AAA companies are very picky, and your competition for a job there is ridiculously fierce. What university degree do you have? What city do you live in? Got a portfolio?

New Mexico is pushing hard to try to encourage game development in the state. Maybe somebody will open a studio not too far from you, if there isn't already something. After the pandemic gets an all-clear (when? if?), companies will probably want their employees to live nearby. Check https://gamedevmap.com/​ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_developers​ to see if there are any studios in your state (or, better, your local area).

You need to get your portfolio online. Your Software Analyst experience is a good start. Today's games are all about analytics. You can make a niche for yourself as the person who can program analytics hooks into the game on the client side and the server side. I suppose that's not what your dream is, but that's a way to position yourself to get your foot in the door.

I just checked an example of game design job advertisement at Ubisoft and they require 3+ years of design experience https://www.ubisoft.com/en-US/careers/search.aspx#sr-post-id=743999734316749​ . At Activision, for a position of Jr Campaign Design or Jr Designer https://careers.activision.com/job/R005743/Jr-Designer​ they don't seem to require any years of experience. That's just two examples for AAA game studio, I guess it must vary from place to place.

francisbaud said:
I just checked an example of game design job advertisement

Tamarar is looking for programming jobs. “I want to be a game programmer.”

My bad, I read this :

Tamarar357 said:

@Tom Sloper Okay so an Indie company may be more suited for me? I have a degree in Game Development and Design and I live in Las Cruces, NM. I have a portfolio, I need to get it published though. I showed some coding, design, game development of course and Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop things I have done on it. I have a current job as a Software Analyst already, so I am just thinking ahead to get a gaming job (what I really want to do).

and thought he wanted a job in the field he studied in.

In Albuquerque there's Maya Virtual that is looking for a game developer (requires experience with Unreal Engine as well as a strong familiarity with UE class structure). Now that work from home is the norm, I guess you could also look for studios that are located in other states. Here's a good alternative to Indeed if you need to search for more job ads.

francisbaud said:
thought he wanted a job in the field he studied in.

For marketing reasons, most if not all game programs include the word “design” in the name, regardless of how much of the material actually involves design.

francisbaud said:
Here's a good place imo to start searching for and compare ads.

Nice, an object lesson in good search techniques.

Tom Sloper said:

francisbaud said:
thought he wanted a job in the field he studied in.

For marketing reasons, most if not all game programs include the word “design” in the name, regardless of how much of the material actually involves design.

francisbaud said:
Here's a good place imo to start searching for and compare ads.

Nice, an object lesson in good search techniques.

I see! The program seems to be very different from one place to the other, sometime comprising animation, modeling and level design, while at other time focusing on algorithms, mathematics and game design.

As for the search techniques, it was more about suggesting a powerful tool by Google as an alternative to Indeed. For a similar search (game developer, New Mexico), Google returns 6 pertinent results, while Indeed returns only 1. (Hopefully I didn't make a mistake while searching.)