Please note: We do not post our vacancies
to any online services, and
we do not consider any applications which are routed through them.
If you see a SJ Games job posted with an online service, we didn't
authorize it; the service scraped it off our website and reposted it
to waste your time. If you want to work for us, contact us directly!
Also note: When sending a resume to us by
email, any attached resume file must have YOUR NAME as the filename.
Resumes entitled "resume.doc" will be read with great prejudice, if we can
even find them among the spam.
We're not looking to fill any positions at this time, but when we are, we'll post them here.
Full-Time Staff
Obviously, the things we look for in a new employee depend on the job we
have to fill. And for any job, we want somebody who can act professionally
and remember that it is a job. We don't sit around all day and play games.
A lot of any staff job is administrative. Some weeks, the really cool things
are few and far between.
Most people who ask us about jobs are interested in game design, writing or
editing, or possibly playtesting. But we don't have salaried playtesters on
staff. We don't have any full-time designers on staff; we
work with freelancers, and everyone here who is a writer or designer also
wears at least one other hat. We do, though, have several staffers who
work, part or full time, as game and magazine editors.
We always look for experience when making a hiring decision. We're not
likely to hire anyone, for any creative position, unless they have
experience either with some other company or as a (productive) freelancer.
Everything we do now involves the computer. We use it for worldwide
communication, writing, proofreading, art and graphics, and layout. Any
potential employee OR freelancer must be computer-literate. Before long, we
want all our editors to be doing their own layout in Quark Xpress on the
Macintosh. (Most of our editing and production work is now done on Macs,
though there are several Windows machines in the office.) Therefore,
computer training is valuable.
We have never offered internships. Someday we may.
Oh, yes. We are a non-smoking office. We have smokers, but they go outside
and suffer.
Education and Experience
If you're in school, you may wonder what classes you should take to prepare
yourself for a career in game design. First, of course, you should learn to
write quickly and clearly. Courses in journalism are usually better for
this than any type of "creative writing" class. If you cannot write
quickly, you'll starve. If you cannot write clearly, somebody else will get
the job. While it is possible to be a genius creative talent who cannot
write a grammatical sentence, we try to avoid them. There are lots of
creative talents out there who can write clear sentences, and we like them
better :-)
When writing rules, it helps to have a logical mind. Any class that trains
this is worthwhile. Law or pre-law courses in Legislation and Contracts are
good preparation for rules writing.
Breaking In
How do you break into the field, then? The short answer is: by writing
magazine articles on a freelance basis, and working up from there. It's not
the only path, but it's a sure one, provided you have the ability at all!
We'll be happy to see your submissions for Pyramid, and who
knows what that can lead to?
Freelancing
We use lots of freelancers - writers, editors and graphic artists. The
Internet is wonderful. If you have reliable e-mail and FTP capability, we
can work with you no matter where in the world you are.
Anyone interested in freelancing must know everything in our
Authors' Guidelines.
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