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Studio posted:Similarly, individual Castlevanias are probably much weaker on their own, but getting a few together for a pack is an easy way to have a higher price point that customers will buy.
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Oct 30, 2021 10:27
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Anomalous Blowout posted:I can't comment on whether or not a publisher is better or worse for your specific case, but your other option for hype or connections is hiring a PR agency to make noise about your game. It costs money, so depending on how "able" you mean by financially able it could be out of your budget, but here's my quick and dirty cheat sheet to using PR agencies in the indie world: Thanks for this. I did hire a PR firm to help out with my Early Access launch. At this point (~4 months after launch), what I spent on that launch, counting ad buy, comprises about 40% of my expenditures overall. Granted that I haven't been paying myself for the past two years, which distorts the numbers significantly. It's hard to know how helpful the PR folks were, but I wasn't terribly impressed by the creatives they made. These days I wonder if I should have pushed back more on the content they were generating...it mostly just felt kind of uninspired and uninteresting, to me. But it was my first time working with an outside group on this kind of thing, and I didn't (and still don't) know what the norms are. They did make a press release that went out to some ridiculously huge number of people, and I got some media attention from that, including one streamer playing the game and leaving favorable comments which probably got me a good couple hundred extra sales. So the impact wasn't nil. I just have no clue how to go about finding a firm that's a better fit for my needs. MJBuddy posted:I don't agree with this if you want to put your game on console. Caveat: I work for a publisher. It's an immense amount of work to get through the cert process, manage your store fronts, QA your title, etc for console, as well as localization. On steam you don't need the same support. A -good- publishing deal includes all of that and the PR and showcasing (a 15 second spot at E3, an indie showcase, etc). My extremely vague plans at this point look like:
quote:That doesn't mean just get any publisher though, which is an immediate burden of work on you. The reality is if you want to go that way, it pays to have someone doing bus dev for you, either full or part time. Someone who can manage contracts and establish relationships. I'm not saying you need that, but if you want to go onto console and position well to grow as a company, it's probably a worthy investment. When I think about what my career goals are, I'm not really sure how much I want to "grow as a company". I like having intimate involvement in so many aspects of game development. Hiring contractors to help with specific, narrow tasks is fine, especially when they provide skills/experience that I don't have. But I don't like the idea of, in 10-15 years, directing a larger team of other game developers and having more of a managerial role. Having said all that, I can definitely see treating at least some aspects of this as a "hire a contractor to take care of it for me" kind of job. There's a ton of minutiae involved in setting up a store page, for example, and I'd just as soon let someone else take care of most of the details and just let me review the result. I appreciate y'all's insight! Thank you!
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Oct 30, 2021 21:07
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Akuma posted:You can make more money doing them piecemeal/smaller bundles. If you charge $40 for 4 games in one pack that doesn't mean you could charge $100 for 10. It's also quicker to get them out, and you can spend slightly more effort per title so you don't get the perception that it's a lazy release. I guess what I'm getting at is that I would totally pay $100+ to own a whole franchise if it was promoted as a "Complete Box Set", like they do with a band's entire discography or like how Disney released the entire Infinity Saga in one collection. Though I get that it's more lucrative to do it in pieces.
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Nov 1, 2021 21:51
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sticklefifer posted:I guess what I'm getting at is that I would totally pay $100+ to own a whole franchise if it was promoted as a "Complete Box Set", like they do with a band's entire discography or like how Disney released the entire Infinity Saga in one collection. Though I get that it's more lucrative to do it in pieces. Most people don't want to pay over $60 for anything, and older titles usually run $40, so you're looking at two sticky price points in the industry for boxed products to prepare. Those prices are easily understood by sales and marketing at well wrt when and how to discount.
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Nov 2, 2021 00:59
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Thanks for this. I did hire a PR firm to help out with my Early Access launch. At this point (~4 months after launch), what I spent on that launch, counting ad buy, comprises about 40% of my expenditures overall. Granted that I haven't been paying myself for the past two years, which distorts the numbers significantly. It's hard to know how helpful the PR folks were, but I wasn't terribly impressed by the creatives they made. These days I wonder if I should have pushed back more on the content they were generating...it mostly just felt kind of uninspired and uninteresting, to me. But it was my first time working with an outside group on this kind of thing, and I didn't (and still don't) know what the norms are. Biggest expense for a lot of titles going to console is, "Does the UX support the concept of controller based play?" IE: is there clearly an 'active' state for a UI element? Does the idea that one element is 'up' from another exist and make sense? Going from mouse or even touch based to gamepad is a rude shock the first time.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:45
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Hughlander posted:Biggest expense for a lot of titles going to console is, "Does the UX support the concept of controller based play?" IE: is there clearly an 'active' state for a UI element? Does the idea that one element is 'up' from another exist and make sense? Going from mouse or even touch based to gamepad is a rude shock the first time. I feel this, because I've been taking pains to make my game work with gamepads from the word go. My UI may not be very good, but it's possible to do everything with a gamepad if you want to.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:56
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How do people get into community management roles? I know it's not just funny social media posting in these positions and it's very stressful, but I've always wanted to help build communities and be a resource to them.
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Nov 10, 2021 18:36
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Agoat posted:How do people get into community management roles? I know it's not just funny social media posting in these positions and it's very stressful, but I've always wanted to help build communities and be a resource to them. It probably helps to have some sort of experience managing communities in other contexts. Do you run a discord/etc for whatever other hobby you have? Probably relevant to running a discord/etc for X corp's new games. Not that I'm in that lane or involved in hiring for community people.
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Nov 10, 2021 22:26
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Agoat posted:How do people get into community management roles? I know it's not just funny social media posting in these positions and it's very stressful, but I've always wanted to help build communities and be a resource to them. Community manager is an interesting beast because there's a few different angles you take to get there and a lot of people want in. A lot of these people "could" technically do it (poorly) so it's very much about standing out from the crowd. Unfortunately, in my experience this is largely a matter of doing the time and building up a reputation when you're dealing with a crowded field: 1. Have a strong online presence that is somehow both interesting and brand safe 2. Have strong engagement with the game/product/company in your online presence to demonstrate you understand the community 3. Take a leadership role in the community. There's a lot of ways you can do this, but a lot of companies want to bring in someone who the community already knows and trusts. You can accomplish this in a number of ways - run events, moderate forums or reddit, be active and helpful on archaic company forums, moderate discord for the community/company/game and post guides and poo poo, etc etc etc. 4. Figure out the level of professionalism/memeyness/whatever they consider brand-appropriate and demonstrate the gently caress out of that - they want someone they don't have to closely monitor to represent the brand appropriately. I've seen people that everyone on the team personally knew and liked working with miss out on CM roles for this more than anything else I think it's much more frequent for starting CMs to be plucked from known members of a community rather than simply being picked from a collection of resumes because most gaming companies want someone who is already a known factor in the community. Disclaimer: I am not a community manager but i have interviewed them and evaluated applications before I Love You! fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Nov 11, 2021 |
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Nov 11, 2021 05:19
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Agoat posted:How do people get into community management roles? I know it's not just funny social media posting in these positions and it's very stressful, but I've always wanted to help build communities and be a resource to them. I was able to transition into community management because I had the skills necessary despite never having worked as a CM by name before. However, I had worked in roles that required forward-facing interactions with large playerbases (player support for an MMO) as well as forums moderation experience. I also had a lot of social media experience from my previous jobs in hockey media, so I was able to show them a strong portfolio of social media stuff that had nothing to do with games but was still able to show that I was able to engage a playerbase and get them excited about stuff and plan campaigns, etc. I would say that the best way to get into community management is to choose what aspect of community management (moderating forums/accounts, player support type stuff which is sometimes under the CM umbrella and sometimes its own role, social media, or more real-time stuff like discord) you can really shine in portfolio-wise, then go at it hard for a while. Volunteer projects, or paid work for non-games orgs, or work for your own projects is fine for a CM portfolio. I'm a senior community lead now - if anyone in this thread ever has detailed questions, feel free to shoot me a PM.
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Nov 11, 2021 06:27
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Agoat posted:How do people get into community management roles? I know it's not just funny social media posting in these positions and it's very stressful, but I've always wanted to help build communities and be a resource to them. It's in comparison easy to get into as it requires softskills above others, but depending on where/for whom it can be very hard indeed. What helps tremendously, in addition to the above two posts, is to have a good idea of the company and games they make, as in being an active player/member of the community so you do know the pain points and possibly the community already. Heres a recent open position from Epic which I think covers the most common things and it also quite straight with the requirements https://www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/careers/jobs/4145799004
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Nov 13, 2021 18:21
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Is there a right way to do pre-alpha testing when you start feeling the pieces coming together? -- Like at what point is something ready where you can put it into the hands of other people and find out what they think? At what point do you decide "yes, I'd like to start collaborating with others" -- what are the best practices of that and where do you even find others?
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Nov 15, 2021 20:35
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Expo70 posted:Is there a right way to do pre-alpha testing when you start feeling the pieces coming together? -- Like at what point is something ready where you can put it into the hands of other people and find out what they think? As soon as possible. Playtesting will be a big help in revealing all of the wrong assumptions you've made, as well as a ton of bugs. At minimum, as soon as you have a vertical slice, but if you can swing it earlier, that's fine. Your initial playtests will likely need to be curated to some extent, because your game will be so off base that your players will get stuck and you'll have to be present to un-stick them. However, ideally you give them as little guidance as possible. You'll have to do a lot of reading between the lines to figure out if they're actually having fun, though. That'll make it harder to tell if your game fundamentally works.
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Nov 15, 2021 20:43
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I don't mind being a volunteer playtester if you need it. My usual fee is 1 (one) pizza from the local pizzeria if you make more than 1 million $ on it per year. I specialize in epilepsy consulting and making absolutely batshit approaches to mission completion attempts.
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Nov 15, 2021 20:50
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Thank you for your posts, y'all. I was nervous to ask, but y'all honestly have me feeling more confident than ever that I'll be able to one day take on such a role. I've been working on growing my own slice of the Halo community, I'm really excited learning that's a step in the right direction. Sorry for the late reply. Ironically enough Infinite came out and that has been a huge chunk of my time. (mostly outside the game.)
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Nov 27, 2021 09:36
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My own take here is a lot of value is probably seen if you keep your communities productive/constructive and non-toxic. Dev teams want to interact with legitimate critiques of their games. They want players to be happy, and if you're showing that you can keep communities in positive lanes of conversation vs leading mobs and whatnot, that's a corporate value add. The infinite patience required to do that? Oh man our communities teams deserve medals (and big paychecks).
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Nov 27, 2021 16:59
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MJBuddy posted:My own take here is a lot of value is probably seen if you keep your communities productive/constructive and non-toxic. More likely to get the medal than the paycheck IME.
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Nov 27, 2021 17:04
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MJBuddy posted:My own take here is a lot of value is probably seen if you keep your communities productive/constructive and non-toxic. I feel good knowing I'm walking the right path. I work to push conversation, and anytime someone gets a little heated in our community I de-escalate and keep conversation focused on the issue at hand. When would you say someone is "ready" to pursue a career in this?
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Nov 29, 2021 22:04
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Agoat posted:I feel good knowing I'm walking the right path. I work to push conversation, and anytime someone gets a little heated in our community I de-escalate and keep conversation focused on the issue at hand. Start applying immediately. Get practice now, don't wait for the perfect portfolio. Even if you have the perfect portfolio the odds of being the one resume they pick out of a pile are relatively slim until you have a bunch of industry connections, so you should start rolling those dice early and often. Someone might like what they see. Really, really important early advice when you're looking to break into the industry that I've seen hold true for a lot of people: 1. Apply for contract roles in addition to full time. DO NOT expect those contract roles to turn into full time positions (the game industry is notorious for not converting contractors) but a 6-month contract in a Community role is enough to leverage into another job at another company. Companies LOVE to hire Community on contract because headcount for Community is hard to come by at many orgs 2. Make sure your resume includes your community/volunteer/moderation experience in a prominent location. I'd even consider slapping it into the middle of your work experience if it's something you did seriously for a while - as long as you clearly label it volunteer or don't try to pass it off as a paid gig. You want to make sure they read it and if it's stashed away in "interests and hobbies" or something no one is going to see it. People dramatically undervalue their hobbyist experiences and don't list them prominently when they directly relate to a job or industry they're trying to break into 3. Make sure your resume has something interesting or unique or weird early on that a bored hiring manager or recruiter can latch onto. You're going to have trouble standing out from the crowd on merit alone early on, but that doesn't mean you can't catch their eye and make them want to talk to you 4. Consider chatting with recruiters on LinkedIn who are hiring for the roles you're interested in, if you can make any connections 5. Reach out to existing community managers if possible and ask them about their roles and even specific jobs you're interested in. Don't be annoying, but they're literally paid to be there to interact with the community and this is a valid area of community interest! I broke into the games industry as an esports manager/product role at Blizzard despite a very inconsistent work history and really stiff competition by grinding it out over 6 months of applications and catching a hiring manager's eye with a unique resume that focused on all the non-work stuff I'd done that made me a great fit for the role rather than focus on the holes. I've seen it happen for other people and in an industry as competitive as gaming, you should consider shooting the angles a bit unless you're well-connected because there's a ton of people submitting near-identical applications. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 18:34 on Nov 30, 2021 |
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Nov 30, 2021 18:20
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I Love You! posted:Start applying immediately. Get practice now, don't wait for the perfect portfolio. Even if you have the perfect portfolio the odds of being the one resume they pick out of a pile are relatively slim until you have a bunch of industry connections, so you should start rolling those dice early and often. Someone might like what they see. Certainly a scary thought diving in right away, but I'll do it!! I'll update my resume today and do my best!
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Nov 30, 2021 19:03
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Agoat posted:I feel good knowing I'm walking the right path. I work to push conversation, and anytime someone gets a little heated in our community I de-escalate and keep conversation focused on the issue at hand. Echo'ing above, just start now. If you run a discord, that's nice. Everything community has a discord/Twitter angle. Talk about it's growth, how active it is, do you run events and are people coming back to those events (retention). Doesn't need to be eSports and such, just like, I know you worked on Halo communities here and of you had a weekly game or something that was organized through your discord,even if you didn't organize it but just created the platform to let people go, that's good stuff!
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Nov 30, 2021 19:05
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MJBuddy posted:Echo'ing above, just start now. If you run a discord, that's nice. Everything community has a discord/Twitter angle. Talk about it's growth, how active it is, do you run events and are people coming back to those events (retention). Doesn't need to be eSports and such, just like, I know you worked on Halo communities here and of you had a weekly game or something that was organized through your discord,even if you didn't organize it but just created the platform to let people go, that's good stuff! I'll definitely include Anchor 9 with my resume. It's really grown a lot lately, I'm actually really happy it came to mind. My goal was 343, but they aren't hiring any community positions at the moment. I'll be on the lookout for other opportunities, too. Truth be told, being able to focus on a game community full-time would really be awesome. (Even though lol I can see it can be rough with angry players)
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Dec 2, 2021 07:33
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Agoat posted:I'll definitely include Anchor 9 with my resume. It's really grown a lot lately, I'm actually really happy it came to mind. Sitting in the VHS Discord and watching a friend of mine have to manage it (when it's growth was rather unexpected) makes CMing Seem Like Hell. Discord has realllly added an extra burden to CMs that seems so much more exhausting than other socials and forums.
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Dec 2, 2021 11:00
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Agoat posted:I'll definitely include Anchor 9 with my resume. It's really grown a lot lately, I'm actually really happy it came to mind. One thing I would advise, and this is absolutely from a place of privilege, is to keep in mind goals like this (specifically which pubdev you want to work for some day) but not to put them front and center when you're first trying to break into an industry as competitive as gaming. There's a lot of reasons for this, but to list just a few: - You are not likely to land your dream job right out the gate, but starting at a smaller studio or just wherever you can get an in will help you get to that dream job, so casting a wide net can really help your career especially if you're looking at contract work or going through a recruiting firm that places candidates in a lot of different positions and companies - Your best fit for a role might not be available at your dream company yet. Getting your hands dirty somewhere else gives you more flexibility to land a role at your target company - You are more likely to properly evaluate your career growth/financial options if you don't just immediately land a job at your dream company A special callout to that last item - I've seen so many people land a job at their dream company and accept less-than-stellar career prospects and endure absolute hell (cough, blizzard) because they couldn't imagine themselves working anywhere else. I think the games industry in particular is conducive to unhealthy relationships with your employer, and having some experience at a different game dev before you land at your dream company gives some very valuable perspective to learn your own value, have a point of comparison if things are sour, and also make sure you're actually landing in a role/career path that is right for you. It's really heartbreaking to see someone in the wrong role with no career growth potential, but they're at their "dream company" and are unable to really process those facts until they've sunk everything they have into their jobs. It's wonderful if you can line up your desired career with your desired employer and you should absolutely pull the trigger if you get the opportunity, but don't fall into the trap of holding out and taking anything that comes along just because it's at your favorite game-maker. If you enjoy your chosen new career and are good at your job and make industry connections, you're going to have the chance to land there eventually anyway because EVERYTHING in gaming is cyclical and moving around between companies is super common. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Dec 3, 2021 |
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Dec 3, 2021 21:37
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It's also absolutely true that my team has passed on prospects because they were clearly only seeking this job because the place they wanted to be wasn't hiring at their level. If you're applying at a studio, make sure to at least play a game they have and be able to say intelligent things about it, and try to talk more about the place you're applying to than the place you really want to work in your interview. We had multiple people who we told after the phone screener "Please download and play our game before your interview," and most of them didn't bother. Unsurprisingly none of those people got the job. We did hire people who weren't fans of our games, but they all at least played them and were able to discuss their experience outside of a framework of "this is how your game differed from the game I actually like."
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Dec 4, 2021 04:26
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Tricky Ed posted:It's also absolutely true that my team has passed on prospects because they were clearly only seeking this job because the place they wanted to be wasn't hiring at their level. If you're applying at a studio, make sure to at least play a game they have and be able to say intelligent things about it, and try to talk more about the place you're applying to than the place you really want to work in your interview. I always wondered about this because it seems like if you're hiring for xyz studio position you don't just want someone who LOVES one game you made 5 years ago. I get that often people hire from communities and stuff like that but generally I always thought candidates with excellent portfolios would be more strongly considered over someone with a weaker portfolio who just desperately wants to work at your shop. Or is there such a number of people wanting to work in games that you end up with excellent portfolios no matter what and you're relatively picky?
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Dec 4, 2021 04:54
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VelociBacon posted:
Absolutely not. At least not for anything even mildly technical. We do get lots of people applying for jobs who tell us what great game ideas they have though.
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Dec 4, 2021 05:20
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MJBuddy posted:Absolutely not. At least not for anything even mildly technical. We do get lots of people applying for jobs who tell us what great game ideas they have though. Do you think people go into postsecondary education for those technical positions with the idea to work in games but end up finding some other passion in that field so you get fewer game-centric technical people? Vs just someone daydreaming about games all day with Great Ideas and taking some one year design program or something?
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Dec 4, 2021 05:37
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VelociBacon posted:Do you think people go into postsecondary education for those technical positions with the idea to work in games but end up finding some other passion in that field so you get fewer game-centric technical people? Vs just someone daydreaming about games all day with Great Ideas and taking some one year design program or something? It's the money OP. Games typically underpays big tech and startups.
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Dec 4, 2021 06:15
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leper khan posted:It's the money OP. Games typically underpays big tech and startups. This is 100% the answer. Games don't pay. I'd personally make 30-40% more at a big tech firm in the same area with my job title. Some roles are better or worse regarding compensation within the industry but it's almost all below market rate. I Love You! fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Dec 4, 2021 |
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Dec 4, 2021 06:31
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I like, tripled my pay by going from games to a temp position at an sf company.
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Dec 4, 2021 06:43
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Yes but I thought the reason games doesn't pay was because the supply of people wanting to be in the industry vastly outweighs the demand. If that isn't the reason, and the incentive to complete projects on time is as big a deal as it is, why doesn't that urgency translate into higher wages like you see in industries of similar economic size? I know crunch exists and often is the avenue taken instead of assembling an appropriately resourced team for the understood deadline, but economists in these bigger companies (where I expect salary standards are mostly established?) must be pulling their hair out. Is the missing piece that other industries unionize more?
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Dec 4, 2021 11:13
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Union is not the only thing. I unionized our workplace but that didn't immediately translate to higher wages. Main problem I faced was culture as the relationship with your work is also different. People generally are okay with more mistreatment (well until recently) if they like their product or they might even think that things are okay/normal. "This is just how the cookie is made." Especially prevalent with that attitude by the younger people hired because they don't know better. Most of my work was to teach people as both a veteran at the company and their chairman that "It's okay to not work over and potentially miss a deadline. Your producer won't hate you for it." and also how to argue for their own worth. The negotiations about wages I had with the company was on a macro level of what the budget would be etc. Groogy fucked around with this message at 12:42 on Dec 4, 2021 |
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Dec 4, 2021 12:38
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VelociBacon posted:I always wondered about this because it seems like if you're hiring for xyz studio position you don't just want someone who LOVES one game you made 5 years ago. I get that often people hire from communities and stuff like that but generally I always thought candidates with excellent portfolios would be more strongly considered over someone with a weaker portfolio who just desperately wants to work at your shop. I guess what I didn't really communicate is that this is a method of differentiating between candidates who we think have the skills to do the job. If you're to the point where you're interviewing with the team, that's the assumption. The people who don't have relevant skills hopefully get filtered out before that point. The "one game you made 5 years ago" thing might actually be important if you're interviewing with a team of people that contributed heavily to that game. It might not, if the people who made it aren't there any more. Try to know who you're going to talk to and demonstrate that you "get" what they do and how you can contribute to the thing they're working on now. It's less about showing passion and more about showing that you're willing to put effort into integrating with the team, and you're excited to work with them. As for our team it's more that we work on a long-running complex game, and someone who understands the particulars of our game is easier to bring on board than someone who understands a competitor's game, and that person in turn is easier to bring on board than someone who doesn't have any experience in the genre. This is probably less pronounced with other games, or at studios that mainly do one-offs. What I'm saying is if you're a big fan of, e.g., Mario, but you're interviewing with the Sonic team, be able to talk about Sonic and what you like about that game, not only the things you like about Mario. If you're going to be working on a Sonic game, you need to demonstrate that you understand what makes a Sonic game appealing to the Sonic audience.
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Dec 4, 2021 12:42
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If I was interviewing with Sonic team, I'd probably forget to shut up about Chu Chu Rocket and Nights. Definitely had a similar issue with volition right out of school talking about Descent. I got told at least twice flat out that they weren't going to make another Descent.
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Dec 4, 2021 15:30
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leper khan posted:If I was interviewing with Sonic team, I'd probably forget to shut up about Chu Chu Rocket and Nights. I just want you to know this made me laugh. I am a huge Saints Row fan, but I started with Freespace (and before that, the original Descent on a school computer), so I know the feeling.
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Dec 4, 2021 16:06
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I don't know if this is an appropriate spot for this, if there's a better one maybe a kind goon could point me that way. Wasn't sure it warranted it's own thread, or if you're even allowed to make threads in games that aren't about a specific game. Motion Sickness(+) problems Background: I am prone, that is no mystery. Have issues riding in the back-seat of a car. Have to take appropriate precautions on smaller boats. VR is all but impossible for me. This issue is slightly different in physical nature as I'm not sure I would qualify it as feeling sick. Gives me the spins, if bad enough it puts me on the floor like I'm insanely drunk until it subsides. This has only happened around a half dozen times while gaming, ever. Googling it suggests motion sickness. I'm in my 40's and I've been surrounded by computers and gamed my entire life, it is easily a top 3 passion. In all these years and all these games I can only think of three that have given me this reaction, but I'm sure there were a few more: 1. Conan Hall of Volta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05iv2TXd3to 2. Donkey Kong Country on SNES 3. Ruined King: A League of Legends Story on PS5 (PS4 version) This latest is the newest and as you can see, it's been a long time since Donkey Kong Country. I have a theory on what is causing this and I'm wondering if there is maybe a discussion on making these things toggleable for motion sensitive individuals. There seems to be a common element in these three games. Conan was a long time ago but if I recall correctly it had larger maps which would scroll around when jumping. Donkey Kong Country had a background that scrolled at a different speed than the foreground (I avoided games that did this afterward, and there were a lot). For Ruined King, it took an extended session (2-3 hours) after a lot of shorter playing sessions to trigger a response. I'm trying to think about what could have done it and I'm landing on those frequent cinematic moments when the camera breaks off to take in a locale. It just seems, and maybe I'm being presumptuous, that it may not be too difficult to create a toggle to simply remove these features for those who are more sensitive to them. In the case of Ruined King, they're not necessary, but if they were, you could allow the player to control the camera. I guess another question is, is there any study for causes or other consideration for this in the gave development world? It's deterring enough that I'm having a difficult time loading up Ruined King again after the incident.
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Dec 4, 2021 19:59
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Jelly posted:I don't know if this is an appropriate spot for this, if there's a better one maybe a kind goon could point me that way. Wasn't sure it warranted it's own thread, or if you're even allowed to make threads in games that aren't about a specific game. It sounds like you're describing parallax and without it a lot of 2d environments would feel extremely strange to move through. Maybe the effect is exaggerated in those games.
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Dec 4, 2021 20:44
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VelociBacon posted:Yes but I thought the reason games doesn't pay was because the supply of people wanting to be in the industry vastly outweighs the demand. If that isn't the reason, and the incentive to complete projects on time is as big a deal as it is, why doesn't that urgency translate into higher wages like you see in industries of similar economic size? It's not just supply > demand (though it is for some positions). Even for roles where there isn't a ton of expertise in the wild, game devs across the board simply pay lower wages for those roles and capitalize off the fact that many people with that skillset will ONLY take jobs in the game industry. The industry is extremely parasitic and personnel shuffle around between companies so much that it's much more frequent that pubdevs use titles to attract people from another company rather than higher wages. I can't really fully speak to the economics of positions in the industry and you'd think that at some point demand would drive wages higher but I think a lot of it stems from Games being a young person's industry. People that fatigue out of the industry to take higher-paying roles at Big Tech and startups are replaced by young, hungry people who will take titles and game dev experience over competitive pay, all across the board. You end up with weird situations like at my current company division, where the pay ranges within an approximately 40k range from the lowest to highest job levels, despite vastly different R&Rs, departments, and levels within the company. We're talking Creative Director making approximately as much as a Project Manager who makes approximately as much as an Administrative/Executive Assistant. It's super weird and can create interesting opportunities to climb the career ladder if you focus on titles over salary (but ONLY if you're willing to hop around between companies) but at some point if your goal is to Make Money you probably need to cash out and go into startup/big tech for a massive pay bump once you're at a level you want to be. The most important piece of advice I have for people in the games industry who want to career build is, in general, to aggressively bounce around companies. Promotion from within most game companies is VERY slow because there is always a huge backlog of long-tenured employees vying for the same roles. Unless a new team/division opens up in your field of expertise, competing with that backlog is a losing proposition for most people and results in very slow salary and title gains. Jumping around every 1.5 - 2 years is significantly better for your career EVEN if you're trying to get to a specific role at a specific company, since you can always come back and the industry is incredibly conducive to doing so. If you pay attention to the "fast climbers" they are either incredibly well-connected or they are frequently moving around between companies (which leads to being incredibly well-connected, incidentally). I Love You! fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Dec 6, 2021 |
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Dec 5, 2021 20:50
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I Love You! posted:The most important piece of advice I have for people in the games industry who want to career build is, in general, to aggressively bounce around companies. Promotion from within most game companies is VERY slow because there is always a huge backlog of long-tenured employees vying for the same roles. Unless a new team/division opens up in your field of expertise, competing with that backlog is a losing proposition for most people and results in very slow salary and title gains. Jumping around every 1.5 - 2 years is significantly better for your career EVEN if you're trying to get to a specific role at a specific company, since you can always come back and the industry is incredibly conducive to doing so. If you pay attention to the "fast climbers" they are either incredibly well-connected or they are frequently moving around between companies (which leads to being incredibly well-connected, incidentally). This is also true for big tech industry. A big part of it is that it's waaaay easier to negotiate for a better salary/title/benefits when you're getting a new job, vs. when you're already at a job and trying to convince your current employers that you deserve more. In the former case you have a lot more leverage, because you're not currently working for them and are implicitly threatening to walk away from negotiations if you don't get what you want*. If you really want to optimize your net worth, you should basically never not be jobhunting, and only staying at companies long enough that you don't get a reputation for ditching them ASAP. My impression is that this generally works out to needing 1-2 years' tenure before you move on. (One or two jobs with a much shorter tenure won't generally hurt you, but a string of short jobs in a row is a bad sign) * Related: if you aren't reading the negotiation thread, you should be.
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Dec 6, 2021 02:30
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