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[DreamspikeStudios]

About Us

Hello, aspiring game developers! We are Dreamspike Studios, a small strategy game development company. We specialize in making unique turn-based games and have released a number of titles in the last couple of years. You can find the review of our latest game, Bronze, in the February 2011 issue of PC Gamer (that’s issue #210).

Following the success of Bronze, we are looking to expand our team. Specifically, we are looking to add one individual to serve as the Lead flash/php/internet programmer for one of our upcoming titles.

Who We Are Looking For

1. Do you have extensive programming experience? Do you know how to program games for the internet, using Flash or PHP? Are you comfortable creating or using an existing graphics engine to display beautiful 2D art?

2. Do you have a real, steady job so that you are NOT dependent on making games as your only means of income? Everyone at our company has a full-time job away from games. This allows us to take the time and make great games without worrying about how we will pay the bills next month. In addition, we are not trying to make quick buck by pumping out derivative casual titles. Having said all of that, you must be able to work on games for at least 20 hours per week.

3. Can you handle working on a project for a long time? Can you take guidance from and work with individuals who have been doing this for years? We start games and we finish them. An average game takes us 1.5 years to complete.


This position is not for everyone. Please consider whether you enjoy game programming enough to commit at least 20 hours a week for several years. This is game development, so there is no guarantee that you will make a single dollar doing this. The only thing we can guarantee is that you will work on something meaningful and thousands of people will be exposed to what you create.


Your qualifications:

1. You must be over the age of 21 and have a college degree.
2. Most communication between team members will be conducted through email and detailed design documents, so you must feel comfortable with written communication.
3. You must be a top-notch programmer. You must be comfortable learning new concepts and technologies. You will be the programming “expert” and main coder on a project. Can you handle that responsibility?

If you are interested, please submit:

1. A resume that includes your educational background, jobs you’ve held (please include all non-game related jobs), and all game-related experience and projects you’ve been involved in.

2. A cover letter. Please describe the languages, game engines, and other tools you are comfortable using. Please describe your experience with them. Finally, please indicate why you want to work with us.

Email both documents to us at:  [email protected]

We look forward to hearing from you!

  
 

[siiseli]

Saying it's game development doesn't mean you don't have to pay. From what I see one needs to be rather qualified, who the hell with that qualification wants to work for free, or on the off-chance of "maybe getting paid"?

[DreamspikeStudios]

This is not a contract job. Therefore, compensation for all team members comes from profit generated by sales. Since it is difficult to predict the number of sales before a game is made, no empty promises are made. This is the nature of the games industry, and I agree that it is not for everyone. If you want to get paid, you get a real job. Then, make games in your free time and just enjoy the experience. That's our philosophy 

[BlueSweatshirt]

Game programmers are typically hired as in-house developers and have a consistent job with a salary or an hourly wage. Commission from sales is a possibility, although I've never heard of it, but it definitely would not be the main source of income.

By all means, go ahead with your philosophy! I doubt it will get you very far though, especially someone with those qualifications.

[Pishtaco]

Bronze was really neat. It's good to hear that it was a success for you, and that small strategy games can do well. I'm curious, how big is the company?

[Nix]

Looking for people to work for free (or for a cut of profits *cough*) is fine, but you shouldn't be treating it like a full blown job with strict requirements, resumes, cover letters etc. That just just seems very inappropriate for the the type of position that you are offering. Good luck with your search, regardless.

[Kramlack]

I understand your position on this but as everyone's saying, it's very unrealistic to try to get people of such a high caliber to work for you for free when they could be making (in an artists case), $200 and up on a single animation.

If you want people who will work for free, you're going to have to lower your standards.

[starsrift]

1. Do you have extensive programming experience? Do you know how to program games for the internet, using Flash or PHP? Are you comfortable creating or using an existing graphics engine to display beautiful 2D art?

Please consider whether you enjoy game programming enough to commit at least 20 hours a week for several years. This is game development, so there is no guarantee that you will make a single dollar doing this.

1. You must be over the age of 21 and have a college degree.
3. You must be a top-notch programmer. You must be comfortable learning new concepts and technologies. You will be the programming “expert” and main coder on a project. Can you handle that responsibility?

Get serious.

If you wanted me to use my very expensive education to create a server from scratch for you as well as clientside plug-ins to run in-browser, then at least we'd agree that you do need a "top-notch" programmer with a degree. But that still doesn't mean I code monkey a part-time job for free for "several years". I have bills to pay, among them student loans. If it was like 5 hours a week for "several years", maybe.

[raleigh]

Get serious.

QFT.

[LemonScented]

Hmmm. I'm not usually one to comment on openings for programmers in Unpaid Collaborations; there are certainly projects in which that sort of thing is applicable. But in this case, it seems to me that you need to decide wehther Dreamspike Studios is a business or not. You talk like it's a business - you've got reviews, talk about past success, and you have strict requirements for potential employees volunteers. But you don't seem to act like it's a business. A business would have taken the money from the previous successes, and used it to fund salaries so that you could have employees rather than volunteers.

Here's the thing: Someone with a college degree and enough technical expertise to act as a lead programmer will likely be able to command a pretty decent salary. If said area of expertise is in Flash/PHP/Internet programming (arguably the most sought-after skill set for a games programmer at this exact moment in time), they could be expecting to earn really quite a staggering salary. I don't understand why someone like that would commit 20 precious free hours a week to implementing someone else's design visions. Hell, someone like that probably couldn't commit to that even if they wanted to, since the contracts for their day-job would likely contain non-compete and intellectual property clauses which expressly forbid such things.

I guess I'm saying that you might want to consider tweaking your pitch to focus less on the required qualities of your dream volunteer, and focus more on explaining why you're doing what you do, why they should join you in that, and where you plan on taking the studio in the future. Good luck.

[Zaphos]

This is the nature of the games industry [...] If you want to get paid, you get a real job.

No, this is not the nature of the games industry ... the games industry does have real, paid jobs.

[Nix]

And that is increasingly true even in the indie sector. Posts like this really put me off

[Destral]

Seriously, for what you're asking for, you're definitely not offering anything even remotely appealing. We're way past the 'hey guys, come work in videogames, you won't get paid, but you'll have fun making games!' era.

[DreamspikeStudios]

To answer Pishtaco's question, Dreamspike Studios is a very small company. It's just 3 people. We all live in different parts of the world, but we are great friends and mesh well with each other. We also work with about 6+ contractors for things like music, art, and voices.

Alex Kutsenok
Dreamspike Studios

[BlueSweatshirt]

Your attempt at a typical "corporate presence"/"corporate PR" really isn't working right now. 

If you really want to get anyone to work for you, then it might be a good idea to actually respond to your criticisms and explain your position, etc etc.