A Survival Guide for Game Developers

[Music] hello hello Wow a lot of people in for nine o'clock and expect that thank you I got 30 minutes so I'm gonna begin now it's a lot to cover basically you're going to talk about I kind of did this presentation for people not wanting to get into the games business that's not what I'm gonna focus on on focusing once you get there how to survive how many people are working for our Indies okay how many people working for game companies okay Little Mix I started out as an indie with a group of guys in our early 20s we formed the studio lasted for about five years and then after that I started working for game companies now I'm back at an indie so kind of circular here I've created three Studios from the ground up in Austin Texas Bioware Austin Sony Austin and battle cry Studios now Bethesda Game Studios from scratch and it's been a lot of fun and I learned a lot by doing that and so what I learned is kind of like what I look for when in the games between how you know to survive because one of the things that you're going to notice is there's a 90% chance of the demon I call it the lay off demon will hit you and it by the way don't feel bad about that's kind of a rite of passage in the games business and it will happen probably within the first five years of your career if you're with a game company or even with an indie average lifespan of the company is about four years I found just kind of looking around change is inevitable our our industry changes so much you look at all the disruptors have happened in the past ten years in our game industry and what's coming with streaming and other things like that VR AR it's a it's a new this particularly I think in the next 10 years will be totally different than what you see today as far as entertainment or as far as what we develop and one of the things I noticed too and every game company I work for is there really isn't any onboarding to say there's some at places training is non-existent in a lot of places and mentoring and career growth secondary and and that's unfortunate and a lot of things I've done for training has just gone on on my own or come here to GDC one of the observations to is there's a delicate balance and it's actually getting better now but when I started it wasn't between work life this industry can chew you up you work long hours a lot of times with no rest again it has gotten a lot better today than it was 10 years ago but something to you know these are things you need to be aware of there's a hierarchy in our business and these are just kind of observations right now I'm going over to you and then I'll tell you get into the meat of this programmers are king secondary design third is artist forces QA on the ladder and it's bizarre because if a game isn't fun it's not going to do anything and designers are in my opinion the are not as high as programmers are and I think that in our industry it just screwed up and QA is not respected which I i totally are against and by the way a lot of really good people came out of QA and in gaming one thing I'm going to talk about is culture so wherever you go whether you're indie studio you're going to have a culture whether you're going from a game company they're going to have a culture and it's really important to learn what that culture is and if you're looking for a job to make sure you see if you're compatible with that culture a lot of cultures are top-down when you see a top-down culture you see you walk into the place and it's very quiet easily an indicator and groups are separated and then there's bottoms up and how you fit on that will be something you need to learn so in a top-down you're taking orders in a bottom-up it's kind of a more collaborative type of development so if people don't like the top-down approach then maybe that's not a good cultural fit for you there is places I've seen in even in diesel like this there is either design heavy or tech heavy and so you need to see how you fit in in that kind of place because that it all goes into how what kind of voice you'll have and again it's like DNA matching so as you're forming your indie Studios make sure that you form something that you all will appreciate and like and as you grow can bring people into it I always had when I started a studio any size studio is my core values and what our mission statement is if your indie that's the first thing you should do is figure out that out and that's something you abide by as you grow and as you are successful and as you hire people because when you're hiring when everyone goes for an interview for a job they're looking at number one your hard skills what you're good at number two is can you be a cultural fit that's what a lot of people use because if you're not you're going to be swimming upstream and sometimes that happens and it's not against all against you you just don't fit within that culture don't take it personally and what I'm going to talk about is soft skills now because soft skills are something that people don't really talk a lot about in our industry but it really is important in fact I think it's more important in your heart skills because you can learn hard skills really easily there's so many great gaming schools out there today teaching stuff you can go learn on or come here you're gonna be working with a variety of different weird people in our industry and you're gonna have tons of personalities to deal with here I see it all the time and I just accept it artists have issue has their personalities designers have their personalities programmers have their personalities and so you're gonna have to learn how to adjust and fit to that and that's where soft skills come in one of the most important soft skills is what I call emotional intelligence and some people are not self-aware on that front self-awareness is really critical if I had to say anything about one of the biggest things about emotional intelligence egos have got to be left to saw aside in our industry I seen so many people not be self-aware if you're not self-aware you're not going to learn and you're not going to grow and you're not going to be able to succeed in an entertainment type company so being self-aware is really at all this and that's why it's on the top is the most important thing and self-management to understanding you know how to deal with your time how to deal with others and social awareness social awareness is really really important where and you when you go to work for a company you kind of like see what I always do is I don't say anything and when I came to my last job which I work out today I only knew one person that was terrifying to me because I've always started up Studios and formed them and grew it and went with the people I know to start them so this was really important for me to figure out how the social structure exists in a studio and relationship management is another one these people you work with a lot and it's really important to make sure and by the way there's a 1 degree separation in our against business so if you piss someone off likelihood you'll maybe baby seeing them again and they may be your hiring manager and that goes for anybody in this room that are really young and starting to because one day I may be looking for a job right another skill I think is really important in this business is called adaptability you really have to learn how to be adaptable you can't be rigid in our business our business changes way too fast way too much versus any other business by the way it's chaotic and I'll tell you what I like chaos and I think anybody that does games and thinks games are easy to make they ought to not be in gaming games are probably one of the hardest things to build in my opinion they require so much multidisciplinary talent lots of people working together to make it happen and it's magic it's lightning in a bottle whether you hit it or not another one in my opinion is being collaborative you have to learn to work well with each other I told someone asked me well what did you learn what are the skills you learned to manage the studio well I said I learned everything when I went to first grade and I said draw between the lines play well with others you know these are things that are really really important as you grow even if you're indeed collaboration is sometimes hard because as a smaller studio you are sometimes you have bigger conflicts believe it or not because they're amplified because of your size learning how to get people to be collaborative is an art and it comes with this ego you doesn't really work well in our business there are a lot of egos in our business I'll tell you that right now and I'll tell you what some of them are very good at damping that down and not exposing it to a lot of people some are not an ego in our business can lead to bad decisions and you need a little humility mixed into that so humility in my opinion is one of the best things to have as a soft skill you need to be confident this is real important if you're an indie if you're going to a publisher or going to get financed you need to show them that you are that you can do the job that you said you're going to do that I'm gonna give you money and the like me getting my investment back is high if you go in there not confident you're not going to get anything from a publisher or an investor as a developer people look at you and you say yes I can do this confidence being insecure is something you don't want if you are a lot of people are I've been insecure sometimes but I don't show it I try to provide try to have a persona of confidence that's really important as you're successful but another side of that if you don't know how to do something there's nothing wrong with saying I don't know how to do that help me ask for help this is another one I think that in our industry is hard some people are really good at it and I've seen and some people really really bad at it learn how to listen understand look through the lens of other people their perspective and then communicate concisely not a thesis I think one of the biggest things I've seen people do in communications is write a thesis get to the point but be delicate if it's something that is a delicate situation but get to the point one of the things that I think there's the other side of this is called a nonverbal communications the way you stand up the way you act this is very important in a game company as well as an indie company because again Indies if you go behind go for a publisher or investment and you have bad body language you're not going to get it make sure that you look at the way you're acting because even when you're in a meeting you put your head down with someone saying that that's not a good thing all the time it's Laura when it learned how to have both verbal and nonverbal communication skills are really important there are many types of people you're going to deal with in the games business even in small teams it's really there you you have the rational people I call them the engineers they're the rational people the producers are trying to be rational as well you the extroverts and you had the introverts and I'm kind of like an introvert myself a little bit more so than extrovert and it's hard to push yourself out of that and some people are extremely emotional and I'll tell you you're gonna have bosses that cover this spectrum I had an emotional boss once and he was a very abusive person and it was awful situation to be on it's really hard to deal with and so having soft skills is why I think is important you had to deal with all these three four different types and sometimes for when you're an introvert the best way from a as a producer of I am to get an introvert to talk as I ask them specific questions in a meeting extroverts you don't have to worry about emotional people you just talk to facts you don't get emotional yourself you talk about facts and if it's not working you just say okay I think we need to take a break for a minute rational people are a lot easier to deal with a lot easier to deal with but sometimes they can get too rational about things and you say well look take a leap of faith so those are things about again what I saw about building confidence why these important because I will tell you when you get it if you do get reviews the people have the best soft skills by the way and hard skills get the outstanding or the excellent people who don't get satisfactory or below satisfactory a game company so if you want to advance your careers go out and look for some good books on soft skills there are many times in our game industry that you're going to have these moments we're all familiar with them and they happen and the way to I deal with those moments is I take a breath I go outside and walk around I don't respond in email please don't do that take a time walk around outside or do something different get away think about it come back and then deal with it at that particular moment but I will tell you I've seen people respond very quickly to those moments that they regret later and so I always kind of like do what I say I need a pause and I need to go think for a minute a lot of times when you do that you can look through the lens of whatever is happening and figure out how to get around it but our game industry is full of these moments by the way stress is something that we deal with a lot it's very stressful to do games I have not been in a situation that hasn't been stressful it always comes down to you you have this passionate thing you worked on this baby and someone says it's ugly and that's the worst thing you can hear is your baby is ugly and you have to sit down and go I'm gonna kill that guy and you get very passionate about it all the reviewers say your baby's baby your baby's ugly no and so you have this fear when you launch that things aren't going to go right you have this fear that you're not going to get money from your publisher because you're missing deadlines and they're going to cancel your project we have a fear of losing our jobs that's stressful and the way I deal with stress as yoga and workout but seriously one of the things I do is I always kind of look forward I don't look back I look at the integration the situation I have on hand it's not life and death here there are many moments in your lives that would be a much dealing with much worse worse things than this but it's about everyone's passionate about it so what I learned is to kind of like deal with stress is to kind of put it in perspective and immediately try to look for ways of dealing with the stress to look for solutions or the way out look forward not look back don't sit down and just go into a loop what I call it of always saying it I call this the abused puppy syndrome some people may come from a very bad place and they start working in a new place but there they got that abused puppy syndrome so anything you do they're gonna look at it from their lens of where they were not where they are it's real important to know that you're here it's not like where you are leave your luggage behind your baggage behind leave it that's my advice always look forward one of the things I do is even when I schedule or everything I don't look in front of me I look where I'm going everyone should look where they're going and up for that for advice to everyone here and this is kind of harsh a little bit but what I've learned is no one's going to stand up for you but you and in our and it goes for any business but in particularly our business you could get laid off any day they don't care loyalty in my opinion is something that I have not seen or earned from any game company yet because if things go bad they'll get rid of you if you have a great opportunity if you love what you want the people you work with and you love your job fantastic if things don't work or if you get a greater opportunity always look for the great opportunity times because you never know what that opportunity is and it may be something that the place that you currently have doesn't offer you or you think you're worth more than what you're getting always look out for yourself but be careful about looking at that being careful what to ask for you always have to look at the situation that you're currently in the company may not be doing well or you know the average salaries of that company are a little lower than most but if you like my opinion is my most important criteria is do I like the people I work with is a company culture something I enjoy and like and there's a work that light balance and that what we're working on is cool and if I meet those criteria I'm fine I am fine so I have some time like 10 minutes for questions anybody want to ask questions yes you go to the mic say go at what mics please thank you that way we can hear the recordings testing okay do you have any soft skill books that come to mind as what do you recommend yeah there I'm trying to think about some good ones out there that I've seen there there you know what there is there's nothing on the gaming industry I wish there was I'll tell you what you ready mail me I'll give you some books that I'll do I have some at home and I can just pick out yeah go ahead no boy hi so you mentioned that you had a abusive boss that was emotional at times yes when you're asked the question of what was the context of the problem and how'd you manage it how do you talk about that experience when you get an emotional boss the best thing to do is is to ask questions versus anything else because that makes them respond and and don't be defensive ask questions that why why do you see this or what's the what do you think are the issues that you're upset about right always ask questions don't make statements because they always end to be bad because when you ask questions you actually can get the viewpoint or the lens that person is looking for I also kind of like if he's really hot right now or very emotional I wait come back later also be careful about the group thing if you're going to ask something that's kind of should you ask that with a group of people or should do that one-on-one that's a really important one because a person one-on-one will talk to you a lot differently than a person in a group right and trust me there are certain things you ask in a group and there's certain things you don't ask in a group and I've been there where I had some of my people in my studio go up to a CEO of a company and ask this question I said oh my god I can't believe he just asked that question in front of the company but yeah that's the other criteria yes so you mentioned having both humility and confidence how do you sort of balance those and I guess in an outward way to be a you know a bit of both yeah I mean I like confidence right confidence doesn't mean if you're confident in what you're doing you believe what you're doing now sometimes a good game designer is stubborn a little bit and confident that's okay if they believe in what they believe in and they have a good rationale for and the data is showing that they're they're moving in the right direction yeah there's nothing wrong with a good argument but if you're wrong and the data is showing you're wrong you need to have humility to recognize that right okay thank you yeah and one slide you mentioned that programmers are like on top and designers are like below so I'm a program myself and I'm thinking okay how does that in fact in your view like the situation what can I do as a programmer like to you know rabbit it is you know every this is just a hierarchy a scene they've been a lot of companies valued technical people over design which is crazy and I don't get it every studio I have I balance that I don't do that and I have pressure from above telling me no you need to give this person this mount for bonuses and this person I said no this person is the reason this game got it 87 Metacritic right or these people are and to me that's messed up in our industry I just seen it so much and to me designers are king because a game isn't fun it's not going to be played and and fun by the way so here's another thing programming is measurable design is this magic black box it really is it's hard to test for it's hard to fire it's hard to hire for because you don't know if someone's a walker or talker when they are designer we do have tests they help call it out but tests don't catch everything so it is it's it is and that I think design and art are not the black boxes as well as I think QA is also that way but design is this little it's it's it's magic it really is what design skills are there's several different versions of what designers are and the several types of designers but it is and I think that's the reason because they don't know how to quantify a good designer right they only quantify a good designer by what they've worked on right go ahead is that I hope that answers your question I don't know how to deal with that it's really the culture right whatever company you have has a good culture where design is king that's that's awesome that's a culture that I like because usually if culture there where design is really appreciated and respected Blizzard it's that's where you get good games yeah so with those problems that you mentioned before like the top-down culture and like the weird sort of hierarchy that he just brought up what do you think about like unions and coops helping with that a little bit with the culture so I'm not a big fan of unions I don't know I I heard all this going on do you know how the film and I came out of I went to USC film school I came out of film business good in games you're hired freelancers that's all you are and basically they make a they have the studios have staff right and they have executive producers and things like that but that directors DPS all that's hired to make a film so if we go to that model that's exactly what may happen is we're all freelancers so we're paint we're getting paycheck to paycheck on on games and by the way getting in clicks of where you where the good people are in Hollywood is hard real hard so if they making a blockbuster triple a movie they know the group they're gonna get they know the group of people are going to hire and if you're not on that group you may not get hired right so there may be a lot of content and needs to be done in against business but I don't know I just in my opinion yes I there are good positive things about unions about work-life balance and things like that that that forces that butt in but again how is the publisher is going to deal with that I don't know right I really don't I think that pushing publishers to do good work like balance by habit by companies that promote that and get the good talent there I think is a good indicator about how to push that forward where I seen work/life balance happen to be honest with you just as long answer your question I see crunch happen because schedules are top down not bottoms up that's the number one cause of crunch in my opinion in our industry that I've seen in the past 20 years is top down schedules versus bottom up and the realities by the way of a business meaning you have to get a title done by a certain time but there are casualties with that too if it's not successful due to an unrealistic schedule but again I I don't know how the industry is gonna handle unions or anything but I know how how it happened in the film business is it just basically it's all freelancers so if that's that I don't know if that's gonna happen or not but that's what happened in the film and video in the industry yes go ahead so on your hierarchy it was very interesting but I did not notice writers anywhere are they so low value that they wouldn't even be on the B no riders or no riders are where I worked at Bioware writers or designers right we call them narrative designers that's where writers are in that field they're not anywhere off discuss you're a writer you know and saying their narrative designer is that's what we call writers cool so don't worry about that I love writers stories important mm-hmm so you talked a lot about culture and sort of the work/life balance that a company can vary from company to company do you have any tips or suggestions on how best to assess that before you're in the position of like during the interview or something to ask for something like that I always ask to go to the bathroom and then get lost there's a reason I do that because I want to see how people are interacting i watch a lot i watch the people's faces i watch the people way they communicate with each other i see how they working around their desk it's that kind of thing how quiet it is is another one and then the second thing I do is during you know there's a time you take a break is this what there's always a smokers area that's a great area to kind of walk to usually you can find it and just ask questions you know that's my other tip for that but yeah I just look watch and listen and and I also would go to LinkedIn and look for other people or who worked there and maybe ask directly hey I'm looking at there what's it like that's another that second degree versus first degree trying to get that information because the people are going to interview you are going to give you a dim perspective than going out and trying to get at your spot yourself right and I would also it LinkedIn look for people who work there before maybe they don't work there now that's another one that's good go have one over get some time good hi my name is Anna um so you kind of covered like many things that are kind of like issues in the game industry and you talked about how it's come far along since like you said like 10 years what are some things that you know what's some advice you can give to us that we can help to move along in improving the things that we still have issues with yeah I mean basically if you see work like balance problems make a big issue into that talk about it and bring it up because and if it if it's that way and you're not liking it look for another job look for another place in the industry okay because it's not worth it that way and if you see chaos and games are chaotic I'll tell you that right now no matter where you go they're always chaotic and no matter where you go I will tell you you always put in a little extra effort it's a matter of what the time duration of that extra effort is a lot of times when I ask when we go into deadlines I ask people to move put some extra effort in I asked I first of all give them goals so they know what they need to do I it's all voluntary and there are guidelines for it meaning duration other things like that and I don't continue it it's like a basically Excel right release accelerate release it's not constant and but anything entertainment wise and even in film and video everyone puts in extra effort when the release comes in it always happens I be honest with you no matter where you go on that that's always the case in the entertainment industry right yeah so I mean just that's what I'd say just push it forward and be a voice in it right yeah you look at yeh yeh had the EI wives got a huge issue with them right along out ten years ago I think it was and they they changed the way he operated for a while so that was good I actually haven't spouse I think the GA spouse yes why is that sorry I didn't mean to interrupt sorry um I kind of have another question Ashley do they like have kind of do they advocate for like certain issues do they have any I don't know you don't want to see social justice you know any company in it the problem is this building bringing awareness if people start leaving that builds awareness okay okay yeah next question anyway I think I have yes uh for someone who is a program who also has interesting being designed like what do you say about programmers who also have design skills oh that's awesome no that's where I came from so I was a programmer then it became a designer and then we came to a juicer but yes and when I started by the way most producers were designers and sorry most programmers were designers by the way so in the 90s when I was started you would not see a lot of designers you see programmers that were designers that are designers and that that's the way the industry was for a long time in the 90s and in the 80s too but from what I heard but the nineties for sure and then probably in around 2000 and Beyond it started you started fractioning off the different disciplines but nothing wrong with being a going to design track being a pro in fact that's a good thing it's good to have programming and design skills together in that case yes it is it's very very good yes is it time thank you thank you everyone [Applause]

Channel: GDC

Views: 53,392

Keywords: gdc, talk, panel, game, games, gaming, development, hd, design, game development, game design, rich vogel, certain affinity

Id: UaRnAXozc58

Length: 33min 21sec (2001 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 26 2019