Do you enjoy your job in the games industry?

Quote from Sentura

Having kids is dangerous in that sense, because it restricts you heavily. I'd never even consider going into such a relationship before I knew I was where I wanted to be career wise.

That basically means you will never be able to have kids while in the games industry, as its so volatile. if you know you are where you want to be career wise, that is absolutely no guarantee that you are going to stay there for the next 18-20 years. Its not even guaranteed you'll stay there the 9 months you SO is pregnant. In fact, I can actually guarantee that if you are in the games industry you will not work at the same place for 20 years.

Out of curiosity; anyone know anyone that has been in the same job for the same company for 20 years in the games industry?

when i worked in the games industry before i enjoyed it but there were some people that rip you off.. you have to be careful not to be fooled. cause what i mean is you make the work and they can steal all it later closing down your company. that happened to me before.

anyway yeah i loved it it was fun but time consuming.. also meeting alot of interesting people.

i have worked on many mods too

Guess last persons who worked 20 years in the same company are Tim Willits and Tim Sweeney?

Quote from Skjalg

Having kids is dangerous in that sense, because it restricts you heavily. I'd never even consider going into such a relationship before I knew I was where I wanted to be career wise.

That basically means you will never be able to have kids while in the games industry, as its so volatile. if you know you are where you want to be career wise, that is absolutely no guarantee that you are going to stay there for the next 18-20 years. Its not even guaranteed you'll stay there the 9 months you SO is pregnant. In fact, I can actually guarantee that if you are in the games industry you will not work at the same place for 20 years.

Out of curiosity; anyone know anyone that has been in the same job for the same company for 20 years in the games industry?

That's a very pessimistic perspective. I think if you stay open minded and work hard as well as expand your professional profile, you're much less likely to perish in the industry. Or even if you do get fired, at least make sure you can stay open minded enough to take an opportunity with another developer in a different country.

There's also a certain point to be made about the life outside work -- for instance, I could never enjoy life to the fullest if I had to live in Denmark forever. That's also why I know I won't stay here for any longer than I have to. But maybe if the living conditions were closer to what I expected from a country like this, I'd be more inclined to settle down here, regardless of possibilities.

In the end, we all want a certain stability in our lives, enough to actually live. But as changes are often inevitable, they will happen. It is then up to ourselves to make sure that our situation works best for us as individuals and as families. I know personally that someone who would want to be tied down to a specific part of the planet for whatever reasons wouldn't fare well with me in the first place -- and that is a choice I make.

Quote from Skjalg

Out of curiosity; anyone know anyone that has been in the same job for the same company for 20 years in the games industry?

The game industry is so volatile I don't think there are very many studios to have been around for 20 years...

I want to make games, I want to be in the games industry, but if you're passionate there is always this burn out you're not working on the thing you really want to. And most people who stick around in the games industry are dangerous levels of passionate.

I spent a lot of time while out of work making my own games. I've made about 12 in the last two years, and made a tidy profit of minus two hundred pounds, but none of them are really the games I want to make either. They're mostly released with a "that'll do" attitude for some game jam, and they're not aimed at me but some kind of imagined demographics that like particle-overloaded area shooters, quirkly puzzle games, or artsy puzzle platformers.

At my current place the games themselves are pretty cool and there's always something for you explore within them even if you're not completely the target audience, but I think it's fair to say I'm sitting outside our demographic (albeit with a gigantic amount of information about our actual demographic). I do have enough free time that I can still make games outside of work without crashing horribly - this is one reason I would never go back into overtime obsessed AAA companies.

The dream would be to sit around in my pants all day making the obscure Japanese-inspired shmups, hardcore-focused fighting games, and strategy focused RPGs I dream about. But fact is that just isn't going to happen, and what I've got is certainly more fun than going back into accounting.

Better make sure I don't wear my mapcore shirt for a couple of weeks.

Yes

I do not live to work. I work to live.

While I do not have a job in the industry, I make sure to make enough money and have enough time to devote to the life I want to live and the person I want to be. Work life balance is the key (increasingly common as a major factor in people leaving MANY industries). It will always be easier to work on the projects you care about rather than those you have to work on to pay the mortgage. . . but those projects to pay the mortgage do not define you and are merely there to get you to lead your life on your terms in the non-work hours, days, and weeks.

Paraphrasing a lot of studies I have read:

If your company is not taking care of you for work-life balance, discuss the matter with your superiors. Perhaps they are simply unaware of the effects of current schedules and benefits. If they are aware, perhaps they need to be educated themselves on how to create more employee/employer/owner synergy. There is a reason that first responders (In the states) tend to work 4 days on 3 days off rotations, or why increasing benefits packages while not necessarily increasing base-pay works to attract employees, as well as other programs like ESOP's (Employee Stock Ownership Plan). To increase the value of those non-working hours for you so that you are happy as an employee. Happy employees produce greater quantities and higher quality work than non-happy workers.

Indie all the way, being pigeon holed in any job isn't fun. I work as an IT Infrastructure Manager by day, by night I don my cape and take to Unity.

Pretty soon hopefully i'll have the cash to dedicate my time to my game, but I enjoy all aspects of making it - coding, level design, even marketing.

Sigma had it right, don't live to work - work to live, if you are not enjoying what you are doing you are wasting your life and need to have a condor moment.

Quote from mawhrin-skel

Sigma had it right, don't live to work - work to live, if you are not enjoying what you are doing you are wasting your life and need to have a condor moment.

idk, i read live to work as the choice with the passion. work to live sounds a little bleak.

Loving it so far , though I'm only in for roughly one year, and the amount of bullshit was pretty low.

Guess I'm really lucky to work for Yager, too. They take really good care of their employees, and try to not crunch them to death. Even in the busy weeks before e3, there was little too no overtime involved. Great projects, flat hirarchy, you can basically work on what you feel is best for the project, all the managment gets done by the team, etc. .

Things are awesome at the moment!

I love being a technical artist. I found a great balance with personal life and personal projects.

Not much too complain. The only thing would be to have other technical artist colleagues again as I am a project again where I am a one man army. I am already used to it, but I feel like learning more when having more discussions about it with another ta.

We are human; there are ups and downs. I get into slumps quite a bit, more so when I feel like a challenge is missing. Right now that is the dilemma I'm in at work. I love coming in, interacting with fellow employees and friends but sometimes the work is mundane and not enjoyable. Working on side projects flexes my brain muscles and increases my drive to improve my process.

Quote from Pericolos0

I love it and couldn't imagine doing anything else. Didn't matter if it was a good project, shitty project, doomed to fail pitch or whatever, I loved working on all of them because I get to do my hobby for a living. Getting to release a succesfull game some day would be nice , but in the end it's all about the journey, not the end.

A straight up +1

Like, sure, there's ups and downs. It happens with every creative and artistic job but man, in the end I'm doing what I only dreamed of doing when I was 18.

And for me what also matters a lot, other than the minute by minute amazing journey that we have, it's what we offer to the players. Like the joy that I feel when I play a Naughty Dog game (just to give an hypothetical example) I just strive that I can offer a similar kind of joy to players out there with what I work on, that feeling of working on something really special, putting it out there and get amazing feedback from the players... man, that's what it's all about for me. I can be a bit insecure sometimes, and listening some good feedback gives me more drive to keep up than anything else. Like "Wow, people actually enjoy what I'm doing, they get out of their way to play it and even comment on it? Fuck... that's awesome I'm gonna do some more then". I know this is very personal, but it's what drives me.

As for the OP, I've also been through some phases where I just feel like doing some personal work instead of focusing 100% on the 9 to 5 job, maybe the latter will "suffer" a little bit by it temporarily, but in the end the inspiration and creativity flow I get when making my personal work will eventually pay off and be poured into the 9 to 5 job.

It does to me sound like you're in need of doing the same, maybe even a little bit more radical, like taking some time off from a full-time job, and doing an indie game, or just some maps for Unreal Tournament or CS:Go or whatever else is out there that you might be interested, what matters in the end of the day is that you feel your time was spent in something meaningful for you, and doing something meaningful to you personally is exactly what you sound like you need.

Pogo, I'm gonna mention something that might sound a bit self-explanatory, something noone have mentioned yet.

What are you doing outside of work? Are you eating enough good food? Are you sleeping enough? Are you working out? Do you eat your vitamins? etc etc...

For me, all of those things, if I don't take care about them my motivation will break down no matter what I do. My point is, maybe it's not work related at all, maybe it's something completely different, not necessarily one of the things I listed.

So what about me? I've gone straight on the indie-dev path together with four other fellas and what I've figured so far that is both good and bad about being an indie is that you really have to do a tons of things that aren't your expertise at all necessarily. Sure I do my designing part of the games but there are so many times I just find my self tweaking GUI variables, creating simple art and so on. But what I found myself doing the most, since I'm the talkative guy in the group, is a lot of management, networking and just doing all of those things that needs to be done, simply because everyone else always seem to have a high-prio task linked to their expertise (art and coding.)

I like doing that stuff at least a little, but there's nothing like just making maps and tweaking gameplay and that's what I'd always want to do it. I just don't see that happening on a really small company like ours, then again; variation is good.

Quote from penE

Loving it so far , though I'm only in for roughly one year, and the amount of bullshit was pretty low.

Guess I'm really lucky to work for Yager, too. They take really good care of their employees, and try to not crunch them to death. Even in the busy weeks before e3, there was little too no overtime involved. Great projects, flat hirarchy, you can basically work on what you feel is best for the project, all the managment gets done by the team, etc. .

Things are awesome at the moment!

Finally some good words about the AAA-studios, I've been hearing so much shit about them in terms of overtime et cetera I've lost quite a bit of interest in applying for the bigger studios. But maybe, since the game dev business is still in its infancy (in comparison to others), there will be a time when working in this industry could mean an economic security and not be as volatile.

Quote from Sjonsson

Pogo, I'm gonna mention something that might sound a bit self-explanatory, something noone have mentioned yet.

What are you doing outside of work? Are you eating enough good food? Are you sleeping enough? Are you working out? Do you eat your vitamins? etc etc...

For me, all of those things, if I don't take care about them my motivation will break down no matter what I do. My point is, maybe it's not work related at all, maybe it's something completely different, not necessarily one of the things I listed.

So what about me? I've gone straight on the indie-dev path together with four other fellas and what I've figured so far that is both good and bad about being an indie is that you really have to do a tons of things that aren't your expertise at all necessarily. Sure I do my designing part of the games but there are so many times I just find my self tweaking GUI variables, creating simple art and so on. But what I found myself doing the most, since I'm the talkative guy in the group, is a lot of management, networking and just doing all of those things that needs to be done, simply because everyone else always seem to have a high-prio task linked to their expertise (art and coding.)

I like doing that stuff at least a little, but there's nothing like just making maps and tweaking gameplay and that's what I'd always want to do it. I just don't see that happening on a really small company like ours, then again; variation is good.

Finally some good words about the AAA-studios, I've been hearing so much shit about them in terms of overtime et cetera I've lost quite a bit of interest in applying for the bigger studios. But maybe, since the game dev business is still in its infancy (in comparison to others), there will be a time when working in this industry could mean an economic security and not be as volatile.

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Yep, I kinda felt the same before joinging AAA because of all the horror you get to hear, but I guess you have to experience it yourself to judge. Awesome to have such a positive suprise!

Yeahse, still love it. Like others have already said then that's the benefit of having your hobby as your job, and you need that love for the craft to get through the really hard times (which in turn won't feel quite that hard).

Granted that I'm trying my hand in more traditional game design these days. Though, since it's a small team, it also involves all kind of other shit (UI/UX work, managing localization, project managment as well as actually desigining and balancing games). I will say that I'm glad that I'm taking a break from what I've spent the last decade doing and trying to get outta my comfort zone, I think I chose the perfect time in my career to try something a bit different, get some new perspective on things and experience in different aspects of game development, hopefully that's shit that'll be handy as the industry keeps evolving.

But I was feeling pretty burned out after finishing up on the last Hitman game, which was by far the toughest crunch I've experienced. But then I'd also gone from project to project for nearly 10 years without ever taking more time off than the obligatory summer vacation, and after a while then it does start feeling a bit unhealthy to never take some time to get properly away from it all. To continuously take care of yourself and prep yourself for the long haul (if you want to stay in games that is) is by far the biggest lesson I've learned the last year or so.

But even now then I'm planning on getting back to level design again. For better or worse then it feels like I've been programmed to do that shit for life

Spent only 3 years in this industry right now but I had a lot of different style of work. Started for a small french company, then the biggest, then as a contractual for a really specific work were I was alone (the most difficult that hit my nerves so hard). Made some personal stuff during a period of unemployment then worked for an indie at home and now in a cool medium sized company in south France on a AAA.

All I can say is that I enjoyed all of those work, even if the game was shit, even if the pay wasn't that good. I can't imagined working for another industry as a main job (because games was a dream, now I want to try something else I dreamt too on the side, music or writting). And now I found the great balance between job and life even if I miss the indie vide with the cool scheduldes like Dux said, I'm working with some great people and some of my best firend and I'm starting a new life with my gf in a few weeks, someone who understand the importance of my work and that I need to do personal stuff at home, I think this help too.

And I wish someday I will get more involved in game dev, maybe my own game where I can make the story and a lot of other things than just make levels.

Hope you will find your balance guys, don't want to miss you on the core