Hi everyone,
I graduated from college four years ago and ever since then I have been working as a freelance game developer and on my indie game. I have learned so much and gained so much experience but due to financial reasons I decided to find a game dev job. Problem is there is a very very small game dev scene where I currently live (UAE). So I had to apply to other places like US, Europe, Australia, etc...
I applied for jobs at almost every large publisher like EA, Ubisoft, Blizzard, etc... I keep getting rejection letters without any interviews. My only interview in the last seven months was at Rockstar for a mobile game engine developer and I didn't even make it past the first interview.
I'm still doing freelance for now but I would really like it to get a job at any of the large AAA studios or even indie studios. I need some help on what am I doing wrong. Do I not have enough experience? Is it next to impossible to hire a junior game developer from another country?
Things I did in the last four years:-
- Created my own 2D game engine on top of MonoGame in C#. It has everything from animation, A* pathfinding, Networking, 2D tile map editor, GUI system.
- I worked on a single and multiplayer 2D game for IOS and Android using Unity.
- I'm in the process of making a 3D game engine in DirectX 11 and OpneGL 4.5 in C++. I understand all the math behind matrices and 3D transformation, shadows, lighting. I wrote my own window system, math library, lighting system and I'm in the process of learning PBR.
- I made a small hack and slash 2D game using my 2D engine that is written on top of MonoGame.
- I made a single and multiplayer 2D tower defance game.
Everything I have ever made is up on my website if you want to take a look at it. Every single line of code I ever wrote is my own and I fully understand all of it.
Do you think I don't have enough experience to get a job at AAA game studio? Do you think I need to focus on something else? What should I do?
One thing to note is I only got a diploma in computer science. I only had to do 1 extra year to get my bachelor's degree. Do you think that is what effecting my job hunting? I thought a lot of game studios don't care if you have a degree as long as you know what your doing.
Sorry for the long post. I really appreciate your help guys.