPoint and Excel. Maths isn't my strong suit, and it comes into the role more than I'd like.
Thankfully, for people like me, there are sites that help with that sort of thing now - https://percentagecalculator.net/ to help with reporting. There are also really handy websites like https://boardreader.com/ and https://socialblade.com/ which can help you benchmark growth and performance against competitors and see what people are saying about your game.
The trick with reporting is knowing what metrics are valuable, and you don’t have to come to that conclusion by yourself. What do the Brand Director and Communications Head value? Is it wishlisting, is it clickthrough, is it views? Don’t think you need to be excelling on every front. What is valuable to you as a team?
🤔 How many jobs did you apply for before landing this role? Any thoughts as to why this application was successful where the others weren't? Did you change/improve anything throughout your applications? - Katherine
I probably had about six or so interviews for the CM position before landing my role at nDreams. They were varied, from self-publishers to indies and a first-party PlayStation studio. The more I had, the more confident I was in my answers. The role is similar across most studios (roughly speaking), so the line of questioning during interviews about what I could bring to the role and what it would involve was fairly similar too.
I felt my confidence in what I was saying grow. With that confidence, I found I was getting further in the process. Out of all the studios I interviewed for, and this sounds incredibly biased now, but I wanted the role at nDreams the most. It excited me the most and Kerry and DC (who I interviewed with) really painted an exciting road map for the future. I was thrilled when I got the call. Yes, I cried.
🤔 Real quick, Jimmy: I recently graduated in May and I'm job hunting in Game Design. I am in the middle of an interview gauntlet with a company, but other than that, I'm not having much luck with finding a job. In the meanwhile, I'm working on side projects in Unity and Unreal. Then there's the thought about being unemployed for a specific amount of time in case I don't get a job offer.
I am wondering about your thoughts about the idea of working on video game projects to add to my resume as justification for the unemployment gap in my resume. If that's not a sound idea, how long would you believe is acceptable for a recent graduate student like myself to be unemployed while job hunting in the video game industry? - Ethan
Hey Ethan! I wouldn't worry about a period of unemployment after recently graduating. We all know the games careers market is a tough grind sometimes, and people RARELY walk into a role without breaking a sweat. Being able to show what you did with that time, as long as it isn't putting you in financially dire straits, is more valuable than worrying about any employment gap. Give the recruiter a kickass portfolio to flick through, get involved in game jams, dare them not to hire someone who puts out consistent work to a high standard 😉
🤔 Can you tell us a little about the Kickstart roles available at nDreams? Do you have any advice for someone wanting to apply for one of the roles? - Nate
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Our Kickstart roles are all still open, although I think we have several interested parties currently interviewing for the Junior QA role. That is not to say we wouldn't like to hear from more of you as we are going through a fantastic period of growth at the moment. We're currently working in partnership with PlayStation on a PlayStation VR exclusive title (Fracked - https://youtu.be/tylD3Ztarb8), and some of the projects in the pipeline for the future are just...wow. If you've got the right skills and fit our culture of inclusiveness and industry betterment, we'd love to hear from you! With this being a talk about Comms, we're actually hiring for an Internal Comms Manager to work alongside me!
As I'll bang the drum for the dev team externally, and be a conduit for the community to reach out to, you'll be making sure that communications between our departments are running smoothly and that everyone is up to date on the latest NDA secrets. Even if you don't think you tick all the boxes, we are very much an employer that hires for ability, we don't gate-keep strict talent guidelines (if we think you can grow into the role, we'll provide the training to make sure you succeed).
🤔 Hello Jimmy, I have a question for you. Do you think it is a good idea to join a studio in another country for a first job in the videogame industry? - Shodanel
Hey Shodanel! I wouldn't rule out a role in a country outside the one you reside in. Sadly, a lot of people find they have to go where the roles are in the games industry. As someone based in the North, I had to be open to traveling for work or moving my family just due to how centralised in the South the games industry is in the UK. It all depends on how comfortable you are with the change.
I actually interviewed a programmer who moved from the UK to Amsterdam to join the awesome team at Guerrilla just over a year ago. He had fantastic insight into what the process was like and the things he hadn't expected that happened to him that you might find useful. You can read that here.
