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This is going to be a -bit- E/N, but I thought I would write it here nonetheless, in case it resonates with someone (and in turn allows me to see if I'm simply being delusional). I actually find this thread very depressive to read. Just the last mention of a 1000 indie games per day just makes me feel as if I'm working in a field in which I will never ever be able to make enough money to live on. Backstory: I've been in and out of the industry, worked for a small (for the standards of the time) studio of 40 people back in 2008. Unfortunately, it's also at the same time I got hit with chronic illness that hosed up my capacity to be at work in a consistent manner. In the worst of it I would be sick almost 8 times a month at random, with about one more day to recuperate. Suffice to say that, uh, a normal company doesn't like that, despite me living in a country that had plenty of financial incentive and subsidies for people like me (IE not the U.S.). In the end I got sacked for "too many absences", not long before the company would declare bankruptcy. Despite that, I was young, and swore off the industry for the next six years, going back to University, and trying out a few other subjects. The same sickness hosed up my graduation, and in the end, I retreated to the most common job I could find: working for a family member in a restaurant, the only place I could work at for someone that understood my health problems. I couldn't see myself in that domain, mostly because of my health, and barely survived financially for the past 10 years by working part time in an economy that just seems to want to kill me at every corner possible. Four years ago, I got into my head to try making games again. Now in my early thirties, I realize it's the only thing I know about, the only field I've been more or less at the periphery for a decade, if not my entire life. [edit] I've also tried getting back in games companies with the intend of hiding my sickness, just to get some small income before inevitably getting fired for being sick, but even then I couldn't get a foot in anything. Pretty sure no one wants to work with someone that's early thirties and has been out of the loop for 6 years. [/edit] My skills as an environment artist have deteriorated, simply because of being in other subjects in University during the shift to ZBrush and PBR mapping. So I've pivoted to learning C#, and plonked down in Unity. I released my first game a year and half ago, and I guess could say I published/integrated one for a friend on Steam. I'm now working on my second one. The first one didn't make a buck (100 copies sold, which is a rounding error on Steam), the other published one the same. The current one I'm making, while its probably going to be much better in terms of presentation due to the skills I've gained, will probably still bring in poo poo revenu. I've since cut off all my spending, barely spend more than a 100$ a month. I now live with my fiancee, moved to another country, and live in a house that is paid for. A huge loving privilege nowadays. I'm now just sick two to 4 times a month, which is actually life changing for me compared to before. I feel like I'm almost there at being able to create games without worrying about the rest of the world. But then I read this thread, I read about how the market is completely saturated, I read about what people that have been able to work 40 hours a week for the past ten years in the field are now achieving, while I feel stuck in arrested development. I feel like this field I've been wanting to work in all my life is forever out of reach and all I'm going to be is an outsider making lovely games, with lovely sales, with no public to even invalidate (or validate) this probably extremely colored vision I have of my stuff. How do you even start to get going as an indie dev if you don't know a guy at Sony to make your own Journey. How do you even get to make a successful Kickstarter if no one is even going to click on your page since nobody ever heard your name? Reading about TooMuchAbstraction getting 500 followers after three years of spreading his info on twitter (and TMA, I've seen your game pop up here and there in the Making Games thread, and I just want you to know it's super lovely. I say that as a terminal cynic when it comes to game design). I'm probably going to keep trying for the next five years. Ideally releasing one game a year would be my goal. I'm also now training another friend to be a budding programmer (his PHD in Chemistry is giving him absolutely nothing). This makes the usual team I work with 3 (one as an artist, me for design/programming/admin/music, and one more for programming). There's nothing else for me but to butt my head against this wall I guess. But drat if the future isn't bleak. Popoto fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 14, 2021 |
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Mar 14, 2021 02:18
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Are there any chances for a generalist to find "stable" paid work (as in, with a contract for a length of time) in the industry right now? Even worse: a generalist that lacks a proper portfolio. Not that there is nothing to show, mind you, but that either the things to show would be outdated, or too small in scope as to warrant having been anything more than a small, "for funsies" side project. How can you compete with specialists just fresh out of school, with knowledge from the latest practices and ready to jump on anything at any price? I once knew how to do 3D art for environments I once worked on a few projects for a sizeable company as a 3D environment artist I've since had to manage teams in another field of work as health issues forced me out of the industry for a while. I now have a really good basis with Unity3D. I can code well enough to have done two full, very modest, very small and unoriginal games on Steam (the bar is so low nowadays, I saw no reasons to not release them on the platform as an exercise). I'm currently working on a side, bigger scope project with two other team members, but both have another source of income (which I do not) and thus of course put priority on that, slowling our project's development to a crawl. Health has now been better for two years, and seems to keep that upward trend, which finally means I could start looking at "normal" work again. But how would you go about it in this industry? If I had to list my capacities, I would probably put them as follow:
Right now I'm thus in a sort of catch 22 where I cannot spend time making games without dying due to a lack of income but would probably be refused outright by everyone due to a lack of recent, decent scoped projects to present. How can I ever hope to rectify this. I'm sure many would say "cut your losses and do something else", but there's nothing else possible. It's game making or nothing. Games are all I know in life, and heading to another industry would be a gigantic waste of all this accumulated knowledge. I just want to find a place to hone my craft, get paid for it, and survive. I'm sorry for the e/n, but I know that on this forum, of all places, I will get the straight and harsh answers that such a situation warrants. I suppose, to rephrase my question, all I want to know is: is there hope? (How many red flags did I pop up while writing this drivel, I wonder.) e: writing this really helped with the frustration, at least. Thank you for reading. I'll have some fries and a hamburger with that please. Popoto fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Feb 6, 2022 |
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Feb 6, 2022 20:44
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mutata posted:As an artist, your portfolio is the single most influential factor in getting you gigs and jobs above all other elements (resume, cover letter, experience, etc). Thankfully, it's the one thing in the job-finding process that you have absolute control over. This is the good part! Here's the tricky part: No one is going to reach out to you or call you back to ask you to do anything EXCEPT WHAT IS ON YOUR PORTFOLIO. As far as employers and clients are concerned, your portfolio is the capital-T Truth about what you can do and what you are capable of. No more, no less. Is this fair? Not really, but it's logical. Now the bad news: You need a portfolio before you can get work, and in order to make a portfolio, you have to find the time, energy, and ability to... do a lot of work. Hey, I just want to say thank you for this effort post. I'm sorry about yesterday: usually I'm very good a keeping my despair to myself (not even that I bottle it, but that I take the time to analyze things over by myself). For some reason yesterday it just was a bit too much. I found myself craving and wanting working in a team, with like minded individuals, with similar interests towards a common goal. Not just once a month for a few hours like it is right now, but every work day of the week. It's really what I miss the most from working in a game company: the common goal, the exchange of ideas, etc. Right now, I think all I'll do is make a list of the nearby companies in this city (there aren't many, less than 10, if not 5), they're mostly indie companies, and simply send them a message that amounts to saying something like: "hey, whats'up, I'm recently established in your town, and thought of sending you a heads-up. I can do this, that, and this. If ever you find some of my abilities of interest to you, give me a say! Best of luck with your projects". I do think indie companies are usually more open to generalists, but at the same time they very rarely hire due to a lack of funds. We shall see. In any case, I'm better today, and resumed work on the plan I had set forth earlier last year, which is : keep working on my main contracts, which brings me a -very- small amount per month, then keep working on my side projects whenever time allows and house chores/family life leaves me alone. I have a roof over my head and am married to the best husband there is, who also, despite having zero interest in gaming, respects my choice and bull headedness of persisting in the field. That, in itself, is a luck not many my age have, so I have to see the positive sides. I just wish I could make a living out of what I love. I just need to keep banging my head against that wall, either the wall eventually break with luck and an opportunity appears, or not. We'll see. Again, thanks for the reply. It is appreciated.
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Feb 7, 2022 14:28
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Someone in here ought to know: I’m restarting my quest to find work and I’m struggling to find what would be the job title for someone that knows Unity well enough to integrate assets, work with third party programs (like Dialogue System Manager from Pixel Crusher) and code intermediate level C#. Asset integrator? Designer? Programmer? All these feel somewhat too specialized. I’m trawling job boards but having massive impostor syndrome with everything I’m seeing and thinking perhaps I’m not looking at the right things. I was told by an artist I know to look at technical artist, as in someone that can take an artist’s work and implement it in the engine, but I thought a technical artist was much more someone that code complex mods or UI for the programmers/artists in the work engine? Pretty sure she had it wrong. In any case, I thought SA might know what title name to search for… Thanks in advance.
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Aug 27, 2022 16:02
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Dinurth posted:Tech Art can cover a lot of things, including what you mentioned, but also the skills you listed for yourself depending on what the studio needs. Your skills would also lend well to any outsource efforts that need someone to be to go-to person for integration and managing those pipelines. Canine Blues Arooo posted:Sounds like a Gameplay Engineering, or a Technical Designer. It depends a lot on how good your C# is, and what the expectations of the studio are. Thank you both /edit/ and Gearman too /edit. I’m going to look these things up. If anyone else have things to add, please do so. Any wisdom is welcome right now. <3 Popoto fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Aug 27, 2022 |
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Aug 27, 2022 16:23
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Hey thread, me again. Portfolio is online (and happy that the two industry insiders that I personally know thought it was quite decent and didn't look amateurish (my -biggest- worry)), LinkedIn is updated, and I've settled on trying to discover "Technical Designer" as the researched title. Hopefully, somewhere out there, an entry level post will pop up. Now, I wanted to ask: what are the current avenue for searching for work, other than going directly on a company's website? There's linkedIn, of course, then also indeed.com. What about monster.com, is that still a thing? My usual motto before for job boards was to always check the company website after to see if the offer is shown there, and if possible use their own contact form instead of the job board one. There's also r/gamedevclassified, but it seems mostly for contractual work for indie devs (might still do that if nothing shows up in the other channels). Basically I just want to make sure I'm not missing an extremely obvious website that everyone knows about and post online, but because of my outsider status I wouldn't know about. Love to look for a job during a giant economic downturn lol. I guess despite all hope is sort of up, as I saw one posting that asked for basic C# and Unity3D knowledge to integrate gamedesigners/artists work, meaning there might be a place somewhere out there for what I can do, unfortunately the job wasn't remote. I'll keep looking.
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Oct 1, 2022 12:45
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Dinurth posted:This is a great resource for jobs; MJBuddy posted:Unemployment is virtually zero. It's tougher to get a big tech job due to hiring freezes but if the companies aren't in a freeze there's more listings than I've ever seen (in my area) and it looks like people are filling them.  Gives me more hope.Mr Beens posted:Depends on where you are. Popoto fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Oct 1, 2022 |
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Oct 1, 2022 16:22
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