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Crazy year for me. I got laid off after 8 years at the same company (Griptonite), and I'm now been at Amazon for about six months. I miss certain things about working at a company that only does games, but I have to say the feeling of stability that comes with this position is really amazing. At the game company, there was always that feeling of "Things could go sour any day and I could be out of work", but I know that there will be work for me at Amazon for the foreseeable future. It's funny to say, but I think it's great to have been through a round of layoffs. I clung way too tightly to that last job just because I was worried about actually being able to find work anywhere. I had no self confidence in being able to make it through an interview loop anywhere, and was extremely worried about how my skillset would transfer anywhere.
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Dec 29, 2013 05:44
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I'm enjoying reading these summations from everyone. It's fascinating to see the similarities and variations between the stories.
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Dec 29, 2013 05:45
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Chainclaw posted:It's funny to say, but I think it's great to have been through a round of layoffs. I clung way too tightly to that last job just because I was worried about actually being able to find work anywhere. I had no self confidence in being able to make it through an interview loop anywhere, and was extremely worried about how my skillset would transfer anywhere. It gets even easier after the second time your job disappears!  Seriously though the zen you get from knowing you-will-be-ok is the thing that makes working in games bearable. I couldn't hack it as an artist or a game designer. I'm too stress-prone as it is.
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Dec 29, 2013 06:14
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This was my first year in the games industry, so I guess it started off well? I started at Microsoft in January, doing QA for MGS, which was actually pretty kickass. The pay sucked, but the hours were good, and my coworkers mostly had their heads screwed on straight. Only a couple of the "hurr durr I play video games" stereotypes. I learned a ton about QA, where before I'd only had retail experience, and learned that this is pretty much where I want to be. At least, in games. I like QA but there are other things about development that excite me. My favorite part was when one of the QA guys from the studio whose game we shipped contacted me and asked if I wanted to work for them after my contract was up :3 I theoretically start with them in January!
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Dec 29, 2013 06:34
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I told my parents last Christmas that I was bored and wanted a new job. I said the exact same thing this year too, cause I'm still in the same job  I've just been so utterly scared of the idea of moving on, feeling like I didn't have the skills or the confidence to work anywhere else and all that crazy-making tailspin. The last couple of months have been especially rough. Still, I think I'm turning it around - I'm talking to a therapist about my anxiety(if nothing else, that is a huge step for me) and both me and my partner have been approached by a startup looking to build a team - I've got a phone interview lined up and I'm cautiously optimistic. So 2013 hasn't been great, but 2014 is going to be exciting.
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Dec 29, 2013 12:55
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At the start of 2013 I was the Operations Manager at a QA outsourcing company with 4 employees where I helped maintain, QA and CS 5 games on a free to play platform. I switched over to work with the developer that I was embedded with and got the job as Community Manager and head Content Writer for their game, blog, forums and website. Then fifty percent of the development team got laid off by the US office and I'm freelancing while waiting for a few prospects to open up. I need to start sending out more CV's.
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Dec 29, 2013 13:35
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I started this year with no contacts trying to get a game out the door as an indie. I didn't manage it, but I met a few good people in the process. So I'm ending this year with multiple contacts and even multiple temporary contract offers, but thanks to project delays my money is going to run out before they'll kick in. So I'm going to be looking for a real job in January. In the industry if I can manage it, but it's probably going to be hard since none of the projects I've been working on for the past several years have actually reached publication, and they're all in Unity (and C#) rather than C++ (and literally every job position I've seen so far lists C++ as a requirement). I'm thinking my best shot is to polish off very limited versions of some of the programs I've been working on and get them released in some fashion, if only online for free on my own website. At least that way I'd have some tangible record of what I've been doing all this time.
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Dec 29, 2013 14:31
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My year started really bad. By January, a sense of dread had already started to creep up into the company, with dwindling work and desperate attempts to pitch new ideas to investors. The company shut down in March. I remained in the US for a short while, trying to keep my work visa, but in the end it was for nothing and I was forced to return to Mexico. I looked for work for about 5 months with nothing in sight. I was really worried because the Mexican game dev scene is extremely small and I didn't want to end up in advertisement. Eventually, by pure chance, I got an offer from the least expected place, a Mexican university and a bunch of health institutions. One of the things they wanted to achieve was to take said research and "translate" it for the general population, in a form that would be helpful and easy to grasp for them. My aunt happened to know one of the leaders of this new project. They interviewed me and I became the head of the interactive entertainment division, which is kind of strange because my background is all in art and animation. Also because I'm literally the only game dev person around there, sorrounded by important people, scientists and doctors. That said, I always wanted to be a designer or producer and this gives me the chance to do that with complete control over the projects, which is something that I know is not easy to come by. I want to talk a bit more but I'm in a bit of a hurry and I'm typing on an iPad so I will continue later on Part 2. Chernabog fucked around with this message at 02:38 on Jan 2, 2014 |
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Dec 29, 2013 14:59
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My year was pretty good! It coincides almost completely with the first year of the business. I successfully cultivated the unofficial position of video gamesman in our serious games studio, so I've designed and coded a couple of cool, fun games with bonafide game systems, they're both light sims, and nice graphics. Sadly one of them still hasn't "shipped" (working for the European Commission has the extreme downside of things moving at a glacial pace) and the other one, for a multinational foods corporation, is for internal training use only For now, anyway. My wife and my little brother both now work for the company, too, which is cool. My brother was hired as an artist, but had to step into the role of artist stroke producer when he started and is totally excelling at it. Very glad I vouched for him. My wife is doing exceptionally well writing content for our instructional videos and games, and doing game design on the side. I've had to do a few websites and native apps here and there (and I'm currently working on a learning app about health that the wife and I are working hard to jazz up into something new and creative, not just reams of text and clipart) but the bulk of my time has been on the games, which has been aces. I've learned so much this year, done a ton of web stuff - both front and backend. Made a point-of-sale system for collecting and selling/printing souvenir photos from one of the apps I did this year. You take a photo in the app with a virtual cardboard-cutout, it gets sent off to the server, then generates a barcode which you redeem at the gift shop and they print it for you. Did the whole process end-to-end in a really short time frame, never done anything like that before! PHP, SQL, JS, user interface to be used by untrained sales staff day in, day out, all of it was new. But, the reason I came to the company not long after it started left a little while ago to start back up on their own and needs bodies, and another old contact is wanting to start something new up, and also needs a designer/coder, so... 2014 will be interesting. I think I've said it before that I must be addicted to startups, but this is the first one I've been at with a ton of funding that's in a great position a year on. But some of the goals of the business don't necessarily line up with mine philosophically, so... I dunno. I'm still having a good time, here, though. The day to day is fantastic, I have some great coworkers! Still feels weird being somewhere with more than half a dozen devs. Edit: So yeah to sum up the curse of Akuma is still in effect and 80% of the stuff I've worked on this year has yet to come out despite being done. Akuma fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Dec 29, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 15:49
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Shalinor posted:... really curious to hear how everyone else's years went, business wise. Gee, let's see. My year opened to THQ undergoing Chapter 11, trying to save itself through a bankruptcy but having it backfire when creditors refused and turned it into a Chapter 7. So instead of getting part of their investment back over time from a relatively stable company, they instead chose to get a far smaller fraction back by liquidating everything while leaving a bunch of people without jobs. Oh well, business as usual in the video games industry! But THQ Montreal got bought by Ubisoft, which was frightening considering most of the studio were Ubisoft expatriates, many of whom didn't... exactly leave in good terms. But they just let us continue working on 1666, which progressed at a much better pace now that we were free of THQ's management and desperate milestone expectations. After producing a very promising vertical slice over the course of just four months, we thought we were home free. Then Ubisoft fired Patrice Désilets over a nebulous "breach of contract", canned the project and gave everyone the "choice" of going to work on some of their IPs. And by "choice", I mean pile more bodies on Watch Dogs to try to ship in time. We all know how well that worked out in the end. From what I've seen on my short time working on the game and from colleagues still on it, it was the right decision, though. It's just a shame that they chose to put me on that project instead of Child of Light, which was my first choice and would actually have convinced me to stay. After the double whammy of having my beloved project shut down and having my choice of a next project ignored outright, I wasn't very fond of Ubisoft. I reached out to Eidos Montreal, who had contacted me before and, after some talk and interviews, had actually made me an offer on a very interesting project. I'd turned it down to stay on 1666, but when the one thing that was holding me back was taken away, I suppose the offer became interesting again. That was an interesting three months and I liked the project and people enough to overlook a few sketchy events that happened. Until it happened to me, when I was going through a rough patch, had punctuality issues and got warned then fired about them within a week. I took it personally at first until I learned that my project got canned the week after and there were a few similar mysterious firings. Guess they don't want to shell out for unemployment for laid off employees, maybe? But between this treatment and what I've heard from other ex-employees, I think I dodged a bullet in a certain way. Since I had not taken any time off in between my job changes, I took this opportunity to take a breath and land on my feet. Which is just as well because it ended up taking a while for jobs to open up. While hanging out with my good THQ coworkers, someone talked about Contrast and how it was being made in Montreal. I was looking for a change of pace from big AAA companies so I contacted them on a whim... And got a reply from the founder of the company, who happens to have worked with me while on a contract at THQ. Told me to come visit them for a chat, no CVs or interviews required. So I talked with Compulsion, and despite my many worries about going indie, I found myself very much enjoying the idea of joining such a team. Sadly, they ended up hiring a programmer more senior than I for their needs, and I had to look elsewhere. I applied to Ubisoft and Warner Bros., but by the time I got actual offers back from either of them, Compulsion had changed their mind and reextended an offer for me to join as another programmer. Since I had other offers in the pipeline, making the decision was a lot harder the second time around. I basically had to choose, as mentioned in my previous post, between working on a large AAA team, a small AAA team or a small indie team. I figured I'm too young to make choices because I'm worried about risk. So after two and a half years in the industry (three if counting my co-ops, which I am, no matter how hard recruiters try to convince me co-ops are irrelevant), I'll be starting work at Compulsion next January. It's indie, but indie with funding, so I figure I will be getting the best of both worlds. Really scary but thrilling business, looking forward to it. After this year, I'd take anything as long as it lasts more than a few weeks. 
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Dec 29, 2013 17:02
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icking fudiot posted:I have a quick seasonally appropriate survey question if that's OK: My studio switched I think last year. We lost all our 'set' holidays other than a period of time between Christmas Day and New Years Day. All of the other yearly breaks were rolled up and added to our holiday allowance (3 weeks a year) and we can choose what we do or don't take off. I've been working my rear end off all year so have 2 and a half weeks time off in the bank. I was able to carry some of that over into the new year but not all of it. I actually got taken aside and was told I HAD to take my time off for legal reasons. Being the kind of guy I am I took those 2 weeks off...and still came in to the office to finish up a project ahead of our due date. Sion posted:At the start of 2013 I was the Operations Manager at a QA outsourcing company with 4 employees where I helped maintain, QA and CS 5 games on a free to play platform. I switched over to work with the developer that I was embedded with and got the job as Community Manager and head Content Writer for their game, blog, forums and website. You still in Scotland Paddy?
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Dec 29, 2013 17:08
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Monster w21 Faces posted:You still in Scotland Paddy? Yeah at the moment.
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Dec 29, 2013 17:59
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Lost my job at DNA Dynamics back in November 2012, busted arse on portfolio and applications while staying at parents place, landed two job offers from Tag and 4J studios and took the latter due to better pay and a safer job. 4J work is solid and Minecraft is not going anywhere soon, which is absolute priority for me.
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Dec 29, 2013 18:14
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How's that Minecraft money, GC?
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Dec 29, 2013 19:09
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Let's see. Around this time last year I had just gotten caught in the Trion layoffs, but things were already looking up -- some folks I'd worked with before had reached out and asked if I'd be interested in a design position at their company. January was a flurry of interviewing and moving, and I began my content design position at Carbine in February. Since then, I've been promoted to Senior, run a small team of content designers, and am working hard at getting Wildstar out the door. As a team we're allowed to work on some pretty self-contained projects within the greater whole, which is fantastic. I enjoy the game I'm working on -- which is huge; that hasn't always been the case in past gigs -- and I'm looking forward to getting this sucker launched and out there next year. Here's to a good 2014!
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Dec 29, 2013 19:40
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Akuma posted:How's that Minecraft money, GC? but we did have the world's best christmas party with a Knockhill track day, a massive posh guest house rented out for the night and £1k Amazon gift vouchers being doled out so it's not all bad. 
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Dec 29, 2013 19:43
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Aliginge posted:Well according to Mutata I'm getting screwed at the moment Edit: The getting screwed part does not sound pretty great for clarification
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Dec 29, 2013 19:46
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In February 2013, the social games studio in Baltimore, where I had spent the last 3.5 years working diligently, closed, leaving much of the studio with the choice to either transfer to headquarters in SF, or accept severance and hoof it on their own. I joined a well-funded indie mobile games developer in Boulder, CO, in lieu of continuing my employment with the big Z. I moved 1700 miles west to a city that I am completely in love with, for a job that I also love. My work/life balance is fair (something I haven't experienced in a long time), I shipped my first game with the studio, and I'm getting valuable on-the-job experience as a concept and UI artist (two roles I didn't really have a chance to tackle at my previous job). The year began with tough news, but I'm truly grateful that I'm in a way better environment, in terms of the city and the company, than I was a year ago. Life's good, and I'm happy. e: In retrospect, moving to Boulder was the right call and was what I needed to do on a personal and professional level. Most of the people who opted to transfer to HQ have since left the company; I might've done alright in SF, but I'm super glad to be in Colorado now. Frown Town fucked around with this message at 03:56 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 29, 2013 19:54
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floofyscorp posted:I told my parents last Christmas that I was bored and wanted a new job. I know your predicament. I feel like at work we're only just catching up with modern games art techniques. All my DS work is pretty much junk now, no one wants to see anything without a specular/normal map unless it's spectacular. It's not the worst thing though. Working on low poly and mobile stuff has taught us lots of valuable lessons and good modelling skills that we can quite easily apply to new stuff. The problem is demonstrating you can do it! I think the first half of next year will be spent making small, quick models that demonstrate this ability. Tiled floor sets, small props etc that can be made very quickly and easily. You easily have the talent and ability, don't let it get you down and prove you can do it.
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Dec 29, 2013 20:07
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I never post in this thread but after working in mostly AAA production roles for 14 years I started working in free to play mobile several months ago. It feels like one of the best decisions of my life. I can't say I'm working on Max Payne, Guild Wars, or Battlefield anymore but everything else is just plain better. Work life balance is fantastic, I feel like I'm valued as an employee, and I'm excited to feel like I'm both learning and teaching every day. Plus one of my projects was top 10 grossing on iOS for 2013. Yay! The ability to come up with a hypothesis for a cool feature or tweak, implement it immediately, and actually measure the results is still unbelievable to me. In hindsight I was flying blind just guessing what the customer wants... sometimes betting many man-months of the team's work on essentially someone's hunch.
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Dec 30, 2013 02:51
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Part 2: When I first started working in edutainment, about 3 months ago, all I knew was that it was mostly terrible and that I could probably design better stuff than what I found out there. Well, as it turns out, the reason most edutainment sucks is because it is actually really hard to design it while maintining the educational value. That, and most edutainment doesn't seem to be made by game designers. The very first thing I did when I started was to research several topics they wanted to turn into games. This took several days, considering the topics were fairly advanced and complicated. This required me to simplify them a lot in order to be manageable and easy to understand. I also had several interviews with doctors and experts in each topic to make sure the information I had extracted was sound. I then created GDDs, concept art, UI mock-ups and whatnot. This was hard. While my experience in game design is limited, usually the constraints in game design seem to be either from tech or IP standpoints. When you are designing edutainment you are constrained by reality and educational expectations: You have to add these gaint blocks of text explaining stuff but at the same time you are trying to avoid them in order to make a fun game. The human body works in X way but that doesn't lend itself to be a game. You have this cool idea but people won't understand what it translates into. What do you do? Anyway, so far, it has been going.... slow... with it being a new government program and all that it entails. I'm a worried about recruiting a programmer. I would have liked to do that since the first day but because the bureaucratic gears are just starting to turn it has taken a really long time to do so. That said, I am excited to start with the first two projects ASAP and see how they turn out. Hopefully I can make a lot of fun little games that people will enjoy and learn from.
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Dec 30, 2013 06:06
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This has been my first full year in games and I'm still bright-eyed and optimistic about my career choice After turning down an associate design position at a more traditional studio for a programming one in mobile/social I'm pretty happy where I ended up, even if I'm new to this facet of games (I actually didn't get a smartphone until after I started working). I've gotten to work with people who know quite a bit more than I do about programming and I've become better for it, as well as recognizing that I'm woefully oblivious to the more powerful parts of C++ -- C# and AS3 have spoiled me completely as far as memory management goes. The faster iteration pace has also been fun, and I'm looking forwards to the future when we get to spin up another project. That being said, I also got to experience my first crunches (light by most industry standards, mind-boggling to anyone outside of it) as well as the fact that in games you're never completely sure where you'll be in three months. I'm not completely sure where I'll be in another year, but I'm pretty happy where I am right now.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:09
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Shalinor posted:... really curious to hear how everyone else's years went, business wise. Two years ago I helped a couple guys start a game company. I had over 6 years in the game industry and they were new, so they were thrilled to have me. We went from just the 3 of us in a tiny cubicle to an office that held almost 30 employees at its peak. Long hours, but rewarding stuff. Then things went sour. At near the end of last year, the two founders started taking contracts that the dev team had no hope of completing on time. I'm talking about signing jobs where the estimates included things like "customizable 3D avatar : 4 hours art, 1 hour programming." At one point, they signed a contract to complete an iPad MMO in under 4 months. Whenever I told them this was losing the company money (since we had to "donate" 3 hours to every 1 we were getting paid for) they told me I "just had to find a way to make it work." Whenever payroll couldn't be met, they just fired people. At one point, I was working 70-80 hour weeks, every week, for four months. At one point I told them I would accept a pay cut if they just let me keep my last two artists, because I was already drowning in the workload. The CEO's response was "Well, now that you mention it, you're going to have to take a paycut anyway." I gave two weeks notice at the end of that day. Since then, I've been grabbing the occasional freelance contract and enjoying life, but trying to get a new job has been rough since I think working at this company has poisoned my resume. I have good hopes for 2014 though.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:26
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floofyscorp posted:I told my parents last Christmas that I was bored and wanted a new job. That feeling kept me at my first job for two years longer than it should have and didn't help my career or long term goals. Don't make excuses take the security you have and use your time to find new opportunities.
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Dec 30, 2013 07:34
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This was my second full year as a game designer making casual games at a mobile studio in SF. I love my job. There's still a bit of "Haha, they actually pay me to design games, suckers" but more than that, I've started to become decent at it. The real job, involving lots of docs and wireframes and words like ARPDAU. When I was young I thought game design was mostly coming up with ideas, but it's way more iteration than ideation. A surprising amount of the work that does involve ideas is convincing people that yours is correct. The biggest challenge for me is probably industrial. There's this huge disconnect between real-life and internet-life when it comes to making freemium games. I like what I do, although there are always a billion problems with a live game that I wish I could fix single-handedly. I add lots of features to make sure every bit of games' core content is accessible to everyone without too much waiting around, and then I get to read emails and forum posts on our website from a whole lot of players who get it. They love the game, they've never spent money, everyone's happy. If I ever look up a game I've worked on other sites than our own, basically we're the worst people in the world for having IAP and you hit a paywall after five minutes. This extends to industry people as well, some people think mobile is exciting and the future and others sort of seem to be asking when am I going to make a real game. Mobile is very hard and it seems like the secret to success (beyond having a good game) is having enough money to buy ads and installs when you launch, which is not a thing people enjoy hearing. Still, the company's grown 3x in my time (although not as good a year as the previous for getting goons jobs), makes a lot of money, and most importantly, I get to see numbers about millions of people enjoying content I've created. That's worth it to me.
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Dec 30, 2013 17:03
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Zeryn posted:The biggest challenge for me is probably industrial. There's this huge disconnect between real-life and internet-life when it comes to making freemium games. I like what I do, although there are always a billion problems with a live game that I wish I could fix single-handedly. I add lots of features to make sure every bit of games' core content is accessible to everyone without too much waiting around, and then I get to read emails and forum posts on our website from a whole lot of players who get it. They love the game, they've never spent money, everyone's happy. If I ever look up a game I've worked on other sites than our own, basically we're the worst people in the world for having IAP and you hit a paywall after five minutes. ... but you really, really have to just give up on the core gamer feedback. You will always be demonized and hated and your game will always "hit the paypall too fast" and you'll always be the bad guy. Meanwhile, your actual target market, soccer moms and the like, are happily playing your game and finding the rate of progress perfectly acceptable. Pretend you're making amazingly entertaining toilets. Or super-interactive towel racks or refrigerators. There's a big gulf between core gaming and mobile gaming, but most will happily cross the gulf to piss on the other side if it's convenient. (I think this gets easier as you get more experience) EDIT: Oh dangit, it's almost the new year... gonna have to stop rocking the jolly singing pirate av
Shalinor fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 17:49
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There are always people who see x, y, or z as "real" games or "real" work. We on the Toybox environment art team can swap stories about relatives and acquaintances who have asked us "Oh, cool, but when are you going to join the character art team?" or "So are you planning to transfer to Pixar at some point?"
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Dec 30, 2013 17:54
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This year I got promoted and I have no meetings and very little supervision lately... I just kinda do my own thing and they seem to like what I do  . I'm a tools programmer mainly but I do a little bit of everything.
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Dec 30, 2013 18:04
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I actually broke into the industry right at the end of this year going into 2014. For the past three years I've been working full time while also finishing my degree. I wasn't getting paid much, but I managed to make a pretty decent portfolio of apps and games in my area, which is mobile with a specialty in Android development (though I managed to get a few iOS projects in my portfolio too, the cross platform side of my Android stuff). The place I've been working actually focuses more on creating mobile dev tools for hobbyist developers and educational purposes than actual games, but I used my free time to do some games stuff on my own as I could, and also convinced my boss to let me steer some of my work projects in a gamey direction. This culminated in me getting an offer at a mobile-focused studio in Dallas. So I'm officially an Android developer at a mobile studio starting in a few days! Pretty good stuff. As an aside, Android dev is insanely marketable right now. I had like 6 interviews in a week and got offers from all of them. Most of them weren't game industry positions, but mobile development is still pretty cool even if you aren't in games. So that was all a really nice experience. Who knew job hunting would be so chill? (Please don't hurt me) speng31b fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 18:32
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I think last time I updated my status was I was the community manager at Robot Entertainment working on Orcs Must Die and Age of Empires Online. Since that time, I went to a mobile/social game company in San Francisco that got bought by Nexon, then I went to Electronic Arts where I was the Global Community Manager for Dead Space 3, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel and Titanfall. EA being EA and me being a contractor, I ended up going to Deep Silver to be a Communications (aka Marketing) Manager just in time for Saints Row IV's launch. So now I'm there and things are pretty great. Full court AAA game marketing at a medium sized (we're top 10 going by NPD) publisher is a lot of fun. Tons of balls to juggle, but I'm doing everything from giving guidance on radio ads to social media marketing to channel marketing to stamping and closing our holiday cards. It's really great. We're actually hiring another Marketing Manager here in San Francisco if anyone is interested, shoot me a PM.
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Dec 30, 2013 18:39
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Wow, it's wonderful being able to see everyone's growth and stories and all the fantastic insight! Thank you everyone for posting. baby puzzle: Congrats on the promotion! What were you before being promoted to tools programmer? mutata posted:There are always people who see x, y, or z as "real" games or "real" work. We on the Toybox environment art team can swap stories about relatives and acquaintances who have asked us "Oh, cool, but when are you going to join the character art team?" or "So are you planning to transfer to Pixar at some point?" I started off this year really well with some of my first industry experience doing contract work. Soon deadlines started to become an issue and I realized I really need to work on my time management and that I'm not the best at working from home. I then moved up to the northern midwest to live with my girlfriend while she finishes up her last year of college. We got a puppy, I got a job in a local art supply store. I've been working on more of my traditional and digital 2d skills. Pushing myself more towards visual dev. and illustration stuff instead of the 3d work I was doing before. In the Spring puppy, girlfriend, and I will be hopefully moving to the west coast to look for work; thinking about Seattle, Portland, or San Francisco. Hope everyone has a great New Years!
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Dec 30, 2013 21:37
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le capitan posted:baby puzzle: Congrats on the promotion! What were you before being promoted to tools programmer? I went from staff programmer to senior programmer.
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Dec 30, 2013 22:32
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ZnCu posted:Two years ago I helped a couple guys start a game company. I had over 6 years in the game industry and they were new, so they were thrilled to have me. We went from just the 3 of us in a tiny cubicle to an office that held almost 30 employees at its peak. Long hours, but rewarding stuff. Then things went sour. Sounds like my last company. They waited for me to get back from my vacation, so I could finish a build, then that day they laid off 14 of the 22 people without a day's warning, including the head of the art department, who had just moved down here 5 months earlier from Redmond. With the company down to 7 people, each week they had 3 multi-hour 'leads meetings' where 5 of the 7 people at the company would discuss the new game. The only two employees not in the room were the ONLY programmer and ONLY artist. I could get into the nightmares, but it gets worse. Eventually one of the founders left because of terrible things the other ones were doing. (Claiming his work at a different company as their own during investor meetings) And the remaining people straight up lied to a big company to get a mobile app contract for a very popular annual FPS that released in November. (They also lied about the empty desks, saying everyone was out to lunch) It required having 4 programmers on the premises. They had zero for the project. They literally hired 4 of them the day before the publisher came to check out the business. None were given any programming test. One of the Android programmers didn't even know what rooting was. They only managed to keep the contract fulfilled for the year because one of the programmers at the publisher was doing 90% of the work himself, covering the asses of the failure programmers my old company hired. M3wThr33 fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Dec 30, 2013 |
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Dec 30, 2013 23:03
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This year, I finally took the plunge and dropped all my other "safety nets" that were paying well but keeping the games industry a "side business" for me, and going all in on my firm, full-time, and have grown my client base to include not just members of the games industry but also casino gaming and traditional (pen and paper/board) gaming clients. I've been lucky enough to represent quite a few of you goons as well, and you guys have been fantastic. I'm pretty sure I've gone through the whole sordid detail of how and why I left the State department a couple of months ago in this thread, but if not I'm drafting a megapost on it for the Foreign Service/FSOT thread anyway, for those who may be interested. So instead, I'll comment on some posts here that caught my eye. ceebee posted:Speaking of all this stuff, why don't we have a little SA game jobs Skype chatroom? I'm on as curtbinder if anybody is interested. I've had so much good advice from everybody here we should really keep in touch outside of this thread. You guys are definitely some of the most intelligent and open bunch I've had the opportunity to be apart of. This would be fantastic. I'm on as swatjester, feel free to add me. Odddzy posted:A few days ago a coworker that I didn't see very often came up to me and asked me "Hey man... What the hell are you still doing here? You could be doing so much more in a new studio", It's hard to believe in myself work-wise when I feel I'm always in need to prove myself to others and being told this and complimented by a dude I don't necessarily know that well felt like a million bucks and was a tremendous confidence boost. At the very least, it helped me get the gently caress out of this comfort zone i've been afraid of getting out of for a while. DancingMachine posted:It gets even easier after the second time your job disappears! floofyscorp posted:I told my parents last Christmas that I was bored and wanted a new job. I know how you feel about the anxiety. It was literally causing me seizures from me freaking out, sweating so much that my body temperature crashed and I shivered uncontrollably till my muscles were so sore I couldn't walk right. I ended up not taking the therapy route (I've done it in the past, it can be great, but in this case I knew exactly what the issue was and how to fix it, I just needed the courage to do so), but mad props to you for doing it. It's really scary leaving your safety net behind. It's the scariest thing I've ever done, in a career history that includes fighting in a war and crashing a helicopter. Every person here who has started their own business -- Shalinor, Mega Shark, Get-Well Gamers, everyone else, you know to some extent or another what I'm talking about. You don't necessarily know where the next check is coming from, and that's terrifying when you're supporting a family. I went to my father, who started his firm 30 years ago, and he told me that he has the same fear even today. But the check always comes. In the end, something always works out. Once I learned to accept that, all the fear and stress melted away, and you're left with just a clarity of purpose. It sounds ridiculous and metaphysical and all, but it really does all work out in the end.
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Dec 31, 2013 08:25
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It's been an eventful year, good and bad. Kicked around doing solo dev and small contracts here and there... started to think maybe I've been thinking about my skillset wrong and started getting interested in Production as a possibility. Landed a job as a production assistant last summer (startups are awesome!) and lost said job in a large necessary layoff(startups are awesome!). Had a bit of leeway after that, so I've been back on the solo dev thing while I consider options and how best to pursue what I think I should be doing-- there aren't a lot of associate-level production jobs open right now in the SF Bay Area (or so it seems). Currently thinking I'll be putting an app together for an opening at Unity that is very similar to my last job-- that would be a great start to 2014.
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Dec 31, 2013 09:42
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Managed to stay in my current company for 2 years now, released a game in 2014, seems secure for now. I'm a bit bummed about my career and long term sustainability, I like like a student scrimping every penny, I do love my job though. Animator/Tech Animator with coming up to 4 years experience. Will probably have to move company to get another payrise.
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Dec 31, 2013 14:27
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In the first half of the year, I was working for the same guys I'd been with for two years. Halfway through the year, I took my last paycheck and left Southern California with the understanding that said guys would soon reinvent themselves in a new city thanks to a pending business deal. In the second half of the year, I sat around waiting, working freelance here and there, as that business deal fell through. Now the same guys are talking about reinventing themselves in another new city thanks to another pending business deal. Continuing to stick with them would be the most convenient career move for me, but given the lessons I learned in 2013, I'd just as soon find a better opportunity somewhere else. This is my portfolio: http://awforsythe.com/. I'd like to write software to support the production of games and/or film, in Los Angeles or elsewhere. Do I have a shot? What could I be doing better?
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Jan 1, 2014 20:35
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I started out as a print packaging designer for the first five months of this year, and spent the last seven months turning my portfolio away from print to game art. I even got to do some cool isometric stuff such as this map: Plus the people I'm meeting as I network are incredible! I'm not of the opinion that my emails to studios were doing any good as far as getting my name out, so I'm glad I moved closer to the gaming scene to pick up contacts in-person. Yeah it's super expensive but that's what I came out here to do. I'm still hunting for UI/layout/2D work, particularly mobile, so if you know anything, keep in touch.
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Jan 2, 2014 00:14
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Okay, so quick resume/LinkedIn opinion question. What do people think about putting periods of independent development between formal jobs down? I've been in a position where I've been able to just work on personal dev projects (boosting up my Unity dev skills) for the last few months, but of course that leaves a gap in the resume. Important to include? Too much like padding? What do you guys think? And if you were going to include such things, how would you be looking to present it?
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Jan 2, 2014 02:26
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That sort of stuff I put under 'personal development' on a separate timeline to formal jobs, where I throw workshops, personal projects, skills development in. Dont throw any old crap in there, just relevant stuff.
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Jan 2, 2014 02:36
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