{"id":115613,"date":"2020-07-17T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/366561"},"modified":"2020-07-17T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T17:00:00","slug":"gdc-summer-state-of-the-industry-33-of-devs-had-a-game-delayed-due-to-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2020\/07\/17\/gdc-summer-state-of-the-industry-33-of-devs-had-a-game-delayed-due-to-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"GDC Summer State of the Industry: 33% of devs had a game delayed due to COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the Game Developers Conference<\/a> released the results of a special State of the Industry: Work From Home Edition Survey<\/a><\/strong> examining how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted game developers worldwide.<\/p>\n

This special edition of the long-running survey compiles responses from over 2,500 game industry professionals, and the results reveal that roughly a third have seen their business decline due to the pandemic, though nearly as many reported their business had actually increased.<\/p>\n

Today, we dive deeper into the results to help illuminate how the COVID-19 quarantine measures implemented worldwide have affected game developers’ ability to ship games on schedule. We also excerpt a selection of the responses some of our respondents chose to write in about the biggest challenges they’ve faced making games during the pandemic, and how they’re tackling them.<\/p>\n

Organized by Informa Tech, GDC Summer will take place August 4th through 6th in a new virtual format accessible from anywhere with an Internet connection. download the free report<\/strong> for full details and more insights<\/strong><\/a> from fellow game industry professionals!<\/p>\n

1 in 3 devs have had a game delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic <\/strong><\/h2>\n

\u201cHas your game suffered any delays due to the pandemic\u201d was one of the core questions of this edition of the survey, and roughly a third (33 percent) of our respondents said yes. 46 percent said no, and 21 percent said the question wasn\u2019t applicable (because, for example, they weren\u2019t working on a game at the time).<\/p>\n

We gave survey-takers the option of writing in with more details about why, and their responses shed some light on how studios around the world are adapting to life in the time of COVID-19.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThe company was quite effective in switching everyone to remote work,\u201d wrote one respondent. \u201cI work on a central team supporting external development. None of our games have been delayed due to COVID,\u201d wrote another.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur entire team has stepped away in order to focus on desperately trying to manage their lives, living situations, and find bread and butter work to make ends meet,\u201d said one respondent. \u201cWe were hoping to show our new projects but some major events were cancelled, working from home slowed us down, and some work-for-hire projects were delayed or cancelled,\u201d another wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe transitioned to WFH okay, but it did cause us about a couple of weeks of disruption,\u201d stated one respondent from New Zealand. \u201cAs NZ has got COVID under control we’re already back at the office and functioning 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some respondents said they\u2019d suffered delays and other losses due to the pandemic affecting their partners, even if they themselves were able to continue on schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of our delays are because of other companies\/studios not being ready for a work-from-home model. Internally, we were already set up pretty good and the transition has not been very difficult to make,\u201d wrote one respondent. Another stated that \u201cCertifications through Nintendo have been backed up due to their processes being adversely affected by the pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Poor communication, isolation, and lack of access to critical tools are some of the common challenges devs are dealing with right now <\/strong><\/h2>\n

We also gave our survey-takers the option of telling us about the biggest challenges they and their team had yet faced due to the pandemic, and what solutions they\u2019d implemented so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important challenge was the subject of communication,\u201d a respondent wrote. \u201cWe were starting the design of a game when the pandemic started; at the beginning it cost us to migrate everything to Discord servers for our communication, but we were able to do it and finish the design from our homes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have an office in downtown Rio de Janeiro, but since March we have all been working from home,\u201d explained one surveytaker. \u201cIt took a while to get used to being available online, using Discord as the main means of communicating, lessening the distractions at home, knowing when to shut down, etc., but I believe we have managed to maintain our efficiency.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRecording voice actors from their homes,\u201d was a big challenge for another respondent. \u201cWe created remote kits of recording gear and acoustic treatment to send to actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe voiceover recordings,\u201d were the biggest challenge for another, \u201cbecause the Italian laws forced us to close the studio, so our audio engineer had to change some processes (and add a few more hours for post-production).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDue to funding falling through, we attempted to cut costs as much as possible by moving to different cloud service providers, cut development and try to go with bare-minimum maintenance,\u201d said one respondent. \u201cWe furloughed all but two employees initially.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest overall team challenge has been managing ambient stress. Everyone has been affected by the pandemic in some way, even if not directly, and the general atmosphere of anxiety is impossible to ignore completely.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest functional challenge has been testing console features and\/or platform certification requirements, which has not necessarily been easy from home due to hardware limitations and networking constraints,\u201d wrote one respondent. \u201cThe biggest overall team challenge has been managing ambient stress. Everyone has been affected by the pandemic in some way, even if not directly, and the general atmosphere of anxiety is impossible to ignore completely. We’ve tried to address this by encouraging people to ask for time off if they need it, take breaks, and by organizing social activities via video conference to keep people from feeling too isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Download your free copy of the State of the Industry: Work From Home Edition report here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/h3>\n

For more details on GDC Summer, scheduled to take place virtually August 4th through the 6th, visit the show’s official website<\/a>, or subscribe to regular updates via Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, or RSS<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent company Informa Tech<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday the Game Developers Conference released the results of a special State of the Industry: Work From Home Edition Survey examining how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted game developers worldwide. This special edition of the long-running survey compiles responses from over 2,500 game industry professionals, and the results reveal that roughly a third have seen their business decline due to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115613","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\/115613","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=115613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}