We just had a lecture by 2 NUA grads that are now working at Ubisoft Reflection studio, the "beginners" tier studio.
Though beginner or not it's a respectable job!
Jack and Alrissa, 1 is an environment artist while the other is a QA tester, both of their stories are amazing!
Kinda remind me of Richard but they had it differently, they did try to go solo but found it to be a little hard very quick, until opportunity came up from Ubisoft.
I am quite a fan of Ubisoft, I have been following them for a while now about... 10 years more or less...
But, I have never heard of Reflections studio, Alrissa explained the idea behind the studio and why although it's not where the big game are being produced it's a great place to start and advance into the industry.
Jack, who had much experience in 3D, explained how that even though you just finished uni no one really expects you to make some super massive product in 2 days, most of the atmosphere is in a sense, learning from the experts step by step and passing no the materials to the next in line.
For me this was quite a relief as I was starting to think that finding a job as an indie dev would be very hard, even harder then concept art and 3D artists as they have competition to win, while indie have? well... everything but not as polished as the other 2.
Both Jack and Alrissa pointed out something critical though, the more you are knowledgeable in more aspects of game development and production the more you might be able to advance into other studios within Ubisoft...
They did not explain too much how and when as they themselves are still considered new but all in all they have heard and know of a few people that have progressed due to their being versatile enough show interest and will to learn.
This is exactly what defines me.
I will soon start to monitor on Linked in Ubisoft Reflections studio and see if I could get myself into there by the end of the year,