I am a 15 year old Year 10 student, and there is Work Experience this year. I was wondering is there any, like 3D modeling, or game developments areas where i can go to do Work Experience. I live in Australia, Victoria, Melbourne, South Eastern. Anything will be appriated, thankaz in advanced.
gahhh!! enough with the god-damn 'thankaz'.
Blitz has it right.. You're better off aiming at a government run place.. A library, museum.. Something like that. Yeah it's boring as shit, but they'll most likely have stuff for you to do.. That means more substance in the essay detailing what you did, and that means an 'A' from your teacher.
For my work experience, I drove around with a courier.. It was the funniest shit. Every time the guy saw a female, he'd blast the horn at her. He also encouraged me to swear my head off at anyone walking along the footpath, not to mention him eating redskin lollies, and spitting red sticky horrible stuff onto the sides of competing courier vans. Yeah.. I learnt alot.
Hey cody year 10 hay, i'm in 11 and we are only doing work experiance this year. I'm going to do it at Wicked Witch. They said I could do what ever i wanted including game testing. I doubt they'll take two people but anywayz what you do is, go to the developers part of sumea and then go to their site, find out their email and send them all email until you get a response, worked fo me.
On a completly unrelated topic, enjoy year 10, i wish i did, year 11 sux ass, the only thing i'm looking forward to is work experiance and the end of year 11. Everything becomes a lot more serious.
You have little chance of getting work experience at a gamedev studio but try looking in related industries. My company usually takes 2 or 3 Year 10 students every year. We're in Brisbane though, so I can't really help you but look around. Try and set it up yourself, don't let your school handle it or you'll end up doing some stupid shit like I did when I was in year 11.
Sorcerer Bob: My work experience was pretty much the same thing. I wanted to do graphics/visual related stuff and ended up with a couple of mobile tv repairmen. Go Figure.
Some crappy work experience placement is easily the most fun. I did two placements with Graphic Design places, and they weren't that great. The boss doesn't trust you to do anything of note (due to time and trust), so I ended up making invitations to clients for some seminar they wanted to hold.
I did one at a Comic store and that was fantastic fun. The boss told me that if I was going to beat a shop lifter, at least lure them out back so that customers can't hear their screams :D The 'official' beating weapon was a wooden baseball bat with 'Weapon X' scratched in the side (I am not kidding).
When I was in year 10, I did work experience at Computer Spot in the city (Sydney). They made me vacuum the floor every morning, make them coffee, fetch milk and other things, pay their parking meters, and all sorts of crappy errands. I cleaned up all the glass one day when someone hurled a brick through the front window. For msot of the day, I stood around and did nothing. I didn't even have a chair to sit on so I had to stand from 9am to 6pm, everyday. They taught me absoutely nothing.
Worst work experience EVAR.
I did my work experience at a computer store, basically I cleaned up, made people coffee, assembled / debugged some computers so it was all good...
I would recommend that you look elsewhere for work experience, since for game development you need to know stuff already, and its doubtful that you would have the necessary skills currently. I would follow Blitz's example and work somewhere fun, or at least not as highly strung and competative (in the business sense) as a game development house.
And Souri, it's called work experience because you're meant to experience how it is to work... Therefore it can't be all fun and games really!
When we get work experience people in I try to teach them as much as I can (without neglecting my work too much, that is). We pretty much keep them busy all the time. If we're particularly busy we'll give them a mini project to work on or something so that they leave feeling like they got something out of the week. I guess its just because my work experience sucked so bad.
Also, for gamedev studios, there is no chance you are going to do anything as a coder, and very little chance you will do anything as an artist.
The problems are:
They may not even have a spare machine for you to work on (they might give you some pencils and paper for drawing though!)
They aren't going to spend any time teaching you their in-house tools/engine if you're only going to be there 1 week. Even if they use external tools, the chance that you know how to use them may be slim.
They don't want to risk their project, you might screw something up (like deleting the CVS repository :P).
They don't want to deal with the legal issues. They're under NDA's for everything, you're a minor, they would have to get your parents to sign the NDA's...it's just not worth it.
Actually, a good idea for work experience, s try and find a place where you wouldn't mind doing part time work while you're still at school/tafe/uni etc. If you impress them while doing work experience often they may be willing to hire you part-time in the future.
Do experience at a computer game store or something, or, try and swing work experience at gaming magazine or something like that!
CYer, Blitz
quote:Originally posted by Daemin
And Souri, it's called work experience because you're meant to experience how it is to work... Therefore it can't be all fun and games really!
I wasn't expecting to have fun at all, but I spent most of the time just standing at one spot waiting.. Being a computer store, they had a few computers on display. There was an Amiga 3000 (pretty new at the time I think) with Deluxe Paint, and I played with it for about 10 minutes before one of the guys told me to stop because "you might break it". [:o)]
I assembled Filing Cabinets, and rode around with the delivery man, and lifted lots of heavy shit!
I learnt how to assemble filing cabinets!!!!
But more importantly I got offered an apprenticeship when I left School.. and as a consequence have qualifications in Electronics Engineering.. Don't shoot too high dude when looking for a position.. its alot higher to fall from..
good luck!!!!
It's very hard to find a place that will give you work experience, and then you'll only really experience the work part of it, not the learning...
I'd say if you're going for it, try to approach it as if you were going to work there for real, and acquaint yourself with the tools that they use and try to learn the skills that you might need beforehand... Then they'll probably think higher of you...
Yr 10 work experience is kinda silly, generally you kinda just sit around doing nothing. I don't think any game dev studios do work experience, they just don't have, or can't be bothered finding, the time to look after someone for a week.
Better off trying to get work experience at a strip club or something, enjoy yourself for a week :)
CYer, Blitz