Never too late to change career! (or How I became a Game Producer)

Hey Steemit! My name is Karl Onnee, I am a Game Producer and an avid gamer. I only joined Steemit this morning when one of my fellow team mate talked about with lots of enthusiasm and I thought I would give it a shot and see what is all about.    

Very often people wonder how you get into games and actually what is the job of a Game Producer. To be honest, I was in the same position not long ago when I was actually working in a different industry until I quit my job to do what I am doing now.    

Because I really enjoyed learning languages, meeting people and discovering different cultures, I decided at the time to go to university and learn English, German and Business studies. After doing lots of small jobs, I got the job related to my studies and became Export Manager after a few years. Unfortunately, it was not the job I had imagined as a younger man and I got very quickly bored of it. I really missed the creative process in my day-to-day job and did not feel I was really part of a team.   

At the time, my neighbor was going to a school called Supinfogame and was taking a course called Game Design and Project Management. I realized when talking with him that there was some bridges between my job and game production. I had not realized it before and slowly the idea to actually work in the industry of my dreams grew.   

Because life is all about seizing opportunities, I decided to quit my job and try joining Supinfogame. I could have decided to keep doing that job since I had spent so many years preparing for it at school and university but I thought it was worth taking some risks rather than keep doing something I did not like for the rest of my life.   

After taking a test, I managed to join Supinfogame. I spent about two years learning about game design, level design and project management applied to games. It was a great experience, which gave me the opportunity to meet awesome people and helped me get where I am now.   

Since then I have worked for different game studios such as Climax, Jagex and currently DR Studios. I have worked on games such as the canned reboot of Soul Reaver, RuneScape and Battle Islands. And this is not the end of my story, but rather just the beginning! Thanks to another opportunity, I will be moving to Canada in the next few weeks to work for Ubisoft and work on a great game with an awesome team.    

I am no one special and I have not done anything amazing that you cannot do. There are plenty other people around there that I have decided to take far more risks to improve their life. But what is important here, is to remember that we should never give up on our dreams. Sometimes opportunities just happen and sometimes you have got to make them happen!