How to make it in the back door (of the games industry)

I dreamed of being a lot of things when I was a kid--an artist, a criminologist, a veterinarian--but none of those professions excited me more than the one that appeared in my dreams shortly after I played Super Mario Bros. for the first time.

Yep, like millions of other kids who came of age in the 1980s, I wanted to make video games when I grew up. I actually held onto that dream until my freshman year in college--when it was shattered just a week into my first programming class.

Anyway, if you're anything like the old me (the me that existed before I gave up on being the next Shigeru Miyamoto), you should head on over to GayGamer.net to watch videos of the PAX 2009 panel, "How to Make it in the Back Door: A Rainbow Colored Perspective of the Game Industry."

The panel featured a number of gay folk in the games industry, including Chris Shroyer, a producer at n-Space, Matt Marquess, a PR associate at SparkPR, and Helen McWilliams, a producer at Harmonix.

In the clips, the trio talk about what it's like to be "non-standard" in the games industry and whether or not it's a hindrance or an asset. They also talk about how they made it into the industry and how others can follow in their footsteps.