It’s another edition of our new column, “Ask a Doll”—from here on, responses to your questions will be posted every Thursday. If you guys have more questions, make sure you post them on our forums! Now on to this week’s questions…

Well, we all know that you FDs are really good at shooter games, but are you good at other type of games too (e.g., strategy games)?

Besides shooters, we all kind of have our specialty. For me, I think I gravitate towards puzzle games (Puzzle Fighter, Meteos, Bust-A-Move, Dr. Mario, Tetris Attack), action/adventure games (Mario games for example), as well as some board games (Settlers of Catan and Scrabble). Please note, I’m gauging this on games where I’ve had people not want to play with me anymore due to their frustrations at losing.

Do the developers ever ask opinions about gameplay ideas or any development-type questions to the Frag Dolls when they want some feedback? If so, have they/do they ever incorporate it into their final products?

Since most of the developers are in Montreal or Shanghai, we don’t get to see them very often - even at big events. But when we do find out that they’re in the same building as us, we definitely have been known to harass and hunt them down so we can give them our opinions (*ahem* Valkyrie and gun changes). And we’d like to think that the female skins in Splinter Cell and the pink camo in Rainbow Six Vegas had something to do with us.

What advice do you have for someone like me to get into the gaming industry? And where is the best place to start?

Depending on what you want to do, I’d say there are a couple of good ways to get started. If you want to be more on the technical side of game development, you’ll definitely need to build up your skill set - whether that means taking courses or getting a degree. The type of programmers that I’ve seen working at gaming companies are very self-driven and extremely passionate about what they’re doing. Imagine crunch time and working 12+ hours a day, but still enjoying what you’re doing.

If you’re looking for something more on the business side, you’ll probably want to check out some job listings on company websites and see what kind of degrees or backgrounds they require. Just remember that you may not be able to get into the gaming industry right away, so you may have to spend a year here and a year there. But hopefully, all that experience will lead you in the right direction.

As for getting your foot in the door, I’ve found that sometimes it’s just luck and sometimes it’s just who you know. In my case, I was having a lot of trouble finding a job a few years ago and ended up taking a job at EA as a Technical Support Rep. I knew that this definitely wasn’t my career path, but a job was a job so I took it. I ended up having a great time working there and meeting some great people who eventually went to move on to bigger and better jobs at EA. And even though I decided not to renew my contract there, I ended up going back later to apply for something I actually wanted to pursue career-wise and I would like to think my experience from tech support helped me get the job that I really wanted the second time around.

Hope that kinda answered your question.

On the Itchy & Scratchy CD-ROM, is there a way to get out of the dungeon without using the wizard key?

Yes.