So this summer I worked at a video game company to try and get a feel for what skills are important in that field. I figure every CS teacher might not have time to wander off to industry for a summer, so while I was there I did a study about what game developers look for in a new hire. I interviewed some developers, managers and artists and then used that to build an online survey.

For the curious, here is my paper as it will be published in SIGCSE 2010. There was nothing earthshaking here, although I was impressed about the extent to which the people I talked to emphasized that people skills were at least as critical as the technical side of things.

There is a big chart a few pages in that summarizes the results.