Redefining Success with Jodie Azhar | GduX.me

[Music] so hello I think this is the penultimate talk of the Expo so I hope everyone's enjoyed the talk so far and I really hope that this comes off as a really positive talk because it's gonna I think it's going to be a bit of a different perspective from a lot of the other speakers so I'm Joe Diaz ha I'm currently the CEO of teasel cap games were an independent studio that I set up at the end of last year prior to that I was the technical art director for total war I've spent 10 years in the industry working in the UK I'm also a founding member of POC in play alongside des the previous speaker POC and play is a racial equity and inclusion movement for video games based here in the UK and I'm also on the advisory board for games for

EU which is a grassroots UK games industry movement to fight against brexit because unions are awesome and I love making games and I think there are some awesome parts of our industry and then it's possible to have a long and healthy career making video games so why am i talking about redefining success well it is a great industry but it is competitive people do get made redundant people suffer from burnout and sometimes you have to make difficult life choices - in order to have the career that you want but it is a highly profitable industry in the UK video games industry is worth more than film and music combined and while this talk is called redefining success its kind of

turned into a little bit of a retrospective introspective because after hearing Larry and Brandon speak and some of the other speakers over the last few days I think there's a lot of concern by people about being able to have a good career so I want to give some perspective from someone who's had a very stable career I have never crunched not in my entire 10-year career I became a technical art director at a studio where my team and I was supporting over 90 artists and I got there without having done any crunch I've been made redundant technically once I survived three redundancies but one of them I took voluntarily because I wanted to pursue a different position and I've been paid pretty well throughout my career and a big part of I guess our

success came from decisions I made and what I prioritized what I decided success would look like for me decisions like where I worked and what I was willing to put up with and yet despite reaching the top of the technical art ladder so even within sort of to be a technical art director that's a position that only exists in large studios that can actually sustain someone being at the top of that department and having other technical artists below them despite that despite being successful and enjoying that I still decided to go independent so I want people to be aware that there is stability out there it's not a pipe dream to want to make video games and sort of have balanced life but also that having security means that you

can scrutinize the industry you can chase what makes you happy instead of worrying whether you're gonna have a job in six months time or whether you're going to have enough money in the bank if you decide to take a holiday so the nice dictionary definition that comes with these times of talk what is success it's the accomplishment of an aim or purpose so it sounds like success is intentional it's this wanting something and then getting it but that doesn't really answer the question for us how do I know if I'm successful and how do I know whether what I want is right and it's a bit of a cheat because there is no correct answer I can tell you what worked for me what shaped my decisions but that doesn't mean that those

decisions are what's best for you I have no idea about your particular situations like anyone watching this what your life is like what your dreams and ambitions are but I can tell you sort of how I came to my conclusions sorry have some sort of aims and purposes in my career I want to have a career making games oh I love making games I want to be doing it my whole life I can't think of what else I'd be doing right now I also want to feel useful in my job and I want to live comfortably so I don't want to constantly be worrying about things and how's that going for me well pretty good so far I managed to become a technical art director in the past ten years I've shipped ten PC and console games and

helped ship a couple of mobile games in 2016 I was BAFTA breakthrough Brit which is an initiative that supports up-and-coming creative talent in film television and video games here in the UK I've also been featured on several sort of honors lists I'm an award winner and have been nominated multiple times Anna founded my own studio so I think on all accounts kind of looks like hey is a successful person yeah definitely sort of ticking they're having a career making games box but these achievements have been pretty situational for me I couldn't have been a director if I had worked at a small studio and I wasn't specifically aiming for that particular title and similarly I can't decide when a studio workout will release a game so I

can't control how many titles I'll help ship for some people though those might be goals if you want to say release ten games in 10 years you might look at studios that have a track record of releasing a title every year or work on multiple titles at once and these are also just the achievements that you can see from the outside anyone can go to my LinkedIn profile they can look these up or you can find them on my CV and there are other achievements that kind of mean a bit more to me so in my entire career I've done 10 maybe 12 days of overtime that's not crunch that's days when I've stayed long late enough that the company has bought me dinner there have been

days where I've just stayed like that extra half-hour to finish off something because I know if I leave it till the next day I'll spend longer try remember where I was in the process and catching up on it but I think that's it's pretty significant to kind of go like 10 days where I've stayed late to kind of go beyond sort of the work that I'm being paid for and working in the UK I only do 7 and a half hour days anyway so it's I'm very like anti crunch I think any of the benefits that we kind of say oh well crunch is kind of good in these situations I think we can find those benefits elsewhere we can build the company cultures that give us the benefits that come with crunch without having to actually do it and no company if people

stop doing crunch would go oh we're not profitable anymore well we'll just stop making games companies take advantage of the fact that making video games is a creative process and that people want to do a good job because they want their work to be seen so the highest quality so it's kind of the more that we do over time the more that we crunch we're hiding the problems with the pipeline that are essentially causing crunch to happen and companies then aren't going to fix those pipeline issues because why would it if it's more cost-effective for them to get work for free if this was any other industry they'd have to solve these technical issues in other ways if people are just like I'm not going to work unpaid overtime because I don't have

that creative tied to my work and and also I think having been a team lead it's important to set an example to others if I'm staying late younger people and my team are going to think that that's what you have to do and I think especially early on in your career you've got all that energy but you kind of you you don't have the experience to be making sort of the right decisions you'll kind of go gun ho into things and we kind of have a responsibility as sort of more seasoned aus to lead by example another of my dealings with inspiring people to become technical artists they're still not a huge number of technical artists in the industry it's still a job role that I'm still having to explain to some people that I work

with what exactly we and I've really enjoyed giving career talks not just about being a technical artist but about any job that exists within the videogames industry cuz it'll all the time like certainly when I was at school it kind of didn't click with me that people make games and that I could do that for a career so being able to tell them actually it is very technical it is very creative you can have a good job being a technical person being an artist or anywhere in between and I've had a couple of people now because I've been doing these career talks for a while who have spoken to me after they've got their first job in the industry and said thank you for giving that talk it really inspired me it kind of it told me that there was this job role I didn't know about that was of real interest to me so it's it's it

feels like a real success to have kind of changed someone's life in a way of going hey here's a job that maybe it'll appeal to like one in a hundred maybe 1000 people but if I hadn't been there on that day they might not have discovered it at all or maybe for like several years down the line and being told I was a good manager was a huge success for me I've not had a manager who really understood what I did as a technical artist and in some cases I've had kind of incompetent team leads who have been in charge with me you've kind of got to a position because they've wanted that career advancement and I've seen a leadership role is that way to do it or they've been in a company long enough that they've fallen into it but they're not actually passionate about leading their or inspiring people and in some cases it

can have a really detrimental effect on employees like there's the saying of people leave because of bad managers so for me taking on the responsibilities as a team lead and as a department director I had to be aware for myself that I can be affecting people's lives so being told by members of my team that I was a good manager was kind of that to me is almost a bigger success than like shipping a game and I kind of had to do a disclaimer of I live in the UK and it definitely feels a lot more stable over here than in the US we still have some major studio closures sort of every so often but because the UK is relatively small for the number of studios that we have there are over 2,000 studios across the UK ranging from independent

one-person studios to those hiring hundreds of people when there are Studio closures there's a good community of support that neighboring studios want to hire good people and it's usually a case of if you need to relocate it's usually within a hundred miles not the other side of the continent and definitely for me going independent having the National Health Service makes it a lot easier to decide that I can support myself without worrying that I'll have an accident and I hurt myself and weirdly I never wanted to make my own game it was never sort of on my list of like these are the this is my bucket list of things I have to do in life I was really quite happy just being good at my job contributing to games that weren't my idea but as long as they're not problematic games I can still feel

accomplished just having a good job being good at my profession and improving my skills in that area so what am i doing running my own studio like I was in a perfectly like good stable job enjoying doing technical art but there's a lot that you can do interplay and there's a lot of problems that come from working at a big studio when you work with a lot of people company culture is made up of every single person who works there so when you have a lot of employees it's hard to change that culture because people are used to things being a certain way you have to give people a reason to feel invested in change and here feeling useful in my job

is a really important thing for me like after a certain point sort of financially no one can give you more money and that will make you happier I have to feel that what I'm doing is useful so if I'd carried on being a technical art director there were a lot of useful things I would have carried on doing but there were things that I couldn't do because of processes because you're one department in many and it can be hard to sort of change takes a long time so while I think a lot of studios are improving or at least they're thinking about improving and definitely where I was working they were trying to put in processes of thinking about employee welfare I felt that I could make a bigger change going off and

starting teasel cap I could do something that I wouldn't be able to do at a large studio as an independent developer I don't want to just make games for the sake of it where I am in my life and my career means that success for me is releasing a game that appeals to people who thought they don't have a huge range of games that are sort of aimed at them right now it's being able to create something from my own interests from my experiences as female queer and mixed-race something I'd have less creative control with working our larger studio and I want to build an inclusive studio where the people with different ideas and diverse ranges of ideas can come together and build new and exciting games and have the space and support to do the best job that they can without sort of bureaucracy without hierarchy because I'll be a better developer for having other people's ideas and skills contribute to work I care about and I

can build an environment that allows the team to define the kind of game we create it's very different from my previous success of being a really great technical artist but it makes me feel useful I'm still very pragmatic about what success as an indie developer looks like for me like I'm not gonna take six years to complete a project part of that would be because I just get bored and hate it after all I'd need to complete something and also it feel that it wasn't what I set out to achieve this is still my job and it needs to be financially viable and that looks flexible to me so I don't need to sell a hundred thousand copies if I cover my costs and have enough money to start the next project that's a success making enough money to hire full-time staff is even more of a success and that's

different from what success would look like to someone starting a game studio who might have less experience and it's more critical for them to release a game soon and learn from that entire process and it's different from someone who their aim is to run a big studio and they're having to pay people salaries every month and make their goal live comfortably this one kind of I had to sort of learn early on how to negotiate and know sort of what was comfortable salary for me and I think that's important to know what you're worth so that you can sort of make those life decisions about do I want to buy a house where do I want to settle yeah and I have this main life goal of

be happy it helps me choose what I want will one thing make me happier than another will putting an effort to gain something in the future make me happier than getting something now that might be smaller but it's more immediate and if I'm not six if I'm not happy what's the use of being successful because you can't get your time back you can never go back and change things like once you've decided to stay late that's it I mean you you you might finish some work you might create something you're really proud of but once it starts affecting your house then you can only try and fix the problem but it's a lot better to try and prevent it and you have to decide what the best use of your time is whether you

care so much about I want to make the best game or I want to release like the best-selling game and I want to work on that but you don't always have to be on you don't always have to be sort of being a game developer it's okay to switch off at the end of the day and it's a young industry and people are still working things out we're gonna get things wrong there isn't really a right way of doing things but there are certainly things that are bad so yeah I can't tell you what successes for you but I can suggest a few ways of what I might look like how to decide when it's time to change what you think successes your goals can and will change and it's not a failure to change what you want

even if that means giving up on your dream dreams can change we discover new things new ideas all the time we can realize that actually what we originally wanted wouldn't make us happy or that something else would make us more happy this could be something new that we've discovered or it could be just a revaluation based on new knowledge experience or a change in priorities when you start in the industry you don't know what every single job role involves so you might decide you want to change career path you might decide you want to start a family goals and responsibilities will change throughout life and this changes the priority of different things and what achievements are important to you and it's good to be realistic

you're not the exception to the rule everyone suffers from crunch but to different extents I think they've already been some talks during the expo that have covered sort of the impact of crunch but we're susceptible to thinking that we can we're not the person who's who's gonna gonna suffer the most we're the ones who can sort of like be that sort of like 50 hour like limit and that will be fine but really there's there's there's a bigger chance that we're not gonna be fine because it's an average like mathematically you're probably going to suffer and it's important to know that a company's failure isn't your failure if a producer is asking you to work late by that point they already know that they're in trouble working

smart is better than working hard like you can hammer on with a task going like oh I know exactly what I'm doing sort of it's the same process over and over again I can sort of I can just complete this in a couple of days whereas taking so like an hour to sort of sit back and go actually how do i improve this process or if I go and talk to another department can I do this in a more efficient way being happier doing a valuable job than your dream job I think there's there's a lot of glamorization about working in the video games industry kind of being able to point a multi selling game that someone's playing go I made that but that's kind of the thing right at the end and that

might be the thing that makes you happy but you've got I don't know a year three years of development that is gonna have a bigger impact on your life and when you're being realistic about things you might realize that actually that time developing it's more important to feel valuable doing that then sort of seeing your your character at the end or seeing your system at the end it's also good to be realistic about your skills and what the industry needs I speak to a lot of students who want to be concept artists which is a really competitive area there's not a huge amount of jobs and unless you're kind of top tier you're probably not gonna find a job in the industry but a role the places I've worked that I've often found difficult

to fill is UI artists and there's a fair bit of crossover between UI r and concept art a lot of it is 2d Ellis tration or taking art and design and creating something usable and functional and I don't know for me there are benefits to UI of your artwork will actually be seen in the game it's not just concepts it's not just the images that people will base their work off of but you're creating something that's going to be part of the game title that players are going to see and you can choose a lifestyle that suits you would you be happier in a stable job then kind of going after like your Triple A Dream is the company culture actually a good fit for you we work in an industry where you get to

know other people or the developers and it's good to actually find out what the studio is like and to if you find out that a studio isn't ideal to not think that you'll be the exception that can change it by yourself or you can avoid it if there is crunch culture and everyone feels that that camaraderie of like hey we're all doing it if you don't want to put yourself in the awkward position of going I'm gonna leave when I've done my hours then that's kind of it's good to know that up front because you can choose what to do you can't go home on time but there are studios that don't have those kind of cultures that it's a lot easier to work with other people who don't expect it is the location right for you do you really want to be spending three hours a day

traveling do you want to have to live in a small apartment to not keep pets to not be near family what happens if you are laid off and all these decisions that only you can make maybe you're fine living in a small apartment because actually you spend a lot of time out and about what part of the industry do you want to be part of and what suits your lifestyle being indie isn't sort of it's not as stable or financially viable as working for a studio that pays your salary every month it's great to have a job and get paid regularly and know that you can always expect that so it might seem sort of really cool and are you

living the dream to be independent but running a studio isn't for everyone and sort of taking a cut to your salary to be sort of feel that you're more creative isn't for everyone it's okay to have a studio job even if it's not sort of like a really big title you can still do really good valuable work and feel appreciated and skilled and talented in what you do can you pursue interests outside of work does the lifestyle of the studio other people support kind of what what you want would it be frowned upon if you went home early or is it in a location where there are other interesting things to do or are you kind of gonna be stuck somewhere where it's

got terrible transport links and you suddenly realize actually you miss having access to big cities or to your friends easily and also don't let somebody else's idea of a dream job guide you if it's not for you I know sort of for me I kind of got to the top of the ladder and and and that was that was great but I always kind of got there because of the opportunity not because I set out to do it and you don't want to become a team leader or a people manager because that seems like a good or prominent high profile job do it because you will enjoy it because you want to do it and gain developments not your life if things do go wrong your company's not going to be there to

support you if they're having to lay you off they don't have the time to find jobs for everyone your boss isn't gonna support you but your family will and it's important to give time to the people who are going to have you who've got your back in difficult situations you can be good at your job while still treating as a job you can enjoy it without being married to it and say hey I've done I've done my hours I did a really good job and I did exactly what I was paid for and I don't feel bad going home and also decide where to spend your time going to events takes energy like when all your friends or it seems like everyone you know is going to GDC and you either can't afford it or you don't have the energy for it it's okay to sort of not be involved with every thing that

sort of turns up every conference every sort of opportunity I know people sort of early in their careers can sometimes feel like they have to take every opportunity because they don't know like sort of which networking event is going to be the one where they make a connection but going to these events is a lot of the time it's still work it's still taking your energy do network it's really valuable but don't feel that you have to be present every single time or that you're if you don't you're going to be terribly missing out it is important to be aware of later software what's going on in the industry and be adaptable change it adaptable to change but unless you're learning something specific in order to gain a skill that you care about or in order to get a new job so you can change a situation then you don't have to spend

every moment of your free time learning every new bit of software every tool every engine that sort of appears you can spend your free time doing stuff you love because it will make you an more interesting person it will feed into your creativity to spend time doing things that aren't game development that aren't even playing video games and it and it rests you it means that you can spend your creative work time that you love so much loving it and looking forward to going to work nobody on their deathbed wishes they'd spent more time at work so make time for things that matter in life and understand what's enough a studio is a

business and they pay you for your skills and the value that you bring to the project enough is doing the job you agreed to not breaking your back if they've created unrealistic deadlines if you didn't finish something this week that you wanted to but you know that you worked your best and did the job you're paid to do and this week was a success it's enough just to have a job and do it well you don't have to want to be leading a team or be in charge of things you don't have to rush ahead and be the best to appreciate the success that you've got right now you don't need to be well-known on in the industry or online you don't need a massive Twitter following or have your work in magazines to be a success you shouldn't feel guilty for going home on time you shouldn't feel guilty for not making games in your free time you shouldn't feel guilty for not going to events and

you shouldn't feel guilty for enjoying life being happy is a success and that's enough are we taking questions now but if you're watching the stream at a later date then I have some contact details if you ever want to get in touch so yes Julie thank you first before we get into the queue a part of everything we really appreciate your speech also I love the the uplifting ending like the voice not moderation they used to like being happy and having a good life is success I was like no I can tell it's about over let me give you like cute us in and so we were already ready on our end but yes we are taking questions directly from the audience and twitch chat and I believe we've got one yeah I'll go ahead and ask my first question so this is from Ben Mears one what are some good tools for aspiring tech artists to learn so there are four main

skills that I look for in technical artists because technical art covers such a range of things like depending on what project you're working on or what studio you're at you could be doing doing anything from making writing shaders to making tools to prototyping things so yeah the four main skills are if I could remember I'll totally forget and terrible no at least one art process so whether that's character modeling texturing process environment art VFX you kind of need to know at least one Arab are to not making things and know a programming or scripting language because we'll be doing technical things and work well in a team because the artists are your clients if you don't like working with other people then it's

it's going to be an instant fail I've completely forgotten the fourth one but oh yeah and be a problem-solver which is the main one because that very much what being a technical artist is you have to enjoy in solving problems because a lot of the time you're not just making art you're you're finding ways of making art or you're supporting the artists so being able to identify what their problems are sometimes when they don't even realize it you've got a you've got a love that aspect of it yeah so tools I think it it will change depending on where you work and how technology advances in terms of scripting languages pythons pretty useful to know because it's used in many different bits of software but you know being adaptable because once you start

learning skills as a technical artist they're very sort of transferable you might be working you'll be working with different game engines with limited unreal something in-house but kind of just being able to adapt to that so nothing kind of too specific I guess it's it'll mostly be what artists are using but yeah python is a good language and fight problems and fix them that's great I've questioned number two from India bellever it is what's been your biggest lesson in owning your own studio because listen um the biggest thing we've had to learn is the business side I'm being honest with myself it's it's not where my passion lies and definitely more of a developer but I glad I've learned the business sorry it I think if if I had been starting off

and there was someone who loved the business signs that I knew I could trust then I would totally have a business person like if if there's anyone out there who loves bizdev then you contact me I would love to pay someone to take sort of that side and run with it and be passionate about it but because when I set up the studio it's I definitely want to do on my terms I think Rebecca Saltzman covered sort of its side of stuff with sort of the maths behind sort of running you're running a studio and the fact that unknown might enable do stuff now but it's somebody else's money you've got to pay it back so any investment opportunity I kind of look at critically of instace right for what me and my company is it better to keep sort of the studio what we produce on a

smaller scale so we're spending less money so we don't have to sell as many copies so for me to someone early and kind of go you we're going to have to pay ourselves absolute minimum unless I found someone with that vision I kind of like I couldn't do that so you know learning the business side because it is a business I want to make money so I can pay people so I can make the next game that's biggest thing for me to learn yeah it's definitely those it's a skill set that you kind of observe casually until you actually start doing it when you're like branding yourselves starting your own business finally talking to lawyers fine listening to producers it's it's something you definitely start appreciating everybody's role a lot more because now you have to you know wear

different hats and it's a natural progression a lot of the things that you were presenting first of all congratulations alright ten times over time for the last ten years I think this is our group entire careers record and we we want that that is exactly how it should be Shan be surprised yeah shouldn't be surprised I think anybody who are very comfortable and telling anybody or just mean all setting an example especially as a leader saying I this you can still get your stuff done and go home you know it's about efficiency and not about like taking forever on something aside from that I guess see obviously UK is a lot different from the US you spoke about unions are awesome for for anybody in the u.s. right now can you kind of explain the function over there more so since we're trying to get this thing going and it's not just the opposition

from the corporate its opposition within our own deaf community and I think there's just a lot of confusion obviously we had Emma canaima on first and she helped clear the air but I would love to hear some perspective from the UK about the yeah so unfortunately for me when we got a game workers union I was then a CEO so I can't join the union because I have hiring and firing power so I'm on the other side of the table now where my employees can join the union and as an employee you so yeah I'll be talking from what I know of unions over here in the UK as an employee you don't have to tell your company your manager or anyone that you are part of a union you have certain support such as if you're doing

salary negotiations with your company you can bring in a union representative to talk on your behalf so that can be someone who doesn't even work at your company they've not got like an interest in sort of I don't know getting you the most money because they're your friend or because they work in the same department then when everyone's get paid well their interest is it everyone getting paid fairly and the union should have wider knowledge than just where you work and that's that's that's the great power of the kind of the network of the Union is that they'll be talking to people who work at different studios they should hopefully have statistics on what is the actual salary expectation for sort of different roles and at different levels they might not know sort of like fine tune you make if you've got X skill and somebody else

doesn't but I mean that's that's a big part of kind of the Union supporting sort of the soldering side of things is that they'll have these brackets to keep people feeling paid fairly and overall people will be happier sort of not worrying and so on who joined the project a crucial time could just ask for more money because a company is just going to say yes to that in the UK you can't strike unless you are part of a union so if anyone over here did want to go on strike then they'd have to join the union so there are the potential florals doing that in the future yeah and I think just having that having a union there who is there to talk and it's not

kind of just people running the union and they tell you what to do your or tell you how things should be you're contributing to that every single person who joins the Union every member has a say and that's kind of how democracy works so I think in the time that the Union over here that it's been running I think it went since December last year they've had two elections I think one was to sort of decide the chair and vice-chair sort of in there we've just set it up intermediary time and as they got new members they reelected people the treasurer so it's it's definitely a lot of work running in Union and I think that's a big part of why it takes so long to get these things up and running because it's a whole set of skills that is in gaming development and it's not creative so it takes two people who have the energy to go I want to change this

and I'm going to put time into doing something that's organizing a lot of people but yeah it's having all those people and having their voices and during how we want the industry to look how do we want fair practices to look like what should guidelines be for hiring equally for making sort of the industry and positions available to people from all different backgrounds for yeah making how do we see our industry looking better so yeah yeah from my perspective yet unionization is is very positive all right I've got a quick question for you this one is from left-handed Heather the question is about first thanking you for your insight in the talk and she says it's so important to maintain balance but it's also so difficult I feel like a

lot of us are taught to seek the best and not what makes us happy do you have any advice for people that have the tendency towards going above and beyond because because of these sorts of ideals okay that yeah that is the tricky one and I think I guess my advice would be find people who can support alternative views or if you think actually these aren't the best practices and it's not right for me finding people with different perspective and that can be a really good thing and it can be a really dangerous thing because we do end up sort of living in these echo chambers of if you're a studio that has crunch and everyone's just used to it you kind of

get that echo of like it's fine we're all in this together alternatively like you can have pretty I mean even worse echo chambers I mean we sort of see this sort of rise of the very right-wing individuals in in sort of politics and and I mean gamergate they've got a space on the Internet where people echoing that this is this is fine and and our opinions are perfectly valid but finding finding those sort of voices and people that you respect our side of kind of that immediate people who are enforcing that yeah you have to be the best and that's achievement especially finding finding people who are more senior in their industry especially for me finding senior women

because they've kind of been through it so like there's I mean for me there's loads of useful advice from men but when I kind of had female all the female mentors or like mentors I respected that were kind of like yeah that's totally okay and and what you want is valid and that's a no right thing to to one it felt I had a lot more belief in in that than kind of just sort of someone offhand being like yeah you can like not do Cranshaw hey you're good at this and I really and finding interesting talks online like there's plenty of GDC talks about people doing interesting things a big one for me was free code because she said she had quite a similar experience

to me and that she'd been a lead in triple-a working on Assassin's Creed and then she went off and did her own thing which is making video games that she calls them companions their mobile apps that aren't about getting immediate reward from like like seeing numbers go up but that give you kind of an emotional reward back of like feel-good feeling so finding people out there who can kind of say yeah there is success there and it's okay to want stuff that isn't sort of being at the top of your game and being triple-a or sort of working on multi-million selling profitable whatever it's it's okay to want those things and still go I value my health and I know what my

limits are but just because of the environments and the culture that comes with those kind of studios it can be a little you can be sort of the odd person out but yeah definitely where I work previously like Creative Assembly pretty much very very limited over time for a lot of the development team like nobody ever asked me to to specifically do overtime and yeah it is it does feel it's a lot easier in the UK but I think that's sort of like yeah knowing knowing your boundaries and I guess going like hey if I if I work at a double-a studio and not triple-a I'll actually be happier but yeah finding those people who who will support those decisions and go yeah

actually this is what works for you and it's okay - one that definitely helps you like even if it's just like people on Twitter that sort of like a crisis time am i doing the right thing yeah having friends to just go yeah you know yourself go with it well Jodie you're you're painting a really pretty picture overseas hoxsey 3d asked would you suggest a move to the UK from the US since you said it has some pretty big financial benefits yes I think yeah having grown up with the NHS and not having to do my own taxes yeah basically like not having to worry about things means that I guess from the opposite perspective I kind of just wouldn't myself consider a career in the u.s. so I guess the other way around is yes the

UK is a good place to work so yeah come join us especially for particular careers that there are skill shortages there UK definitely hires people from over see places that I've worked of hide people from all the world and yeah where I worked before they never had a visa rejected because you have to be skilled to make video games and and if we can't find the talent in the UK then we're gonna have to look overseas which is one of the really depressing things about brexit for us right now is like oh it's really it's really easy to hire people from Europe right now and I don't want that to go away say yeah definitely consider it I think the the main challenge is kind of understanding the salary conversion because if you just look at the numbers even with a sort of direct like what is the currency conversion right now I think because of having to do you're

like do your own taxes or whatever the system is depending on where you are in the US and it often looks like you're earning a lot more in the u.s. sometimes that it's the case possibly because it's more volatile but a lot of the time because you've often got more holidays in the UK you'll have other benefits you don't need an expensive car to get places you can walk yeah yeah I like working in the UK it's it's very nice and we also have castles it's just cool Queens to go in there to go away well then I hate to do this but the way that time works there's only so much of it and Jody you've given us more than enough content to fill the hour a night from the bottom of my heart I appreciate your involvement in us having the very first G ducks ever like no one has ever

done this before the way that we've done it and you're a part of the very first one and you're on day three and you're still keeping the energy live everyone didn't which Chet was like saying this is great energy it's good and perspective we really appreciate what you're doing and then one person's even saying it's a start to helping the United States get the kind of things that you have over there and so you got to start somewhere and so I really appreciate everything that you've done and I also refuse to crunch I want from now on if I work more than ten days I'm serious like now that's I'm gonna reset and now I'm gonna see if I can tie that record or beat it starting from now because you did I think your 10-day quota for your whole career was probably like my bimonthly quota if you average it across all my jobs yeah something like that it definitely helps to have a spelling out you do not crunch so I've been on this bandwagon for a long long time but uh yeah I mean the reality is is is within the developers control I

think a lot of people get lost thinking that they have to do this have to do that it's like now you're your own person you you have your own values and there are other ways and that's the thing I think a lot of people get funneled division tunnel vision and to thinking yeah either way tunnel vision into thinking that this is the only way it works for the industry and they are so blinded from everything and everyone that is succeeding with the same skill set so one of the reasons why we have Jody on and every other speak is to kind of hate there are other ways obviously so Thank You Jody again for for coming on yeah and we wished your studio your studio yours too much success and prosperity in the future we hope to hear more about your achieve and accomplishments so please feel free to brag to us whenever you want we're gonna throw your slides up ways to contact you but thank you so much for joining us and talk to you soon

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