What's going on with your life?

[AlexM 1,146]

So I decided to leave the medical tech industry a few months back and take some time off. I was a little burned out working at a startup and have had an unprecedented amount of family and friend deaths in the last year (covid/suicide) I just needed a break so I could stop treading water trying to deal with all this stuff.

It's been pretty nice and I've finally had time to do stuff like read non-academic books, playing video games, studying math and going to school for Japanese. I'm also getting a lot more exercise. Even entered a game jam for the first time in 4 years. Finally I started tinkering with Unity. I used unity about 8 years ago and wasn't much of a fan of it but I decided to give it another go and it's come a long way.

Thinking about getting a license for Houdini, I used it a couple years ago and absolutely loved it. It's been well over 10 years now since I started programming and not doing art/design every day and it's so cool to see how all the 3d tools have advanced.

Anyways I'll be re-joining the games industry again in a few weeks. All good things must come to an end

[TheOnlyDoubleF 1,125]

I burned out too while working on Riders Republic at Ubisoft Annecy last year. I can rely and say that not having a full time job is nice ahah. I've had kind of the same recovery moment after the burnout, covid madness and political insanity in France, climate change depression, breaking out with my girlfriend, family member's illness.... Life shit. 

But it's cool, I took time to build new courses for my level design lectures, I finished to write my game career book and signed a contract with a french book editor, I have time to read (I read the Ants trilogy from Bernard Werber, Karl Marx's misery of philosophy (and soon others), and bought many other things like Proust, Balzac and more classics) and exercices more. More importantly, I ride around France during two months by bike, visiting, riding and camping, meeting new people and way of living. That was a energizing adventures for sure. Will do again. 

Now, I have regular lectures in game schools for level design, I've started again my interview podcast of game devs (only in French sorry). The main question now is what do I do? Do I take a new job in a company? There are plenty of opportunities for technical design positions. Or do I go freelance as my heart is telling to? Am I able to work remotely? Am I not already too lonely? Should I live in a big city to benefit of culture and plenty of chicks? Or should I go and live in the countryside to get the garden I need, green lands and space for a dog? Wouldn't I be too lonely ? 

I'm really fighting with myself on those questions. My heart would like to work a third of my time on freelance mission, a third on lectures, and a third doing what I want but the impostor syndrome is challenging my ability to build a freelancing business on level design and tech design. Yet, I have an int for a potential client working on serious games and requesting assistance on UE4 stuff, may be that could be a good start and try for this way of life.

Edited November 4, 2020 by TheOnlyDoubleF

[AlexM 1,146]

8 hours ago, TheOnlyDoubleF said:

I burned out too while working on Riders Republic at Ubisoft Annecy last year. I can rely and say that not having a full time job is nice ahah. I've had kind of the same recovery moment after the burnout, covid madness and political insanity in France, climate change depression, breaking out with my girlfriend, family member's illness.... Life shit. 

But it's cool, I took time to build new courses for my level design lectures, I finished to write my game career book and signed a contract with a french book editor, I have time to read (I read the Ants trilogy from Bernard Werber, Karl Marx's misery of philosophy (and soon others), and bought many other things like Proust, Balzac and more classics) and exercices more. More importantly, I ride around France during two months by bike, visiting, riding and camping, meeting new people and way of living. That was a energizing adventures for sure. Will do again. 

Now, I have regular lectures in game schools for level design, I've started again my interview podcast of game devs (only in French sorry). The main question now is what do I do? Do I take a new job in a company? There are plenty of opportunities for technical design positions. Or do I go freelance as my heart is telling to? Am I able to work remotely? Am I not already too lonely? Should I live in a big city to benefit of culture and plenty of chicks? Or should I go and live in the countryside to get the garden I need, green lands and space for a dog? Wouldn't I be too lonely ? 

I'm really fighting with myself on those questions. My heart would like to work a third of my time on freelance mission, a third on lectures, and a third doing what I want but the impostor syndrome is challenging my ability to build a freelancing business on level design and tech design. Yet, I have an int for a potential client working on serious games and requesting assistance on UE4 stuff, may be that could be a good start and try for this way of life.

It sounds like you've really been using your time well. Spending 2 months biking around France sounds amazing! Balzac also sounds really interesting, I should read that some day. Maybe in French.

Post a link to the podcast! Quand j'etais un enfant je pouvais parler plus Francais que Englais m'est je n'avais pas parler Francais chaque jour pour 20 ans alors c'est jours mon Francais est merd

I'm also heavily struggling with the city vs country thing. My partner is Japanese and the Japanese government is currently giving away 8 million houses, sometimes they even give you extra money to renovate them. We've thought a lot about maybe moving there and possibly having some sort of cafe or business. Either way, Japan is WAY cheaper than Vancouver. Since I'm a programmer I can pretty much work from anywhere and stuff is relatively cheap in Japan compared to where I live.

I'm Looking forward to seeing what you decide to do

Here's an example of a cafe started by some game developers close to Tokyo. They run the cafe and work on their games at the cafe at the same time. Sounds amazing https://picopicocafe.com/index_en.html

EDIT : I found some more photos of the cafe with people in it https://placehub.co/articles/2911580594

Edited November 4, 2020 by AlexM

[TheOnlyDoubleF 1,125]

Voilà le lien vers le podcast : https://open.spotify.com/show/6nyuHat61nBpT8flQcfpZ8?si=C2f4eh6iT22MZz_6pZHiYA 

I would not hesitate if the French Government was giving away houses in the countryside ahahah. 

I had some sort of alternative idea too. When I left ubisoft, my plan was to build a place outside of a big city where I could have a small game dev team but also space to have additionnal people working there like local freelancers, etc. A coworking place next to our game dev studio, and possibly welcoming some kind of game art residence there in greenlands. Sure the place would have a common food forest and a crop garden for people working there.

 

 

[Vilham 1,239]

1 hour ago, TheOnlyDoubleF said:

Voilà le lien vers le podcast : https://open.spotify.com/show/6nyuHat61nBpT8flQcfpZ8?si=C2f4eh6iT22MZz_6pZHiYA 

I would not hesitate if the French Government was giving away houses in the countryside ahahah. 

I had some sort of alternative idea too. When I left ubisoft, my plan was to build a place outside of a big city where I could have a small game dev team but also space to have additionnal people working there like local freelancers, etc. A coworking place next to our game dev studio, and possibly welcoming some kind of game art residence there in greenlands. Sure the place would have a common food forest and a crop garden for people working there.

 

 

Sounds awesome, the dream. Can you send me some of your riches please so I can do this.,

[blackdog 4,403]

23 hours ago, AlexM said:

I'm also heavily struggling with the city vs country thing. My partner is Japanese and the Japanese government is currently giving away 8 million houses, sometimes they even give you extra money to renovate them. We've thought a lot about maybe moving there and possibly having some sort of cafe or business. Either way, Japan is WAY cheaper than Vancouver. Since I'm a programmer I can pretty much work from anywhere and stuff is relatively cheap in Japan compared to where I live.

That's fantastic! I'm surprised they have houses to give away really, thought it was hard to find as they seem so squished together in cities. You talking about apartments or other sorts?

Italy has been doing this as well for several years, or better said, local municipalities that have become progressively deserted due to youngs moving to cities. I think in most cases you have to pay a nominal fee, maybe just some law loophole, but we are talking of €1-2. The catch is that in most cases you have to turn them into businesses, cos they are of course hoping to revive those areas with these operations.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the same sort of deals in past years in central Italy, and I think the occasional "train crossing house" goes on sale (I believe is where crossing operators used to live as they had of course to be on-site to do it).

~

@TheOnlyDoubleF the idea sounds amazing, throw in an Airbnb for game jams anyway was great to see your face on your facebook updates during the cycle. Grand adventure, well done!

Edited November 5, 2020 by blackdog

[AlexM 1,146]

3 hours ago, TheOnlyDoubleF said:

Voilà le lien vers le podcast : https://open.spotify.com/show/6nyuHat61nBpT8flQcfpZ8?si=C2f4eh6iT22MZz_6pZHiYA 

I would not hesitate if the French Government was giving away houses in the countryside ahahah. 

I had some sort of alternative idea too. When I left ubisoft, my plan was to build a place outside of a big city where I could have a small game dev team but also space to have additionnal people working there like local freelancers, etc. A coworking place next to our game dev studio, and possibly welcoming some kind of game art residence there in greenlands. Sure the place would have a common food forest and a crop garden for people working there.

 

 

That sounds amazing.

 

1 hour ago, blackdog said:

That's fantastic! I'm surprised they have houses to give away really, thought it was hard to find as they seem so squished together in cities. You talking about apartments or other sorts?

Italy has been doing this as well for several years, or better said, local municipalities that have become progressively deserted due to youngs moving to cities. I think in most cases you have to pay a nominal fee, maybe just some law loophole, but we are talking of €1-2. The catch is that in most cases you have to turn them into businesses, cos they are of course hoping to revive those areas with these operations.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the same sort of deals in past years in central Italy, and I think the occasional "train crossing house" goes on sale (I believe is where crossing operators used to live as they had of course to be on-site to do it).

~

@TheOnlyDoubleF the idea sounds amazing, throw in an Airbnb for game jams anyway was great to see your face on your facebook updates during the cycle. Grand adventure, well done!

The thing about those 8 million houses is they are in very small towns. Very little of the free stuff is in the city. My understanding is that part of the reason this program exists is there were people who died who were the last of their bloodline so the property went to the government. The other motive is to bring people back to small towns that are losing population. I guess there's some similarities to Italy's program.

About a week back, we did see a listing where you can inherit a large onsen ryokan (traditional japanese hot spring inn) but part of the deal is you have to agree to run it for at least 5 years.I wouldn't be able to pull that off

Btw : love those Kirsten Dirksen videos!

 

 

 

 

[blackdog 4,403]

My 1.5 years old was pointing at my tshirt last night, so she can now say Doom almost perfectly #goals #gamerdad