Crystal Dynamics Community & Communication Manager Meagan Marie was recently a guest at Katsucon in Washington, D.C., where she presented a panel on how to get a start in the gaming industry. Before joining Crystal Dynamics to work on the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot, Marie was an Associate Editor at Game Informer, the world’s most-read gaming magazine.

In this 45-minute-long panel, Marie touches upon getting her start as a community blogger at Destructoid (which is where she and I first met), the importance of networking and going to college, the ups and downs of being a female in the gaming industry, and much more. Want to know how to not get dismissed immediately when applying for a job? Do potential employers Google you before even reading your resume? Does using improper grammar on Twitter make you look like an idiot? It’s all here, and if it’s not, Marie also spent a year writing a thorough 20-page FAQ on the topic.

Note that the panel is mostly aimed at the younger high school and college crowd, so if you’re already Tim Schafer then it might not be of as much interest to you.

“How do I get a job like yours?” is the number one question I get asked every day, and ironically, it’s the very same question I asked many years ago that eventually led to where I am now. If you’re serious about being a journalist or PR/community manager in the gaming industry, there are some extremely good tips here. Plus, Marie’s not exactly hard to look at, but that Minnesotan accent does begin to grind on the ears after a while…*

*Full disclosure: The author of this post is in a relationship with Meagan Marie.

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