Q
Anonymous asked:
You have talked about certain things young designers can do that will set them up for failure, namely not studying in college, not prototyping ideas, and trying to burn themselves out by working to hard at the beginning and then slowing down later. What are other common early mistakes that will make a game developers job harder?
A
One common mistake I see with young devs is that they invest too much of their identities into what they do for work. I can understand that quite well - for most of my early career, I did the same thing. I was the game dev. I worked on famous games that most people had played, or at least heard of. It’s a really big ego boost when total strangers you meet know of your work and are impressed with your job. I would caution young devs to avoid this.
One very hard lesson I learned over my career is that the industry is volatile. It’s very easy to lose your job - the company financials start looking bad and there’s layoffs. The game doesn’t sell well and there’s layoffs. The game is sunsetting so there’s layoffs. When the vast majority of the costs in the industry are salaries, the vast majority of cost-cutting is how many workers to let go. We’ve seen a huge number of layoffs in 2023 and this year so far. I doubt we’ve seen the last of them. Job losses are commonplace in the industry, which is what makes the next part a really big deal.
If a large part of my identity is based on my job, I’m suddenly forced to deal with a significantly changed identity when I don’t have a job anymore. That’s extremely difficult to deal with when the chips are down, because being jobless puts a lot more responsibilities on my shoulders for my survival - I need to be operating at my best. At the very least I need to project confidence and competence in order to find a new job. If I must go for an extended period without work (e.g. an economic recession), that gap in my sense of identity from being a game dev encourages depression and melancholy to occupy that space. Overall it’s much more healthy to separate who I am from what I do so that I don’t end up in this feast or famine situation, especially when I need stronger mental health levels to find a job than I do to keep a job.
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askagamedev posted this You have talked about certain things young designers can do that will set them up for failure, namely not studying in...