The Hunt

It’s 9 PM and I just got back home from work. This is one of the good days – on Monday, I wrapped things up at 10 PM, and on Friday, midnight caught me at the office still. But I am doing something I love – I’m officially involved in creating video games, finally! Does this, however, worth throwing away my life?

To back up and summarize the odds and ends of my adventure, my job hunt has ended – I landed a job as Assistant Project Manager at a Romanian video games studio that works for one of THE publishers in this industry. I chose this position over a design one based on a simple reasoning (back then): as a manager, I can step in and shape the design process, but as a video game designer, I would not be able to help up managing a project. And since my past experience is heavily centered on management, the choice seemed logical. 

So starting October 1st 2009, I moved to Bucharest and got my hands dirty from day one. No training, no "Hey, I’m X and I am going to be helping the management for this project" , no "Here’s the restroom". [...]

This is the story of a Romanian game designer wannabe. It is filled with passion, true love, action, excitment and drama. There will be unexpected turns of events, races, things that blow up, and cake. At the end of it all, there will be cake.

Or at least I hope so. The Hunt – my hunt for a game design job somewhere in the Northern part of Europe – began together with this year’s summer. Some people plan holidays; I started to plan my way of getting my dream job, stirred up by a passionate game designer who, unfortunatelly for him, showed me the design tests that are given to candidates at Spellborn NV. He didn’t find any more peace from me, ever since. But he gave me wings, so he needs to live with the consequences of his actions.

The Hunt began with an application at Spellborn NV. I dare not speculate the spiritual implication of what followed, but in few words, Spellborn announced it’s bancrupcy only days after my application. The outcome was a broken hearted hunter (that would be me), but at least one with confidence untouched. Apparently, this time it wasn’t me (or if it was, I don’t [...]

 Why: This was my first true game dev application and my first true grasping of the idea that this is what I want to do in life. I was motivated by El Drijver, lead game designer for The Chronicles of Spellborn, who gave me his regular game design test because I asked him to (ok, forced him to  ), and later pressured me to fill it in because we were both curious about my abilities. Writing for this test was the prime thing that made me realize how fun it must be to be involved in creating a game, especially as a game designer.

How:  I sent an open application e-mail to jobs@ tcos.com, containing a CV, a letter of intent (also known as a Cover Letter) and a short e-mail stating my willingness to openly apply for any job at Spellborn that the team would trust me to do.

Result: Rejected – because I am a Romanian citizen and as such, I require additional paperwork [...]