I have have noticed a trend where most job offers ask for WAY over qualified staff. For example you must have awesome 2d and 3d skills to model rocks for a game that ends up looking like a turd.
My question is whats the point of the nudge-nudge-wink-wink game where both parties involved know that no fucking way someone that good will want this shitty job?

Because nobody wants to admit they're working on low quality games that they can hire any old person for?

Simply to scare away those who lack confidence. If you look at a job offer's description and say to yourself "Wow, I'm not good enough." Then you save them a lot of time in the hiring process.

I guess it's the same reason most companies have 'mandatory' 3+ years experience listed. Just one more thing to filter out the people that they know will never make it.

Heres a related question, should someone with no experience but with an excellent portfolio still bother sending out his resume to companies that ask for only people with experience? Or are they just going to throw away the portfolio before they look at it because you didnt meet their qualifications?

You need experience to create an excellent portfolio, and experience builds confidence. That doesn't always mean work or school experience. Schooling alone is nothing to stand behind. Your work will prove itself. I think these requirements are only posted to filter out the bad artists, or those with poor work ethics.

Or it's just the studio being a little too optimistic.

aesir, surely you have nothing to lose by sending in an excellent portfolio even if you don't meet their "academic" or experience requirements. Obviously in many cases companies will only want people with prior experience if they want to get up and running in the quickest time, but there's no harm in sending a portfolio in - if you don't try, you won't know.

It also depends whether the company has a pure HR team rather than art-ish types checking over applicants, and how much control they have over the process - I'd guess that in a larger company, HR will have more control and therefore use the qualifications as a screening process, but often if it's just a lead artist checking over applicants, they might allow someone in with a great portfolio even if they lack experience.

That's what I reckon anyway.

Hiring managers take a lot of things into consideration. Quality of work. Apparent reliability of artist. The odds that a given artist will stay the course and finish the dev cycle. Will he or she fit the culture of the team (is there someone already on the team or in the company who can vouch for this person). Is he or she versatile enough to do everything needed by the team? Has the artist been through the development cycle on another project -- or will senior people need to hold the artist's hand until they can be productive?

Why hire someone who only has the skill to make crappy rocks? Better to hire someone who can make those crappy rocks quickly and then move onto other, more complicated art assets after they've figured out the pipeline by making rocks.

I think Lucas Arts over the years in a prime example that even if you have the most stringent Artist requirments you can still have terrible game art . Personally I think it takes Good Art Director who can recognize talent and foster it to really make an art team shine .

I also think another reason is that it sometimes helps to know someone in the company. Have them give your resume to the HR person as opposed to email, read, delete (not good enough)

I've noticed that they put these high qualifications, because they want to see whether you can do it or have it in your portfolio. If not, then maybe the next resume does have the experience they are looking for. It also seems like timing to get a job, its what are they looking for now.

I saw a very funny help wanted post a few years ago. It stated that they wanted "An experienced 3d game artist... With at least TEN years Maya experience."

At the time, Maya had only been out about 2 years. I don't even think that Power Animator had been around for that long at that point. Shoot, 3d games had barely been around that long.

I think you should scan the job requirements for three things.

1) What software packages they are using, is it software you can use or adapt to easily?
2) Previous game art the company has done and perhaps art from the game you hope to be working on. Does it match or exceed what you can do?
3) An email link to send your stuff to.

Anything else really shouldn't matter. The worst that could happen is that you will never hear from them again, GASP! Rejection is a hard thing to deal with but you have to get used to it if you are going to try the carpet bombing method of getting in.

My friend applied for a concept artist position at Naughty Dog and they asked him to send a VHS Demoreel, why didn't they just go the extra mile and request Betamax?

Hi all I'm new to this site but thought I'd give you my thought as I am one of the recruiters that looks at these applications and I have done it both client side and agency side.
I actually look at the examples sent in before I open up the CV/Resume as I prefer to base my opinion on the work itself. So if you have an excellent portfolio then you should definitely send it in, dont send it in for Senior/Lead role though as thats going a bit far!

About the never hearing back, unfortunately that is bound to happen if your experience is way off the mark, I would spend for ever trying to reply to every application that I got, but If do dont try then your definitely not going to get it are you.
Best of luck to all you who are looking!

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My friend applied for a concept artist position at Naughty Dog and they asked him to send a VHS Demoreel, why didn't they just go the extra mile and request Betamax?

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I think that is a true test of "how much do you want this job".

I used to be an art director, when I was told that I could hire two new artists to help out on our insane workload I placed a few ads (our HR department sucked) and got precisely 5 million applications in about 2 miliseconds.

I didn't do a david brent and chuck half of them in the bin, but you really do develop an eye for the stinkers very quickly. In the end I hired two guys with no experience but very stong portfolios / demo reels, and of course the right level of confidence in their interviews.

I myself have been to shitload of interviews, from the age of 17 to 20. All with games companies and all based on pure speculation that they want someone, thus sending in an email with some jpegs. Of course I never got any of these jobs because I was hopelessly bad at 3d. but they are ALWAYS willing to meet you, just incase there really is a Gem hidden up your butt.