AMA: Hopping and Skipping Your way into Last Place Q&A with Zaire Lanier

[Music] hello and welcome to this ask me anything session on hopping and skipping your way into last place with syria lanier uh zaire thank you so much for making time to chat with me today uh we're gonna have a chat room here with polls and stuff so uh folks are in chat please just feel free to say hi and ask whatever questions you want uh upvote ones you really wanna hear the answer to and we're to hear all about how uh and what zaire has learned in her uh freelance career but first of all there could you tell everyone sort of who you are and what you've been up to this year yeah um i'm zayn i was a igda scholar for 2020 um so i was going to go to gdc and then you know everything happened um so during quarantine i wrote a comic and started a comic kickstarter and i was asking for 5k and ended up somewhere around 80k and then shortly after that i got hired

at unknown worlds on subnautica below zero um so i feel a little funny doing this chat because i no longer feel like i'm in last place but i did spend a pretty significant time there um and in last place i feel like you find quite a lot of community there and i think that's something that's very important to work towards when you're trying to enter the video game industry yeah i was going to say this is last place you're making it look pretty good uh let me reach in here and chat people are still saying hi so let's talk about sort of um the journey even in that short month or two between you know getting together sort of think through this talk and things started happening for you um what what changed what happened that really sort of kick-started your jump into the industry um i think it was making a point to try to insert myself into the community not in like an aggressive way but i i want to be a writer a narrative

designer so i found someone relatively famous as a writer narrative designer and i literally went and followed probably two-thirds of the people they followed because i didn't know any other way to find those people it's not like something i feel like you easily google yeah yeah yeah and then eventually i started seeing people pop up and having conversations and so you know you have the people like like the really big people who've been in it and they have like successes and their names are well known like say like a like a married kitty or like a someone like that but then you know those people have their own communities and they've already kind of done their time so to say in my opinion um and they're they're having some success and you want to look for the people who are in the same spot you are because those are the people um who when they get a job at a studio and someone recommends them then they say oh this person was helping me like edit my twine stories or i looked at their stuff and i know they're actually like pretty cool so you kind of get you start creating these

connections in different places and like you know i've got friends all over the world well twitter friends but i consider you know some of them pretty close friends at this point oh yeah um you really even though you're like in last place because you know i sent out a bunch of applications over the past three or four years um i feel like i really found kind of like my niche of people and i feel like that's almost more important in the long run than like immediate successes yeah i mean i think you're right certainly sounds like a more sustainable and enjoyable way to pursue a career in games um so yeah i think i think that's a common that's a common learning that we we hear often especially places like gdc and especially recently where uh you know it can really burn you to not to not like get to not work with your peers and get to know your colleagues and all kind of like work together it can they can sort of isolate you from the industry and isolate you from your peer group if you only chase the established game industry veterans

right who are fantastic but you know at different stages in their career um so you know is this a good example of how you got your recent gig writing on subnautica or is that kind of a different way in i think i think so i think um i think my kickstarter really helped with that and i think my kickstarter um succeeded as much as it did in part because over the past couple years i had tried to create a little community and i was supportive of other people's works and i feel like people are more likely to be supportive of your work if they see you also you know sharing and retweeting other people's things hyping up people who are you know doing something new and interesting um and being an overall like nice encouraging person in a like a genuine way because i think people can definitely sense when you're like only interacting with them to get something for yourself because i'm sure they it happens a lot just due to the nature of the industry like you know there's

only so many spots and you know a ton of people want to get in so yeah it's always striking especially in narrative and design how small the industry really is for how big it is globally uh and how important stuff like this can prove over the years i have lots more questions but folks in the chat are finally coming up with some good ones and by all means if anyone has any questions for xavier please throw them in we're gonna get to as many as we can today uh yori right off the bat had a good one here excuse me tori tori asks how did you work to build your writing and narrative design portfolio before you were hired by a studio um for for building my portfolio i end up some of those like higher up people actually they have like guides and stuff that you can um like on their websites that i looked up greg buchanan's i think mary kitty had on um a couple other people whose last names i can't remember so i don't just want to blur them out but i literally looked over as many of those as i could and some of those people would you know

if they say hey i have a couple minutes to chat about people who want to enter the industry you know talking to them but what i ended up doing um almost universally everyone said make a twine game yeah does it it's something you can do yourself you don't need to know any kind of coding necessarily you don't need to have any skills really other than clicking a button and typing and then doing different genres i started doing game jams uh itch.io was really good for that when i first was starting out i probably was doing like two game jams a month for like six months to a year well twine or did you experiment with other stuff other engines um with the game jams i got paired with a team so i got lucky because programming in the art and not most of them i would say didn't even like work out like someone would like just decide not to and then the team would fall apart but i ended up making i ended up making um i think like two or three small games and then you can put those in the

portfolio and those i think show that you can work with a team and that you're at least trying uh someone told me if you have a portfolio you're probably ahead of 80 to 90 of the people out there already who just like want to enter the game industry but haven't done any work to show why they should be in it um absolutely it's frustrating to hear that uh perhaps not surprising that game jams have the same problem as school projects do yeah that's so much just not gonna do any of the work or someone else is gonna do the rest of it uh one of my game jams uh someone had to drop out literally because they got like attacked by a machete like we didn't hear from him for like two oh my god okay i mean that's he was like he's like oh i still i still want to do the programming because i got attacked by a machete so i was like in the hospital and my family was like looking for the guy that didn't and we ended up finishing the game but like i think that was my very first game jam so i've had some like really random experiences with a few of my camp camps yeah attack by machete is like a

definite get out of jam free card for sure for sure uh uh let me just turn away from blade of weapons here for a second nathaniel has a question so how did you go about contacting people specifically i still find myself trying to get the attention of people above me to know success how can i grab their success i'm going to grab their attention and i think you know not just people above you because i think there was part of that where you were really suggesting that you sort of raise up your peers but how do you get in touch with people who seem out of reach like you know whether they're on your level or above it they've got their own projects they've got their own communities what's a respectable polite way to reach out do you think um i think i mostly did it through twitter um and like i said every once in a while someone would say hey um i'm taking on a mentor or you know you can schedule a time to talk with me about like your resume or your cover letter and i think it's kind of scouring twitter for opportunities almost like every day i was searching like looking for plus narrative designer or

like various iterations of that to look for people who were in need of story writers and i also found that um a lot of discords have overlap like every time i join a discord i feel like there's at least seven other people from another discord that i know um because i feel like i've been doing some stuff for games comics and tt rpgs and i don't feel like there's an overlap in the community because they're all kind of small i mean they're all big but all small at the same time and a lot of people who have like similar interests so you know a lot of game designers played like dungeons and dragons and i know at least two or three people who introduced me to dungeons and dragons through them i found someone who like helped me get some writing for like a like a lot of it i don't know it's it's hard to say like exactly because for every person is different and every situation is

different but a lot of people are quite nice and if you approach them in a professional manner like a lot of people have like maybe their email on their website um if they say that unless they say you know professional only but a lot of people are willing i think to help other people i've met too many too many people so far who were like very stingy with how they got into the industry yeah i agree i mean i thought that answered the question well but i think she did yeah absolutely i mean you know just my own experience as a as a writer in the industry as a writer about the industry not on games um folks have been sort of very willing to you know reach out to talk about their work and talk about you know how they got to where they are i've only ever seen people really start to get tired of there's this trend of uh of game develop game design classes and game development classes like asking students to contact devs to like do interviews and stuff and i think that can be challenging but for peers in the industry and colleagues absolutely

that sounds uh totally legit let's see uh there's a bunch of good questions here i want to get a good one that we missed andy asks how do you manage looking for entry level positions most of the qualifications wants you to have five or more years of experience or and triple a titles under your belt [Music] i think that one is just to some extent it is what it is it's systemic like i don't think there's personally anything that like we can do to change that um you know i can't go to riot and be like hey now that's a really unreasonable qualification or something you know what i mean i can't i can't go to any studio and say you know i think you should change this but i think as more people get into the industry as more people make it known um that those qualifications are often prohibitive for a lot of groups of people um i know a lot of people said just apply anyway uh and that's kind of all you can

do in some respects um the job i got now is subnautica actually someone recommended me for and i think that goes back to um the idea of community um you aren't necessarily gonna stand out just just starting out in like a sea of applications but if you're in the community you're helping people you're putting out small twine games you're doing game jams you're like contributing to different things in the community i think that is where you get those kind of like opportunities and i know those opportunities aren't they're not numerous yeah there aren't a lot of you know junior positions especially for writers and narrative designers and when they do pop up like you know it's like a thousand retweets and you know like 2 000 likes there's just a lot of people pumps on it and that's i mean that's just kind of the reality of it um but i i really think that it's just persistence i know someone

told me they applied to something like 92 jobs before they landed great studio was that was that in game writing no i think it was for production but i know that's probably not comforting but it's at least what i've experienced and you know do stuff with your friends like i know my friends a couple of them did like a pretty cool game jam they made like some stuff and now sitting in their portfolio and apply for those different like mentorships if you can it's like i said it's not it's not easy um i'm still amazed i'm here to be honest um [Music] but that's that's that's my advice i'll be here for a long time to come what what do you what what do you think about cover letters you know i imagine you probably sent out a few in your day i don't know i don't i really struggle with cover letters like like i get it but also like i don't know it feels a little bit like you think anybody reads it like beg for

it like i don't know flatter this company but like i i kind of understand them um i don't know i i almost feel like i don't know like a resume and then like samples should speak for themselves and the cover letters maybe like hey we're between these like five candidates let's you know i don't know i just it feels it's just irritating i guess because it's so labor-intensive i understand they're necessary but like i don't think anyone actually likes them and if they are i don't know they're probably like an alien in disguise or something there's a necessary evil i feel like yeah it's hard to pour out your heart and soul like 92 times in three months it's uh it's a lot anyone in chat is a hiring position or or looks that kind of stuff please tell me why cover letters little thing um there's also some good questions in here let me scroll back up a little bit oh my gosh my eyes are going forgive me i think it's rue here who asks what are most important social platforms for reaching out

finding communities and making connections as a newcomer we've already talked about twitter and discord were there any other places you found real value or are those kind of not really um twitter and discord were like facebook groups are kind of like for for me they felt like the wild west yeah um and so i just was like oh let's go back out of here um but yeah i think twitter and discord were the ones that like i found the most community i found like start running into the same people and comments about like the same ideas and then i even feel like i learned a little bit about other disciplines like obviously i'll never be an expert in like 3d art but like seeing how things work in like when they post a thread about the work they did on a certain game i like get a little bit of understanding about the work and like effort that goes into other disciplines and i i don't know it's just been really interesting i feel like twitter gave me like a full like a more full experience that i wouldn't have gotten just like

trying to do it on my own yeah i totally agree i mean without twitter we never know what frustum culling is uh let me scroll up here a lot of good questions a lot of fun ones this is a this is a quick one i want to get on to so we're talking about um all the jobs you applied for relatively recently uh jonathan wants to know how wide of a geographical reason well excuse me region where those jobs you applied for like how do you during your job search how do you how do you choose how far how wide of a net to cast is it just in your city in your state is it anywhere well i definitely looked like internationally um especially i live in the midwest and there's a little bit of a gaming industry kind of popping up but no one really looking for narrative designers so i mean west coast obviously because that's you know gaming mecca i guess um and then just kind of anywhere that said you know remote jobs like available um

i guess if you don't have like a wife and kids and like your family's there if you're willing to to move to like another country then that's an option too um i know canada has some really good gaming uh studios which is probably an easier move than like sweden or something but um i mean honestly i applied to anything that looked pretty reasonable um you know i'm like i said i don't have a family or kids or like anything like that that would be yeah it does seem like this industry you know more than most uh often requires travel uh and strangely i mean it's been interesting you know during this whole pandemic this global lockdown like uh watching the industry rapidly adapt to you know like the full company-wide work from home setups and i kind of hope that that leads to a general shift in the industry where folks can do remotely my girlfriend's like looking at me because i said the thing about moving and she's like hmm really yeah you shouldn't have to

move if you don't want to i mean if you're just writing you're just talking sentences into a spreadsheet or whatever you should be able to send that off but uh what do i know uh all right there's another question here from katarina who wanted to know it's like a fun general question what inspired you to pursue your current profession um honestly i i went to when i went to college i like super struggled i graduated in 2010 i just will be graduating this year and i feel like i was doing a lot of things that i felt other people wanted me to do and so when i finally just kind of like sat down was like well what do i like and what am i like good at i kept coming back to writing in video games the first video game story i remember like that really had a impact on me was um knights of the old republic nice good choice yeah my my grandmother bought an old xbox and i stayed up till

like four in the morning playing it i finished it my mind was like like it was just like crazy to me and i was like i want to like replicate that feeling and then i bought a ps3 when i was like like 20 or something it was some sketchy like craigslist buy that i bought in some like alley somewhere and then i kept getting like dragon age the last of us mass effect and i really started getting into story driven games and then so i was like well i'll i'm failing at everything else so i might as well try to fail at something i like and that was that was really what inspired me um to to try to like get into it i i really enjoyed those stories and the interactivity of them and i wanted to to try to make worlds and games myself yeah i wondered now that you're creating um how do you look at that appeal of enmeshing yourself into narrative and making decisions because i was about to ask like oh what is it about you know games that made you pursue creativity there rather than films or

art or anywhere else but now that you're actually doing it how do you how do you think about designing choices into story how do you think about designing a story for a game if that's not too broad no i it's a lot like it's a lot different than writing like a short story or a novel because you have to deal with like player agency you have to deal with you only have so much space to make people feel something you know like you don't generally have huge paragraphs unless maybe you're reading like a like a lower sample or something but like you only have and then you know some you get the people who just like skip everything um so i think for me i've been learning that narrative is that design is more than just like the words it's also like the things you see in the environments it's um like the mechanics that play into everything and i'm learning how they kind of all mesh together um i'm still definitely very new at it um

like i i feel like i'm constantly learning and like will probably always be learning um but i'm learning that it's a lot more complex than just like make this sound pretty you know you're working with a whole team of people to make something happen and they all have to like all the gears have to fit into each other to make the machine go that's and that's something i'm getting used to nice i mean that's why i think your perspective is so valuable i mean you have fresh eyes on this uh you're just you know not not just starting out but it's just taking off and you have these two projects one with your you're working with a team and the other one you sort of have it sounds like creative control and direction um because it's your own thing yeah so yeah what i'm curious to know is uh and there's so many good questions in the chat that i just kind of lost my train of thought but i sort of want to sort of pick apart how you what you're learning from having that dual approach to oh here's something you're creating on your own

pretty much kind of like a twine game and then here's this project you're working on with the team where i assume you and you can tell me whether you have like specific deadlines to hit the targets to hit specific you know things you need to achieve um yeah how do you how do you how do you switch modes when you're changing projects to go from like lead creative to team member well kickstarter is i don't want to say i'm just writing because it's a comic but like the writing is a part of it but like people read comics for for the for the kick ass you know um and so a lot of it for me has been like trusting the artists like i give them a rough idea of what i want this panel to happen what i want to happen in this panel and then i just kind of watch them do the magic um like it's it's really interesting and it's honestly really humbling because it's like a completely different skill set but it's like absolutely necessary to

what i'm doing um and so you know i'll do like concept art and stuff but it's i really like being kind of the creative lead because they like i have an idea and we but we discuss it as a team i try not to be like too overbearing um i don't think anyone wants to be like oh she won't let me like what's the point of having an artist and like that's their life if i'm not going to trust them to like bring my vision to life um and it's it's really paid off because every time they send a page i'm like oh my god they're so like that's so good like thank you like like like i'm bowing down to you this is amazing and then with the working on subnautica my writing process has always been super chaotic like i have notes on this envelope i have notes on a post-it note over here like it's two in the morning and i just wrote two pages and then you know the project lead will be like where's your stuff and i'm like oh oh it's in it's scattered here and they're like

okay but like i can't see it so like like adjusting my process that i've always done to working with a team is like it's taking me a little bit but it's also really rewarding because then it's like i get pretty quick feedback you know i get to read other people's stuff it's you get to kind of like joke around a little bit it's it's nice but it's that cherished like shifts a game experience point on your resume yeah yeah wait what oh i was just making a bad joke i think after the end of this you get this this cherished like the thing so many would-be game devs are searching for is like that experience on shipping an actual game and working with a team yeah i can't like deny that i'm very very very excited about that nice very excited that's fantastic uh i got away from the questions here so i'm going to come back you guys uh y'all let's see uh there was a really good question that followed up on jonathan's and here it is so sydney wants to know can you work remotely in this industry

or still mainly in person and i want to ask this because things are changing so rapidly right now and you just recently you know were on the job so i'm curious to hear your perspective like did you see a lot of employers who really wanted you to come into the office or was there more openness to remote work um i the the jobs that i applied to were at the time mostly like you know you need to like come to the office and then covet hit and i started seeing a lot more remote work or people had to move to that city but they still were working from home um subnautica is like a the whole company is remote so we have people from like all over doing like student meetings and stuff i'm hoping that the industry i mean it's kind of proven somewhat that you can do some remote work i don't know how i'm sure someone's done studies on it on like whether it's efficient or not but i think it's showing that's like even if it's partially remote like you only have to come in like two or

three days a week or you know something like that i think the industry can change to accommodate more and i hope that's something that does come out of this terrible pandemic uh yeah i hope so too for sure um we have about four minutes left in this talk i'm sorry to mention earlier folks in chat if you got any questions get them out try to burn through as fast as we can here i'm going to put some ones in i want to get to a donna's question if you got a second adonai wants to know what is the data they look like when you're doing narrative designing games is it a lot of collaboration or is it working on your own or does it depend on the team so this kind of like let's let's dig more into your experience you know switching between your own project and working for the team at subnautica uh how does like i'm just curious like how does your day break down typically and sort of how do you how do you structure it to be able to serve both those needs um my my kickstarter is definitely more hands-off like i just kind of send in script pages and then

they give me like the art and i might give some feedback and then they change it and i say oh that's great it's not as intensive it might get more so with the closer we get to shipping out the first issue of the comic um but for now it's pretty i wouldn't say chill but it's definitely not like something that's very stressful um subnautica since it's the whole company's remote there's uh two there's like weekly meetings two a week i think and then each department like i know the narrative one i have one with a meeting with my person on tuesdays and then we have a myriad of online tools that um we can comment and we can send links in that we can like comments like oh i finished this section can you take a look at it so it's it's kind of like a constant interaction but it's very like loose it's not it's not like super strict i can't speak for other studios because this is definitely my first studio but for me it's been pretty pleasant and like pretty pleasant yeah i've heard similar

things from uh small teams you know 10 people 20 people 30 people less sometimes often seem to have a lot of that's working remote whereas larger companies they seem to hear their stuff less all right one last question before we go [Music] i wanted to get to the pay question there's a good question about hey adana nope forgive me donna we already asked that question uh here we go i want to give credit salvatore asks how did you handle pay rates when you were starting out with a reasonable range for folks breaking into the industry to ask for when the job ad asks you for a rate now i don't expect you to have a knowledgeable answer about this because you know who knows what they think that job is worth but how did you navigate this challenge when you were looking for your first gig um a lot of people i know i did um i had several friends like yell at me over the internet because i think when you're starting out you tend to undercharge yourself yeah i was charging i think 15 an hour and one of my friends was like that's like absolutely

unacceptable and i was like i'll work on it and you and you want to kind of diminish yourself because you want those jobs like you want a low ball so that you can you really want that like credit to get in your portfolio but um i think valuing yourself and your time especially if you're a freelancer um you don't get health insurance you don't get any kind of benefits you don't and you have to like pay taxes directly out of your paycheck yourself yeah a lot i think someone told me um do like all your expenses for the year figure out what that is and then uh i can't remember what it was it was something like three times that so like like if you're charging yourself 15 an hour take out what you would for taxes blah blah blah and maybe you'll end up at like 45 an hour and i know um a lot of people in like art writing music to non-charge themselves just because it's it feels very saturated but i found that when i raised my rates

i got a higher quality of client um just because they're more likely to see that like especially if you have a good portfolio they are willing to pay for good writing as opposed to just like some random person who's like you know 10 15 isn't really that much but someone's willing to like hey i want to pay 35 an hour for eight hours that someone that you know is probably a lot more serious about their project i think you're right so yeah that's fantastic we got to get out of here but before we go is there anywhere you would direct people who want to follow your work or get in touch with you yeah um if you want to like ask me questions that i didn't get to answer here you can um go to my twitter it's uh zeelanier21 um and then just like send me a thing and i will make time to try to answer your questions or just like tweet out a response um and my web my portfolio is on zaire yourlanier.com um yeah that's

that's where i have all my work and yeah that's that's pretty much it i don't really do much else online yeah you too busy riding fantastic you nailed it thanks everyone for joining us enjoy the rest of your last day at gdc summer and uh yeah have a great 20 20. bye thanks guys