Is asking about game industry careers on topic?

Question

Inspired by this question on the main site: Best courses on coursera for someone who's interested in game design and development [closed] This question was closed as off topic. I agree with the closure for the question as-is; it is, at best, unclear what is being asked.

I believe that buried underneath this unclear, seemingly-off topic question is a potentially on topic question about what sorts of things game studios tend to look for in an entry-level resume. While answers to this question would be subjective, I think that they would be subjective in a way that experts in the field could come to consensus about the best answer enough to satisfy Good Subjective, Bad Subjective.

Would such a question be on-topic here, or are there other reasons why we can't or shouldn't field questions about that?

Answer 1

Yes, such a question would be on-topic and very welcomed!

It is a blurry line. But we have a bit more flexibility on this site, than say, stackoverflow.com. Because we talk about subjective things such as game design, the cutoff is a bit more to the right here compared to some other sites:

Answer 2

I'm uncertain about whether or not our community is a good source of information for this topic for a few reasons:

• Most game developers develop games rather than make hiring choices. Some folks in HR roles aren't game devs at all & thus unlikely to be part of the GDSE community.
• Considering people who got hired rather than those who do hiring:
  • There's not a strong feedback loop for reporting experiences because while the outcome is known (got hired or didn't) the relevant variables are rarely identified (I.E. which qualifications actually made a difference and to what degree).
  • It seems to me that there's going to be a survive bias.

These aren't hard stops for me. I'm clearly making some assumptions. And there's maybe an argument that there's value in addressing this topic even if we know there will be gaps in the answers we can get.