LIVE | Becoming a Lead in the Game Industry

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained the number one game development podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof i am your host brandon fam and with me it's just myself man this is a soapbox it's been a while but here goes soapbox is uh where you get to spend more time with myself it's been a while since i've done a lot of these where i spend some quality time with you listeners out there hardcore listeners know this from the very past uh once in a while i like to

kind of have a straight conversation with you guys about a certain topic and in this case we're talking about management i've been getting a lot of questions the last few years and actually pretty recently where people are trying to move up right within the position they within the company they have or at or they're trying to move up in by moving other to other companies right now this is a very common question we have a lot of people in various positions out there in some form or another either you're trying to get in the industry uh or you're trying to go from junior to mid-level mid-level to senior senior to principal principal to lead lead to art director right there's always an opportunity to hustle within the game industry and every few years

you're outgrowing the roles and responsibilities that you have as an artist as a developer and in this time where everybody is remote mostly or starting to get back into the office it is actually even more confusing uh because right now we're in more of a survivor mode right most companies are just trying to stay afloat or they're recruiting a lot of people but not really it really changes the dynamic within the company where you're just talking face-to-face all the time on zoom and not in person right and being able to communicate is a big part of how you get a promotion nowadays uh and even before but even more now because the only times that you really interact with someone is through just these really short calls that you have with people right so sometimes that's not enough and what you want to do is that

uh create opportunities for yourself so that you can move up and have that motivation to contribute so i guess i can start off with sharing experience at least my personal experience right uh my first time in the industry i kind of had these little short stints of these not very fun games that i worked on uh i think everybody is always uh shy of sharing their first game that they worked on i think i've shared many times on this podcast but for those new listeners uh it's hannah montana ds right so when the ds was popular when hannah matana was the um that was my first game that i worked on and i only worked on it for a few months right my personal growth have always been through

moving around so what what that means is that for every promotion that i've got for every um every time i moved up the ranks has always been switching companies now that is still very uh common from everyone that i talk to through people that i've seen my colleagues it is the most common route to up your salary real fast but also move up in position uh because you kind of avoid all the politics because inwardly within the studio it's very difficult to bypass the line so to speak right there's other people that have been there probably longer than you and there's people that been there shorter than you and i've seen cases like that where there are people that have been at a company shorter and they've been able to be promoted um either through over me or other people but the most common way that i've seen

uh people move up the ranks have always been migrating into a new place and it's just easier because you don't have that baggage right you don't have that um ill will from your colleagues like why did he get promoted not me right it's not usually towards you but it can obviously rub off to you it's towards management towards leads people who are making the decisions however it doesn't feel good to be around that that negativity that energy the only times that i have just ever really seen people uh get promoted through the ranks by being out of company for a long time is um have been primarily initiation from that person where they feel that they deserve it they feel like they uh

they have the loudest voice to command it and in in a lot of cases those are the people that get promoted because they speak up right and it should be that way some people might be out there thinking like well it should be the one who is the best at the job and that's not true either that has happened but people who are really good at let's say environment work or character work don't necessarily make good managers i would be willing to say that it's 60 40 where those people are terrible at delegation at being able to manage people um or being able to communicate what they do so well to others and it takes a very special type of person to be willing first of all not all not everybody wants to do that but also be able to share information um in a very effective way right so that's essentially what a manager is um because you're you're trying to multiply

yourself your efficiency of the team and that's why it's a commodity that's why when you're looking at studios being built from the ground up uh our are are kind of composed of these individuals that are are have been leads right because you're able to maximize the efficiency so one lead can manage a group of five to ten or more and that 10x or 5x the output right which brings in 5x or 10x the money so that's why there's a lot of emphasis on management and developers in general i think if you're a true artist i think you know i was like this and i still like this because i think at this point i've been a manager longer than i've been an individual contributor which is

kind of crazy to think about but i've been a manager at various companies and now on my own for longer than i have created assets or uh put together environments right and that is kind of natural progression because as you're older um you need or you want you don't necessarily need you want a higher salary you want more stability you want uh a little bit more control uh on your life right and that usually means you gotta move into management and um the unfortunately thing and by design not everybody can be lead right at any given company for every lead there's 20 or 25 people under that person and for each discipline right each

department uh if you're at a triple a company right and that is normal that has to be the way uh you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen i've been and seen studios that have five different leads for the same department and to me is the dumbest thing because you know you're really splitting the focus here and uh i think it's always sacrificing the creativity when someone does that right you can't be a lead and take ownership of something and it really complicates a singular ver a vision of a creative rector or what the game is about if you have that many people uh trying to make a call right and um the hierarchy way have always been my preference because that's the point right you're trying to get your job done

you don't want to talk to five different people so explaining the structure of a company and why it has to be that way uh hopefully illustrates to a lot of you guys and i know it's very popular getting back to what i was saying for a singular artist to remain a principal artist or an artist that just contributes individually and never wanting to step into management because the idea is that when you become management you're mostly in meetings and not producing work right and i think um nine out of ten people who wants to be lead feels like they don't want to do that but 9 out of 10 people end up doing that because it is comfortable right to manage and make the call and the less time you spend doing your craft you know the less relevant you become and actually producing the work

but what is timeless is the ability to delegate and kind of gather a team together to execute a certain goal right a certain project so uh i'm trying to explain to a lot of people here that are listening that if you want to move up in the industry you're gonna have to eventually look to take on some of those responsibilities of can you multiply yourself with another person i mean that's basically what management is because that is what is a value right for growth for a team to grow for a business to grow you can't just have uh like 50 spear fishers right you're gonna have to be able to have an actual fisherman boat and just scroll the earth uh and go with the best techniques possible to maximize the same amount of time uh

and and be able to produce way more work right so i mean i feel exactly the same way that's why i can relate as i was moving up in the industry i was kind of in this position where i didn't want to let go of the actual art because i feel like if you lose touch that you're not relevant anymore how can you lead a team when the team knows more than you do about the actual techniques of making art right it was only be until i became a lead or until i became senior or moving up that i realized that what the timeless part of it is that being able to work with people with communicating my ideas and being able to document my ideas so that a team can follow uh and and be able to work as a team right and that was pretty exciting to kind of

be the organizer uh essentially and um and i think at the very beginning it became more transitional where i stepped into the role i was doing a lot of art i was still hands-on with the day-to-day stuff but uh in addition to that you're you're able to kind of um you know craft what a lead is right you don't have to be in meetings all the time which is a common misconception and if i were to break down and i'll use environment because that's more of my background but in every department it's kind of essentially the same right so from junior the difference between a junior and mid-level is very clear a junior is basically bright eye into the world fresh out of college

and maybe get are good at art but in terms of procedure and process being able to work as a team completely new this is largely uh on not taught in schools right so and i think it's still true to this day i'm pretty sure because the infrastructure of the company is just not simulated uh that well in in a school environment right so that's the first thing that you learn you go in there and you learn about your assignment but also the process of getting that in the engine uh so that your team can be able to use that uh efficiently without using thumbna thumb drives or or google drive or whatever right uh there's a whole process to that so that's the junior and once you get good at that you're producing your work you're efficient people can rely on you you move on to mid-level mid-level is like hey it's a step above the the student you've

been doing this for a while uh and so you're reliable in a way where um you can be given a task but you are still being uh needing guidance on completing the test in some way in some form either compositionally or colors or uh essentially someone needs to keep checking your work right uh to get full approval all right once you pass that stage where you're super efficient you know you need little feedback uh if any uh you're in the more the senior position in senior position or self-compose being able to kind of take a test take it to finish up with very little feedback and uh and in this range you're in the i would say five to ten years range right so if you look at zero to two three years you're a junior three to five years your mid-level five

to ten years your senior right that's the kind of like hierarchy time frame of how you should shape your career and from five to ten years senior you can and a lot of companies have like made up names for this it's either senior environments one senior environments two principal uh principal artists um it's just made up titles to justify your to respect your your years the years that you've been in the industry uh but also it's an excuse to give you a higher salary right because every two years you want to hire sally and you should uh the principal artist is i i remember the first time i was hearing this and it was quite new and it was pretty made up and then soon it got adopted everywhere is essentially lead status without management right so the best way to think about it is like

if you were a previous lead before and you want to go back into production and not management you would be a principal artist right you wouldn't be a senior artist anymore and again this is up to you guys to kind of um negotiate that and uh vice versa right um if you've been a senior artist for a long time let's say past 10 years i would say even 12 years you wouldn't want to be referred to as a senior anymore you're way past that you're a principal artist right uh to justify your your salary at that point and uh principal artists can be very helpful in in a lot of cases they can step in when the lead is out because they have that experience that ability but also uh they don't have that the need to manage all the time right they're very hands-on and they are that they're valuable too it's basically when you have a lead and

a principal you're basically having two very senior developers on at your department that gives you uh peace of mind of anything all the principal artists that i've ever met have always had that on average like 15 to 20 years of experience that they can share with you uh they've been around not just by the process but you know company culture and all that stuff so that that's kind of the lay of the land and from lead you can uh at first i've always thought that only concept artists can be art directors which isn't true um the last five ten years i've seen animator animation directors become art directors i've seen environment art uh environment artists become art directors basically every art discipline have been able to make that jump uh to art director where they're very proficient essentially they're either they're very

proficient on one part of the pipeline but um they know enough about the other departments that they can deliver a vision and be able to command uh what they need to get things done right so that has been a really interesting development because i thought at the beginning of my career being an environment guy that my highest track was lead environment artist that there there was nowhere else to go right and because of my lack experience that was my thought process because that's what i saw and slowly i think when i became slowly into the senior role mid-level the senior role five years in three to five years in i uh begin seeing environment leads making that jump to art director as well as animation leads making that jump to art director which i never seen before so simple fact um i think corey um balrog uh

uh i forgot his name but the god of war director right uh creative director not even art director was he started an animation uh he was just an animator and then eventually uh moved up the ranks and took over god of war ii right because the first god of war the original creator um david gaffey i think uh i i think you guys know who i'm talking about um left and he moved up the ranks from from the animation department right so this has kind of been brewing up in the 2000s i feel where uh every art track can lead to art director and even above that creative director right so i've seen that last five years um no 10 years actually where you can be at the very top if you want to and you can show that you can do that

but going back to like all right how exactly do i move up the ranks because it's not as easy as like oh i hit my three-year mark now i should be considered a mid as a mid-level right because most companies refrain from promoting you as much and as long as possible most companies do because financially it's uh beneficial to a company to do that they can't be giving out raises every year they have to but if they can avoid it uh they will because it saves their bottom line right and um running a business myself i understand that sentiment but i'm kind of going the opposite route uh with my company because we want to reward and create incentives because i've been in that position and i think if individuals want to grow grow into these responsibilities that the company needs it's beneficial to the company because that means they can uh make more money at the end right so i

because i think companies like mine that are smaller can be more atrocistic uh with what we want and treating our guys right that we're more flexible to kind of make those changes but what if i maximize that to a large corporation or even just a large company like 300 plus people not even like active in a corporation uh that can be a problem because uh there's just not enough people to make those decisions on a day-to-day basis right i i really do feel like there's always a threshold to how many people uh a person can manage right when you think about hierarchy and think about your department at the company you're at and look at that single lead it's one person how many people can you manage if you're that person right realistically it's

probably like on average probably two people right and maybe you can stretch the three but when you go past three it starts to get kind of um difficult i think uh because i've been in those positions where yeah uh the team's growing and i'm your your whole time is basically slated towards feedback and uh in meetings right and that's the i think number one fear for a lot of people who want to stop at just like principal or senior artist they don't want to move the leap because they see their leads in meetings all the time and it's not fun and they seem stressed but i think because it's an understaffing problem right where that lead shouldn't be managing that many people at once um [Music] so and what that also means is that

this you're not hiring enough seniors where they don't need to be handheld the whole time right you need this is what the advantages of like hiring experienced developers because they can lead themselves and only need to be checked in once in a while to make sure that it's in sync with everybody else right and it's the same problem that we see i guess in schools nowadays i i know some of you guys might not have children but let me explain to you what the school system you might have heard it are overloaded right you're talking about a teacher uh having to manage 30 kids right and naturally when you think back right these students have a better chance and attention if there were only like 10 to 15 kids half it right the same is true with any hierarchy set up

like your game company uh if your lead is constantly stressed and in meetings and having to communicate with everyone to make sure uh everyone's caught up there's a couple of things that you look at either that person's not efficient with their communication which is i think probably most of the case but secondly uh just naturally it's just too many people right i really do feel like per person you can probably only can take on two to three people to be healthy and also be able to kind of do the art yourself um is another way of thinking about it any more than that through my personal experience and through seeing how other people uh handle it they and and don't get me wrong there's a lot of leads and managers that i feel do like that challenge of just being in

meetings all the time and and and delegating it's admirable it's probably i would say a very effective way of growing a company but there are those that i've seen balance between the two because very quickly how can you be a leader if you're not motivated right and as an artist you got in the industry to make art and if you're not making art anymore something that i'm starting to feel uh you're not motivated to inspire right it starts with the the the lead to kind of push that forward and i keep playing saying lead because it's relatable it's the end road for a lot of these career developments right if you guys are just in the industry middle mid-level or senior right you're all you're all looking at least towards lead level salary right so i'm kind of using the lead a lot as in this example

because it is kind of like the main goal for a lot of people right and what that looks like i wanted to illustrate that there's different ways of doing that so you don't go into the company and they might have like a rule book of like oh this is what we define lead as but when you become lead i think a lot of people have a misconception about all right so this is a role that i need to kind of gel in otherwise i'm not being efficient a job no you kind of set those rules yourself so you go in and you get hired or whatever it doesn't mean that you stuck in meetings all the time right you can define that uh yourself and tell people like hey let me write my department this is how i've done it and this is how everyone's happy right you get to have a say in that obviously because you're running the department uh and so if you want to remain motivated and not give up the artistic side of you

and just do management you can dictate that and make that change because i think that's important so kind of going back to my little personal stories like this is the longest um [Music] longest time that i haven't touched art in my career we're talking about four years uh four or five years where i formed my own studio um and made uh godemics right and because of what it needs being a co-founder there's a lot of things that you have to develop to make sure that the company runs smoothly right and that means offloading a lot of the stuff that i love doing day to day but because of the growth uh you have to kind of put aside those things and focus on new skills so to circle back and even then before then i was a lead for like four or five years

before that right or even six years and as you can see there was a progression to me like letting go of the art stuff slowly but surely right but what i find myself is you know i'm an artist at heart i got an industry to make art or at least inspire and give ideas not to like um only inspire others for their own idea because you know that's what you need to do as a manager but you know to implement my own ideas too because when you're starting new projects that's where it starts with the individual and i want to still be at the forefront so i don't want to just inspire someone to do that for me i want to be able to do it myself so i'm at a place where i spent a long time away from art which is the number one fear that you guys are thinking is like oh so the higher i go up the less i do art because as you manage people people are is your art now it's not the artwork itself right it's another way to think about it but because i did all these things

because my ambitions always been higher than it's weird right people have different reasons why they want to move up the rings mine has always been my immaturity area even when i began i've always had problems listening to others where i feel like i guess i know better uh in truth in my beginning career i don't but i always had this rebellious attitude i don't know where it's from uh maybe i was just a bad kid growing up where i have a hard time falling rules right so i think i mentioned this many times on the podcast where i'm completely cool to complete tasks and i'm very respectable right obviously you have more experience than me i'll listen to you but you gotta talk to me as a equal which is a very hard pill to swallow for a lot of people out there on the opposite side because who's this kid i'm fresh out of college and i'm telling

you that we should be equal uh i think i guess uh i don't know what it is man the minority in me i don't know what it is but like uh i've always felt that you know we're a team here maybe this is i think of anything it's probably the sport side of me growing up with sports the success that i've seen working as a team has always been because everyone respects each other and everyone respects everybody's role to complete the objective right so i came into the industry thinking the same way it's like hey we're here to make a game i'm here to assist and specialize in a certain area but your goal and my goal is the same therefore talk to me like we're trying to achieve that goal but don't just hand down tasks to me as if i'm you know cog in the machine in that whether i do it or not doesn't matter someone else is lining up to do it instead of me if i don't do it right i

hate that feeling where i'm wasting time i guess essentially it's like if what i'm doing and contributing doesn't matter right then in my mind i'm checked out right so i have to feel that what i'm doing is contributing to the greater goal but also it is important where i'm the only one that can do it right um and there's a very hard way to think about it because you know i tell you guys all the time the number one reason i might not my first burnout but where i felt like oh i needed to change course in my career which is the beginning of this podcast uh the creation of this podcast i say five years actually been seven years since we started this podcast and that moment was based off a moment where i didn't like the fact that i'm making a call of duty and it's coming out like i realized that this

this call of duty game comes out every year and whether i'm here or not it's coming out right i finally i hit that realization near the end cycle of that game advanced warfare where i as a senior environment artist that um i wasn't being challenged and uh what i was doing basically didn't matter because anybody else could have done it right and it got former lake not the game itself i still think that game was awesome for what it was but because my task got former lake where anybody could have stepped in my shoes and completed the game and that game would have shipped anyways right so i was looking for a bigger purpose i didn't want to be an individual contributor to someone else's idea anymore and that's where the shift and the frustration kind of charged me up to

like all right this whole time i've been trying to move up the rings which i did and in that moment um out of everybody i think i made at least my the graduation class that i graduated i i was able to move up the ranks and get senior uh with a pretty good salary within five years right which um is not that common uh and i was proud of that moment because of a lot of things there's a lot of factors that motivated me to move up the ranks money was won but like uh because of my life situation this is where settling down getting married early and having kids really pushes you to kind of reach higher for for career goals and i have a lot of single friends obviously that don't have that push and they're very comfortable they're very comfortable where you're at but the thing is they didn't have the same drive which is everyone each their own right you don't have to always drive to to

make you feel better as long as you're happy with are you doing but because of that i was able to kind of move pretty fast in my career because i had that push i had a family support uh but also my ambitions were always and that have always been high and um if anything the family and marriage have taught me how time is so valuable right which is i think underneath it all is my main motivation is like if i'm gonna put time into something i need like the maximize amount because i'm competing with individuals that are single individuals that don't have a family to support they're just themselves and they have infinite amount of time to dedicate towards their craft and so uh the little time that i do have outside of family and being married and uh i have to make sure that it is not going to waste right which is and always have been my my motivation to move up that rank

and um which is a good note for you guys you know why you guys want to be promoted why do you want to move on to the next stage is it the specific job um that appeals to you right i know for me environment wise to cut and this is relatable to every department right because it's kind of diced up this way when you start an environment you don't start making levels you start by making props uh and then when you start doing props you're doing low level products versus hero acids and slowly you move up to hero assets and when you do hero assets uh you can start piling it up together and start contributing to a level you get a little corner of the map and then eventually having the whole map to yourself and that's the senior role right so that that has always been appealing i want to be able to be a part of these discussions i want to be able to brainstorm and come up with uh ideas for this level and then and that ambition grew because i just don't want to contribute to one level i want to be

able to have a say in in the overall game because you know there's only so much control you have over just a level and then you know that led to management that led to that moment where i felt i need to change that direction because which can be a dangerous thing right i i do want to at least footnote that as well where uh you're never going to be at peace yourself unless you define what you want to do because it's a never-ending ladder uh climb uh career-wise right like when are you really satisfied you know i moved up the ranks now i'm running a studio i'm happy but there are things here that i you know as a developer i'm trying to do which is make my own game right and we're finally at that place where like super awesome we can start doing this but look at that long list of of of of uh

of my career we're talking about over uh 15 years now from the very beginning we're to finally to the point where like i can make my own game now that is a long track and why it's important to define it before you go on this track is that you avoid a lot of burnout uh i think there's a few points in my career where i was lost where i was just not i was just looking at the next thing and wasn't looking at 10 steps ahead right and that is a huge uh noob mistake and the number one thing that i learned from that is that i wasted a lot of time right where i'm at these companies where i feel like i'm wasting time and and i have a lot of bad energy right because the politics or whatever right i feel like i'm wasting my time and it affects everybody it affects home life you know i'm the number one person where i bring work home obviously right i'm working from home

now which is even worse but like i at a certain point where i was able to control that right and what changed that for me was being able to change my mindset from looking at the next step of what i want to do to looking at the next 10 steps of what i wanted to do because now the little stuff the day-to-day stuff that bothers you in the office or someone being promoted over you or or someone's being favored or someone's trying to stab your back and being shitty uh about it uh doesn't bother you as much right uh because it doesn't really matter uh because it doesn't affect your overall goal right if your overall goal is to move the ladder and stay at the company forever yeah then it affects you because someone in that company is being asked to you and it's preventing you from achieving that right but if your number one goal isn't about that company it is about

something else you know your side hustle or whatever the case then uh you just end up being that pleasant guy uh in the office and funny enough that's when things get easier now now promotions are being thrown at you or or people are trying to recruit you because you're known as like this positive energy guy where nothing bothers you and you get your done efficiently and you're never complaining about it um that bad energy is completely lost and the main thing is you resolved it within yourself right there was nothing outside influence wise that was affecting you and your goal is because you know who you want to be and you know how to get there you defined that and your career itself just simply played out to the point where you're not held up hostage to other people's ambitions or goals or to work and wherever you're at right um so winston is kind of making comment

here uh let me read that out loud maybe i can respond to you guys while i do this i think there's no longer you feel creative or have creative input or an outlet you're just finishing and repeating the task that's ordered as a programmer a lot of tasks are relatively basic but you can still feel creative in the way you handle the problem if you're being micromanaged or in a rut that creative outlet is gone yeah like i said like we're in this because we are creatives and uh if you're starting to feel like things are repeating itself or more importantly even above that that your contributions don't matter that i think is the number one cause for burnout right we're not in a regular pharmaceutical company where or in an assembly line of sorts where you can get by with uh day-to-day minute tasks i mean you can but what i'm saying is that

uh like a drug right that we we like feeding if we have an idea and able to execute it and see it and run in real time and everyone else is enjoying it that's that's our thrill as a creative right so the number one fear of moving up the ranks is that you're uh after senior especially when you become a lead is that that thrill and being able to feed into that adrenaline is completely gone um because now you're you're more about maintaining and inspiring others to have that thrill for you on your behalf right and i think uh relatively that that's a correct assessment right i was just telling you guys earlier it you know as a lead you do have to take on management you do have to deal with people more obviously you have to

but it's about effectiveness right um can you if your greater goal is to own a part of this game where you feel like i can take this game you know environment programming whatever animation like i'm the only one on this team can take this game to the direction to what the creative vision is i'm the one that can do that and the thing is i can't do it by myself i can't sit eight hours a day in the office and just figure this out myself right at least with the deadline but what i can do is like i know how the delegate i know exactly what we need to do and i know the team that can get me there right i love my team and i'm the best person for this job right so you're contributing and you're making a difference in a different way right less hands-on but more about like you know 5xing your output so that that's the i think if you don't have

that mindset as you're kind of moving into a more manager role then um either you're in a lot of cases when i talk to people about it they they don't see it as that right that they don't they didn't hit that switch yet right they really do feel like oh this is when creativity starts right uh i mean stops is when i start managing people that's where it stops it's gone right the whole time i'm just like checking in with people right and those are the worst leads uh i'm speaking from experience but i'm sure you guys can relate those are the worst leads where uh they are doing it and clocking and clocking out they're going in meetings getting out of meetings and they don't really have any uh any ownership over the game they're all about that salary and they don't really care about what you have to say right so to me that's not what a lead is

that's just like in any position a bad lead right the the best leads i've always had or anybody in upper management i've always had are there is like it's all about like hey man i'm we're here to make this beautiful game together i can help you there you can help me let's do this right and those are people are very communicative they're very good expressing their ideas they're very good at listening to your ideas and and while you sit back at your desk to kind of do what you need to do i'm moving that message forward for you on your behalf and uh basically you know spreading the information and then working that out in the background right that that to me is a good lead and we need more people like that right and unfortunately in studios it's the less creative people that move to the top and um because they spend their time being political and stuff and they're very

good at talking and uh the people who likes creating the and making the contributions just want to be left alone and being quiet but you can see that how that can be an issue right if you want the success of the game to be awesome we need more creative people to move to the top uh but you know you look at these studios a lot of these studios are kind of being formed by producers right i don't hate producers i love producers the good ones but you know i want contributors to be equally as a co-founder as well uh because you need both you can't do one with without the other right uh i'm just seeing too many producers forming these studios kind of dictating a lot of what we should be doing as creatives and um and creatives kind of uh wilting and and hiding behind uh

these these uh these areas and and not being able to share their their story or information and wanting to communicate right overall i think that's why a lot of studios fail it's just the the the money incentive or the business side of things kind of overruled the creativity of it and how creativity should be um spread out evenly to be successful right we're just getting a lot of suits uh making a lot of people making schedules and not talking about the soul of the game right where where people who talk the most get these in these higher positions and call them the shots and studios either in trouble or eventually shut down right this is the most common way i think in the playstation 3 era where a lot of these triple a studios just started crumbling and you can go

back six years in the podcast you hear me talking about all the time that was the trend you know all of us use were dying right and it wasn't until smaller teams and i contributed to a lot of smaller teams were the mobile market i felt and maybe in the future this will be studied and explored more uh were were saving the industry and saying hey like these smaller teens in the teens you remember the steam green light right these innovative ideas like creatives again took over the mantle and created uh excitement again and uh really turned things around right uh i'm beginning to feel though that we're going back into that old cycle cycle where these uh developers are these game studios are are kind of falling apart again uh because uh the the business people or the schedule people are are kind of

caught in the shots right uh i do feel like it feels very similar to the playstation 3 because i'm seeing a lot of these studios pop up now everywhere right uh there's a lot of interest in investment either in the metaverse or new studios or or or blockchain or whatever right these are three main areas that i see a lot of interest going in and uh i i unfortunately feel that it's not for the right reason right it's not because there's such a great idea that hasn't been made therefore this the studio it's more people trying to you know uh grab some easy cash right and it's a dilemma man i really do feel a dilemma like uh the more creative we get the best creatives that i've met

don't want to do anything with management but they hate it because they were so exposed to bad management i mean i i really do feel that has been the main issues like they've been exposed to such terrible experiences of people telling them what to do and and um it not working out where they're like i don't want to repeat that i don't want to be a part of that just leave me in my corner and i'll figure things out where the opposite response would be the most appropriate it's like oh this is all therefore i'm the only one that can fix this right so we need some hero developers out there so aside from moving up the ranks wanting more responsibilities towards the things that you want to do i advise everybody to kind of what helped me long past i wish someone sat me down and told me this um you know what is your end goal right uh and it could be piecemeal

right i didn't figure it out until a little way basically through trial of fire um i was only looking two years ahead sometimes uh in most of my career until recently where i was like all right 10 years down the line do you really see yourself being 45 to 50 just making props right uh no uh life changes really quickly and uh the thing is i i don't think um when we go to colleges or we even take these online courses for games no one talks about career development right which is a very common uh course you would take in in any regular curriculum to think ahead to outline your life basically uh because i at a certain point in my career i was looking around i don't really see and i i talked about this many times in the past podcast i don't

really see a lot of 65 year olds hanging about right uh it being a new industry yes but um you know our industry is so new where it is worrisome that like it's not just news it's tech driven right it's your skill set correlates to uh just like anything but i think more so in the game industry it correlates directly to how much time you spend towards your craft right you're only as good as your investment in your craft and that becomes less and less true as life moves on right past 30 you're looking towards other things than work like having being married having kids and that whole life that you're never going to be able to compete with

newcomers with that ambition so you're you have to be able to be making a decision and define what that role looks like and still be a huge contributor people who are worried about like yeah i'm not gonna be as fast right as uh someone new out of college i'm not gonna be as good even as someone new out of college uh some of these college kids are awesome as they should be as the way you want it but what you can give back and what you should look towards to maximizing your potential is being able to manage those people through experience and guiding the the youngins uh to avoid mistakes that you've made right not just career not just making profs think larger than that it's like hey practices burnout work life balance

the average career in the game industry i think has lengthened i think when i was going in when i was in college my professor was telling me hey it's pretty much five years and then you burn out and it gets tougher after that to find a job i think since then that has improved because our industry has have grown have matured uh we're not just talking about making console games anymore there's mobile there's enterprise there's facebook there's google so because of that our uh the longevity of a game dev career thankfully is not shortened uh that that we are seeing people starting to retire as a game developer right that's an awesome achievement what i think we're struggling with now is the natural evolution of all right now we're established industry we don't have to worry about that it's not going

to die out it's continuous growing and in a lot of cases surpassing the movie industry or other entertainment industry uh if anything these tech companies are looking at the game industry as the future with vr and the metaverse 3 web 3.0 or whatever right so we got from the back seat of uh nerd uh nerdum right we were we were like in terms of the technical uh stratosphere of uh of importance you know games were always like kind of a play thing game developers were kind of like contributing to like little kid toys uh even lower than kid toys right it's just a pastime but now we're we just leapfrogged everybody as being the most important um technology for real-time simulation right uh either through movies with virtual production

enterprise in terms of practical usage vr ar military everybody is using it and then the metaverse the future we're like right at the forefront so amazing opportunities uh so even if i stop by right now and look at my career what i did like five ten years ago of uh where i wanna go you know if i'm a prop artist right or a junior character artist or whatever you need to start looking beyond just moving up with your company you guys have so much more opportunity now where you're able to easily meet those salary requirements that you need as you grow older and have that security that you want but the main thing and a luxurious thing that you're considering now is like overall happiness it's like am i going to be happy doing everyday things like props or am i going to be happy contributing to something larger and be effective by managing 10 people to do what i used to do right and guiding a

team to achieving a greater goal than just a singular contribution to the game right that is awesome and it's hopefully giving you guys a better framework of what moving up the management can look like because you know we think the number one innovator in the world is elon musk and rightfully he's at least on paper the richest man on on earth right from time to time i think he switches places with jeff bezos but uh he's able to run three to four companies at the same time because he delegates and manages well and when he wants he gets hands-on but he knows he's the most effective because he's able to delegate right if he's in there prototyping every device every car every rocket himself and then handing that off you know it'll be a

a hundred times or even a thousand times longer uh than you know getting the right people working with the right people right so my personal career and what i'm realizing is i like working with people on a project right so just think of it in lines of an indie project you know do you like working on solo right solo developers are very popular nowadays it's like everything done by me zero to hero right um that is not me all right and i think defining that for yourself first will really help guide your uh focus in your career all the way from junior to senior to principal delete i really do think so and i hope i wish i had known that because that would have helped me because then i would have been more about um uh socializing you know uh

keeping no i did this subconsciously but i would have been more determined and conscious about uh the people i like working with and the goals that i'm trying to achieve so uh be less combative right i wasn't really that combative but i can definitely i could have definitely been less combative um and and just spending that time at work just uh not just uh secretly holding on to my personal goals but sharing that with others and seeing how they react to it because maybe later down the line you can regroup which is funny enough how i started my own studio i worked with the guy for a long time at one of my other companies uh and uh we were kept in contact even though we didn't work with each other anymore and eventually form a studio together right if i had known that back then i would have

my focus would have been i would have been i'm happy where i'm at now but i would have gone a lot further to be honest if i had known that from the start right we're talking about 10 years ago if i'd known what i know now so hopefully what i'm sharing now is kind of painting a picture for you guys to think at least beyond two to three years or i think 10 years right and when you think 10 years is like why can't i do that in the next six months you know why am i wasting my time uh and what is preventing me from achieving those 10-year goals right it it really is as simple as that because it really aligns everything that you're trying to do to a very effective output and at the end time is short man we spent two years with the pandemic uh in inside a house and dude you know i feel like uh that was stolen from us right that's two years of delay there

and uh in in ways that we're trying to make it up with remote working at all uh hopefully you guys are using this time effectively being at home because i do feel that that is starting to be taken from us there's a lot of people in companies that i'm hearing right now that are being forced back in the office right um and i do feel uh because of that there's gonna a lot there's gonna be a lot more uh depression developed from suddenly needing being home and available to your family or whatever and all of a sudden being back in the office uh and and your time taking from you right um so use the time that you got now to kind of project where you want to go [Music] and if you can't get promoted within your studio which is again i want to explain to you guys that's the hardest way of getting promoted uh to move into

the position that you want it's just the hardest you're competing with colleagues that's been there longer you're competing with young talent that just got in right and you're in a line that you know everybody uh essentially wants that position right you're competing for that position and yeah may the best man win but you know best in what regard is he just uh or he is she just a favorite right uh and not necessarily on skill it's just a lot of stuff that you have no control the only control that you have and i've seen many times to get promoted to move in the better position is go to the company that is looking that for that position and see how your resume stacks up to the qualifications it's the fastest quickest way to get your salary get promoted and get to your goal right don't waste your time if you are asking for it uh at your company it's

it's going to be the same answer it was right well we'll look at it in six months and we'll look at it a year because fistful fiscally that fits within their company promotion structure they can't give promotions every month right they have a determined time in the six month mark january july whatever uh november december whatever right that they can hand out promotions that they can uh give you more money basically right other companies are more sporadic right they just formed a company and they need people now can you feel in that position that happens more frequently therefore you have a better chance of getting promotion and yeah you are in a way competing still but at least you know you're competing with no bias essentially right you're talking to people that never talk to you or other candidates unless they're referred but in most cases you're

you're you're being judged fairly uh which i feel impedes a lot of in studio promotion right there's always biases so you there's too many things stacked against you um but yeah man i think i've always appreciated every promotion i've had i've enjoyed it more and more because the responsibilities is what i always seeked personally right i know a lot of people uh are not looking for that but uh enjoy it while you can a lot of those people that i talk to who are very comfortable are mostly single right they don't have a need for for any upgrade which is cool you know keep that going as far as you can but at some point you're going to have to be pushed and it's good because you do learn a lot more being able to move up in management and actually learn what's going on with the studio you don't want to be

blindly coming in coming out all the time it's always best to see if the closer you are to the heads of the studio in terms of positioning the better you are in positioning yourself in your career uh to avoid unexpectation right so i think that's a good way to kind of end it uh that's being a soapbox i always doubt that i can talk for an hour but there we go i talked for an hour and that's why it's called the soapbox for all you guys that join me live thank you uh winston thanks for chatting with me yes it's a good take uh i'm trying to do all these episodes live uh going forward even though if they're like not being officially released on the podcast for weeks on then right but i love the participation i love talking to you guys directly as much as i can you know i'm trying to change it as much as i can without um with uh with just putting out the podcast and not hearing from you guys

right i want to hear from you guys as much as possible this topic in particular was being asked a lot in the last couple months um and uh i felt like it's a good time to kind of talk about this because we're facing this all the time uh personally and and just curiosity-wise right