Hollywood has designs on jobs in videogames.

L.A.-area videogame companies continue to be in a hiring mode, as the once-fledgling industry is attracting Hollywood screenwriters, animators, artists, producers, writers and even agents.

While evidence of this migration remains mostly anecdotal, recruiters and personnel managers report a steady shift from traditional show business work--so much so that demand has long since outpaced supply.

"Part of the reason it's so hard to get a job is because so many people want those jobs," said Chris Swain, co-director of the Electronic Arts Game Innovation Lab at USC. "L.A. is the biggest job market, but it's probably the most competitive."

Game recruiters now say they are in the midst of an especially busy cycle placing programmers, graphic artists and marketers. In the past year-and-a-half, recruiters like T.J. Summers have been hiring people for permanent jobs at gaming companies, as opposed to film jobs that are more project-oriented.

"In our first two years, we probably had about 10 people who came to us from film who were genuinely interested in games," said Summers, who co-founded recruiting agency Digital Arts Management in 2000. "Now, we get multiple inquiries on a daily basis."

Like Hollywood, the videogame business is subject to the vicissitudes of a fickle consumer. Electronic Arts Inc. which reported a 4.4 percent drop in third-quarter earnings last month, promptly laid off 60 designers and managers in its Los Angeles office. Layoffs included those who were on the teams behind last year's "GoldenEye: Rogue Agent," which had disappointing sales. In addition, two dozen local positions were eliminated last week by Atari Inc., also the result of sluggish sales.

But industry-wide, business is generally strong. U.S. videogame sales rose to $6.25 billion in 2004 from $5.8 billion in 2003, according to Bane of America Securities. The industry's increasingly close creative and marketing ties to Hollywood are convincing gaming studios to open or expand their operations here.

"While large companies are restructuring, quite a few smaller studios are hiring aggressively," said Tamara Rothenberg, a recruiter for game industry search firm MaryMargaret.com and a former talent manager and development executive in the film industry.

Industry growth

In Los Angeles, where big gaming companies like Electronic Arts, Activision Inc., THQ Inc. and Sony Corp.'s Playstation operation have offices, gaming is seen as the only area of growth in the otherwise mature entertainment industry.

"We absolutely seek out people with a film background," said Stephen White, co-president of Naughty Dog Entertainment, a videogame studio and Sony Corp. subsidiary.

Of Naughty Dog's 75 employees, White said 16 came from the film industry. Such hires tend to be game enthusiasts, but be said he's hired some who didn't play videogames at all. "Especially for artists, it can be a fairly easy transition," he said.

Animator James Polk hired a headhunter and last August joined Sony Computer Entertainment of America as a senior tech artist, lured by technologies that didn't exist five years earlier. "It was the opportunity to create models with just as high resolution as those in film," he said. "I realized I was actually doing the same job, just in a different industry."

Polk first moved to Los Angeles for a job on "Dinosaurs," a 2000 Walt Disney Pictures-animated movie and later bounced to other projects, just like he had always done. Then last year, Polk took a serious look at videogames.

One draw was job security. Once a movie is finished, an animator's job is essentially done, Polk said, as marketing and distribution take over. But the game cycle tends to be longer and because studios are constantly designing and developing games for new consoles, an animator's job appears more secure.

There are adjustments. Stephen Townsend, lead producer for Heavy Iron Studios, a division of THQ whose recent releases include "The Incredibles" and "SpongeBob SquarePants" titles, said while film shooting typically takes six to 12 weeks, game development can run up to 24 months.

Game scripts range from 300 to 500 pages, compared with a film, which seldom runs more than 150 pages. What's more, the videogame stories are not linear. "The bummer is, even if you never take the 'B' path, you still have to write all that stuff anyway," he said.

Townsend, who has a master's degree in screenwriting from UCLA and worked at DreamWorks SKG before making the switch to videogames, estimates that 25 percent of his teams are from a music video or film background.

With new game consoles Sony Playstation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 2 slated to come out this year, the size of game development teams is expected to increase. Typical team size can be 30 to 60, which usually involves sub-teams in computer programming, artists (usually animators, modelers and lighting) and design (usually writers and story designers.)

"If they have experience in film, that's great, but if they have experience in film and games, that's better," Townsend said.

Economics also has played a role in luring Hollywood talent. "The game industry tends to pay pretty well, offer good benefits programs and bonus attachments," said Pat Bigley, president of game recruiter Prime Candidate Inc. of Woodland Hills. A new college graduate with no proven track record can start at $50,000 to $55,000 per year, while a programmer with a few release titles to his name can make $125,000. But unlike Hollywood work, which often involves hourly wages--and overtime--the gaming industry is famously varied in its overtime policies.

As video games begin producing more blockbusters like the "Lord of the Rings" series, hiring of Hollywood talent is expected to increase, which could lead to some friction. The gaming industry is not unionized, but is taking on more camera, lighting and cinematography work, which are traditionally union-represented professions.

"It's an untamed, Wild West kind of environment," said Naughty Dog's White, "but it's getting more mature all the time."