'05 Graduate from Qantm (Brisbane) - Bachelor of Interactive Entertainment: Animation.
Currently a full-time Business student at QUT.

G'day,

My name is Matt and I'm a 2005 Qantm graduate (Brisbane campus) with a Bachelor of Interactive Entertainment: Major in Animation. After my graduation I applied for various jobs in Brisbane - I got a few interviews, but never managed to actually land a job. I'm pretty sure my biggest issue was the lack of time that I put into a portfolio - I was quite young and easily distracted by women, alcohol & partying (like many young kids do), and playing (rather than making) games.

I've always had a job to support myself of course, and I have worked various retail/sales jobs in varying areas: mobiles, games, electronics, etcetera. Now while I regret not putting in the time and dedication required into my original gaming aspirations during and after my degree, and as thus having not landed my dream job - My degree and years since graduation haven't entirely gone to waste - I I have gained a broad range of skills and experiences that will help me for the rest of my life. As this is not a resume I won't go into too many details, however if you've read this much already, I may as well tell you just a bit: I'm a damn good salesperson, have excellent communication and customer skills, I can manage a store, train staff, and more recently as I've discovered in uni, am a pretty good negotiator too.

My most recent job (prior to my current job) was as an assistant store manager at EB Games. Having my eyes opened by fellow colleagues (who had recently quit or were about to) and then seeing that there in fact was no real future by staying in that position I decided to resign and go back to uni - so that I could "Get a REAL JOB".

I decided to do business and while not knowing exactly what it was I wanted to do, chose to do International Business as a major as it seemed to offer a more broad palate of subjects and supposedly more job opportunities. I am now in my second year within my business degree and again finding myself at a crossroads I guess you could say - as I still have much love for games I am now thinking that I want to get back into gaming or something related to gaming. Furthermore, I think it'd be a waste to not use my games degree.

At the same time however, I think it'd be a shame to also waste my business units (studied at QUT thus far) and my previous years of working experience. So I thought about perhaps combining them all and looked into changing my major to marketing. In the marketing faculty there is a subject called 'Entertainment Marketing'. Upon finishing a degree with this I could perhaps get a job for a games company doing that. Or perhaps even for for Sony or something.

Then I thought about doing a double degree - 'Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment'; or perhaps dropping business all-together and do a Masters in animation or design?

All these possibilities and a lot of excitement indeed. However.... What about actually being able to get a job at the end of it all?

I've heard that the games industry is doing it pretty tough and that there are in fact a lot of talented artists and designers without jobs. Furthermore there's been game companies like Krome who've been shut down.

I need to do research and be very careful about what path I take - and when I do make my decision, put 110% into it. Use my passion for games to fuel my efforts and unleash the talent I know I have within me to finally land a job I love!

Thanks for reading!

-Matt