When you visit our website you will most certainly notice that we dont really publish any roles under Careers and you might really wonder why. While we do hire talents like other studios, we dont quite publish roles in the site. And you might again wonder how do I then apply for a potential role without knowing what you are looking for. Well, we know its kinda bummer but thats how we prefer to look for talents – ‘just be open to all‘. This way we welcome profiles across various or all disciplines without restricting it to particular roles. Of course we aren’t going to hire numerous roles either but this way we are able to see just about every profile ranging from a fresh out of the school student to senior experienced profiles. And in most cases our hiring criteria is pretty much the same for all these roles – ‘cultural fit‘ and ‘willingness to learn and progress‘. Number of experience under the belt doesn’t really count. This might come as a bit of a shocker or a disagreement to many but it is what it is. 10 years as a Games Programmer or a Game Artist wont mean anything unless they are demonstrated at work. Output speaks for itself and it does very loudly. This is also the reason on why we are not hell bent on the core skill sets either. The core skill sets like creating Art or Coding for games can always be further developed at work as long as there are strong fundamentals. For instance, if some one shows a great potential at Game programming and has demonstrated that in a tech test but hasn’t done professional level work or shipped games in the past, there is a still very good chance we would hire him or her provided they are a cultural fit and they have a good fundamental understanding of how things work. We are more worried about what they will do next and not what they have done in the past!
So when we open up a position, lets say a 2D artist to hire. We should typically list the roles and responsibilities along with the eligibility criteria as an industry standard which can go like, 2-3 years of games industry experience creating 2D art, a minimum of 3 shipped titles and such. While in reality we may lose a greater talent who aren’t necessarily from the games industry but from a neighbouring industry like graphic design or illustrator or even someone who has self taught the trade- where they might be even more talented and show a stronger appetite or desire to be part of the games industry. In fact majority of our members or recent hires have always been from different industries with a strong desire and eager attitude. For them it didn’t really take a lot of time to get accustomed to the business and the best part of is most of them have become Avid gamers now and are very proficient with the whole ecosystem. This could be regarded as a radical approach when it comes to looking for talents, but this is what we firmly believe will work for the local industry and have very well been put to practice at Hammerplay. Restricting talents from a singular domain sounds very counter intuitive at-least in the current times. We need to create more venues and an equal opportunity for everyone!
So the next time you visit our site and look to apply for a role, please do not hesitate to email us. You can still email us at careers@hammerplay.com. We can at-least tell you that email ID very well exists and we take all applications seriously that is sent there!
Good luck with your endeavours!