Interview with Joanna Giordano, Career Coach

As I mentioned before, I'm now offering online workshops on game writing tests and portfolio preparation.  I get my information by talking to industry hirers, recruiters, and human resources.  

To give you a glimpse into the human resources mindset, here's a short interview with Joanna Giordano, your "friend in HR," as she likes to call herself.  

She's also a career coach who can give you candid resume reviews, job search strategy consultations, and resume writing lessons. She specializes in helping people with long career gaps, career pivoters, early career job seekers wondering how to get experience when all jobs require experience, and those with diverse backgrounds who need to tell a story about transferable skills.

Question: Should we be doing anything different to prepare for Zoom interviews than what we would do for in-person or phone? 

Joanna:  You get the advantage of knowing your environment ahead of time, which is good because hopefully you will feel comfortable. Watch your lighting and camera angle. Best to face a window or diffused light. Put the computer (not phone if possible) on some books so the angle is more eye-level. We don’t want to look up your nose. Be sure you are looking at the camera and not a different screen. Pay attention to your background! 

Question: What can you do about gaps in work experience or lack of credits? Some people have worked on games that have never shipped.

Joanna:  Focus on spinning facts in a positive light. Even if your have not shipped or scored a credit, you still worked, learned, delivered something most likely. Gaps can be zoomed out artfully by giving a season or year instead of exact date or month. Your experiences can go out of order if it serves to highlight the most relevant experience to be top most instead of the most recent. Include experience that was not paid if it is relevant or serves to help fill in. Volunteering, studying, etc. If you have nothing, then start immediately and add to your resume immediately. 

Question: In your opinion, what are things that need to be addressed and taken away immediately? 

Joanna: No photos, addresses, tiny fonts, block text, second pages. 

Bio: Joanna has worked for over 10 years in corporate HR in recruiting and talent acquisition operations. She has seen thousands of resumes and has unique knowledge about both the human and machine side of the selection process. She believes if you’re going to play the game, you should know the rules. Her webinars have drawn hundreds from an international audience. The mission is to make this common knowledge more accessible to alleviate the frustration felt by job seekers. No one likes writing a resume, but it remains a necessary evil for the foreseeable future. Applying is not a black hole, it’s a black box.

If you'd like to get help from Joanna Giordano, you can find her on LinkedIn.

Flavored by Authenticity: How Personal Experiences Amplify Narrative

Matthew Farber, Juliana Loh, Kimberly Unger, and I headlined the Georgia Game Developers Association CIMFest last year with this powerful panel exploring how personal experiences empower narrative writing. Especially enlightening was the conversation on how personal experiences do not necessarily equate trauma but can instead be more uplifting and positive.  

Keynote Panel: Flavored by Authenticity: How Personal Experiences Amplify Narrative 

Digital storytelling is a currently evolving medium and the push-and-pull nature of player interaction in video games provides an opportunity for the inclusion of personal touchstones in order to more deeply connect with and engage a broad audience. Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the examination of personal narrative elements as methods of engagement in teaching and community building, most notably by contributing a level of accessible authenticity. 

This keynote examines how personal narratives inform narrative and character design as a whole in a game or virtual setting, Join us for a look at moments in popular games informed by personal narrative, from the indie to the AAA level, and reflect on steps that might be taken in order to retain authenticity while avoiding the pitfalls that naturally come with the wholesale creation of fantastic and fictional spaces. 

 

Sande Chen

Profiled as one of the Game Industry's Top 100 Most Influential Women and a 2020 Women in Games Global Hall of Fame winner, Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. Her writing credits include 1999 Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a 2007 Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform and was a contributor to Secrets of the Game Business, Writing For Video Game Genres, and Professional Techniques for Videogame Writing. She has been a speaker at numerous game-related conferences, including the Game Developers Conference, NY Comic Con, PAX East, and SXSW. She has been invited to the White House and represented the USA at the World Conference on Science Literacy. She also has a Grammy nomination.

Matthew Farber

Matthew Farber, Ed.D. is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado, where he founded the Gaming SEL Lab. He has been invited to the White House, authored several books and papers, and is a frequent collaborator with UNESCO and Games for Change. His latest book is Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning (bit.ly/GamingSEL). For more, please visit MatthewFarber.com.

Juliana Loh

Juliana Loh is an independent Producer/Artist whose background includes branded entertainment, UX and art direction. In addition to developing educational/gaming experiences, she has honed her artistic skills as a concept and gallery-showing artist while pioneering, empowering and supporting grassroots tech meetups and communities. Currently working as an instructor and immersive artist, she is keenly aware of how emerging technology is changing the way we relate to each other. She is currently designing story-based Pro-Kindness Workshops using VR360 based on user-centered design thinking.

Kimberly Unger 

Kimberly made her first videogame back when the 80-column card was the new hot thing and after 20+ years as a pro in that industry, the magic still hasn’t faded. Now she sources leading-edge content for Oculus, lectures on the intersection of art and code for UCSC in Games and Playable Media, wrangles a monthly column on science-fiction in videogames over at Amazing Stories and writes science fiction about how all these app-driven superpowers are going to change the human race. Her debut sci-fi novel, NUCLEATION is available now on Amazon and her next novel The Extractionist will be available in November of 2021. You can find her on Twitter at @Ing3nu or on her blog at www.ungerink.com.

 

Watch my interview on Negocios TV

What a thrill to do this interview with Bisila Bokoko on Negocios TV, a business channel. Bisila Bokoko herself is a truly awe-inspiring woman and she has helped female entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. We chatted about different topics regarding the video game industry including how to help women break into the game industry and the importance of female game players. 

Launch and Liftoff: Career Workshops in 2022!

 Hello! It's January 2022.  Though I haven't been updating the blog, that doesn't mean I wasn't presenting or doing interviews.  After SXSW and CIMFest, I participated in two MCM London Comic Con panels, "The Art of the Onomatopoeia" and "Creating Diverse Characters for Comics and More."  I presented at SIEGE and Serious Play Conferences and was interviewed by Women in Games and Negocios TV.

But on a personal note, I completed the LAUNCH1000 program, an intensive course on entrepreneurship.  You may have seen that I did a new, improved version of my webinar on game writing portfolios.

I plan to run more workshops in 2022 and as part of the workshop benefits, will invite all attendees to join in our own supportive community.  I've learned from film school that when we all help and support each other, we can all succeed together.

Within the community, I hope to inspire, spotlight resources. and bring guests from recruitment or HR to better inform us on how to prepare for the next exciting opportunity.

I'll be posting my interviews and conference appearances in the coming weeks as well as more career-focused content.

Happy New Year!

Hope to see you at the next workshop!

P.S. If you want to be notified about upcoming workshops, just drop me an e-mail and I'll let you know.

Designing Non-Toxic Game Communities

In this video from 2021 CIMFest, game designers and community managers discuss how to remove toxicity from game communities.

Originally scheduled for 2020 GDC, this roundtable on Designing Non-Toxic Game Communities was canceled due to the pandemic. We are so grateful to the Georgia Game Developers Association for allowing this roundtable to occur during Columbus Interactive Media Festival (CIMFest).

Participants:

• Sande Chen (moderator)
• Brad Merritt, director of game design for Cartoon Network
• Kat De Shields-Moon, PR manager for Schell Games
• Joshua Quinnett, senior community manager at Gallium Studios
• Judy Tyrer, founder of 3 Turn Productions 
• Jared Creasy, community manager at Tripwire Interactive
• Isiah Turner, lead community specialist at Hi-Rez Studios
• Kimberly Unger, Content Lead at Oculus

New and Improved Game Writing Portfolio Webinar!

Last year, I was planning to have another run of Game Writing Primer but the pandemic and subsequent lockdown made that impossible. I checked in with my former students and was delighted to hear of their successes, games, awards, job offers, start-ups, and even a pending wedding between two of them!

PlayCrafting asked me to do a Webinar, which I knew could not be the same as the popular workshop series, Game Writing Portfolio Workout.  This remote learning Webinar was informational and not that interactive. Still, from the feedback I've gathered, my students found it very useful.

There's just not many places to learn the do's and don't's of game writing portfolios.  

Since last year's Webinar, I've been asked to repeat the Webinar and to accommodate any non-East Coast people who want to attend.  I've also conducted interviews with jobseekers and hirers in order to improve the Webinar.   

If you are interested in learning the best way to prepare and present your game writing portfolio, please go here to help me with the scheduling.  I'll notify you when it's time for class.

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. Her writing credits include Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, a founding member of the IGDA Game Design SIG, and an expert in the field of educational game design.

A Day in the Life of a Game Writer

This year, when I interviewed numerous aspiring game writers and narrative designers, I discovered that many were a bit fuzzy on the actual day-to-day tasks of the job.  It was much like when people ask about game design and then find out with surprise that the actual job entails spreadsheets.  Game writers and narrative designers often look at spreadsheets too!  

There were so many questions about working within a team, interfacing with other departments, and what a person actually does on the job. 

Therefore, it's my pleasure to be interviewed by career site OwlGuru.com and shed some light on the life of a writer and game designer.

Check out the interview "Day in the Life of Game Writer Sande Chen" here!

And if that interests you, here's an older interview I did, with SciFiPulse: "Sande Chen discusses her career, teaching, and video game design."

Sande Chen is a writer and game designer with over 15 years of experience in the industry. Her writing credits include Independent Games Festival winner Terminus and the PC RPG of the Year, The Witcher, for which she was nominated for a Writers Guild Award in Videogame Writing. She is the co-author of Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform, a founding member of the IGDA Game Design SIG, and an expert in the field of educational game design.