Career Options Beyond “Traditional” Game Development with John Podlasek | GduX.me

I think your options beyond traditional being Fellman wanting to get into this topic gets near and dear to me and just a a little bit about myself I work at level X incorporated and I'm a host of the game dev advice podcast so the credentials page 30 years in the industry hard to believe that now I think back but it was 1989 when I started working at the turbo graphics 16 as a hotline foam rep been at ten different game studios over the years and working some of the titles big ones probably heard of maybe likely mortal kombat dead alliance deception armageddon and about half of em cavers DC Universe worked on a BS and butthead PC game Marvel Avengers initiative on

mobile bunch of other things on PC Facebook mobile and lots of council and I'm now the e as I mentioned director of talent acquisition at level X 2015 I was talked to into by a media consultant to do a reddit so I did that was kind of fun and I was excited this year to be a part of Tim Schafer Gabe Newell people like that so it's exciting here's some pictures and things just to show a little bit about my background so what is traditional game development just just so we have a context I'm pretty sure everybody knows what I'm talking about but just to be extra sure you know console games handheld games PC games mobile games all intended for a general kind of consumer audience so it's kinda like those games you know when you think back what got you interested in industry

you know what was that game you know maybe with Starcraft 2 or maybe Halo or you know for myself Spy Hunter right you know it was that game that that really hooks you and got you interested in the industry so that's kind of what you think as traditional games and they're obviously out there and doing well this talk is not going to be about though focusing in that space I've got plenty ideas around that and discuss some of them on my podcast but but not for today so I'm not gonna be able help with you know getting that our job say you have a you know that genius idea for a game or you want to make money with your indie game this is uh areas we're not going to cover today and there's other areas that will people that can do that it will be about though so you work in traditional game development maybe you're concerned about burnout or crunch I know it's gotten press it's

been going on forever I think it's getting better than its uh than it used to be but you know it's out there and normally outside of traditional game development that's less of a factor so maybe you're just curious or thinking more about a career outside of of that space oh you're just finished fool so so you get your CS degree you got a portfolio together and you're kind of getting to lay the land saying hey where can I go what we can I apply these skills this trade that I've learned possibly somewhere in between maybe you're a year or two out of school got that first job on your belt and you're thinking Heyman what else is out there so this is gonna be about looking beyond traditional looking beyond the obvious the things that you know and think about when you think game development here's a meme from mr.

robots so it's it's just about the idea of just you know looking beyond what your thoughts are of game development to all these other avenues so there are other worlds out there and there's all different kinds of verticals and and and business models and different things in the non traditional gaming space here's the categories I'm going to be diving into deeper and talking more about during this presentation arc-v' is this is kind of like what it sounds it's you know taking a design and just visualizing it in a way that a client will better understand what they receive primarily around buildings so the output or the format can be varied give you a photorealistic animation 3d and often more more frequently and XR

and I wanted to I found this great little slide about what XR is because sometimes people say AR /vr but then you're missing um R and X R is kind of that all-encompassing format to describe you know the different genres within extended reality so VR it's your typical what you think HTC vive oculus things like that AR is yogge mented reality like ok man go alright the best example there and mix reality best one for that I would say is the magic leap which is a interesting piece of hardware with some some cool potential so all of these types of formats are used in this space for arc fizz and it's a growing field hiring is you a guess is primarily for artists so I took some screenshot here of all the different types of roles that

are open and you can see art direction UI lots of 3d so there's all these different jobs in that space and got inside information from Ringling that it's that's one of their biggest industries for people coming out of school so if you're in the art space and you're looking beyond traditional game development this is one of them immersive learning and training excuse me so it's primarily in corporate medical and workforce when you think of training normally it's been kind of like PowerPoint type slides with clicking meaning for compliance training and things like that but now it's branching out it's getting bigger it's getting more visual it's getting more interactive often its XR based a big example is the Walmart initiative and they're using XR to Train 17,000

associates and you know soft skills those can be easier to to watch and visualize than say clicking with a mouse and answering a question or watching a short video so you know this space is growing and and again a lot of it's being fueled by XR here's some example companies so this sty VR and STI VR and 360 immersive are some of the companies and as you can see from job openings it's a lot of traditional game development roles so there's unity3d programmers and UI UX of course 3d modelers sure those designers - and you know this is an area that I see more and more potential with with growth and if Walmart's doing it then obviously there's some research and some money behind it so yeah it's growing

simulation space is big there's lots of verticals in that I'm just gonna kind of tap into the medical one you know here at the beginning and this is really geared as you would guess towards medical professionals and it's about visualization and figuring out ways to get those better patient results better patient outcomes there's a couple hundred of these location-based simulation labs and they're throughout the country there's one down in Peoria got a screenshot here from jump simulations which is the Peoria one and it kind of recreates that environment so they're they're replicating what the surgeons go through it so they can practice in this environment and get better at their skills other times they may be based at the hospital or with the practices so the the games weather excuse me the training will be based on location and they don't have to travel to these faces a couple

companies in the space was a really exciting one a Germany called brain lab and they do a lot in the narrow space neurology of brain surgery and visualization all those kind of things Hart flows another one as you guess has to deal with cardiologists and they're hiring so I took some screenshots you can see heart flow as a VP role there and brain lab has tons of roles and it's you know heavily and engineering also in arts project management all those kind of things and they're based out of Munich Germany but they have companies all over the world and they do a lot of cool stuff also assimilation gets a little controversial but military so and it's part of this really broader big top-level genre which

is modeling simulation and training and in that overarching genre militaries when the biggest customers and it's three to ten billion a year and the contracts are huge and you know the money is being spent by the companies in in the hardware side so the Lockheed eats and Northrop's things like that organizations are involved with it that help out in that space and it's a lot of its concentrated in the Orlando Florida area which is kind of interesting again it's now for everyone but there is a lot of cool tech and um a lot of interesting stuff that goes on in that space um also in a little bit in the controversial spaces the military games I'm sure a lot of you have heard of the US Army game America's Army and that came out you

know 17 years ago was initially on the PC I'd have a pretty high-end video card to run it and yeah it's really evolved over the years 17 years going and it's on all the consul's they use Unreal Engine so all those type of roles that are based for gaming using Unreal would be applicable here you know designers programmers project managers and you know that's this can be controversial but I'm just here to kind of show what the options are and not make judgment and let people decide on their own there's also these niches within the simulation so things you would never think of but they were out there and they tend to be pretty heavy on the engineering side a lot of math a lot of simulation a lot of calculations and and trying to do predictive work but oil and gas is one

of them and you know as you can guess they want to take all this data and make smarter decisions you know when they're drilling and refracting or whatever they're doing in terms of the oil extraction so as you can see is a bunch of rules that are open in that space it's not surprisingly heavy in the Texas area and that's for about overseas but yeah it's a interesting a smaller vertical that just kind of gets into using all those math then simulation skills in a different way if you're an engineer same thing whether in climate modeling there's an industry for that if you think about all the craziness going on with our climates now and being able to predict that and run simulations and you know use it across all kinds of different applications and again it's it's heavily on the engineering side and here are some examples another one

gambling full disclosure I've worked in the gambling industry for about a year and a half and did some slot machines sort of a couple prices right slot machines and learned a lot it's it's huge I was shocked by this number and again this is a global and it's prediction about 450 billion with the B dollars when you think of casinos the first thing comes to mind is Vegas right traditional location based so slot machines kind of fall into two John Resort ooh two platforms I should say the the kind of classic they call mechs mechanical so you have the three reels four or five and it's what you think of for the old-school kind of one-armed bandit you know they spin maybe they have some graphics that overlay on top of it but there are physical reels that are spinning in there the others of the video and that's when the screen

actually slates the reels so all kinds of things you can do in that case with lots of bang-ups and big wins and special effects and sounds and yeah they can be really elaborate The Price is Right payment we're done we had video monitors with models from the show and they were showcase showdown and there was four of them lined up with lights overhead so he won the lights were flashing on you kind of like the TV show and it was like a whole environment so it's it's not your it's not the blue hair one-armed bandit that you think of right so there's or maybe you see at the location based areas around restaurants and gas stations and bars and things it's those are kind of the baseline ones but there are the more elaborate games that are out there a lot of them are unity based all the roles that you think of 3d yard UI animation design and

programming mathematicians is an interesting one because at the end of the day that pie has to equal 100% so however you divide up your base games and your big wins and all those things they need to equal 100% and then the RTP return to player needs to be set below 100% because if the machine is paying out over a hundred percent you have a problem and it's not something you want to do so a mathematician will work very closely with game design to figure out how to get that to work lots of companies in the space as you would guess primarily based in Vegas a Chicago area list some of them below here with scientific igt ballet or istic rats actually they're based on Australia Credle technologies got into this about five ten years ago no more known for gold to golf but besides land-based there's online casinos and that hasn't

really taken off here in the States at least because of legislation and I think it's about figuring out how everyone gets their cut before it goes legal between the casinos and the government thinks but it is more prevalent overseas and they're estimating 40 billion with that you have all those different kind of roles you're not gonna be pushing the boundaries as much with in terms of graphics and things because it's an online platform and you have to be throttled with bandwidth and then dealing with those kind of things but yeah there are roles in those traditional game spaces there companies in the space net nth and para play they kind of build these online casino platforms that casinos then license from them to build games and again it's more overseas I think it's just a matter of time until it gets more in the in the u.s. space hardware companies right so

so all of those game consoles they need people working for them doing different roles than making a traditional game obviously you can work for Microsoft and work on fours or things but there are other roles so you know I got examples here with screens talking about different jobs I have friends at all three companies Microsoft Sony Nintendo and they all came from traditional console gaming and not work there so there's a lot of opportunities there for your console platforms in addition to your XR platforms so you know magically down in Florida you can see you know audio tech game design different roles like that QA lots of programming they've got roles open obviously Facebook oculus is in this HTC vive to

some degree and Microsoft also with the hololens too but it's not just about hardware there's also the software so all those tools you used to make games need people working on the tools so you know you think about the game engines Unity Technologies is huge right I started working with them and this one 2010 we were working on Marvel Avengers initiative and it was a much much smaller organization they were based and I believe was Copenhagen we were doing those Skype calls and now they're all over the world multiple offices in San Francisco I know people up in Montreal working with them and they've uh you know they have all kinds of roles you know more engineering than art but there are roles to help build and support new features fix bugs all those kind of things same epic we all know epic games down in North Carolina there and yeah I have a friend that works in that space

too is an artist who's an artist evangelist and he's helping going on-site and working with developers to make better games using their engine 3d modeling it's now kind of a one horse race with Autodesk he's up in Canada they've kind of dominated and they now own Maya and 3d max and for those who don't know it used to be kind of a holy war you know 10-15 years back it was kind of like Mac versus windows right it was your the one camp of the other and they hated each other but now it's all part of the same company and it seems like Maya's pretty much won that race at least in terms of the on the game side and the tool Sarah but there's a games there's only a small percentage of their market you know all this stuff like the auto industry and all these other areas I think I've heard somewhere that only 10% of the revenue for Autodesk comes

from the game industry 90% comes outside so there's a lot of options in that space and then there's other tools you know digital sculpting and painting ZBrush Adobe a substance painter these people have jobs they have this these companies have openings so I got some screens here engineering roles UI things like that here's a big one digital health so you know you think about a market where things just are growing and you're going to continue to grow I found this business insider slide kind of talks about from a very high level all the different verticals and like all the different players and I'm sure you recognize a lot of those names it's huge and in terms of game developers you know you're probably not going to be working at Aetna or something like that

but there are areas where you can work in this space patient individuals you know so it's for people wanting to use an app before say and out outcome or improving something and then there's kind of looping back to the healthcare providers you know with the doctors today you're trying to deal with a condition like type 2 diabetes or you want to get into meditation lifestyle change you know there's an app for that calm is raised 250 million dollars and they're hiring for all these kind of roles Saab C heavy on the engineering side but you know uiu is all those kind of things are there too and then other companies like Achille interactive you know they're creating these digital medicines with help people's lives with cognitive impairment challenges and

they've got open rolls so there's ways to working games that are apps that aren't your traditional apps in terms of pure entertainment but are trying to solve a need or help someone in some way here's the one I'm most excited about video games for doctors so this is level X I think it's really exciting I joined the company when there was a little over a dozen of us about two and a half years ago and you know with with a few contractors I think our head count is closing in on ninety here in the near future in the next four to six weeks we're growing like crazy and we recently were awarded a grant to work with NASA NASA has this program called Trish and I've got a quick video here I'll show you about it and it's about helping doctors helping astronauts in space when you're in microgravity dealing with medical conditions situations because

when you're in space your body is totally different gravity's not there to be pulling blood through your heart and all kinds of things change so astronauts need to know have ways to deal with that in those situations and let me see if I can get the video to run here so we definitely see the video but we won't be able to hear the audio John okay all right it's good enough you know unless you put yours alright I'll ask you and I'm sure this will be shared some people can click on the links and stuff yeah but you can at least talk through it like what are we seeing and visually be kind of interesting kind of see what yours doing okay we're back yep

in here yes I do so it's the company let's make sure I'm gonna kill this issue Annette there you go can you guys hear me yeah you're still on yep video games for doctors we are not serious games were game vacation we use advance game

technologies and service of fun challenging well design gameplay we have over 500,000 downloads and across four different games on iOS and Android and our team comes from Who's Who in the game industry you know EA Activision LucasArts backflip Zynga telltale all kinds of places I am hiring for all kinds of roles senior designer senior programmers programmers graphics physics UI UX all kinds of things our approach compelling challenges build the tech play test amplify what's fun programmers are involved with real-time graphics soft body dynamics fluid simulation all while optimized for mobile and making these kind of dynamic world environments our game design uses a navigation hidden

objects person shooter physics and idea being to create you know accurate exciting games maybe mix genres with exciting and deep replayability factor and artists are on the cutting edge ZBrush substance designer unity and Houdini substance designers is critical for dialing in those visual representations and working with doctors and optimization on ZBrush for modifying medical data as it's important here again are the roles I'm hiring for and here's some of my closing connection information so you can email me directly at John at level XCOM again the podcast is at info at game deaf guys calm I've got the Twitter handles there check out

the website level X the - backslash career and then game dev advice and I might have a shout out to Mark Murphy at Ringling and chris at Yaga who shared some information that can help me with this presentation all right John well thank you so much for that this is a topic that I feel I always hint at when we are doing the podcast so this is the Q&A portion yes we do hear it do you hear me do you do hear me right you hear me just fine oh no audio uh let me get hear me I can't hear anything I can hear you so this is part of the live thing so Ian do you hear me I see it does that mean okay we're I can't hear anything oh no worries one

sec one second well as I check my twitch chat all right so my audience hears me but they are for some reason it's not connecting to you so I'm gonna do some troubleshooting a bit and and kind of get that so all discord chat let's see if I get you somewhere so uh this is actually a perfect time for anyone that needs to ask the question so I will be scavenging through twitch through Facebook to Twitter wherever you guys are just guess the questions we have moderators there to to talk with you guys so we're gonna gage these questions towards John as soon as he gets back it's gonna reconnect real quick and I think the fielder the question directly this is a perfect opportunity this is something I always hint about to a lot of you guys out there that there is a hue amount of off there's a huge world

outside of games that uses game tools specifically to kind of promote so let me see if I hear John do you hear me John do you hear me just fine all right so he's still gonna gonna do the I gotta meet him real quick so this is part of the fun yes I hear you do you hear me no all right let me do some troubleshooting on this side because I definitely have a lot of questions that I want to talk to him about and you got it it was disconnected that video might have obviously caused some issues we were able to hear anything after the video played yeah we heard everything so people were able to hear me and hear the fussing but now is actually at the

perfect time great we can go ahead and get go about it alright so this is a topic that I always am very interested in because this is a blossoming thing that I felt the last 2-3 years that the the the people who are on the bleeding edge of using game tools outside of game development are Elise moving over to other companies and can you kind of remind us again how long has it been that you've been spending in this space just to give an idea yeah two and a half years so I came over from Zynga to level X as the executive producer and shipped our game gastro TX which is 4G I doctors and I've seen firsthand just how this industry is growing just knowing that the tools are like you said really cutting edge right you're doing all

kinds of things especially in mobile that it has to be optimized and be very realistic but also fun because you know at the end of the day it has to be about fun because if it's not engaging doctors and physicians don't play it so you got to make it fun and I've learned a lot just seeing you know even in the simulation space to learning about trade shows and and oh yeah there's a whole world out there and I think I think there's about a year ago I was on your podcast when we talked about the industry outside of traditional gaming and yeah it is a growing field and again I spent 28 years in more traditional gaming although the gambling might fit outside of that but yeah it's exciting so since the transition may be your first year what was the most surprising thing that you discovered with this

industry because it feels like a not exactly an au poivre I kind of an open secret right not a lot of developers are aware they're kind of tunnel vision with the game project that they're working on and if they are thinking of shifting or leaving they are looking at most primarily at game companies and not exactly and there's kind of like a disconnect I'm sure like you you recruiting talent for level X and stuff you're seeing this a lot not a lot of developers know firsthand where to apply and and and thankfully you're from the industry so you have connections but most of these companies don't have that networking ability to kind of reach out to the right people and so there's kind of like no bridge between the talent and the people who needs the talent that know from what I've seen the last year and a half can you kind of speak on this yeah the the bridge I see happening a lot you

know with conferences and things so we're very active at GDC and we give talks and people are like wow I had no idea that you guys were out there you know see graph last two years we presented at sea graph won third place in 2018 and second place last year you know and we're presenting with people like Digital Domain and unity and Lucas and stuff like that so we're spreading the word I think it's starting to resonate you know for some people they're really excited about the technical challenges and the technical prowess and how they can use their skills technically so it's like a different Avenue for using those technical skills other people are excited about the the game design right because it's it's kind of little bit more of the Wild West our VP of game design John Whitmore kind of talked about 15 years in Council ten years in Mobile and now he feels like he's back kind of the early days of that because we're learning this as we go along and doing new different new and different

things instead of kind of turning the crank and just upping the graphics like you do in the normal game industry so there are people that are are learning about it and being attracted to it and also I think there it depends on the person but for some people the there's there's that intrinsic value of like I'm making a game I'm working on content that helps doctors and doctors help patients so like I'm you know indirectly helping up to millions of people based on you know doctors seeing a couple thousand patients here and you know having 500,000 downloads so there's that sense of a reward that you get knowing that you're you're helping people and it's not just for pure entertainment but again it's different for different people some people just just love the gameplay challenges of trying to figure out how to do that different genres and mixing things and the technical and on the art side but it is growing and I think it's going to continue to grow

because there is no shortage of need in the healthcare space in other areas so it kind of just a individual gauge right so the last two years from year one to year two it seems like there's a more awareness more growth as you're saying like what would you say percentage-wise or at least the key difference is when you do approach someone that GDC about this their knowledge about it is there or that interest is there where you don't have to sell it as much what is the difference yeah I think it's really about it's not gamification right and it's not simulation in the sense that it's boring right it's I think there's a stigma like maybe people be like oh it's you know because they think of kind of the stuff that's out there that maybe he's not being done by people in the game space that are on the cutting edge so you know I've been in some conferences where

stuff looks like a Half Life right I'm like you know these companies maybe aren't aren't current with things so there is that stigma but when they see the visuals and I see the design challenges that we have and they see the tools we use they're like wow this is you know the same stuff you do in traditional gaming but it's just for a different audience and it's for doctors and and again it's about fun right if it's not fun they hit the home button and if 5,000 other apps on their phone so I think if you make it fun and let people know that that's what we focus on is fun it's not just doing dry simulation or gamification things but making it really exciting I think part of the transition to was learning the medical angle of it right because when I came in working on on gastro I didn't know anything about gastro and I learned about different types of polyps and and we have an actual medical team that's embedded with the game team that does

research and finds visual references and gets us ideas for you know cases for different types of gameplay and you know just learning it about the medical and then thinking all right how can we apply that to these different types of mechanics and how can we make that look really realistic on mobile running at frame rate and all those kind of things but I think the angle with learning from mobile has been really exciting excuse me learning from medical has been really exciting just trying to figure out how that makes us into this big mashup between state-of-the-art graphics gameplay and medical creating fun compelling content and I would like to kind of explore the the client side of things so doctors of course haven't been exposed to this industry I think a lot of these enterprises these verticals kind of did the same where the last ten years of game development or not at all completely ignored it and until graphic fidelity reached a point

where it was on par with pre-rendered content where they're like whoa whoa all right time to pay attention so when you're working with doctors or presenting this new world to them of how to educate and how to apply and practice basically their craft what kind of responses do you usually get with interfacing with people who have no idea where games are nowadays yeah yeah I I think they get really excited about it and it kind of depends on the subsection of the audience you know with doctors because some of them may never have been exposed to any of this right we did a VR experience for gastro where you're standing in a giant colon and they were maybe had tried VR before now they're you know in this little sandbox environment and they're pulling polyps and one of them triggers of blood rupture about with a vessel underneath it and you have to cauterize it with a

APC gun which is kind of like a lightsaber and they just get really drawn into it other people the medical professional you know they grew up playing games so you know we do a lot of play tests with doctors and you know they talk about you know playing call of duty and things like that maybe it's a way for entertainment stress relief so they're like they're familiar where where the technology is where the graphics and the fidelity are but not just in their world and they get really excited right because like you think about your your life of a doctor of surgeon has been focused on this pursuit say cardiologists so you've been studying and and learning and building your whole life around that and now you have this app that you can play that speaks to that right so it's it's it feels very custom to them and they feel very grateful you know to be honest like

like wow I can like pull this out of my pocket I've got ten fifteen minutes I can learn about this you know type of monitor that Philips has that lets you see where there's blockage for placing stints at a better level of say granularity so you I can be better at placing stents and and I learned about this new type of technology from Philips you know with with a device in my phone a game on my phone in my pocket and I think they're they're embracing it and that's why we've you know hit half a million downloads across four platforms or excuse me four games on iOS and Android and whatever I don't know if you have the exact data maybe we don't need it but what is the general impression because from little that I know and I think we kind of talked about this the last time we talked on the podcast doctors or surgeons usually their first hands-on is on a patient or something

like that right am I getting that fact wrong like how do they use to practice before apps or any simulations yeah it was primarily on you know cadavers and and sometimes in some cases there'll be a new device or something that they'll be a rep from the company you know in the operating room with them the first time they're using it um you know I think of it that way so now instead of having to do it that way you know they can practice on a phone and get more familiar with it so there's they're more comfortable with it they understand how it works more and they understand the challenges and it also gives them like an environment to you know experiment in a safe way but back to the question on the the first time yeah sometimes it is actually you know in an operating setting with

somebody from that company and and they're getting that training with that representative and we're here to kind of bridge that gap and give them those tools before they get in that situation and learn about them and have fun one thing that most game developers are people viewing or listening don't realize how big these verticals are in it by itself right so we're talking about the game is free making games using game tools right you got to think about also the medical industry and within that there's our different sectors of medical fields that can use game tools and and and you can apply it and actually get practice out of it but there's also pretty much every industry that you can think of out there that has some type of training tool or need can make use of virtual reality and then I think one of the big thing about VR that people dismiss is that they think it's a

complete failure and it is in a way where it's slowly on a consumer level not picking up as fast as we want to on an entertainment level but there are companies that are using it as a training device or on other practical needs that are using game tools but not for pure entertainment that people don't really think about and it's only the last few years that the savvy ones such as yourself and some others are taking notice and our shifting gears and kind of escaping what's happening with the game industry because I think we can pretty much well I can pretty much speak to this the last two years that you left the game industry things are pretty much the same we're mostly dependent on game sales and if anything it's gotten harder the saturated market

makes it a lot tougher to stand out but also we're in a weird period where on a personal level and we were just talking about this yesterday in a roundtable where I have games that I own that would take up my next two years of my life if I just spent the whole day on it let alone buying new games which is constantly on the daily throwing being thrown at me with thousands of new games that I probably would be interested in but how do we circumvent that problem as a gamer as a game developer is it's causing a lot of chicken under the egg problem right so taking a step back my question to you this is a long-winded way to ask this questions like what have you noticed I don't know if you still keep up with us but what what are you alright what are you seeing from that other side of the field well you know

being in this space looking back in traditional gaming it's um you know it's at arms war right so is just you know the budgets keep getting higher the breakevens keep getting higher and it just you know when is it end right it just seems like it's harder and harder to for companies to make that money back unless they're you know a Madden or Red Dead or something something like that so yeah I I kind of look at it like wow it's just it's just there's gonna be less and less players unless they they go in this you know the indie router or smaller but it's those mid-sized companies or just getting squeezed you know I saw that firsthand at Midway and then in terms of you know our space our CEO is at a conference once and it was kind of they were talking about like you know who's in VR right and all these people there you know raise her hand and it's like who's making money in VR and hardly anybody's hands was up you know that question was asked enterprise

is making money in VR right that's the vertical that is making money and and we've developed trade show experiences that are in VR or in excuse me em are also not with the magically and you know there is money in that space that there isn't in the consumer space because it's it's still especially for the cutting edge VR it still feels very hobbyists in some ways you know the vibe is that sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't you plug it back in you have to have a four thousand dollar computer there's all these barriers of entry although I don't like the PlayStation VR is kind of removing that where it just hasn't been embraced in that way that I think everyone thought they would be making all this money whereas you know outside of traditional gaming there is money being made in in the XR space and I can say that with certainty so as you're in these conventions and kind of open the doors for a lot of us to finally realize

the potential of different industries I'm imagining you're rubbing a lot of shoulders with other Greek rooters reducers from other industries and what kind of the issues are they have are they having is just purely just looking for more talent because we're in a converting stage I imagine is like a lot of it's like making educating talent about these industries but also there's a lot of changing of workflow not really right I in a way it's is the changing of mindset it's like hey it's gonna be a stable job right you're not have to worry or crunch you know there's a lot of languages there that if I have PTSD from work it's like what are you saying to me so like what what are the other verticals and all these other people from other side outside the medical field saying are they sharing the same worries and yeah yeah well I've had some

more exposure recently in the simulation space because we do some recruiting there for the nasa trish project and it seems like people get burned out from the you know the crunch and the grind and then they go in the simulation space and then it's a more nine-to-five type role but it's not as exciting you know so they kind of Miss that adrenaline rush maybe seeing the commercial for the game on TV you know that they work on stuff and then they flip back and go to the traditional entertainment gaming so there's a push poll kind of thing goes there where sometimes the simulation space pulls them out of traditional gaming and then they have them for a while and then they go back you know I can speak force and there's an experience where we had a we have a really talented UX designer that was in her space at our company and he spent

some time and helps us ship a game cardio X which was phenomenal especially in the UX and he had a brief period where he thought you know what I really miss that console experience working on that triple a game they know the game that you see on TV the commercial for everybody talks about he left the company and six weeks later he was like you know what I went back and he actually changed his mind and came back to work for us because he realized he'd missed some of those challenges that we deal with and he realized it was going to be doing the same old thing again and just the reward from having that high profile game wasn't enough to stay in industry and that's why he came back from the traditional gaming tool to our studio doing this kind of new area of types of gaming so um if that answers your question but the industry itself pulls from different areas and there's a

need for a lot more excitement in the medical space the trade shows are nothing like a three so when you come in with something cool and it's XR based people get really excited and yeah there's there's a lot of growth opportunity in these these different verticals yeah be kind of funny the doctor conventions are as big as III you know it was that I went to ddw and it was at McCormick Place which you know that's where the Auto Show is in Chicago so it it's it's billions and billions of dollars a year or spent on these conventions and it's a huge industry and but yeah it's it's different than III it's it's more conservative right you know putt-putt golf hot dog carts and baristas and it's not as exciting as the game industry so when we show up with VR and you get blood shooting out and a PC lightsaber like devices people get

really excited and that resonates with those companies because they see as a great way to get people excited about their products you know I mean this comes with age in and other responsibilities too like last two and two and a half days we've had speakers on and anybody that have gotten to that level where they worked on the dream project that they want to work on at least on a personal level what I found was I felt very unfulfilled and I went through a couple of those cycles where as like oh maybe because I need to work on the other franchise that I would want to work on and I got less and less exciting on launch day and it wasn't it wasn't until like three five years ago where I started to boil down with the importance you know I love working on projects but it become it became less on

it became more about control of what I put out and within a big environment within other companies no matter how high you climb you really don't have that much control over the final product right you just have a roomful of leads at most but even though then you have 300 plus members on your team that has that should have an equal say and it becomes less and less your baby right so what I have found salvation in is in these different industries outside of a game using game tools I really do see it as a very mature step in your career as a game developer to move on towards because at that stage you have a wife and family or a husband basically a family this is port that you want stability that you want less less weight

into the final sales of a product because that is always a variable no matter how much you you spend millions on that's not yours a company that has been that have been putting like the fifth or six game of that franchise still is praying that that game does well right there is no winning formula and I think with the market being saturated and stuff I don't feel like that problem is ever gonna go away it's gonna get worse and I'm so glad that these different industries are happening do you can you kind of speak on your theory on why exactly there has been sort of like a trigger for these industries in the last two years I have a personal thinking on it but I want to

hear your thoughts on how this came to be all of a sudden that it's growing [Music] yeah the tools are there now and the tools can just move over from traditional gaming so again you know we're in unity you know we use use Maya use all the different perforce all the different kind of things that use you know in the traditional space and and there is that those opportunities that are out there now where you can just apply those talents that you have in a more meaningful way or in a more challenging way technically you know I think in some cases people if we kind of been to the top of the mountain and then now what now well you know what's next kind of to your point right like I'd worked on the number one game in the country and that's kind of okay and what's next you know what's next and now they're asking themselves

set more and they're seeing this industry is seeing our company there's they're seeing this these other areas where they can have a bigger contribution where it's it's not three or four or five hundred people spread all throughout the world and it's you know at the Willem of how marketing spends the money to see if their game is a success and if they have a job or not but you're a more control of your own destiny you know a lot of times at these companies and you have more input and more say and I think that's what's exciting and that's what's attracting people is that it gets more to the heart of game development and you see the results and you're not so much a cog you know in the machine and and again it's cutting edge and you're doing all those all that cool tech stuff a lot of times again back not to harp in the past but it was a lot about gamification and you know edutainment and you know and then you can let's us is crap right so people would see that and be like yeah I don't

want to deal with that III don't want to I'm a treat I'm a craftsman I don't want to I'm a crass person I don't want to be part of that but then when they see stuff being high fidelity visual graphics and fun gameplay they're like okay I could see my skills being applied you know in that space and then they they start to get attracted to it and then they make that transition and I think that's why we've grown so fast and why we've had so much success is just that combination about doing all those different kind of things and beyond do all those technical challenges and gameplay challenges and being on the cutting edge with arts and you know figure out ways to help people and a lot of our company is young I'm one of the second and third oldest person in the whole company so it's not a lot of people at the later stage of their careers people all stages of their career you know we've hired people straight out of DePaul with the master's program that

just came in and just done a fantastic work so I think it's people looking for four different options different alternatives and and also wanting a little bit better of a life balance so maybe they can work on their own game outside of work you know a lot of these big companies the big media companies are run by lawyers and the lawyers say you can't have you can't work on games outside of work you can't have games out published outside of you know your role here companies like ours embrace that or like hey more power to yet right if you want to get better in unity if we're going to get better using a Z brush and do it on your own time that's fine and then bring those skills to work and it's everything's everyone's cool with that so I think it's about work/life balance having this different kind of opportunities to solve both technical and design wise and just thinking about holistically about what what your work

does and how it contributes to society if you want to even get a little deeper but which kind of resonated with me as part of the reason but there's different different answers for different people but yeah that's kind of always yeah I mean it's definitely a big cell that you're saving lives now with game tools yeah but uh but the I like that you're touching upon a point that oh two things right so these these game companies that are kind of pushing the developers to a breaking point and aside from that you're you're interfacing with a lot of professionals that you wouldn't normally interface with so you're talking about you have a medical team that helps with the research and stuff how has that interaction been because you're at the same time well I'm sure like game developers kind of take over a workplace where you're

like all right it's like it gives to you again but then there's like that great hybrid with other professionals that are way smarter than we are and then where you're like talking across the table to them about things that actually matter so I mean that's it's a different day to day life that I I think that most developers would embrace what's something that is kind of unusual right yeah no it's really exciting right because you're involved with medical people and and you learn about stuff and you're like oh wow that's what goes on when you have a colonoscopy I didn't know that and that's now I know more about that and then you figure out ways to make game play around that and in other areas around medical and it's it says we're danced between medical and design because you need to make things fun and they need to be medically accurate so it's it's fun in the sense that you're

trying to figure out where that line is and and then you play tests you get feedback and you learn because you know at the end the day I'm not a cardiologist so my opinion doesn't matter as much by any stretch as a cardiologist so we put the games throughout development in front of cardiologists or whatever the specialty is so that they can learn think wait we can get their feedback I should say but I think it's really fun just having medical they sit right with the game team right so the they're just like another artist or designer or programmer and they're doing spreadsheets and maybe I have different things up for reference and but they're in the meetings and they're kind of rolled in with the team and it's cool to when you hear how that mashup happens I remember there was a one of our designers have been about six weeks at the company and I heard him talking about the game cardio X and he's

talking about this we have to do the stent into that and I just kind of looked at I'm like dude you sound like a doctor you know cuz it was like he he had to embrace that subject matter so he dove into it to really understand it and then to learn about it and then to figure out how to come up with cool content fun gameplay compelling mechanics you know using that medical information so you you kind embrace that that medical angle and figure out ways to reshape it and make it fun and it's cool to learn about medical stuff right it's our medical people biomedical engineers they talk about you know dissecting cadavers in school and you know all the kind of crazy stuff that they know so it's a fun way to learn about stuff that affects all of us which is health right yeah definitely there is actually something that I just remembered when you were talking about how this has actually gotten more offensive actually in the

last few years it used to be about bigger companies not allowing you to work on games outside of the company that we work for we're at least competitive games right a game you can tear working on a first-person shooter you can't work on a first-person shooter at home all right that kind of makes sense I understand and then it slowly spread out to like well you can't really work on anything that is being put out on the same devices is like okay all right and then now it's good completely it gotten to the point you know with a lot of artists friends that I have where you can't work on any personal artwork just an image rendering if you're a character artist and because that would be counted as owned by the company which is uh an insane how pervasive that these lawyers that these big companies are kind of limiting the creative freedom that what creatives are really good at being

creative and I think what's refreshing is that these other industries recognize the importance of it and being somewhat non-competitive it doesn't really even factor in as a problem I would love to hear more your thoughts about that because that's something the last year and a half you know I'm an interface with my friends and it's gotten so much worse and it's not at all improving and it's crazy how it's not illegal to that point where they may sign a contract before employment you know yeah I think there's kind of two angles to it right there there's the well if you got gas in the tank to work on your own stuff why don't you just crunch more right you know so there's that mentality which is not healthy and wrong and and then the other one is so see how the lawyers are there and you know you could have a game that has nothing to do with anything on the game that you're working on but because

it's out there and the lawyers are kind of running the show you have to pull it down or you can't have it out and now I think that's just wrong right you know people in our industry want to create right that's what that's what drives them that's their passion that's that's their their their their juice and not being able to do that or having to do it under pseudonyms or other kind of stuff I think it's just it's just wrong and it just kind of shows how some of these companies the power they have and and how the lawyers are in control and it's it's not right right and and we openly encourage people to work on stuff outside of work you know we've had a couple of our people have game of the day on the App Store for their personal game and you know they were with us during the day and if you look level 80 or 80 level Ryan Blake who's our art director at all this amazing 3d modeling done for this kind of retro space stuff he had done on

the side and you know guess what he's getting better at ZBrush she's getting better at his craft at his skill doing that so why would you not embrace that because that you know translates back to your day to day work it makes you better in that space also and it's just lawyers that don't understand game development calling the shots it's wrong there used to be a joke at Midway at the CEO would say I own your dreams and I think he was only half kidding you know and so it's been like that for a while but it's yeah it's traditionally the big media company so those are the ones the big companies that have the rooms for lawyers they have to justify their lawyer ring that's a word and yes is wrong people should be able to work on games outside of work especially if it's nothing related to what the games that they're working on are and this is something I've noticed too like

later in my career I consciously made the move into smaller teams mobile development just outside of triple-a right and what I've noticed especially on the smaller teams like there's a mix of the the veterans who have escaped right that been through it and are happy and to for for actual weight in in saying in the in the boardroom right making decisions that actually matter and then there's the mix of the young talent that are eager to get to where those resumes were and are just finding this as a step to get to that and there's a constant like reminder of like hey you don't have you have no idea how good do you have it right now like but there's just no way I'm convincing these young talent of like unless they go through it themselves you can only share so many stories and share so many war scars before they're like yeah yeah yeah

your burnout you're just saying this and that so what is your advice that let's say you were to sit down I'm sure you run into this all the time especially with the young tennis I know but I want to work on the next Call of Duty call it battlefield it's like it's not as good as it sounds but hey good luck you know what what do you usually say these guys yeah it's you know sometimes they just have to experience it themselves right and and I tell them like it's it's not as great as you think it is and you know my friend said he had a quote like where like it's it's fun to drive a Ferrari but it's not fun to make it sometimes writes but you know they have that vision of their head of speeding down the road and they don't understand what goes into the as we as we call the industry it's kind of gross but the you know it's just making a sausage right you know what's actually going into that and they don't understand the late nights and the sick deprivation and the futons and all that kind of stuff that

go into it so you try and point them in the right direction you you tell them to Google things right you know if you look up EA spouse they came out and was it 2002 2004 and it kind of talked about the dark side you know with the crunch and things up until it more recent stuff going on and it's out there but you just have to experience a like like myself I would get every 10 years I quit the industry and I would just feel like that's it I'm done I'm out and you know it's like Godfather 2 I get out they pull me back in you know and it's like ah you're doing what what are you working on alright maybe I'll talk to you about that and I would get back in it again and then I'd be like why am I doing this you know so I went through myself multiple cycles like that until I just said you know that's enough and there's got to be better ways to you know make games without killing yourself but also that are fun and that have value and it's not

just point and click and boring gamification stuff but it's actually compelling fun content so yeah i i i don't know people people have to either learn it themselves or just hear from enough veterans like ourselves and read enough websites and blogs to know that maybe i don't want to get into that and it and i I do think there is a bit more of a mind shift happening over the last decade where people are less prone to be like put up no she says to put up with that you know maybe they're like no I I don't want to make those sacrifices to my health in my life I I want to have a life outside work so they they're more open to ideas of working in different spaces in the game industry that don't expect that because you know back when I got in it it was just that's just the way it is it's just it was just part of the deal you know it's like you go through the boot camp of qat and can you

survive the gauntlet and can you make it to the next year and you know until one day you go where's this all going what's the value and this what what does this mean at the end so I say come work with us yeah I definitely agree with you there there's definitely more awareness and I feel with level X and other industries outside of games more options that's slowly building I feel like there's a maybe another I will you probably have a better gauge in this but like mother a year or two where you can start seeing these type of job postings and be familiar with it to kind of recruit talent and actually have options outside of the traditional game development companies I see that fastly becoming the the the the the trend because like you said I mean these industries are need a talent and have lots of money so it's only a matter of time where the

conversion happens it's not ready yeah it's gonna if the apex will happen so yeah John maybe this is a great point time to kind of throw back your closing connections slide so that people can find you great but I'm gonna hand the mic over to you and just as a send-off people who are interested how can they find your company how they can find you how we get connected to you cool I'm gonna go back to share the screen here [Music] there we go can you see that yes all right here we go yeah yeah there we go um John at level - XCOM that's my email and info at game dev advice com that's the website excuse me that's the email for my podcast Twitter's level X game dev or game dev

underscore advice the careers page you can just go to level X and click on careers is right in the middle of doing an update so it should be a newer version coming out pretty quick but yeah I go to the careers page check out all the roles click on the link let's see if you're a fit from one of the roles and then the podcast if you go the website there are links to all the platforms you can listen to you know iTunes stitcher Spotify all the usual suspects and yeah it's just a fun one-on-one conversation I have with people in the industry usually friends of mine kind of telling the war stories often the stories talking about crunch but I think I think people should just really check out the website for level XCOM because there is a lot of exciting things that we're doing we're getting into new genres we're pushing the boundaries with medical and gaming and really really doing attracting the best of the best

about 20% of our studio has relocated to Chicago from various places and I'm hiring so check it out think outside the box try something different you [Music]