I'm moving to London! Does anyone have any contacts?

IceCliff

Hey guys :)

So I'm moving to London at the end of this month and while talking to another member from makegames (I don't want to say their name, as I don't know their handle here and I don't know if they'd appreciate me saying their real name or not) I mentioned I have to do the painful process of searching for jobs when I get there. They suggested I ask if anyone has any contacts here as this is a pretty large community.

I've started looking online myself but it's pretty difficult to get noticed from the other side of the globe through a little job posting.

I made Proxy recently:
http://gamejolt.com/games/proxy/221194

I don't know how much that is worth or whether that is unimpressive. I've also made a bunch of websites here and there using angular, jquer, etc. I just graduated from university (well course completed, I'm going to miss my graduation because I don't want to sit around waiting til march to get a job).

If anyone feels this just isn't the place to post this please let me know and I'll take it don't pronto.

roguecode

Speak to @CiNiMoD
http://makegamessa.com/discussion/4487/life-at-a-aaa-studio

LexAquillia

Contact UKIE (www.ukie.org.uk)

Elyaradine

Are you looking for a job there and asking for feelers, or have you already found one and are just looking for other people with game-dev interests?

Do you have/need a work visa?

IceCliff

Thanks for the suggestions @roguecode and @LexAquillia

@Elyaradine, I'm going to be looking for a job. I have British citizenship and have planned to move for some time. Now that I have finished university I am going to stay with my uncle there :) He's okay with me staying there for a while until I get on my feet but I'm trying to see if I can't organize some interviews

CiNiMoD

@IceCliff Hey, sorry, I just saw this now. Is your goal to get into the games industry? If yes, then London probably isn't the best place. Check out Leamington Spa.

a) Its significantly cheaper
b) There are tons of indie studios up that way

The best bet for finding a job is getting in contact with recruiters. One I can highly recommend is this amazing lady. She works for a company called CV Bay and does the gaming side of things. She ultimately got me my job at Rare.

If you're indifferent about industries, I found jobsite to be a great place to upload your CV and apply for a couple of roles.

Good luck :)

P.S London is crap! Rent is crazy, salaries aren't that much better than up north, and people are just generally friendlier up north :D

IceCliff

Thanks for the nice reply @CiNiMoD :)

I'm definitely staying in London because that is where my family and support structure is.

I'll definitely add that recruiter on linkedin.

P.S I love London, ill fite u :P

Jason

The best place to start is with the specialist recruitment agents. Try to get an interview and then they have all the quick contacts. The bigger ones are:

datascope.co.uk
amiqus.com
opmjobs.com
aswift.com

Then you can also browse

www.mcvuk.com/jobs
www.gamesindustry.biz

Good luck!

lloydizle

I'm from the UK and being in South Africa for nearly two years now.

What I'll say is this. Getting into the gaming industry there is tough. Since you graduated as well, it's best to look for junior positions (maybe give QA a try).

Along with that, most gaming companies are not in London. Places like Manchester or West Midlands are your best bet. London is an extremely expensive place to live as well.

If you are interested in jobs in the UK (and not just London), try this site:

https://www.gamesjobsdirect.com/jobbrowser/uk-jobs/

Hope this helps!

IceCliff

Thanks for the recruitment suggestions guys :)

As I said my support structure and family is in London so I'll definitely be staying there. If the game dev scene isn't too big there yet it's a bit unfortunate but I thought I'd make a post here just to try my luck.

lloydizle

IceCliff said:

Thanks for the recruitment suggestions guys :)

As I said my support structure and family is in London so I'll definitely be staying there. If the game dev scene isn't too big there yet it's a bit unfortunate but I thought I'd make a post here just to try my luck.

The main reason it's not so big is cause it's really expensive. Yeah you have some known companies like Splash Damage and stuff, but they're based in Kent, which is "technically" not part of London. So that's why most gaming companies are not in London.

But yeah, the cost of living in London is high. The cost of owning a business in London is A LOT higher. Renting a building is extremely expensive and tax is just the worse in the UK. I used to get taxed by 20% and that's not even including National Insurance and I didn't even run a business!

Jason

I'd disagree, there are tons of game development companies in London.
It's definitely the biggest in the UK, followed by Brighton. There are loads of big publishers, I worked for Eidos (now Square-Enix) and Disney, Capcom was over the road, Sony and Microsoft are there and have internal teams - and that's not even considering the tons of smaller dev's.

Also try go to some game dev meet ups: https://www.meetup.com/London-Indie-Game-Developers/
This won't be where you find your job but you never know and it will allow you to figure out who is where. You'll definitely meet people from the bigger teams attending.

TheFuntastic

So I actually just moved to London two weeks ago. Finding a placement here has been tough, even with years of experience. In general my sense was that if you don't have recognisable games to your name people don't pay much attention (and why should they, when there are many people that do). Then again it sounds like you'd be looking for a junior role so you're more likely to be judged on the merits of your portfolio. Personally I think London is a great choice, it has the biggest dev scene in terms of meet ups and networking (according to my other game dev friends who live here anyway). Also there is a fair amount of work, though a lot is focused on social/casual games, especially if using Unity. Being based in London you could also conceivably commute to Guildford or Brighton if you had to, though that gets expensive real fast.

I'll echo what others have said. Best bet is to speak to a recruiter. Based on my recent experiences, I can highly recommend Amiqus who helped me find my placement. Skillsearch are another I'm aware of. There is also the London Unity User Group on meetup. (Sorry, I have a Unity bias if that's not what you are looking for).

lloydizle

TheFuntastic said:

So I actually just moved to London two weeks ago. Finding a placement here has been tough, even with years of experience. In general my sense was that if you don't have recognisable games to your name people don't pay much attention (and why should they, when there are many people that do). Then again it sounds like you'd be looking for a junior role so you're more likely to be judged on the merits of your portfolio. Personally I think London is a great choice, it has the biggest dev scene in terms of meet ups and networking (according to my other game dev friends who live here anyway). Also there is a fair amount of work, though a lot is focused on social/casual games, especially if using Unity. Being based in London you could also conceivably commute to Guildford or Brighton if you had to, though that gets expensive real fast.

I'll echo what others have said. Best bet is to speak to a recruiter. Based on my recent experiences, I can highly recommend Amiqus who helped me find my placement. Skillsearch are another I'm aware of. There is also the London Unity User Group on meetup. (Sorry, I have a Unity bias if that's not what you are looking for).

Just saw this thread now after a while.

How's everything going in London? Also, where in London are you? I use to be in Blackheath, South East London.

If it's also any help, try to talk to lecturers in universities. There's loads in universities in London that do game development courses and a lot of the lecturers there work in game development or used to do hame development.

If you ever have a chance, pop down to University of Westminster (Cavendish Campus) it's where i studied and there are some lecturers there who can also offer a lot of advice with game Development in the UK.

You'll probably need to take the underground Northern line towards Warren Street to get there though. But if you're still looking around, try heading there and see if you can talk to a lecturer. If you can, they will probably be glad to help.