Gaming internships are an excellent way to get your foot in the door and have the potential to lead to further career opportunities. Not only do you receive experience, but it also allows you to develop relationships and connections with your coworkers and the organisation itself. We at XP put together a list of 5 gaming company internship programs from a variety of companies and fields.
1. Unity Engineer Internship, Unity is a game engine developed to allow creators to assemble assets and write code to interact. It’s often used in video games, movies, and other forms of animation. It’s widely adopted within the gaming scene with Unity having been around since 2005. A couple notable games that use the Unity engine are, Phasmaphobia, Osiris: New Dawn, Cuphead, and Escape From Tarkov.
This program is an awesome grab for any software engineering or computing science student who is interested in joining their team as a Software Developer in Test (SDIT). You will be given the opportunities such as developing automated software to test applications on a number of platforms. This organization has years of experience within the field and would look excellent on your resume.
2. Riot Games is next, the creators of League of Legends and Valorant have a number of University Programs that not only give a good experience but also have plenty of perks!
Riot Intern positions are given relocation accommodations if living in North America, housing support, play funds (money to spend on video and board games), and events. From digital art to computer science, these positions are highly competitive and highly sought after. At the current moment of publishing this piece there are no positions available, but who knows maybe you’ll be able to score one!
3. From the creators of Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry, Ubisoft’s Internship & Graduate Programs has a wide variety of positions and fields. From 2D/3D animator assistant to Financial Planning Assistant, Ubisoft’s got it all. While some reviews note that the pay is lower than other internship positions, there seems to be a general consensus that both the work environment and experience earned at Ubisoft are quite high.
4. Roblox, that old video game that you played back in grade school, the Gmod before Gmod, well it’s still kicking with over half of U.S kids under the age of 16 reported to be playing Roblox in 2020. The online platform and storefront where users go to play a variety of games made by other players or developers, the game is still incredibly popular and active. Roblox currently has a Data Science and Software engineering intern position open at the moment. Both positions are paid!
5. Zynga is a social game developer that focuses on mobile and social networking with a mission of “connecting the world through games.” Known for their popular Facebook game Farmville, they also worked on Words with Friends, Zynga Poker, and Harry Potter Puzzles & Spells. The mobile gaming industry is booming, with the entire market generating over double the PC gaming market. Zynga has a number of varying internship programs from Software Engineering to marketing analytics.
Looking through company websites is one way of finding some of these golden opportunities to enter the gaming industry, but there are plenty of other ways to get your foot in the door.
Job boards like our XP Game Jobs are excellent ways to find interns as well as full time positions. Here are a couple notable alternatives to finding internships and positions within the gaming industry.
The Game Dev Map is a database website that marks positions at gaming development organizations around the world!
The next way is the subreddit r/gamedev, there are plenty of hiring managers and companies that utilise the subreddit to post job openings.
