Similarly, the most immersive games I’ve ever played were three text MUDs ( Aetolia, Imperian, and Lusternia), and these have roles you can take on as newbie mentors for new recruits to your class, PvP champions for guildmembers who were responsible for warping in to rescue a weaker player if they were ganked, treasurers for managing city finances, diplomats for negotiating trade/conflict deals with other nations, events managers for guilds, and city-wide activities or political decision-makers responsible for maintaining/changing the cultural direction of an organisation. Where did all the community jobs go? My first introduction to an immersive online world was a little known 3-D chatroom of the late ’90s called Cybertown, and I remember the most engaging thing about it was earning in-game currency by getting a job as a welcomer of new players to your virtual neighbourhood or as a block deputy organising events and moderating your street’s bulletin board or dozens of other community-focused jobs. It’s from long-time reader Avaera, and I’m embarrassed to say I’ve pulled it out of our email bin from last May: The next question is job-related too, in a slightly different way. It may not be glamorous or lucrative, but it looks a hell of a lot better on a resume than nothing in these lean times. Games like The Repopulation and City of Titans are by gamers, for gamers, and a lot of them are always looking for help, sometimes in return for profit sharing. If moving is out of the question and you really just want to work on an MMO, you could always consider donating your time to an indie studio. And frankly, you should.įor the community and human resources roles you’re looking at, you can often get noticed and picked up as a blogger or YouTuber, but that’s a crapshoot, and frankly it’s harder to get a paid gig as a blogger than at a game studio these days. If you’re a programmer, you can make so much more money without the crunch hours and layoff cycle working in a non-gaming industry. Artists and modellers are, too, of course, though those jobs are less likely to outlast the game’s launch. Programmers, on the other hand, are in significantly higher demand. Of course, that’s mostly for writing, producing, design, community, and QA roles, and those who can move and can afford the expense of living in high COL city should know that companies like Blizzard and Riot are nearly always hiring customer service and QA folks if you just want to get your foot in the door. And please note that with the exception of Austin, all of the places I just named are extremely expensive to live in, so even moving there and landing an entry-level on-location job may or may not be a ticket to the monies. This limits you if you’re unable to move to an online gaming mecca like San Francisco, LA, Seattle, San Diego, Austin, or DC. ![]() They’re great for extra cash in hard times and look good on a resume, but they are not a career. There are studios willing to hire contracted writing, community, and QA folks from afar - ArenaNet and BioWare have both been known to do that, for example - but those are usually short-term contracts that do not lead to long-term employment. The hard reality is that location is extremely important to the larger MMO studios (and even to some of the indies consider that City State Entertainment only recently began taking on select remote employees). Then you’re virtually assured a position at ArenaNet eventually. The recession and recovery has been very bad for us. (Unless you’re a Guild Wars 2 columnist at MOP. Seriously, I love MMOs, and I love devs and players and games, but this is not a good industry right now. My skill set largely revolves around project management and people management, so I don’t know what I could work toward doing in the MMO world. What I was hoping for was perhaps to glean some of your great knowledge of the MMO circles to perhaps provide some direction, some hope that I may still be able to get there some day. I have recently had to leave the industry to do what’s best for my family, but my passion goes unfulfilled: I never got to work on an MMO. I am limited in that I cannot leave my current location, but I still want to try to work with the MMO industry. ![]() I grew up, went to college and eventually got into the video game industry proper where I worked in QA. I have always been a huge fan of MMOs, since the original days of EverQuest. ![]() The first question is an oldie but goodie that arrived in our inbox recently: Today, we’re reintroducing our general MMO advice column, here named Ask Mo: the column where you ask Mo questions, and he… lets me answer them for him because he doesn’t talk, see.
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