In January 2025, I saw an internship offer from a game company in my city (we'll get to which one, it's just not my goal here).
I won't be giving sensitive information, as I signed an NDA. My focus will be on my experience, and I'll try to be vague if I believe something is saying too much.
In videogames, an internship or any entry-level role is very rare to see, these companies usually want people with some amount of experience, even if it's not much. They seem allergic to teaching anything and just depend on enthusiasts who wish they worked on cool stuff so much that they teach themselves. I've always been interested in videogames, so I figured, "if I like the company, nice! And if I don't, I get the experience and money for myself". They valued solid skills in C++ and any previous videogame programming experience. The position was about gameplay.
I was living in another country at the time due to my Erasmus studies, but the offer gave the option of saying from when you'll be available. For me, it would be in the summer, and later I found out they had no issue with it. I sent my CV and filled the application, and I had good chances since I had both videogame experience and C++ skills from previous jobs, especially for a student.
They reached back for a first interview, in which they asked some generic technical questions. I wasn't very invested on it since people hiring for C++ positions seem to love the same "kind of useless" questions. The only good thing is that I knew the answers, as everyone does by now. At the end, I was told the next step would be a programming assignment, something like a coding test. If I passed that one, I would participate in yet another interview to review that assignment both to get feedback and to be able to explain myself. After that, there'd be another interview to determine where I'd fit in best.
I wasn't told more about the programming assignment until I got the task. I'll keep it vague for obvious NDA reasons, but I'll say I was tasked with implementing my version of an arcade 2D game. In like a week. The chosen programming environment wouldn't be best for work efficiency neither, and they also wanted it to be fun, like by my definition of fun. So I had to even tweak this basic game.
With my current experience, I know I should've just said no. I had a lot of either C++ projects, videogame projects, or even both to talk about if they wanted to (to which they refused). Apart from that, no one should have to crunch a week of 100% free, spare time just to have the chance to get a role. And not any role, an internship. You don't get paid well or even get to do really interesting stuff in these. However, I did it: I had to sacrifice a week of uni work at home and got a basic version of the game done. I wasn't proud of it: it just worked well with a few features. To really score well on that "test", I had to do more on the fun part, but I just didn't want to, it was exhausting.
They promised they'd get back to me before a certain date, and just didn't. I let one more week go on, and ended up asking if something was wrong. Long story short, I finally got the feedback interview scheduled a month after submitting the game. In that e-mail, I also learnt that they had a lot of candidates this time. Definitely great news. Keep an eye on this fact for later.
This "review" interview was the worst one I've taken part in ever. The interviewer went over all the small details on the code that they didn't like. We discussed them and I gave a justification of why I did it that way (well, what I could remember after a whole month). In some cases, it was a dumb error I'd glanced over. In others, it was the design patterns I applied (or didn't). I was very clear with how the amount of time I had was crucial for making these decisions: you don't just pump out a fun videogame with perfect code in a week, as simple as it can be. And don't get me wrong, I wouldn't accept more time just to make better code. I was lectured on concepts I already knew for about 40 minutes, and didn't even get feedback on the game, outside the code. I had to ask for it, and it turns out they liked it.
After one more week, I received a rejection e-mail. For me that's not an actual issue, since I know there were a lot of candidates. It's just impossible for everyone with good chances to get accepted. However, I think an important lesson stuck with me after that: I would have only been OK with that interview process (and assignment) if I'd got the role. However, just going by statistics that was very unlikely. So by failing the interview process, I think I'm able to see why it's so bad, and why that puts the company under such a bad light: a company that makes you do a week of free work, that doesn't deliver on its own promises, and that just makes you wait weeks and weeks does not respect you. Especially if they know beforehand that a lot of people will just have to be rejected for everything to add up.
If I had any other interview process going on (I didn't, I don't need a job that much yet and other options weren't very attractive), it would've probably ended before I'd finished that game, just to put it on a different perspective.
So TL;DR of this story, if there's anything you can take away from this, is that you should say no to some stuff. Don't go on with options you're only OK with if they succeed, that's just gambling. To end this post, I think now's a good moment to reveal which company I'm talking about. I've left it for the end to avoid biases and so you can judge for yourself. It was Larian Studios.
After that, I changed my opinions on interviewing and the job market. I'd had very good interview processes (and roles) before this one, and I think that experiencing something like this helps me get out of the overly optimistic mindset I had. There's just many companies -and by proxy, many people- that don't want to respect you, and the only person who can know before it gets bad is yourself.