[game_edu] Summer internships in gaming?

[Ian Schreiber]

Umm... I don't think there is such a resource, because summer internships are rare.
 
They're rare because game projects typically take longer than a summer, and development teams don't particularly like it when a key project member leaves in mid-project. It also takes people time to ramp up, which means just around the time the intern is finally able to contribute something to the team, they leave. Also, interns take a lot of management time that a typically-overworked producer does not have, so many studios decide that it's just not worth it.
 
This is not to say that internships don't exist, merely that the companies that offer them tend to be low-key about it (lest they be flooded with tens of thousands of resumes from eager college students).
 
Best best to offer your students:
 
1) Do your own work. Research the companies you'd be interested in interning for, go to their corporate websites and see if they have an internship program. Be willing to look at lesser-known companies too. Students who are willing to take the time to do their own homework are that much more likely to take initiative on the job, also, which is a good thing.
 
2) Know your local developers. Internships are often low pay or even no pay, and they certainly won't offer housing or relocation expenses (some of them won't even consider someone from out of town). So, the most likely places to get hired as an intern are those that are local to you. Is there a local IGDA chapter, and do your students attend meetings? Do your students look in your city on gamedevmap.com to find nearby companies? If not, they should. (Oh, and as a professor, this would be a good thing for you to do too. Nothing like having local industry connections for guest speakers in your classes.)
 
3) Be willing to work in a related field, such as serious games or the greater software industry. Just working on a project at all is preferable to none.
 
4) Failing all of that, students could also consider "hiring themselves" and working unpaid on their own game project(s) over the summer... finances permitting. A student who diligently works 40+ hours per week on their own project (especially if in a team with other like-minded students) should be able to produce several small to mid-size games in a single summer. If one of those games ends up being spectacular enough to win the IGF student showcase, that's just as juicy a resume bullet-point as an internship. Even if the game projects themselves flop, the student will have a lot of experience from their mistakes.
 
- Ian

--- On Tue, 2/17/09, pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu <pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu> wrote:

From: pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu <pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu>
Subject: [game_edu] Summer internships in gaming?
To: game_edu at igda.org
Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2009, 10:18 AM

  Can anyone point me to a resource for summer internships
in game development?

  I'm a faculty member in a computer science department.
I've got a number of bright students who are interested in
the game industry looking for summer internships. It would
be nice to point them to some places.

Thanks,

Ted

Thaddeus F. Pawlicki, Ph.D.
Undergraduate Program Director
Computer Science Dept.      (585) 275-4198
University of Rochester       FAX (585) 273-4556
Rochester, NY  14627-0226   pawlicki at cs.rochester.edu
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/pawlicki/

        "Learning to dance was similar to learning geometry, my best
subject. Each piece of physical movement could be thought of as a
theorem that had to be proved."
                                - Gelsey Kirkland, 1986

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