Hoping to get a job in the game industry after language school

2 comments

1. Build yourself a portfolio of work, try and get work experience. Visit the trade shows, build connections and relationships with people working in the industry. Japan can be one of the hardest places to find work in this industry if you don’t have connections, experience or something that companies are looking for.

2. A year of language school *might* get you from N4 to a fluency where you could work as a game developer, but that’s absolutely not a guarantee. If you do manage that, you would at best be at the same level as the shinsotsu grads interviewing for entry level roles in a highly competitive industry, because you don’t have any professional experience – but you would have the distinct disadvantage of not being nearly as fluent as they are, as well as needing a visa sponsorship.

   That’s the best case scenario. There’s a very good chance that your language skills would be low enough that you’d be disqualified out of hand (even despite being quite capable of using Japanese to handle daily tasks and general conversation with confidence).

   Most foreign game developers who get decent jobs in the Japanese industry are applying for mid-level or senior-level jobs, after gaining the required experience in their home countries. This holds true for software developers outside of game dev too. In order to justify sponsoring a visa for a foreign employee, you need to prove you are worth it, and more valuable to a company than just hiring a Japanese developer – and the best way to do that is by getting good development experience that proves your ability and your value.

   To answer your question: Spend a lot of time networking during your language school year. Meet people, see if they’re hiring, see if they’d give you a chance. You might get lucky.