{"id":107693,"date":"2020-01-20T16:38:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-20T16:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/356844"},"modified":"2020-01-20T16:38:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-20T16:38:00","slug":"blog-is-your-21st-century-games-career-what-you-thought-itd-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/01\/20\/blog-is-your-21st-century-games-career-what-you-thought-itd-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: Is your 21st century games career what you thought it’d be?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. <\/small><\/i><\/strong> <\/p>\n

\n

\"Colorful<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hello, lovelies. Long time, no post.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was originally going to title this piece \u201cWhy I Gave Up on Being a Full-Time Indie Developer\u201d, but then it hit me that I haven\u2019t actually had that particular distinction most of my career. In reflecting on personal and industry events of 2019, I also decided that I won\u2019t <\/span>completely rule it out yet either. But I rather like the career I built, and it just keeps getting better and better, even if it wound up not looking like I initially thought it would look like. <\/p>\n

As now is about the time that people start to check in on, or completely chuck, their New Year\u2019s resolutions? About a fortnight into this new decade seems like a good time to talk about our expectations with games careers, especially if you decided this is the year to power up your career, and figuring out how to dream big vs. knowing when you\u2019re flying too close to the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I\u2019m not fond of that phrase \u201cdon\u2019t quit your day job!\u201d with respect to diving into pursuing this full-time. <\/span><\/h2>\n

And I get that some of you probably just said \u201cWait a fucking minute!\u201d upon reading that. But hear me out.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, going indie is risky as it is. The industry also sure is different compared to when I entered in mid-2011, then it changed yet again from when I left my old career behind in 2014 first upon leaving the financial industry then teaching my first few business courses at Playcrafting. I can probably only use about 25% of my original content from Basics of Business nowadays: for both better and worse.<\/span><\/p>\n

The good: <\/span><\/strong><\/u>we got a ways to go yet, but games have definitely gained more legitimacy as a medium. Things that were niches 5-6 years ago are now irrevocably woven into the fabric of community-building for games now, like streaming on Twitch. There\u2019s Twitch channels with viewerships rivaling or even beating primetime TV shows and have proven crucial for getting into other markets. On that note, resonating with the US market doesn\u2019t even have to be this be-all end-all for entertainment like it used to be. The barriers to entry are totally gone and underrepresented groups can use games to tell their stories just as ubiquitously as writing or music now. <\/p>\n

Oh, and employed game devs are <\/span>beginning to unionize<\/a> too and address the long hours and studio conditions that have had an adverse impact on employees\u2019 well-being, among other critical aspects of being paid to make someone else\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

The bad:<\/span><\/strong><\/u> that ubiquity came before the means of getting it to audiences was really sorted out, because woah, distribution is totally broken compared to when I first got an IGDA card.<\/p>\n

Steam alone was your be-all end-all, if your indie game got distributed there then that meant you had it <\/span>made. The selection process was as arbitrary as putting your business card in one of those deli fishbowls to win a year of free sandwiches. But if you were in, you were in. A few years later, Greenlight was introduced, which meant constantly nagging friends, fans, and family to upvote your game so you could prove you had enough of a market to be worth hosting. Then Greenlight got the axe and it just became this massive free-for-all with Steam Direct, where 82% of the games that come out on Steam<\/a> now don\u2019t even provide a year\u2019s worth of American minimum wage. With 25 or more games being released on the platform daily<\/a>, and no native tools for developers to market? Unless you\u2019ve got a robust enough fanbase to sustain you, you pretty much only have a shot in hell of rising in the Steam ranks if a streamer with a huge following played it one night, if you didn\u2019t release through a publisher with sufficient resources to beat the tide.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s other distributors now like Itch, the Humble widget, Amazon Games (hey, they at least offer native advertising tools), the Discord store…Steam still holds that lion\u2019s share, but some more options are cropping up even if it feels a bit like hurling plastic butter knives at Godzilla.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, all that risk, all the eyesocket-grinding labor that goes into making a game, and those depressing statistics: you\u2019re probably wondering why I\u2019m still not fond of \u201cdon\u2019t quit your day job\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t had a day job in almost six years at the time of writing. No intent or desire to ever go back to one. After all, my particular decision to never work a day job ever again was a no-brainer. I was in a side of the financial industry that really sucked. People perceived it as me having my pick of high-paying jobs with excellent benefits, but no, they were shitty jobs with no benefits and I was virtually never around people my age. I had to do things like explain to my boss how to copy and paste text into an email next to a talking Ronald Reagan doll while I schlep down from The Bronx every day to listen to people with seven-figure incomes complain about how universal pre-K isn\u2019t fair to them. I worked seven days a week during tax season and it left me with a facial tic and ulcers, and workplace protection laws didn\u2019t care because I was a \u201csalaried professional engaged in the normal course of business\u201d. Does that sound good to you? Well, it sucked harder than a nuclear-powered Oreck so when it came down to \u201cfigure out a career change and never apply to another tax office ever again\u201d, it was pretty much no contest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus, I\u2019m a bit biased in side-eying \u201cdon\u2019t quit your day job\u201d, I\u2019ll admit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rather, I think this phrase needs to be reframed to account for the possibilities a 21st century economy and infrastructure allow us.<\/strong> <\/span>The \u201cgig economy\u201d has caused both suffering and delight, it opened doors while it closed windows. Many of us are fighting exploitation on both collective and individual levels. But none of that changes the fact that we live in a world now where you can bring in a livable income anywhere you have an Internet connection, more remote jobs are out there than ever before, and there\u2019s more means to build a fanbase than ever…even if laws and attitudes are still stuck in the 20th century. You can build an audience on your own, though the traditional routes are still there if you want to try them or feel they\u2019re necessary for your particular goals. There are a million and one ways to build a creative career today and I feel game developers aren\u2019t told enough that there\u2019s more options than A) become a studio employee, or B) go all in on the indie developer path.<\/p>\n

I also 100% get that quitting your job is not always an option for some people, or at least not feasible right away. I\u2019m just saying, \u201cStop saying this is the ONLY option for indies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Because a fanbase and the game itself still take time to build and manage, and being under a job\u2019s control impacts that. If you had horrible jobs like I did, they take a toll on your physical and mental health. Even if you\u2019re lucky to have a job you enjoy but it happens to be in games, tech, or other digital media, you might have to sign an agreement stating that you won\u2019t work on outside projects– including your own.<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole \u201cyou need a job while you do this\u201d thing didn\u2019t work out for me. If it\u2019s not working for you either, you might want to read <\/span>this<\/a>. My games career wound up becoming NOTHING like I thought it\u2019d be. My expectations were blown the way people\u2019s were playing Doki Doki Literature Club. I guess I\u2019ll always be working on some kind of other consulting, business of games education, or digital media project instead of solely sustained by my games, and I decided I\u2019m just not going to apologize for it anymore. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s why I\u2019ve embraced it and encourage you to think more about what you truly want out of your games career if social and\/or industry pressure is getting to you.<\/span><\/p>\n

No matter how you cut it, we\u2019re talking more about owning your labor.<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Close-up<\/p>\n

We\u2019re finally having important conversations that need to be had, like quality of life for studio employees and the pressure that many indie developers place upon themselves to grind, grind, grind. I\u2019ve fallen victim to it myself: I\u2019d feel genuinely happy for my peers seeing all of their works in progress and shiny new demos plastered on Twitter and Discord, but then feel bad about myself for not having enough done. I was showing a rough prototype of <\/span>It\u2019s Different When It\u2019s Your Own at GDC 2019, GDC 2020 will soon be upon us and I don\u2019t even have a micro site up for the game yet. Yeah, more could\u2019ve been done if I didn\u2019t have this long journey full of suffering to get a life-changing surgery I\u2019d been waiting for over a year.<\/p>\n

Hey, you can\u2019t make games if you\u2019re dead or severely incapacitated. It means temporary setbacks where you have to prioritize paying the bills while you\u2019re waiting for 36 stitches to come out. But the game is back in motion, a dev team has been assembled, assets are being made, and communication with my dev team has been of utmost importance to see if we can make it to a \u201cpolished prototype with bespoke assets\u201d stage, if not expo-ready demo, by GDC 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s always a much different story when you own the end product compared to being paid to build it for a publisher or for-hire client. All of these arrangements have bonuses and disadvantages, but I pretty much chose this path because the ownership is simply more clear-cut. No debates about copyrights and royalties, those are pretty much negotiated in the beginning. When the cash outflows are constantly piling up and you\u2019re dying to just move forward, it can definitely feel like you\u2019re just never going to get the damn game out. And it\u2019s why indies tend to put themselves into this self-imposed crunch, especially if everything is riding on that next game having a successful release. Just like how self-employment itself simultaneously gives you your time back, yet also takes it away? Same goes for your own games. You don\u2019t have strict milestone terms and schedules, but that means it\u2019s easy to get derailed when paid work, health issues, and other personal things crop up. When you have to schlep to medieval torture physical therapy several times a week and it impacts your time not devoted to paying clients, it\u2019s easy to feel like you\u2019re \u201cnot a real developer\u201d for not spending days at a time writing code or dialog.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a spoiler alert for you though: no matter how much money you currently have or end up making, persistence and relationships are going to be more crucial to your long-term success than compromising your health by spending long hours in front of the computer and never getting a break from anything games-related.<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"Hands<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just one reason why I\u2019ve come to embrace the amalgamated digital media fiefdom I built by accident. It makes going to games conferences something I treasure even more and provides balance, not to mention the wherewithal to take creative and financial risks I never could with a day job or relying solely on game royalties.<\/span><\/p>\n

You can stay on top of what\u2019s happening in the industry and the games you love, but pursuing things outside the industry can make you a better game developer. Not just for the appreciation factor, but because you pick up different skills, experiences, and passions that wind up translating to your own work differently than the familiarity overload we can wind up with when you\u2019re in \u201call game dev, all the time\u201d mode. Then when I get paid to help other dev teams to fund my projects, I always learn something new about engines, processes, narratives, or concerns in the speculation stage. So I\u2019d say that in effect, my business of games consulting accidentally made me a better developer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, maybe it\u2019s just because of the way my brain is wired, but I love alternating between writing articles and helping a diverse array of indie teams solve their business problems to suddenly spending the week immersed back in my own game, just to be flown out by a law firm to talk to their employees about the nuances of doing business with indie developers. Owning your time also goes a long way to getting things done on the game, even if you have challenges like recovering from a major surgery and wrangling a tag team of similarly awesome free agents working on a variety of projects.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plus, you can make the game as batshit crazy as you want when it\u2019s just you footing the bill. That\u2019s the <\/span>ultimate <\/em>sell for me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s going to be a challenge to not be in that 82% of games on Steam. I\u2019m assuming my wild adventure\/visual novel hybrid won\u2019t be in the top 5%, but that by focusing on such a large and underserved audience, I got faith it\u2019s going to make it to some degree. How much, I don\u2019t know yet. But I\u2019m glad my games career wound up not being what I initially thought it would look like, so I can build this game and start this conversation with as few restrictions as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

As for being able to live solely off my own indie games, I haven\u2019t completely ruled that out yet. But that\u2019s what rules about not strictly abiding to the games career dichotomy we need to leave in the 2010s: the decision is mine in the end, just as your takeaways and decisions are yours. I once had a writing teacher who said that even if you never get anything published, the simple act of writing makes you a better person. That\u2019s how I feel about game making. You\u2019re putting your ideas out in the world, and it makes you a bolder and stronger person willing to be challenged.<\/span><\/p>\n

Just remember that it\u2019s a whole new frontier out there and we got possibilities we didn\u2019t always have, but also lots of untangling to do in the 2020s to build a better world and industry than ever before.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra\u0092s community.The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.   Hello, lovelies. Long time, no post. I was originally going to title this piece \u201cWhy I Gave Up on Being a Full-Time Indie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}