My experience is that game companies don't value experience out of the game industry very much, so you should probably expect to take a bit of a ranking hit on your first job. From their perspective, you're a blank slate. In theory, you'll climb back up quickly once you've shipped a game or two.
> salary as well
Game industry salaries have always been a notch or two lower than salaries for comparable jobs in other fields. Working on games is a perk, and there is a lot of competition, which drives wages down.
> Knowing that i feel i already have a good "product sense", but i may be lacking in terms of execution.
For what it's worth, everyone thinks they have a knack for game design. In practice, very few do. It's very easy to make a game that sucks and incredibly hard to come up with a novel yet fun play experience.
The game industry tends to be long hours and a lot of stress. The emotional and professional maturity of your coworkers may be less than you're used to. It could end up being a death march.
But it can also be very rewarding. If it's something you want to try, the sooner you find out and either get on that career path or get it out of your system, the better.
Even if it works out well, don't plan to stay in the game industry forever. Few do. So try to make sure your resume and network is in a state where you can gracefully leave the game industry if that's what you want to do later.
> I feel the level is a bit low for my age
My experience is that game companies don't value experience out of the game industry very much, so you should probably expect to take a bit of a ranking hit on your first job. From their perspective, you're a blank slate. In theory, you'll climb back up quickly once you've shipped a game or two.
> salary as well
Game industry salaries have always been a notch or two lower than salaries for comparable jobs in other fields. Working on games is a perk, and there is a lot of competition, which drives wages down.
> Knowing that i feel i already have a good "product sense", but i may be lacking in terms of execution.
For what it's worth, everyone thinks they have a knack for game design. In practice, very few do. It's very easy to make a game that sucks and incredibly hard to come up with a novel yet fun play experience.
The game industry tends to be long hours and a lot of stress. The emotional and professional maturity of your coworkers may be less than you're used to. It could end up being a death march.
But it can also be very rewarding. If it's something you want to try, the sooner you find out and either get on that career path or get it out of your system, the better.
Even if it works out well, don't plan to stay in the game industry forever. Few do. So try to make sure your resume and network is in a state where you can gracefully leave the game industry if that's what you want to do later.