Colin McDonald: 30 Years in the gaming industry

Colin McDonald has been involved in the gaming industry for over 30 years and being able to watch an interview of him talking to fellow students was an interesting and informative experienced.

Right from the beginning he made something very clear to me: despite how massive and established the industry has become, its always been the case that people who have a passion for games have been making them and distributing them. McDonald started out by making his own games, putting them on a disk and distributing them. Then people started to send him games to put on his disks and eventually he began working with bigger companies on projects like GTA, founding his own companies and becoming the director of Games Jobs Live which aims to help people, like me, get into the industry.

I learned some key things from his talk. For example getting into the industry in the beginning is the hardest part but after that your reputation speaks for itself so as long as you maker sure to work hard and produce good quality work you will likely be in demand. In fact I got the impression that reputation is a very important part of the industry; while I knew that networking and getting your name out there was important I hadn't considered that not all publicity is good publicity in our case. He talked about having volunteers who would drop out of roles without telling him and how they are effectively un-hireable because he knows that he cant trust them to do a job or communicate when there is a problem. On the flip side those that are reliable he will take forward to other projects he needs volunteers for.

Enjoying playing and making games is important but what I've learned is that I need to make sure that when I do a job for people that I remain professional and trustworthy. I have to be dependable for others but equally when I decide who I want to work with I have to know I can depend on them also.