Networking is a key part in every field and is of an even bigger importance for the creative industries. This is mainly because this area is one of the fastest growing and you will be expected to always keep track of the latest trends and tricks. What better way to keep yourself updated than participating in common events and meeting professionals in the field.

One of the main benefits of networking is showing yourself to the world. Many people (including myself), find it extremely hard to push into conversations and if you are one of those people you better listen (read) carefully – You will never get there, unless you step out of your comfort zone! Especially at the beginning, you might find it very hard to get into the world of creative industries. The best way to become a professional or keep being a professional is to keep communications up. That’s how important networking is! Whether you are looking for clients, information, inspiration, promoting yourself or finding a good job, networking is what lies in the centre of it all. Fortunately, networking is a skill. Like any other it can be learnt and improved.

JOIN EVENTS

The importance of events for networking can easily be compared to the importance of networking within the creative industries. This is the place where you can meet professionals face to face and gain valuable information, contacts, advices and so much more. This is also the place where you will be able to raise your reputation and get feedback on your work. It is even possible that you land an amazing job offer in case you get lucky or manage to impress somebody, and this is the greatest part – you get to accomplish all that, while having fun at an amazing environment! More events you visit, closer you get to your goals. In fact, you can just as well call your buddy as you read this and get to the next interesting event and I promise, you won’t be disappointed! If you are unsure of how to find one, or which one would suit you most, you can do a small online research or check the link below.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom–paisley/science-and-tech–networking/?page=1

LEARN TO IMPRESS

This is a skill that not everyone can acquire for five minutes time and conquer the world. However, it is not impossible to get good at it, and once you do, it will open doors for you like magic. It all bottles down to practice and of course – the way you see yourself. Positive attitude, energy, and motivation will help push you to the correct direction. Always be prepared – whether you are trying to impress somebody in person, or on the internet, make sure your portfolio is at it’s best, and always keep business cards in your pocket! After all, if you are aiming to fire yourself up in the creative industries but cannot present a good-looking portfolio, maybe you should rethink your choice of profession or simply take a step back and look for ways to improve.

STOP BEING AFRAID

If you have led those tireless battles with yourself about when, how, and who to speak to, it’s time you win them now. Take the initiative in your hands, because no one else can do it for you. You lose absolutely nothing from keeping communications up or asking for advice. If you are a bright games developer student, unsure about how to pursue his/her ideas, just talk about it. Worst case scenario is that you get a negative feedback, which is nothing but a chance to get better.

If you follow the link below, you might find this guide extremely useful. It contains multiple articles about how to start a career in the game industry and covers a lot of information that you might be wondering about.

https://www.gameindustrycareerguide.com/tag/networking/

Overall, networking takes significant part within creative industries and you will need to practise it as much as possible if you want to be successful. Despite what your job position may be (freelancer, self-employed, regular job, etc), communications will always play a profitable role for you and even though some people find it difficult, it will never be a step back to try, and remember the best part – there is nothing to lose, and everything to gain!

PS: Don’t forget to check this interesting video where a professional game developer reveals the significance of networking from his personal experience.

Working as a freelancer in the creative industries might cause you way more struggle than you think. Whether you are a young student or a professional, making the decision to be your own boss is worth a fair amount of thought, calculations and of course – research. This might be confusing though, since the information about this on the internet is quite controversial.

If you look up the data, you might be surprised that about 43% of the workers in the creative industries are freelancers and that this is exactly where the economy growth appears to be. More than 78% of the companies are small and consist of less than five employees. It seems, many professionals choose this road, however, the internet is full of articles against it.

For sure freelancing has a lot of benefits, like being your own boss, working flexible times, choosing your work and location. On the other hand, working for yourself might give you a lot of headaches – the money you make will always depend on you. You will no longer rely on a regular monthly pay, sick leaves, insurances and so on which other workers benefit from. One of the most common risk in this field is the fact that you must find your own work and fight competition every day. Keep in mind that you are not the only one dreaming for the perfect job. It’s been stated that freelancers spend a great proportion of their time looking for a job. Many times, you will have to work overtime, do multiple projects at once, compared to periods of no job at all. Most importantly, to be a successful professional freelancer, you must work hard on putting a name for yourself out there, build a reputation, and maintain it, which can often be a difficult task and requires a lot of effort and discipline.

An interesting video about how to start as a freelancer you can find below.

But is the freelancing the road to success? There is more information on about how to become a successful freelancer rather than evidence of how many of the freelancers out there are such. The truth is, whether you will succeed in this field depends entirely on you. As you might happen to read very often – freelancing is not for everyone. Some people are good at networking, building client bases, promoting and organising, but many are complete opposite and lack motivation and self-discipline, which are key qualities when working as a freelancer. However, if you turn out to be good at it, this might turn out to be a golden road for your dream life as a game developer.

Working in creative industries might sound a lot of fun. However, like any other job, concept of professionalism applies, moreover, it applies on an even higher level. One of the many reasons for that is that these industries are evolving with the speed of light and are the fastest growing part of the UK economy.

Nowadays, if you want to land such a job in any of the creative sectors, you might need a lot of persistence, luck, and of course – skill. The most common confusion among young students is the idea of a perfect job position where you would work on something that you are so passionate about, that it won’t even feel like a job. Don’t get blinded! If you are a hardcore gamer, aiming to sit on a desk and play/test video games all day long, unfortunately, it won’t turn out this way. Whether you work in a fancy office or at home as a freelancer, you will be required to show a lot of professionalism. After all, nobody’s going to hire you twice, if you are not reliable, leave your work for the last minute or get carried away.

You can speak with many professionals about their positions, or simply do an online research to find out about the daily problems they face. Since the area includes a lot of different jobs such as freelancing, self-employed, part-time and so on, it might be very hard to keep in a casual eight hours working time. Even if your contract clearly states the days and hours you are supposed to work, you must prepare that often you will be asked to extend those hours due to deadline requirements. Although most of the workplaces offer a great, fun and relaxed environment, and are very keen on whether you are going to show up at 8am or 11 am, you must always keep in mind that you are expected to deliver a high-quality work and benefit the company with your ideas, which sometimes might feel too heavy on your shoulders. Such was the case with my previous internship, for example. As it was a new and small company, with no strictly set rules about when you should show up at work, have your lunch break and so on, I found it extremely hard to leave, even after I have worked more than eight hours. Since I felt I have so much to learn and improve on, I was afraid I might not be able to manage to do what is expected from me. This led to working overtime, stressing out, and a lot of brain blocks due to trying to learn everything at once. Thus, it’s very important to find a way for yourself to relax and keep your mind fresh. Unlike other jobs where people can simply do their task and forget all about it until the next working day, this is not going to be the case here! Practising, researching, discussing and experimenting are 24/7 duties for any artist who wants to keep professional. If you’re not up to date, well, don’t expect your boss to keep you around.

In the video below you can hear what does the founder of the D language, who has worked for giants like Facebook and Boeing, have to say about how to be a professional programmer.

However, professionalism itself does not only consist of delivering your work on time but many other smaller or larger requirements such as being open to critics – it is always a positive quality to be able to improve from feedback. This way your work is going to get better and better by the day. Another important professional quality – keep good appearance. Now, nobody would require you to be able to cast for a beauty contest, but hygiene habits are extremely important, after all, you would not like to sit all day next to a colleague who stinks. Looking and being positive will always benefit you in any aspect of your work life. And most importantly – you must know your limits and what you can do. Many times, you might find yourself in a situation where work is offered to you and you would feel it is out of your skill range. This can affect your career or reputation as a professional, and it’s worth thinking twice before accepting such an offer.

“What makes a professional is not merely an academic excellence; it is in the possession of the relevant virtues related to the professional’s area of expertise.”
― Michael Quansah, 21 Virtues every Professional must Possess

Nowadays, every young student or worker is supposed to have a portfolio to land the job of their dreams. It’s extremely important to have a place where you can gather your projects and show them to potential employers, however, apart from making it pretty, there are few important facts to keep in mind while building a portfolio or a showreel.

MAKE IT INTERESTING
It might sound lame, but the key to get noticed is to show something different. After all, employers receive hundreds of portfolios, and especially if they are looking for a certain set of skills, yours might not get noticed at all. Different is good. Different shows that you are a person who is not afraid to step out, to be creative, and foresee ideas. These are important qualities that can fire the business in a very successful direction and employers know that.

SHOW WHO YOU ARE
It’s great to have a lot of good work to show to whoever you are trying to impress. It’s greater if you manage to express your character and persona in it. Remember – people want to see you. Especially in the Computer Development area, more and more employers prefer to train motivated, talented, and charismatic people rather than someone, who simply has just better skills.

KEEP IT PROFESSIONAL
Even though this one goes without saying, I cannot miss to mention how important it is to show professionalism in what you do. Giants like Apple and Microsoft would never hire someone, who appears to be poorly educated or carried away, and even the small companies might choose someone less sciential but more professional than you. If writing is not your strong side, you can always spare some time to look up articles about how to improve. Google is your best friend!

A great example of how to make a good showreel can be seen in the video below, which I found on YouTube and found very entertaining to watch:

MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE
No matter how good you think you “got it” this time, the lack of retouch and update every now and then will take your showreel or portfolio on a lower level. Keep in mind that It is not just a bunch of projects stored somewhere on a server, it is your brand, it is the image of yourself that you show to the world, and you want to look as handsome as possible, right? While you change as a person, and improve as a professional, so should your portfolio. Don’t let it catch dust!

If you’d like to know more about how to make a good portfolio, it is worth taking a look at the video below for some tips and tricks while building programming portfolio which you can apply as a game developer as well.

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations, ideas, inventions and others, which are legally secured against being used without authorisation. The creative industries, as some of the fastest growing industries, have essential need to protect their products since that may determine their product’s success or failure. Intellectual property rights aim to protect contents from being used without permission just as any material property, however the difference is that most of those assets are not material and the field they occupy is the World Wide Web, which makes it very easy for anyone to steal.

There are few categories of intellectual property rights which include copyrights, patents, trademarks, and industrial designs. Copyrights are mainly used to give the author the right to be in command of how others use his/her work. This might include software, code, artwork, sounds, game play, text, and videos (the technical part of the product). It is possible to own copyright without having it registered to the correct department, however, it is always better to have documents and be able to prove your ownership. Patents are characteristically similar to copyrights but can be used for a limited period of time and their aim is to protect inventions. In most countries patents last up to 20 years. Trademarks are used to protect names, logos, and signs used by a company to identify its products. Trademarks are valid for only 10 years. Industrial designs also find place in the creative industries, as they protect the design of the product including colours, shapes, textures and others. This is fairly common for game covers, graphics, and artworks.

Many argue about the pros and cons of intellectual properties. As complex human beings, it has always been our instinct to copy in order to come up with better ideas or improve. A lot of scientific research, which you can find on the internet, has proved that people subconsciously copy behaviour, ideas, fashion, and even way of speaking and thinking. Thus, it makes it very hard for game developers and artists in general to create their own, completely new and fresh to the world ideas, as this field is so large, that your idea is likely already existing. You can check the video below for some interesting facts regarding famous games and their intellectual properties.

However, intellectual properties are essential as there is no other way to legally protect your work in the vast virtual space. Moreover, it is a basic economic rule that if a product is harder to be found on the market its price would be higher than a product easier to be found on the market. If intellectual properties did not exist, anyone can take a ready video game and sell it for their own benefit without having done any work to contribute for the product. This can lead to possibly ruining the reputation and success of the product, as well as completely disrespect its creator. Intellectual properties should exist, unless, of course, you are fond of the idea of mind robbery.

On the video below you can listen to a game lawyer from California and his advice about intellectual property in the game industry.