LIVE | Leaving the Game Industry for Tech with Ryan Bullock

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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 a special guest whom i thought i had on before but didn't ryan bullock how you doing ryan doing all right thanks for having me yeah this is great to finally have you on regardless of the fact that i thought yeah i had you on but uh this is the part of the podcast where i have our guest which is yourself introduce yourself to the listeners out there who you are where you been where you at where are you heading uh let's see so uh yeah i started off and started doing 3d way back in the probably the quake 3 duke nukem 3d days and doing mods uh decided to drop out of uh business

school and go to art school uh started in yeah yeah i was actually uh i didn't know i went to university yeah i went to a university for international business and marketing uh ended two years there and ended up taking some art courses and was like no i'm out i'm sure your parents were so proud of you is that a four-year school program yeah that was a four-year yeah yeah yeah so yeah yeah it just uh there's something i'd woke up one morning i just knew like uh i'm i'm done with this i need to go do something i've always been into art uh so it was a kind of uh coming home to i think what i should have started with in the first place but no uh then went to art school started working in the industry in 2005 uh did a couple of studios got starting indeed aaa startup i think the my career really started

taking off when i started working at sledgehammer um so that was you know starting in the last year production on advanced warfare um and then rolling on into world war ii um and then kind of got a call from uh big tech company 01 in the by the name of apple and they were like hey you know we need someone who can do some hard surface stuff it's all right cool um let's talk um went through the whole interview process there and uh i'm here now so that's kind of the rest of the story i think i i turned in my acceptance offer the day we shipped world war ii um that is direct line right there where does the family get into play here the wife the kids um yeah so let's see um we moved down to we moved from seattle down to bay area in 2000

and to 2013. um the tail end of advanced warfare production um and so we had let's see my oldest was five my youngest was no oldest was eight yeah then middle child was three and then the youngest was six months i think when we moved so they kind of grew up in in california really um that's most of what they remember um and so it was kind of great to to get out um and to live somewhere new but seattle's home pacific northwest is home but i've lived all over the us um but it was kind of nice for the family to get out and see something different you know be somewhere different um and so we kind of just thought of it as a big adventure when we when we moved down there we thought we're going to go down ship a game and then move back to seattle um and ended up staying you know eight years i think down in down in bay area so it was uh stayed about twice as

long as we wanted and now we all miss it do you really miss it that much though like you know i've always wondered because i've i've grown up and been in california my whole life and i'm always afraid that i'm so sheltered in what the outside world is like and i could be probably enjoying it somewhere else but you know because i never ventured off but so i'm always curious for people who've been here and then going to other states do they feel that way really or is it really you know it's it's it's hard to say i think there's always an element of grass's greener on the other side no matter where you go um it's always going to be a list of pros and cons and you just kind of try to align yourself with the pros that mean the most to you and you just deal with the negatives as they come up um you know i think the the hardest the hardest part to think about being back up here is the weather you know

it's just not something that you ever had to worry about down in california every now and then you're like oh god what is this something's going on here uh where's my blue sky um so it's cloudy rainy yeah oh yeah yeah um except for this past week you know it's close to 100 degrees up here um but no i think there's there's elements in california that i absolutely miss um but being up near family i think right now is super important as my parents are getting older right um you know my my sister lives on the other side of the country um so you know it's nice to to have have one of the siblings here uh to help out you know if needed which was ultimately kind of the big reason that we ended up moving back up to seattle um towards the beginning of the pandemic um you know my mom had just gone through a bout of breast cancer and she was recovering and just you know my dad's getting old as well and so i was like well you know

maybe we should scoot back up there and uh you know help out with the family uh yeah because the world is ending supposedly yeah yeah yeah you know and it worked out you know we were able to move back up right before you know mortgage rates and everything kind of took off in the housing market so we were able to we just we caught the last train how we reference it yeah and now that we you know we're like well maybe we'll back to california and you start looking at the interest rates again you're like no that's expensive wait wait for the next pandemic right it's the return back to california pandemic well i mean my my view of you and your career and everything you've done has always been like precision strikes like you were very you're a very careful speaker you're well composed like versus other people that's so funny because i never feel like that one

you're so you're so you seem like a guy who has it all together most of the time when i'm talking to yous right so and i do want to talk a family aspect a bit right but um you know i kind of went through the industry with the families i got married super young and basically my first job was with my wife first and then the kids started trek tracking uh trickling in in my uh 20s right i basically lit my 20s like most people live their 30s right i feel like that's something you can relate and it is kind of like a hidden trump card because it did make me work harder you know i did look at career goals more seriously than people my age um because you know i have to right you know because i enjoy luxuries as well as not just surprising and uh for that reason i progressed pretty quickly uh was that kind of similar situation to you or like hey you know i have a plan it's nice to have this job but i need to

think and look ahead you know two three years from now as well i can't just dislike it just because of liking it um um no i think i was probably a little different in that respect um i i i loved working in video games right that was like that was my goal like and once i got in i was there like i was i was happy i was content career ones it wasn't until i started working at sledgehammer and actually started getting approached by other companies at times like when i would update portfolio or whatever and they would start pinging me um and it it really wasn't until probably probably my mid-30s that i started thinking it's like okay well i've been yeah i've been a weapons artist for 10 years now it's starting to get a little you know not going to lie like all the school shootings start to wear on you when you're staring at a weapon that's being used in the shooting and you see how do you how do you work um especially having kids right now so uh you can relate

um and so that's when i kind of started thinking about well what would what would be next what should be you know the the midlife career switch um and i think that's when it's about that time when uh apple called and you know started talking with them and it's like you know this is i would i don't think i was quite ready to leave the industry but i think it was time that was just my my thing that was how i interpreted it at the time and so no i didn't really do that 2018 is when i started early 2018. so i i didn't really have career goals i think it was more art goals than that drove the career um you know looking back like is always going to be you know just worked out better yeah just well and you know my wife and i talk about it all the time like we're very very fortunate to be in the position that we are um in

the middle of a pandemic and i've been very fortunate i think uh my whole career um whether that's a bit of luck whether that's how i've positioned myself it wasn't a conscious positioning um you know the end result is you know i've had a very fortunate career and i think i've always kind of relied on the fact that you know you the stability doesn't come from the company it comes from how good you are at what you do and so there's there there is a focus there that maybe has been developed over time that was really kind of came from just being as good as i can be and just trickling out portfolio work here and there uh just to just to kind of be still there right you know people see the the post on our station or they see the update on

linkedin or twitter or whatever and i think it's important for people that are you know artists like myself and others that you know you can get so ingrained in a production workflow um that there is that career management side of it that you you do kind of need to to work on and kind of need to nurture um doesn't have to be all the time it doesn't have to be every week you're uploading something new it doesn't have to be crazy hours after work um but it does i think there's a huge benefit for it to to constantly just kind of trick your stuff out there on occasion well definitely uh you're a testament to that um it's working out like uh yeah so far well did you feel at any point your business background is kicking in at this age at this later part of your career like some of that is somehow helping you because you do you are a little bit better than i would say peers right

at r um i i will say this i won't say this i will see this all right i'll paint you i'll paint you what i'm talking about right so i i always relate to the great migration right around 2018 2015 2016 when these tech companies were growing a gaming sector right and uh at it was at that point a lot of aaa devs were not knowing about this blossoming industry and only a few took the leap and kind of paved the way to now i think it's more regular to have friends at facebook at google and and apple and such right that wasn't a thing uh five years ago right so i think you were yeah you were one of the first that i knew in my circles that was like making that move and uh a move that i didn't know was possible right it's like hey we could do our thing somewhere else more stable and bigger so that's why i kind of credit you to like well you know even if it

seems accidental but like i feel like uh you know you made an evaluation at that point and you're like hey i think this is where we're kind of going you know this is where it's more stable and yeah yeah you know i guess in that context yeah like i kind of was one of their early adopters early-ish adopters i remember you know when when i worked at sledgehammer i was very distinctly looking at other industries um just to kind of keep up to date um i knew you know ar vr was a big one simulations um uh got to maybe yeah there's everything right there's everything and i think it i think with me like i used to freelance for um a company that did forensic animation and i think that was my first kind of non-game introduction uh to to like wow i've got this amazing skill set and now it can be used somewhere else yeah um you know and

then for that you know there was freelance were not i was working with this guy up in canada who would 3d print jewelry from video games um so i went through and created rings and necklaces and stuff for from skyrim and all these other big games and send them over the files and he would he would put him out and sell them on etsy and other other channels and that was probably around 2015 2016 as well so i guess you know in those kind of early days yeah freelance was the way for me to explore those other industries and kind of see kind of what was out there um and kind of pad the portfolio a little bit with you know non-non-weapon work i guess you know don't want to pit upon myself too much um but yeah i mean this the whole movement to tech is is interesting um there's i never would have thought you know when i started my career 15 20 years ago that being in 3d would have led here

and in no way did my brain i figured you know if i was you know making video games and making you know 50 60 000 a year i'd be happy for the rest of my life um which is way off um but yeah it's been a crazy journey um and i i think that you know comes back to what i said earlier is like just investing yourself and being good at what you do is your greatest stability because the jobs are going to come and go and the industries are going to come and go and so it's just about kind of keeping up and keeping your eye out there well if you don't mind kind of walking through that first day right you don't have to describe the cafeteria or anything but like yeah you know it's a big shift i mean over a sledgehammer it was a pretty good studio but it's not like riot or you know these mega studios but it was a good

typical high triple a studio so going from there into somewhere like apple where it's like it's on campus um what was that what was the feeling did you feel pretty confident i mean i would assume that there's a lot of talented people on your team but yeah come on i mean right you're probably one of the best ones in this first group of people no no no no i i think one of the things that really attracted me to moving to tech was the caliber of people and that was the same thing that uh made the decision for me to go to sledgehammer it was the caliber people but the team that was you know is assembled here that i work for the work is um intimidatingly good um to the point where it's like you don't know if you're gonna be talking with someone who has a phd in neuroscience or work at you know nasa's jet propulsion

laboratory or whatever right so that first day i think it was very eye-opening going from video games to tech it was uh much more corporate um and i think the the thing that actually really struck me was the first of all the amount of people you know you go through employee orientation and at that point they're having like 300 people every day go through new employee orientation and that was for all of apple wasn't just for our org but just the variety and diversity of people that they that they employ um i think i've i've interacted with more you know diverse population in the first week at apple than i had in you know 15 years in games so i think that was the biggest thing that stood out to me was it felt more like a kind of like a college campus you know it's just all walks of life um

and everyone you know that you interact with is absolutely like one of the best of what they do that being said i didn't work at the big campus we were in a sound like campus um a couple miles away um so i didn't get like that huge big campus experience where you walk into you know security access um you know it was just our little kind of building um but you know to see that team grow um is pretty pretty awesome it was it was my kind of estimate like when you first came in to now like how big your team your organization is that live yeah it's i think we're reporting that um i will say that i was one of the early ones um and it has grown tremendously at that time um i think the the org had only been around maybe a year year and a half before i joined

so yeah it's a it's a huge team now yeah it's it's funny because it is around that time where you know vr oculus was starting to do their things more seriously uh google hence no more uh did not you know that's when they had their stadia team right yeah everybody was kind of doing something um because you know uh with video games what's what drives more engagement than video games right and that's the main thing with all these companies it's about engineering uh even tesla right yeah we have a lot of good friends over there right now that are doing their own gaming sector yeah i got ghosted by tesla actually yeah they reached out to me to do an interview and i went i chatted with the recruiter and he's like okay we'll set up a call with the project manager guy and sure enough like showed up for the call and no one showed up of course oh my to you god never got back to me which that's fine um

i would gladly dodge that bullet yeah i think toge is over there yeah i think he is yeah he uh he was out of startup for a while i think right and then he's over there yeah i've been there a couple years now yeah yeah and then he left again right well anyways um well we i think that was the beginning of the year like i said a lot of our friends including yourself that i knew that were spreading into those areas and um through the exploration of like i noticed the same thing right i never got into tech i think after sledge i went to mobile a little bit right to see what that world was about and i feel if anything mobile is kind of like the in-between of a aaa and a tech company not as big as tech companies slightly bigger than aaa and a mixture of that what you're saying like data scientist analytica the game team is like this much smaller

right it's like this small and then everybody i was like what do you do it's like you know what i mix i make sure that you get paid i was like oh okay yeah okay all right well we'll set up a weekly sync yeah yeah but yeah it opened my eyes on you know is this video games evolving like as a business as a structure because mobile of anything is very disciplined looking at day-to-day uh profits only right there's no promise of like this might be a great game it's like this is a great game we'll iterate it and maximize the profit and next year you'll be fine right and so at first my biggest thing was the pressure of triple a development was completely off right it was all about culture it was all about coming with ideas at work and figuring it out there was no green light meetings that you have to constantly worry about so that that was nice and i was starting to understand like i

can see why people who's been around in the industry for a while might find this pretty relieving uh especially with the families it just feels it just feels more of a safer space yeah oh totally totally yeah i can imagine it was kind of similar feeling to you right yeah you know i mean it was i think that that transition i mean working on call of duty as you know i mean there's a ton of scrutiny right i mean your your trailer or whatever is going to be up on an 80-foot plasma screen in front of thousands of people and it's going to be poured over by digital foundry on youtube and everything's going to be analyzed right so especially working on weapons like it's front center right there right like it's not good there are times where like i would see like normal map bears you know and you're just like oh my gosh like how did that get approved or how did that you know but yeah it's it's like you know point zero zero one percent of the population is going to see that one specific area in that

one area you know gamers aren't going to care um and yeah there was that sense of okay so this definitely feels um a little more relaxed it feels more supportive um with in regards to like career growth um and how you are as a person um and i don't know if that's apple specific or it's tech because i've heard horror stories from other companies as well but at least where i'm at i feel like i've got support in the career goals that i want to hit which is totally new to me um you know my my manager asks me some very pointed questions sometimes and my only answer is like i don't know i'll have to get back to you so i think um i think moving to that tech or maybe just outside of video games there is the element of stability and

that element of uh maturity i think that that comes with ultimately leaving what is kind of an immature industry i don't mean immature and like i mean like age-wise right the video games industry hasn't been around for a long time um whereas you know you go to these other companies that you know the managers are you know they've had 20 30 40 year old or 40 year long careers you know it's been honed over time but that being said like that stress is definitely there and i think that stress is is is worse than work in games um because there's so much at stake you know whether it's whether it's a function of the the increased salary and compensation that if you mess up that could possibly go away yeah whereas you know if i got fired from sledgehammer

uh okay you know i mean i would i would suck because that was a really really fun job um but the pay is video game pay yeah it's not nearly what you would get outside of video games um and you know maybe it's a function of also you know me being older and actually needing to look at retirement in a more like considered way like oh gosh like i am actually going to have to pay for myself when i could no longer work like i was god ah this is weird thinking about this like why do i need to think about that i carry that old fart yeah right so i think there's definitely like there's not so much like stress to perform at an artistic level i think there's there's stress to not like [Music] not make a career ending decision because you know is this a big one it's very true i think you know in the

late 20s early 30s when i started to consider more of what comes after right uh in a more serious manner because when you like i got an industry pretty young i always was kind of like the young guy at every position i was in until i wasn't anymore and that got really real really quick i was like yeah it's funny that you bring that up because all of a sudden like i've always i have i think my natural inclination is to always assume that the person that i'm talking to or the people that i work with are older and know more than i do yeah like that's just a dog maybe maybe it's just me maybe that's just natural but all of a sudden like i'm in a position here where people come to me for answers yeah and it's like wait oh i don't know like

oh gosh and then you know you start to see the gray hairs pop in and it starts to sprinkle out and all of a sudden you're like no i am the older person on the team now oh this is kind of depressing yeah it hits you like a punch in the face right almost overnight yeah yeah almost overnight you know we were playing basketball at sledge right and i was the young guy at one point and then i wasn't near the you know and now when i play uh in in regular pickup games it's like i'm the what are the older guys now i know it's just painful to accept but it is the way it is but it is something i noticed immediately when i look around at a triple a studio company and i was like where are all the old guys right these guys are not that much older than i am and so it really is intimidating because there's not a person who kind of uh has gone through

you know that career growth and planning and and showed basically the blueprint of this is how you can retire at a game company right i was looking around like i don't think it's been done yet and at best it's experimental right now and it does scare me because it's like you know we were in the cycle of a bunch of layoffs or job security issues and you know there's only a certain amount of companies that in the bay area la right and you have to live around these super expensive places and that of course eats into your long-term growth and everything right and it was a real crisis and a certain someone wouldn't raise the pay grade they didn't make it to everybody yeah and uh basically it felt very out of control and i think if any like especially that group that we i would say graduated from

sledgehammer right yeah are doing very well because i think they face a similar crisis right they're like oh i can't stay here forever no there's great jobs i love it here but i can't see yeah and that's that's where i'm with it like i love it there but it's hard living and at a certain point when like i brought got brought in to sledgehammer i only made i think like ten thousand dollars more a year than what i was making up here in seattle and so but you're looking at like a 30 40 you know cost living increase and this is you know 10 years ago it's it's it's yeah it's a little different now like the cost of living between the two areas but no um i think for the majority of the time that you know we were in that time that that advanced warfare to world war ii ship unless you're making 120 130 000 a year like you're paying to work there you know and you you see your savings go down just just a little bit and then you get the bonus check from advanced warfare and it kind of comes back up and

then it kind of goes down and three months later you get your bonus check uh and you you really are like you know come to work there that's exactly how it felt right because that's exactly what it was yeah well exactly what it was because you know world war ii we were doing rod i only i was there for a year before i left right for the war two part of the game and we were doing r d and i was tasked in making trenches right this is when we were trying to figure out and i'm like digging these trenches uh in 3d and i remember at that point i was living in a one-bedroom apartment right with with the young kid right and we were basically making the living room into a studio bedroom like just because i wanted to live close to work i i just absolutely wanted to live next to work i didn't want to commute i hated commuting and that was the sacrifice we made just to live within three miles of work right i was looking at that i was making the trenches like you know i feel like

there's this is this is metaphor to me right now i'm like digging my own trench and and it was a real big realization moment for me where my brain did turn off and you know i love toga he's probably one of the best uh director of production or whatever that i ever had and i i kind of always look back and i kind of felt bad because i know he was trying his best to kind of motivate because he i think he was getting a sense of what everybody was feeling at that point because at that point we were getting our life-changing bonuses and such and uh got a little depressed about it and uh he was sitting there with my yearly reviews right and this is the first time where i did not even care and tried but in a very nice way he was asking me like you know what's your five ten year plan it's like are we even going to be around five years you know what's your fight what's the studio's five-year plan right just bluntly putting it out there

because that's how i felt because you know like he said the every company after i felt like there was always some type of uh you work here but you know let's get your life in order after working here you know your retirement going here's some company stocks there's some things like things that i've never even heard of before slidge right um but i didn't feel that at a typical aaa studio up to that point right right uh and like many others made a career change just exploring like what options are there yeah and uh i think thankfully i i love the fact that as game developers we have so many choices now in the tech company being like a great avenue not just tech like you know i hear people in automotive industries now like every type of industry they can think of animation people are doing straight out

of unreal now you know there's so many applications for what we do it's amazing and it's it's absolutely blown up just in the past like seven or eight years i mean who would have thought that when i was working with you know unreal three and you know i started with unreal 2x right so long long time ago i kind of skipped udk i didn't really use unica that much but i would have never thought that this would be used as like a virtual production tool in film no i mean that that's like the craziest thing is so so cool that they have this tech that is like my skills are directly applicable too you know and i think i i think because of so many avenues and those non-game industry avenues are fairly well paying if if not low paying then their average pay that's not below pay like you get in video games that that has forced the industry to kind of look at itself among all these other things that are going on with

diversity and inclusion and you know the stuff that's going on with blizzard and all these other big companies um the video game has the video industry has to get competitive with with compensation or you're gonna see what started you know four or five years ago with people just leaving because they're growing up you know um and so it's amazing to think that you know our skill sets are can go to those those industries and it's i think it's great for the video game industry because it kind of forces it's a it's a forcing function you know it's it's going to force function yeah yeah it's going to force games to do something to better the lives of the people that create these awesome experiences for others in in both ways the employers have an employee like um we have friends that are still working on games on great gains but i think as of late you probably see it in the last year or two like these guys have been in the machine for a while

and uh they work on the biggest games you know last of us all these dream games that everybody would love but like they hit the pinnacle like of these games uh of game making right it's like this is what defines triple a this is it once you get one of that out of your system all right what you do all right let's i guess do another one and they get kind of lost yeah i do have a lot of friends that are like searching soul searching right now a bit it's like well i've done one of those games before it's like do i keep making another one until i die yeah you know i think you know i think i went through the same thing with with call of duty it was like okay yeah there are other games i can go to you know other studios or continue working here i mean for for what it is like you call of duty is great if your weapons hurt us right i mean it's there's it's top 10 top five percent um at least in in my opinion um but yeah at a certain point you're like

okay well i'm kind of getting bored i'm kind of you know feeling something different and you know i don't want to go to you know you know my 50th birthday or whatever saying you know i'm a weapons artist you know like i know working on call of duty for 15. [Music] or anything like that or embarrassed by it i mean one of the great things about working on that franchise is you know you put your shirt on you go out to the store and you know it's pretty common that people ask about it you know god man did you work on that yeah yeah i did you know it's pretty cool um but at a certain point you just kind of start wondering like well maybe maybe there's something more i could be doing maybe there's uh you know other skills that i could develop or something there's other itches that you know are coming up that i need to scratch and i think that's probably ultimately like the reason why i left um it was just i think it was just time yeah

um i'm glad i did it's i think things kind of quickly fell apart i mean arco was my lead right and he was probably one of the one of the best leads that i've had in games and i think uh if i think if i would have stuck around and then watched him leave i probably would have just left as well i mean they say people don't leave jobs they leave managers um then i think that would have been my case if i would have stayed another six or seven months yeah i think i got out around this the the right time as well i was really i i talked about this on the pod a lot but um it was a real turning point for me uh on a personal level but career-wise because that was the first game advanced warfare was the first game in my career where i didn't even until this day opened up the rapper right every game i ever made i opened the rapper i played from beginning to end day one uh but i think we had like a little small one of those game stop meet the

developer kind of events right it was kind of impromptu and i remember standing there and i just didn't have that excitement you know of what i was expecting right and i really was questioning what i was doing if i didn't feel that anymore and i didn't it really hit me in a way where i was very surprised and shocked and uh there was a lot there was a a good few months after thinking about what i wanted because you know there's two ways of like of coming out with that right is you gotta face it yourself and then you gotta tell your wife right and i was like hey i think you know i gotta change things up you gotta do things like like what do you mean change things i know you want stability but i know right no you're getting a cough yeah i'm gonna go i'm gonna go low maybe like uh

but my dad always used to say that my dad worked in hospitality for like 35 years right same company his whole career and he always said that he wanted to go mow lawns at a cemetery so he didn't have to talk to anyone anymore and i'm like you know yeah i think you get to a certain age and i mean i'm i'm 41 right so you're hitting that midlife crisis time um in full force and you start to think like you know did i did i make the right decisions did i you know that this is where i've i've stayed my future this is i've staked my time on this planet doing this and you start to think like well maybe there's something more maybe there's something i could be doing else to to give back more than just entertainment to i mean which is a huge thing especially with the pandemic like this entertainment heads that they kept a lot of people from you know going into a really really dark place um so i'm not trying to underestimate her um lessen the importance of entertainment and

escapes especially in this in this world um but it i always felt like it was important for me to give back um with my with my skill set and so i you know that's when i started mentoring a lot more and that was kind of like that initial exploration to you know what else can i do but i think you know with with sledgehammer and i think with games in general like it's can be so restrictive and what you can do outside of of the job yeah that that really like is really just like really demoralizing yeah yeah yeah it's like more than just in the contracts like you cannot even think about yeah i remember i'm a lot more open to it now to try and talk about my my horror story but um you know i was starting to teach you know while working at a game studio that we both worked at right

together right there and then and i was teaching on the side and you know it was just on the weekends completely out of work hours didn't even interfere with it right and then uh and i was avoid i was avoiding like just telling because it didn't mix right there was no reason for me to even talk about it at work uh then a friend like mentioned to me at work hey you should there's the whole process you just do it and they get it approved just so that you know cover your butt nothing crazy uh i just did it it's fine it's like all right i'll just do it i guess big mistake right as soon as i did that i got an email saying like hey uh and then call got called into the office it was like hey we we saw your requests we're concerned because you know this is our shipping year at the end of the year you know we're afraid that you might not have enough time to do this in the weekend right i was like if i don't have time to myself in the weekend then we have a bigger issue we have bigger issues here we're talking about four hours of

teaching here on my saturday right like these are this is my time and i got so upset and probably began my my inner uh inner hate for all yes aaa because it was it was at that moment where you were hearing a lot of your friends can't freelance uh even to this day a lot of these bigger companies you can't freelance you can't do anything you can't even do personal art like it's gotten that restricted it's gotten that bad yeah it's gotten that bad which personal art before i thought it was like personal research you know it's a plus for you guys right but not even to this day no you can't publish thing anything on our station without getting it approved by us for it because it's my personal stuff so these this old uh sadistic method of basically enslaving i mean this is the reason why we called the podcast game devon chain is because it felt like we were being

chained to the death um this is the point i'm making yeah i feel like i i love the fact that there's a lot of avenues now here and i i feel like the veterans if probably a big body of veterans have been migrating to different tech industries to different industries to tech automative uh movies whatever because i feel like the gay industry overall is a young company a young industry and it is probably best for younger folks like the demands that it is asking for is basically if you're single young and able to work long hours uh that is kind of what's encouraged still for promotion and salary raises and yeah yeah i think it's i think it's i don't know now that i think about it

you know i'm i'm in eternal life yeah yeah no i'm an eternal optimist right so i always try to look and see that you know things are getting better yeah but i think it's a double-edged sword right you know i think conditions have gotten better but as the industry grows it becomes more focused on the profit and that you know that's a that's an inverse you know downward pressure i think on the the improvements that may or may not have been made over the past 10 years we're talking about more sequels more or like this safe things like not taking the risks and i think you know as you get older like you you can't take those risks you know like even even like where i'm at now like i would love to go there's a handful of students i would love to go work for yeah but you know like there's just that you know i've been fortunate i've been through one layoff right right and it's like i've been fortunate to be able to only go through

one layoff in my career and it's like i'm always just kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop like something's gonna happen like i have to be prepared for it i have to like you know it's funny like i this is the longest um at apple this is the longest i've ever been in one place and i'm coming up on five years which is which is a normal amount of years which is a normal amount of years like yeah that was always the crazy thing about video games is you know i i'm sure the break-even points in the graph has changed but you if you were in games for five years like you were a senior like yeah you could because there was such there was such a drop off between four and five years because people would burn out and they'd go do something else and so there was a huge pay jump at the five-year mark and you know that pay jump you know may or may not be good depending on the company that you're at but the problem is now you

have a whole bunch of people that really don't they're really really good at what they do they're great individual contributors but they're not managers and you see you know seniors getting promoted to management or leads getting promoted to management and that just kind of starts the spiral of well you don't have the experience being a manager but you do have the experience being a contributor and that can cause problems at higher levels and then you go on these these horrible like cycles of layoffs after shifting a game where all that accumulated knowledge and all that experience that was made as a team shipping this product gets lost and so these companies hire up get experience and then they throw away the experience that they invested in it's like what's the point of you know investing buying stock in the company in three years and then oh okay well i'm gonna throw it away and buy that stock again yeah like just hold on to it like hold on to the people that are making the game for you it's just no i know i

yeah um it's something that i brought up and talk about all the time um in this podcast like a few years ago i was seeing that this exodus of a lot of talented people that you know for for better for worse understand uh their value right yeah and where i felt it was a huge loss because you want experienced guys who've gone through a triple a cycle because you can learn from their mistakes and they can help guide the younger generation it's never good to have this imbalance of young talent and no veterans uh to help guiding them right it's it's to always having those two in a room will always be better for your company for your bottom line et cetera et cetera right now yeah but like because of shortsightedness these companies kind of push a lot of older folks out just by

the structure just by disco well encouraging five-year people to do such things right when they're not ready clearly not ready uh but they're managing and if if there was ever a love letter and maybe i'll do the kobe thing i do a love letter to the game industry at some point and it's the same thing it's it i love the game stream because i love the people i've met it's it's still the coolest groups of people that are like yeah that absolutely love talking to that are very similar in personality and everyone just clicks well right because our passion is games and games taught us basically how to be a person right now but the number one thing i do also hate are the are the people as well it's like the managers that i've had in my career pissed me so much off it made me leave places that i like right it made me moved on and it made me

hate my day-to-day i was a very negative person in a certain part of my career uh believe it or not right i know it's hard to demand yeah i know it's like just like i come home you know it's just like you know venting it's like all this happened i can't believe that happened and it was annoying me right and i'm the one saying it and i didn't like the person i was becoming because you know negativity only attracts negativity right right yeah but how can you not how can you ask someone to be good at their job and not be passionate about it right for us to be good and going through the grind and you know put in the stupid hours right in my little apartment right you basically have to love it and we hear this too a lot of tech guys you know we still love the game industry it's just right now it's not stable for us to come back right right and that's the only problem that's preventing us that and these

middle managers and a lot of producers all right until the majority of producers prove me wrong i'm just gonna like blanket statement like producers i've had some amazing uh producers here at my current job um i mean when push comes to shove you're you're there to ship something right and so you have to and so it's usually those like so for for a game dev cycle right it's two and a half years if everything's fine or two years of everything's fine but when it really comes to pushing then that's when it's like oh it's real the mask this is real this is yeah the mask comes off and that's it hey remember donut fridays no more donuts we're just pausing it for a while the fridge is a little empty these days what's going on yeah when i worked at sony online when they went through layoffs and i remember starting to see the signs like three or four months in advance you're just like oh this is kind of weird all right

um ooh okay this person left and i think that going through those layouts is probably one of the best experiences because thereafter you can always tell you can see you can see it coming so i went from sony to euphoria which was a startup and i was there for like two and a half years and i saw the signs like straight away like five months out and i just so happened to get approached by sledgehammer and start working the sledgehammer and that startup went under like two months after i left and even up until the point where they shut down no one thought anything was wrong like close the studio down it's like 15 20 people no severance no like yeah right well what there was there was no there was no like last paycheck like everything's like done like your benefits are cut off next week no severance nothing yeah and i was like whoa man i'm glad like i didn't go through that you know and then the same thing with leaving sledgehammers like it kind of like

crumbled a little bit you know after he's been through not just one but a serial amount of layoffs right just like i know oh god yeah it's it's rough it's like certain that they carry with them right and uh it's hard not to be jaded after so much rejection uh in in their career and uh you know i can't help but look at those guys and be like i don't want to be that person where i'm cause and uh i would say yeah some things have improved in the game industry but it's more the same i if anything that pandemic um kind of exposed a lot of the issues yes uh yeah i absolutely agree with them and we are dealing with it but i don't know it would be completely solved come you know where

it would be attractive for any of us to keep keep going back there on wanting some more right like we're seeing a lot of people leaving for smaller companies smaller finance companies right they're like not indie but they're like fully financed but there's 10 of us and we're going to change the culture it's going to be different more diverse right this is something i always tease about and yeah but the characters are all the same people that caused the problem in the last company right right hopefully it works out but i'm very pessimistic it will it'll have to be you know not not like showing my age or anything but i think it's gonna be a 15 20 year you know timeline for any sort of like permanent or lasting change and i think it's the this new generation that are coming in to this world being surrounded by you know the mutual respect for the people that you work for and they know the whole like me too movement um diversity inclusion movement i think once

the the younger generation that has grown up with that sort of respect for other people when they start getting to that higher level in the games industry that that mid that senior that lead i think that's when you'll start seeing lasting change you know so i don't think it's going to be anything within five or ten years i think it's going to be that next generation that comes in and redefines what they did because they grew up with it you know it's like like you and i like we didn't grow up with phones right with cell phones like it was kind of like someone's got a cell phone cool i'm gonna go dig a hole in my backyard for the next five hours because i don't have anything else to do do you know and then you see kids now like phones are their lives that's just they're it's the norm for them and i i think you know for for the older folks that sense of maybe not maybe respect's not the right word but just that inclusion isn't isn't the norm for them or maybe it is but industry-wide it's it's not um or at

least they try yeah but it's it's like um okay a good analogy is like someone who's a native speaker versus someone who's taught right like the kids these days they speak that language natively because they grew up in it and that will force permanent change in the history i think yeah i hope i hope too man because i think uh i think overall it's gonna end up with a better product i mean there are i hate it when people kind of say there's there's there's a method to the madness of crunching people and aggressive deadlines and pushing people to the limit and creative yeah no it's not worth it right because you burn out a lot of people and like i said before once you do one of these big games you want those same people to be motivated to make the next big game right and return and do those things and i'm just not seeing that i don't know if the pandemic really pushed people to their

limits but i'm seeing a lot of on my linkedin a lot of people who's been at like blizzard or are leaving right it's like whoa at this time when inflation is up what is going on like these are if anything before you know pre-tech right before you you your group of people you know people who are there for 20 years at these super established companies were kind of like the ogs of that's that's that's the path of retirement like stay at these big companies you're safe you're golden i mean they're beasts they're being handed to swords that blizzard right for every commemorations right so they're literally given they know that place inside and out and i've noticed the same thing with the past two years for sure yeah it's it's something i i don't have a handle on what's really going on but my sense is the people are questioning basically kind of like going through a midlife crisis a game

game dev crisis right now um unfortunately i the places i see they're going they're going to it's like that's a bad move man we've yeah i've noticed that as well like i wouldn't do that right now i just just stay about like i need to do something and hopefully it works out but my my my i mean overall they might be safe but like i i see a lot of like updates in the next year there's something i think there's a lot of desperation moves being made right now yeah where people just feel like they need to to change and some people are gonna make a good decision on that change and some people aren't you know my my hunch my instinct is just to stay put you know the things are gonna the economy is thankful you have a job yeah yeah yeah yeah this is not the time to make big changes

i mean if you're young you know you can take that risk but you know people with family it's like nope i'm gonna park here for a little while i'll let the storm blow overhead and then you know later on down the line we'll see we'll see if the storm brought in yeah yeah that's i i completely agree like even like well apple you guys are doing fine i was sending you an article you guys are one of two people are doing just fine basically you guys bought benefit through the pandemic and are keeping all the profits yeah and all every other company right now like meta you know i'm sure you have a lot of friends over at facebook that are kind of like yeah really yeah i just got some one of them just reached out yesterday he'd only been there a couple of months and it was like what do you got going on not sure it's like what do you think of course dude have you seen what's what you guys been making lately is any of that interesting to you well yeah that's the thing you know there's the whole financial aspect of getting you know uh

kind of hired over at a place like that because they dangle a lot of money at you oh yeah um but it's like you have to divorce yourself from the finances and be like is this something that's sustainable long-term look at the product itself you know it's something that you would buy that still matters and i feel like even then where i think a year and a half ago i was like yeah you got to go into tech you got to go take this like right now it's like just hold on unless it's apple just hold on don't take any crazy risks everyone is uncertain right now well especially with tech like the i think the average career span at a tech company is like just under two years you know so if you look at like get through that lens like okay maybe i could do something good in two years but do i really want to be in this position in two years again you know maybe you get a good sign-on bonus but my thought might not be worth it so it is uh relieving to kind of hear you're doing well overall i think everybody

kind of who went through this crisis i i always tell people it's good to go through a layoff because i the people i've met who went through a layoff do think differently about the career choices and just how overall they show up to work with a different attitude it's like i'm just thankful i have this but not resting on the laurels either right there that's i think that's the important part i've always tried to always view myself as a freelancer working on site you know i bring i'm a business that i bring to a company you know that business is how i conduct myself the businesses the results that i bring the businesses have the people i can coordinate together and i think if you if you're not if you don't think of yourself as just as someone who comes into this artwork in the leaves but you think of yourself as a business then you start to cultivate that around you you know when you start to it forces you to rely on yourself look for these things and so yeah like that going through a layoff it definitely forced that within myself

say okay well this can end at any time um i'm going to conduct myself accordingly and i'm not going to get too chained or to like you know in on it um i'm not going to rest and that's i think that's the key especially for artists when it's everything's so visual i mean you could spend four years working the company and it goes under there's nothing on your portfolio to show for it yeah yeah and i think you're that's the best advice that i've heard for people in this trying time to just show up to work you're a consultant right your company is on your borrowed time you give them a solid good eight hours a day no more no less be fair about it and then uh you leave because that that's just the industry still um don't like when i see people like get geared up with all the swag he's like oh he's sucked in

think there's there's a there's a oh god how do i put this experience i think especially my experience tells me that you just don't get too close to work yeah you know you can you can find the relationships that work with the people you work with but it's not everything and i think that's always the hardest part to learn because you enter into this industry as a passion work as you know thing that you love to do and i think that's always kind of the hardest thing about it is to over time of working in the games industry like you you learn to distance it uh from yourself um especially going through a layoff like okay i can't get too excited about this and at this i need to conduct myself as as a business like it's much more of a job um than you would ever imagine um

you know it always sounds like oh i'm going to go over and maybe sit in a room with a bunch of bunch of people make fun games but you know it's a job and treat it as such it's not everything that's that's so true if you uh it's nihilistic don't think of that but like it's like um yeah you know if you if you if you expect disappointment you won't get disappointed right don't think it like that but it's a little it's a little bit positive and realistic it is an exchange in services right we pay you for your skill set you give them this that skill set but you go home and you're your own separate person and uh maybe like you said 15 20 years down the line when here's the best promise and version of the game issues that i've seen that is still part of games but not really it's the mobile market it's when i was working at a mobile company in sf

it was my preview of like oh this is where the game this is what game companies could be right um still making games uh for for for uh an audience of the gaming sector which is weird right because mobile players and triple a players never really crossed as much now's yeah different you see it's a little different but yeah warzone but you know they're still kind of separate uh but like it was a preview of a company within the studio uh within the industry where i felt like hey this is how we should conduct business i mean um it was cool because you know it felt like we showed up to work and i'm pretty sure you guys have this there's always like some kind of activity going on you know culture is a big thing and they're always trying to do things to kind of keep you happy they're talking about diversity they're talking about how to make things better and oh yeah we make games too it's like all right when you start making games don't worry about it you know don't think

about it as i have to get this done right now it's more like let's make it as best we can there is like this luxury of time as long as you're profitable right the big asterisk up in they'll take time because we're still making money all right take time make the next dlc awesome right um but it gave me a lot of hope and for whatever reason and maybe ea's doing this because they're doing micro transactions but even then when they're doing like a transaction it's not the same atmosphere right and i think a lot of it has to do with the majority of the mobile companies at least the one i worked at but like i talked to other friends that were in the mobile company aren't game developers or at least didn't come up in the traditional game development scene right they came from college that came from other industries and when we talked about like oh this is my experience in triple h like what the [ __ ] is wrong with you guys i was like yeah i was trying to stab me in the back and was whispering

all these things to my other manager and was preventing me it's like what i thought you guys make games what is game of thrones what's going on and it was like interesting yeah i've worked with some mobile developers at pals companies but i've never worked for mobile um but i kind of pertained to that's probably how it's like at tech companies because they're very different and you know right out of college they're expecting 401k company stocks isn't that the normal if you're not working there for these perks why are you working there she's like that's a good question wow damn i wasn't going to be reflective today but now you forced it for paycheck to paycheck she's like why would you didn't you go to college bro like aren't you trying to like make your life better i didn't get out of debt to go back into debt right while working i was like oh my god but you know it was refreshing to kind of see a mixture of

realities i think i was in a bubble for a while not yes and i think that's a the bubble is a perfect word for it like you get out of it and you're like oh this actually is a little bit more comfortable out here damn all right i guess i'll you know i'll still do the artwork and i'll still like pay attention to the industry but yeah i like this this is good i'm pretty sure you guys have a quarter inch in apple where you're all these triple a guys are coming into your company for the first time they have all like these ptsd jitters hey yo calm down it's okay take coffee from our cafeteria it's like what yeah yeah no one's no one's clocking me it's funny because we i work probably with more film folks um and films even crazier yeah because they they're like on like three-month contracted super month contract and they're like going all over the world because they don't know where they're gonna end up um yeah so yeah work weeks is kind of the norm oh yeah

it's it's it's ridiculous and so hearing their stories like okay now i think i prefer games like it's the same same size you know two sides of the same coin but yeah it's uh alive well i don't know if evolved it's just different branches in the sludge i guess yeah but no no it's uh it's been eye-opening to watch those folks come in yes and that's why it's hard not to be pessimistic about the game stream i hope you're right even when you say 15-20 years i'm hoping that's the case because there's hope in that but because of how our close cousin the movie industry have been so successful right there i remember working at the digital main for a little while right and and this effects guy was parking right in the front with his freaking ferrari you know who's that guy walking in like he's a rock star he's just a nerd behind a computer what's going on don't even talk to him right you can't talk to him he's he talks to the director spielberg and he consults you

know he's the guy where the directors come to right so come on just come on you're a nerd beyond the computer you're a fan away from me let's calm down yeah but like that's that's the respect in terms of respect movies has it where games are starting to but not i don't think we'll ever get quite to the same level of like movie people right and they're still living contract to contract and being shipped around yeah yeah that's a little sobering i guess when you put it that way it hasn't improved at all since i've seen it happening and i hope games don't become that way we're no but we can improve from where we are i hope so too um yeah the the games industry is always given my first love you know and so i was i hope for the best for it yeah i think there's it brings together like so many awesome people like you said earlier like it's like it's funny

yeah i mean you galvanize so many relationships by the crappy things you have to go through and maybe that's it you know it's kind of like a little boot camp in a way um yeah exactly but i mean there are awesome people and i hope that it continues to get awesome people and that you know those awesome people turn out to be awesome managers and awesome founders and awesome you know directors here's the hopeful diversion i think when things get a little better and tech people get a little more bored but it's stable enough or at least somewhat almost attractive enough where some tech people bring some of that culture over and it's like hey this is how it's kind of done outside of this bubble and things need to change i see that maybe happening down the line to kind of help push for change because yeah like you said it's like a lot of people are stuck in the matrix right now and it really does take people outside the matrix to come in to kind of change things up yeah yeah absolutely have to accept living in a closet bro you know letting

your hands you know you can you can and then just you know if you enter back in the industry bring it back with your brain that might set back like things could happen oh yeah it's a trip it's a trip and i'm looking forward to seeing your journey man uh yeah absolutely likewise uh killing it in the tech world we are hitting that hour mark and i want to thank you for coming on and spending time with me i know you're a busy man uh this is the point where a lot of good people want to kind of find out where you are right in terms of how to connect with you all this stuff yeah so anything that you feel like you want to share to the good people out there uh the mic is yours uh yeah so portfolio um is all on our station i gave up the personal website 10 years ago um so you can find me on our station um you can find me on linkedin just ryan bullock can you find it um

you know i i love hearing from people who have questions about the industry i still mentor a little bit on the side so if you're a individual who you know prefers more direct interaction uh just uh my email you yeah ryanespolica gmail.com you know send me thoughts questions anything i'll be happy to answer as soon as i can i'm not much on twitter or anything else so that's that's gonna be it as far as the socials go for me all right cool yeah i'm the same thing i hate talking yeah surprisingly yeah yeah i'm on it but not uh not enough to be on it yeah cool yeah i appreciate you having me this is this is a lot of fun talking shop they don't get enough of the video game you know shop talk yeah it's uh it's trading war stories man it's what i miss the most cool well thanks again for having me and uh i look forward to seeing uh what you do with your time here

it seems like you're always off doing stuff so i'm all i'm a busy bee i guess busy too distracted hopefully not too distracted thanks for tuning in guys thanks for listening i'll see you guys next week [Music]