Q1: Hi Matt, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your day-to-day role at Payload Studios?
A: Hello. I’m a Community Manager working on TerraTech. It’s my job to be the beacon for the TerraTech Community. This involves live-streaming, creating videos, blogs, memes, etc. At Payload Studios we’re Community Driven developers so another key part of the role is to ensure I am the voice of the community when it comes to developing TerraTech, such as having input on what the community like or doesn’t like. Over time we’ve found that we get more quality feedback the more engaged our community is so these two aspects of my role go hand in hand.
Q2: You recently spoke at your local college about your career and how you got into the games industry, how was that experience?
A: It’s always great talking about yourself for an extended period of time in front of a room of strangers, right? But to be able to share my own experiences in the hope that it will maybe one day lead a young person to join the games industry and potentially have as much fun as I have is a huge honour. The talk itself went great! The students were engaged and eager to learn about what I had to say. I only counted about 20 or so yawns, which at 10:45 on Wednesday for a group of teenagers is a major win! A massive thanks to Conor and the class for having me!
Q3: What piece of advice would you give to students trying to get into the games industry?
A: Have a clear understanding of what you want to do or achieve. Sometimes the idea of working in the games industry can be more enticing than knowing exactly what it is you want to do. So having a clear idea of exactly what it is you want to do will allow you to plan it all out. For example, I wasn’t clever enough to be a programmer, creative enough to be an artist, I didn’t have enough attention to detail to be a QAer, or organised enough to be in production. But what I was good at (and really enjoyed) was being the centre of attention! So I worked on the soft skills that are required to be a Community Manager. Customer service formed the early foundations, then social media marketing and finally content creation. I was then able to fill out my CV with enough detail that I landed my dream job at Payload.
Thanks!