Where can I find internships with Indie game developers?

[Gloudas]

Hi all! I'm currently a 2nd year undergrad studying Computer science at UC Berkeley, and I have every intention of becoming a video game developer. With the summer around the corner, I wanted to start looking for internships, specifically with Indie developers, of which I know there are plenty in the San Francisco bay area. The problem is that I just don't know where to start looking for these companies/internships, or how to contact them.

So I was wondering: do you all have any advice regarding finding Indie developers in my area or finding internships for them? While I know that bigger companies like Blizzard do internships, I didn't know if smaller game studios hire interns as well, and if so how to apply/look for them.

Thanks so much for the help!

-Doug

[ryan.george]

My advice would be to find out who develops in your area ( www.gamedevmap.com ) and try to get in contact with them.

But, in my opinion 'small' indie developers wont really have much need or use for interns.

It all depends though! Why don't you want to try and land an internship at a larger studio?

[nikwin]

I did an internship in Dhruva Interactive, which is a Bangalore-based startup, over the summer two years ago. I got it simply by e-mailing them and then going there for an interview.

All in all, it was a really good idea to go there. At first, they didn't really know what to do with me, and were quite happy to simply have me playing whatever game caught my fancy, but I pushed for more work, and as a result, I pretty quickly got serious tasks. I play tested (and incidentally bug tested) 100 levels of one of their games, and also designed a couple of levels for it myself, I designed the introductory 16 levels to a different game of theirs, created a prototype of an original iPhone game which I designed completely as well as prototyped two games of their designer and prototyped a number of the minigames they were contracted to make (doing three prototypes in two hours). It is a great feeling to be given direct control over something that is to go into a finished game, and I doubt that a big company would have given me the same responsibility.