Dan Jacobs 'Time for Cheat Mode'

Hello and welcome back to another Industry week blog, this was my third and final session of the day.

Dan Jacobs is an industry veteran, although he admits that he was exceptionally lucky in getting his foot in the door, this industry is hard to get into, but the more experience you obtain, the more attractive you are to future employers, he made this clear a number of times.

Dan revealed, that in the late 90s he received a phone call from one of his friends who was currently working for a company named Empire Interactive, and that company were looking for Christmas Temporary Staff, which he took with both hands and ran with it, he worked as a QA before working to become the manager of QA.

He was massively passionate and highly critical, which aided him to succeed in this role, he tested some big names and even got a game stopped from production, the game is known as Medal of Honour, it must have been bad, he also tested Halo and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games! However he admitted that his most disappointing moment in the gaming industry was sat singing current Disney songs instead of Disney Classic on a Disney Karaoke project that the company at the time was working on.

Along with being passionate and prepared, you must also have a lot of dedication, he spoke that in one interview he had heard of, the future employer made a candidate run round the building to prove dedication to the cause! Dan clearly has dedication, he once spent 3 Days and 2 Nights in one go behind his desk, sleeping at work whilst the cleaners worked around him! Publishers also love crazy demands, in one particular game, the publishers wanted a calibration screen to ensure happiness among the audience, in reality the screen did nothing and was pointless.

Get noticed, do odd things! Dress up as a storm trooper, there’s a high chance anybody won’t forget you in a short space of time.

Cheat Mode, the name of Dan’s book was plugged once or twice, but he had to be told to write a book, he was working Eurogamer’s Podcast, he received a question on that and was told after answering it, that he should write this book, it has articles about all aspects of the gaming industry and is really worth a read if you’re looking to get into the Video Games industry.

“The Games Industry isn’t all fun and games, if you’ll pardon the pun”  too true, take it seriously and try to inject yourself with industry professionals on Twitter and LinkedIn this could have a massive impact on your chances of getting into the industry, make friends and contacts now, and it will help.

Like the other sessions, this one was massively helpful for everyone that wanted to break into the video games industry, it was an honest question session with Dan, it gave a massive insight as to what we could expect, onwards and upwards.

Thank you for reading

By Nick Mason, Level 3 Games Student.