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Job Opportunities at SJ Games

Last Revised October 9, 2008

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.


Part-Time Bookkeeper

Part-time bookkeeper for A/P, payroll and cash receipts. Possible full time position. Minimum 3 years experience in general accounting, MAS200 experience preferred. This is an Austin job; telecommuting is not possible. Email resume with salary history to accounting@sjgames.com or fax to 512-447-1144.

Perl Coder

Steve Jackson Games is looking for an experienced Perl coder to work on various projects, including our online storefront, our in-house databases, and online games such as the almost-complete UltraCorps. All these projects involve OO Perl, mod_perl, Mason, and MySQL.

This work could range from full-time to (for less-urgent projects) as little as ten hours a week. We would love to find someone in Austin, but we are willing to work with telecommuters. We would certainly consider full-time employment, but we recognize that a contract relationship is likelier.

Please respond to perljob@sjgames.com with a current resume and relevant samples of your code.

Production Assistant

Steve Jackson Games is seeking a Production Assistant to join our production team. The job entails pouring text and laying out books in Quark 6.5, minor Photoshop work (coloring art), as well as advertisement design and graphic work on miscellaneous marketing projects.

Candidates must have experience in multiple-page layout in Quark, and understand basic coding for Quark. Experience with Photoshop is a must. This is a full-time job, with health benefits and paid leave, and requires relocation to Austin. For more information, or to send in your resume (in ASCII or PDF format), please contact Philip Reed at phil@sjgames.com.


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.

Steve Jackson Games
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