Unchained Life Thus Far 1.5 Years Working for Myself | SoapBox | Game Dev Unchained Episode 240

[Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev unchained i am your host brandon fam this is the number one game development podcast about game development in the lifestyle there i love and uh today it's just gonna be me right this is an episode dedicated to the fans about me uh it is a new segment of the show that i want to introduce every couple months i think it's be the appropriate time and it is called the soapbox right so what is the soapbox dedicated to my unchained development uh

status right so the one when i started this podcast about five five years ago man it's almost that it was the the beginning of a theory of let's do something about the industry it's on this trajectory and um it doesn't seem to be stopping whereas the workers of the industry um anywhere even including leeds and under are in this perpetual cycle of crunching and uh endless endless uh chase of the next job right and uh didn't seem like it was improving and the industry jaws felt like it was getting smaller and smaller so the choices got more and more limited uh this is again just thinking back what

the beginning the podcast and what the climate was with the gaming stream and there were only if you know a few selected mecca cities like los angeles san francisco austin texas seattle um that were concentrated game development areas for people kind of settle in and that came with the the the the the problems of commuting right but these are mega cities basically so uh these areas that are concentrated are pretty expensive therefore you would have to commute to work on average a dedicated 2-3 hours every day so that this was the norm and you flashboard five years after uh to today um we have a pandemic the game industry is on

its next gen cycle with the ps5 and xbox series x there are a lot of things to be thankful for a lot of things to be excited about uh vr gaming is i think it's on its either second or third uh uh uphill battle of uh getting getting the masses kind of to buy in i think the quest two is clearly the leader in this it looks exciting it's removing all the wires uh streaming games is becoming more the norm with pretty much every tech company major game publisher uh having their own type of services like sony with their playstation now xbox with its game pass google stadia entering its um entering into the field uh and and most recently amazon luna

uh and then nvidia even has its own kind of uh streaming service so there's a lot of things to be excited about uh a lot of things to be scared about so what the soapbox and the intent of the show is to kind of make it less generalized right i wanted to kind of talk about my experience because uh that's all i know uh for sure and so when we when larry and i started this podcast um it was at that time trying to navigate through this industry and ask professionals who found these outlets uh within this this this machine uh a place where they could thrive right and i i've always felt like there were three ways of finding independence and happiness within the game industry

you don't have to hit all three but two out of three is always like seems to be the magic number here which is choosing where you live uh choosing what you work on and then uh well i mean i think money plays a factor right so it's some money in financial freedom right and so if you get two those three if you're super awesome you get three out of three you generally have like a pretty good grip on your career path and who you are in the industry so for me starting the podcast and bringing all these awesome people on experts in the fields was to kind of navigate my own and chart my own path trying to hit those all three i have to say that flat you know flash forward to today i luckily and methodically am able to hit all three and i am infinitely a lot happier so even with the pandemic

i think people are getting a taste of that lifestyle more everybody's working from home i did not see that coming i always felt and all of a said repeatedly that office politics have to do with the office usually being in the office and i felt like a good portion of those problems will go away as soon as you find that ability to work from home and to not worry about moving to a city you don't really like to stay within your hometown right so that that's the part of where you live and and having that creative freedom to work on what you want and having that financial stability the third arm of my theory there uh to completely be free of worry right and and i've i kind of mentioned this many times where

there is a portion that although we're kind of luckily falling into that by default because of the dynamic everyone's working from home uh these major companies that were resistant to that are forced into that type of thinking now and have by this point uh created an infrastructure to support hundreds of people working from home right uh that barrier is completely removed all the resources all the money already has been spent uh to invest in this future because the pandemic is far from over maybe in 2021 in the foreseeable future and a return from that will be either a hybrid but i don't think a complete reversal with that being said what's going on well i mean we're connected i'm connected you're connected you are probably working at these studios and you're probably seeing the aftermath of this very hip hippie thought of

everywhere work from home which means everyone's happy and projects get done it's quite the opposite i think it's actually um where we're in in a place where it's uh i think we're we're in the precipice of a major layoff disaster i've gathered from the stories that i'm gathering from people i'm hearing from uh major studios that are delaying deadlines and milestones and a recent story uh that you guys should check out is uh gabe noel right gabe newell just recently are thinking of just relocating temporarily all their steam workers as kind of like it paid for vacation in hobbiton in new zealand uh not exactly where the hobbits are but new zealand's kind of known as the

leader of a major country right now that's handling their with the pandemic and have this uh virus completely on lockdown when when anything seeps through and everybody's relatively living normal lives over there just being out and about and it's a beautiful country right so uh a recent proposal on what they're and he's going straight to the prime minister or the president i forget what they refer their their leader over there on uh making the logistics work and i think there was a whole press day about this conversation and only press was able to paraphrase but weren't able to kind of reveal the the exact details of what was said only just certain quotes that were um that were prepared for press release but the idea of the conversation was what would that scenario look like and a lot of data was shared and you know given that valve doesn't really have like a great record of um productivity right i mean they take

forever uh to ship a game um that's not to say they don't work but i would just have to somehow parallel that to you know if there's nothing publicly shown in your private company right in your your your place that's supposed to be shipping out games and you're not shipping out games uh you know the end result is the only thing that matters then you're not doing anything right but so put that aside valve is finding that uh 70 or above of inefficiency with this pandemic right and that kind of falls in line with my suspicion to also what i'm hearing about the industry at large where deadlines are just not being met and there is there is as a whole in in to the game developer in in general the population we do need that in-office interaction to

make things work the brainstorming session was referenced a lot in where valve was just having complete difficulty it wasn't about motivation but in terms of um productivity it was just difficult to get things going you know multiple zoom meetings just doesn't get the job done as if if you're at the creative front of a project and you need that interaction with everybody to participate currently the pandemic and these virtual solutions are not good enough and um the human factor i think plays a major role in why things are just being pushed back people are just not good at self discipline and productivity and a lot of it it's not just that they don't want to get work done of course

they do their livelihood and their job requires them to i think the balance is what throws people off with especially senior developers that are not single uh have wives and kids or husbands to to balance and it's hard to carve out a comfortable space uh as well within their home uh to dedicate to just work right and that's the advantage of being in office it's like fully concentrated for and designed for work although i had my suspicion i didn't i didn't think it would be that big of a problem i think with mo with many we were just hearing a over bearing amount of uh people celebrating that yeah i get more work done and i think that those voices are a small percentage of the whole because who who actually announces that hey man

i'm actually not getting a lot work done and this sucks and i'm fearful for my job performance currently uh and i don't know what to do right no one's gonna say that publicly right but that's the majority of people right now in the industry and so i guess what i can do to relate to that is like wow you know the soapbox isn't just a survey of what's going on but my opinion on at least what i'm going through too so what's funny is like i'm hearing every every you know i thank you for a lot of fans uh reaching out through emails and stuff i love having conversations outside the podcast uh on our discord to kind of catch up with all you guys and everything like that and uh every few often i i would get an awesome email uh of someone finding uh the podcast and uh thrilled that there are hundreds of episodes uh they have to go through and they're starting for episode one right so i

gotta start coming up with the nomenclature for for these people who are like warrioring through from episode one which was even for me it's hard to listen to because of the little tech that's involved creating the first episode uh they are in for a rude awakening by episode 200 when the breakup happened right so uh that last year was the greatest challenge going from a a partnership podcast to a solo and i had to get very comfortable talking to the camera to you guys uh for long periods of time just to externalize my thoughts and i personally still feel that i work better bouncing off from someone else and i just like the natural evolution of a conversation and less about talking to myself to a camera right but that's just the way it is um and

i've learned through the hard way man like these lessons even when i before i went unchained where you know uh i guess at least a little status update last time i talked to you guys you know i run three companies right now um you know the the game dev unchained as well as the other shows are under the blue champs uh ran name right that encompasses everything uh entertainment and media and then i run an online school as you guys may know to teach you know students anybody who wants to learn game design or game development at an affordable price and in most cases even free which reminds me this this month uh this week we're opening up free enrollment for those who are interested and then uh the main the main money maker uh the one that's floating my boat and

my family suppose godemics and it's like a co-development studio so we work with a lot of aaa indie so i'm still uh working with these awesome ips and um projects that i would have continued uh if i were working for these studios independently but as a company now we're we've grown to uh 20 plus people full-time and contractors been running it for three years uh with my partner leo gonzalez we've i've had him on on this podcast a couple of times great partner awesome guy learning a lot from him and it's been fun just navigating this thing with him i've never intended even at the start podcast to see myself as a businessman where most of my day is business development and less about art production didn't see that shift going i always thought i would always be

producing art and you know in in a weird way naturally right i would love to kind of take care of both my day just making art but that's not the case you know uh i'm just in another stage of my career in life now where i got to worry about all the the uh the structure of business right and never went to business school you know you guys long time listeners know i went to a overpriced art school uh didn't even have a business elective right so a lot of this is through self learning and experience and failing fast which happens to be my forte of how i usually learn things i kind of just do things terribly at first so uh even with the podcast kind of theoretically or meant was meant to for me to prepare for this lifestyle that i'm going through right now

when i took the leap of faith it was still a leap of faith it was my idea of safety was completely destroyed i think within the first month or two because it the reason why the podcast is called game devon chain it really felt like that i felt like i stepped out of the matrix a bit because i was used to a salary job i was used to earning a paycheck every two weeks for 40 hour weeks i thought that was how things get done and then as soon as i stepped out of that bubble and realized you know you can make these business deals you can make these transactions that set you up for the next couple months where you technically have to be behind the desk working uh as much and still

relatively earn a competitive earning or even more in a lot of cases a lot more uh by doing less and that completely flipped the script for me right did not even with all the guests that i've had on this podcast who've kind of gone through that hearing that someone studying it but going through it was very scary and so it was at a point where i'm one and a half years through that i'm truly unshamed i'm not answering to anybody uh but maybe to my partner i still gotta let them know gotta know when i'm taking a day off or something right um but mostly my day is made up of what do i want to do and there are some uh

weirdness to that because i thought you know i've been side health ceiling ever since the podcast i've been always doing things on the side you know i was teaching at a physical school outside of my full-time job i was trying things you know gamescom online was born um a couple years after the podcast or a year after the podcast it it happened around the same time uh preparing that uh and then godemics uh there was a lot of things always in motion but it wasn't until i actually stopped the security of a full-time job where it felt real where it felt my mindset completely shifted and and i always thought that once i dedicate my time to to um completely dedicate him to the full-time hustle right

actually all this the online school games go online the podcast godems i always felt like oh i get to do pretty much everything i wanted to which is still true but now i'm finding the day going by so quickly and uh and it was in my struggle now is more like how do i get to do everything that i want to do in the traditional eight hour and i still keep it within eight hours because it it's just it's just like kind of force in me right that's just how i operate now i i usually wake up at around seven uh well i mean i start work i said i wake up like way earlier that for working out uh hence the ghee right and then um usually my day ends around five i try to end it around five and of course there's breaks in between with lunch break and all that stuff but that's generally my day and i was very surprised where i'm like

i thought i can get everything done but i'm just finding like things just fall by the side and you know academics definitely have like a team um to kind of support all the services that we provide but like you know largely blue champs gso is just me and you know scholars and contractors and all stuff like that but like largely me just figuring out the business development and growing the school and all the podcasts all this stuff um this past year fun you know i finally opened up the gates and i want to shout out to joseph um who's helping big time especially on the blue champs side to kind of edit these videos into clips preparing the blogs uh that has been completely awesome and i've always been kind of like control freak where uh relinquishing control on a product kind of scary right because i've always

felt like hey man it takes me longer to explain things than to just do it myself but i'm at a breaking point where i can't do that anymore and uh it's been incredibly helpful to kind of just give creative freedom to to to others uh and help out with that and the same same thing on the gs side these are things that man i wished that uh were well more well documented and was better uh just information out there for people who are trying to get this i i guess in a way the podcast if anything is giving you guys insight and that's why i want to share this in this soapbox right here to show you my story because it is it is very uh tough uh uh specifically for our industry there's a ton of books out there right for starting business and a lot of those general information did help me kind of through this phase but for game for something so unique as our

industry like games and you know i think there's there's a lot of indie studios of course but i think still a majority of game developers are working for the man right i think a majority if you take everyone in a room most people who raise their hands are people that work for a publisher for a game company and less are about indie developers who are figuring out on their own i mean there's a good percentage don't get me wrong but i think a majority of senior well-established uh veterans are in the i'm working for a company camp right and so while they're busy with that there are i think with any developers there is a good mark of knowledge to of course i mean we have a huge amount of any developers on the podcast

um kind of helping us guide through this i it was uh it was still very difficult for me to kind of figure this out and in a lot of cases figure this out on my own and the only way i i kind of learned this was through experience experiencing it so for those who are doing things on the side i think last week's episode with ray kind of kind of reminded me a bit of the the importance of what the side hustle right i never forgot i mean my side house is my full-time job now but um because i was kind of knee-deep in that in the last year and a half i kind of forgot that in a weird way a lot of listeners out there are still at these jobs right so um i kind of want to rewind back that that that step that um that i took

five years ago and the funny thing is i keep referencing five years it's probably a little more than that but ever since the beginning of the podcast the thing that is so scary about all this that's ringing true and and rang true for me right i don't know if that's grammatically or correct i'm always bad with grammar um was that whatever side thing that you do outside your full-time gig if this is consistency and constant um constant analysis and upgrading what is what that is making it a better product to to sculpt that into a better project takes about five years for some self-sustainabilities or some type of stuff stability

uh to to move on to the next level right that's about five years for the podcast where i took that leap of faith and i am so happy with that and um in a weird way i'm not like uh at the beginning i don't feel it anymore but at the beginning i was kind of like um sour a little sour but happy right sour but happy but this is the human nature of jealousy right here where you know i was doing my thing for a good let's see nine months before like february march of this year where the pandemic hit where i was already working from when i figured this stuff out the challenges with that which i'll go back in a bit and then everybody suddenly is working for him i was like you guys took all these i worked so hard to get to this place everyone just took a shortcut and had like a uh virus kind of go through

the world and i was working for mom and you know there was a good part of that where you know people kept their salary job super comfortable super stable at least for now um just just a little glimpse at the beginning there where we're honestly i felt like i should have just stuck it through and enjoy this free money right but uh obviously you know i'm happy that people are getting a taste because i think that's what woke me into creating game devon chain is because i've had a taste of what my ideal day looks like and a lot of it didn't have anything to do with going to work so that was the problem the moment i realized that i sat down and started making a game plan of how do i unchain myself from work right and that's why the teaching thing teaching thing is a very natural step for developers in the industry to

be outside of the cubicle and uh in a way kind of give back to our industry right there's constantly a lot of students who want to get in so it's it's very viable it's a very viable option obviously i create a whole school for it so that was the journey i took to kind of learn about side hustling and what ray said last week was very it um it was a it was a great advice right which is if you're gonna crunch right the last last week's episode was all about you know city red project crunching and uh when they promised they wouldn't and it's the same story every few months if you're a game developer you're going to have to crunch there's no way around it but that investment in yourself that

decision to invest in yourself if you're going to crunch don't crunch for that empty promise of a bonus right it's rarely worth it um like he said there's five to six games i completely agree a year that makes that amount of money that actually gets to be forwarded to developers of the game right very few and even then it's it's not that crazy um it's nice but it's not that crazy knowing what i know now it's it's nothing compared to what you can do on your own right and um and that brings me to the the final point of this is like whatever you do man spend that extra hour at home working on your portfolio building a brand building an audience building a product that's going to propel you and create this nest egg that you can fall back on when something doesn't work out at work at work you'll always be having no control

right um you're working for someone they make all the decisions behind closed doors and if they're nice you might get some breadcrumbs of that success but that that that um the idea of no control is what always bothered me um because no matter what you know you can imagine me at a workplace when things you know my last few jobs were kind of like that where things didn't go the way i felt that uh could have gone better right you know office politics involves you know office complaining and i was in that state where oh wow man i am back at it again and it's the reason why i avoid aaa studios right after you know shipping call of duty it's just like i

know how that system works and i just needed to take a break from that and figure out what other corners of the industry like indie development like mobile development double a development have these companies figure out something that these aaa companies are repeatedly making mistakes about right so and in all honesty you know these companies did have uh gave me glimpses of what could be done better right mobile industry was surprisingly very fun it was um i was in san francisco it was my last job that i worked for somebody right about a year and a half ago and even going up there i had a game plan to exit to do what i'm doing now uh which took six months longer

because i gave myself a year it actually took a month a year and six to eight six to seven months for for me to grab my courage to quit right but what i saw with the moment strand i'm glad i kind of ended it with that was like the efficiency of uh think of it as a business and i think a lot of these game companies don't think of it as a business they think of it as a creative endeavor first and they do the best to kind of like survey the uh audience of you know what they're getting into but in large part you know they're they're not thinking as business people uh with daily revenue streams and and uh the ability to sustain themselves when things don't go exactly how they tended to they're it's still like gambling and so this mobile industry this company i worked for i i was able to kind of see how they

operate and every day was about numbers about you know uh customer behavior about pivoting about evolving about sustainability uh sustainability and marketability and uh projections and missing those projections what options they have in place already to pivot uh to constantly evolve the formula right that was a mind-blowing way of looking at gains i was so used to companies by that point of spraying and paying like just put a we have a game idea we think it's going to be a hit only have like a slight um half-assed data plan of why we think it would be a hit give us some money and we'll prove it out right in green light meetings and every green light meeting every three four months milestone is constantly trying to prove not just to ourselves but to the publishers uh that is providing us incremental

payment of why this game should keep being financed and are we on time right that is a bizarre way and the more money that you're dealing with the more risk that you know these milestones aren't aren't going to work out right so it's it's um it's scary man it's it's a bizarre way of doing things it's um it doesn't work in most cases it doesn't work and that's what i was used to so to kind of see that switch up of a mobile industry that i've been hearing so much about works crazy and all that little knowledge wasn't for me to carry forward to the next company it was more to like all right how do i bring this back to what i'm doing now and so what people are experiencing now because of the pandemic and having just missing deadlines of milestones these all these companies that are delaying the inevitable which is massive layoffs i think it's going to be a cascading effect it might happen in november

uh where basically they can only stretch out so far everyone's just holding on as long as they can until some company breaks where they're going to be the first one to announce there's going to be a mass layoff because you got to think about it man these companies are being financed on these incremental milestones and these milestones are constantly being pushed back which also means the uh the the budget for the game originally is being ballooned up every month or ever even every day hundreds of developers right that is becoming a huge issue um if not already and at some point they're gonna have to cut their losses and games are gonna have to be canceled uh postponed uh where they can't keep paying developers to sit around and miss deadlines so i am suspecting november maybe even the first quarter of 2021 uh we're gonna hear some crazy

unemployment happening and the way that these companies are kind of stretching out as far as they can is they're hiring more people to kind of offload the missed deadlines to the the extra things that they have to do because of missing deadlines and well again that's another way of ballooning the project so i am very scared for my colleagues my brothers and sisters out there for you guys um that are in this i hope i'm wrong but i really do feel like every day that passes is um is a disaster for the enemy's game industry even valve who has infinite money uh they're not complaining about money but they can see that productivity is has gone down so much that they're willing to consider to basically relocating their team hundreds of people uh to live in new zealand for six months to kind of sit

the pandemic out and get things done right um that is a crazy proposition but that's the the the measures that are being taken right around this time frame right that's valve thinking two three months ahead and having to act fast otherwise it's just going to be a a dead year another dead year for 2021 right so companies like valve are making plans of how to combat this other people don't who don't have the ability to kind of reclocate everybody uh are faced with the more realistic realistic proposition of just laying people off right so why am i telling you all this why why why is why is all this why is i'm why am i making this you know the part of the conversation of the soapbox right i just want to remind people man this is if you're listening if you're watching this game devon chain

it's just not it's not just a catchy name right it's not just a cool way to hang out and and kind of learn about the industry it's constantly trying to remind you guys it's like unless you work for yourself in this industry you're really never gonna be free to make decisions um even with um with now people are uh grateful enough to hit one of those three three marks that i kind of mentioned at the beginning where you can work on where on creative freedom right whatever project you want to work on where you want to live live wherever you want and the third one you know financial stability um even though right now the epidemic is forcing everybody to kind of work from where they want to work from where they want which is at your home um it it is only short term right so so executives at these companies

who are not seeing productivity seeing missed deadlines and just generally you know miss everybody in the office um as soon as it's over i don't think they're gonna be full throttle everybody back in the office i think it'd be a hybrid approach it's gonna be uh a slow roll into the office it's not like day one going to be back in you got to think about it not this is the misconception with the vaccine that people don't really think through is that for some reason they think day one zack scene everyone can go back to work right it's a long journey right after that so we're not even at that step yet but it's a good like six months after that step where maybe like half the office can be back um we have vaccinations now for the flu and not everybody's obligated to take that so and not only that the supply of these things are not going to be openly available to everybody it's going

to be for first responders for people on the front lines and then you know a slow roll to the public and even with that the vaccine is not going to be 100 proof of uh making this work right so dude you guys are we're in this for another two years so what i'm saying is that this is a perfect time to not have a to uh have a manager over your shoulder checking your your everyday progress you're not going to be judged by your colleague if you're uh finish your work early and work on something else this is the perfect time to initiate that uh self self-help plan right here to uh whatever that is the endeavor with teaching with with your own business with your game i highly encourage everybody like i did to start doing that i wish i had i wish i had the pandemic when i started doing side hustle you know imagine how much

done how much stuff i would have gotten done but you guys have the opportunity uh it's never too late to to start um doing that and it's gonna map it out you know if we're gonna be in this pandemic for another i say another year and a half two years max maybe you know you're two out of five years to finding success it takes about five years what a weird mathematical truth but it you know i've heard many guests on the show saying the same thing and i've experienced yeah for some reason five years seems to be the time when you figure out to for self sustainability and just having that that comfort of risk factor to actually go out and do something about it so you know the the initial issues that people are going through i went through that phase where working from home was completely

difficult uh carving out a space to dedicate to work making sure your home workstation is legit so so you're comfortable to doing and accomplishing things but aside from that setting up some ground rules between your spouse and your children of when you need to work and why you need to focus that honestly even to this day there is still some semblance where i'm not completely 100 on top of it much better than before where you know clear guidelines are set but you know that guideline that line of work and being a father and a husband gets blurred because you're you're at home and you're available and the kids are constantly wanting to play with you which is always a good thing right even though it's annoying but you know i mean that's what life is about right uh that took that took a good solid

six months of fighting arguing and and uh finding some compromise uh some rhythm uh with the spouse uh with my wife in particular um in uh setting those rules up with the kids and children of when play time is happening right good six months after doing this full time and when i say semblance it still happens to this day where i'm still gonna have to remind my family where the line is and you know i need time to work because we're in the epidemic i need to feed you guys right so let me work uh that is happening right now uh for everybody and it's even harder with kids doing homeschooling right you can't even drop them see at least i had the luxury that i could have i was able to drop the my one of my kids at least at school for hours on end and we were

we were close to putting our young one out of a three-year-old into daycare right before the pandemic like the march march of this year we were looking at at school and we were finally deciding on one and about to pay the monthly fee that's how close we were as soon as the pandemic hit and so that got pushed back so my three-year-old is gonna be intellectually behind even with all the homeschooling he's just you know he's missing out preschool uh yeah so this the the no school thing is tough and i understand like within the uh within my neighborhood right now i get it for the ones that can't do 100 at least in my area there's a hybrid approach where half the time they can be at a physical school with safety measures and then the other half

online schooling or they can do full online schooling right so my kid is doing full online schooling and even with that hybrid approach it's like i still feel like you're throwing your kid into the fire and hoping he doesn't get burned right there's a pandemic going on and kids are the dirtiest groups ever to spread diseases so but a lot of parents are left with no choice i mean it's either that or daycare they have to work and a lot of thankfully we're leaving living in an industry so far that it's not forcing us to go back to work but a lot of people have to go back to a physical space to work they're not a digital company can't get that done right so a large percentage of our problem game developers is the full homeschooling stuff and [Music] i get that even now i had that was a hiccup right i'm used to i was by the time the pandemic hit i was eight months in

figuring the out and had a rhythm going i was good right but then that happened where it kind of kind of put a halt into everything into the fam operation here at the blue champs camp um where where we had to adjust and make things work uh and that's looking like the case for the next year and a half that's a crazy thing to think about right we at least when i was growing up i didn't have that weird two three year gap where everything was not normal wow i mean i'm looking forward to kind of seeing this generation grow up with this experience of how it affected them um the overexposure screen time the over reliance on technology the social aspect the social ass ab absence of friends uh or their two-year gap there wow man that's a lot for kids

and parents um each separate problems that we're gonna have to somehow uh get together and figure out but yeah man developers overall the people that i'm seeing succeeding through this is that they are having something else on the side and taking advantage of this time the people who are fully all in to their um game job i am very fearful for uh and in a lot of cases you have no control over that because you're behind at work and if you're behind on these milestones you don't really have that much time to work on side stuff you're just trying to catch up it's a tricky problem man but i would say that

like betting on someone else's project is always it's always the wrong route i feel uh because you have no control over that even if you pit your milestones and uh catch up right you're always gonna be left out of that decision room uh where leads or management or the man with the money is saying like hey we're team the team as a whole is still behind we can't keep going on like this the project has to be postponed or canceled uh and people have to be on leave um temporarily right with no paycheck like i i think the person who is able to stay on top of things uh admirably like close enough where they're not in trouble but still use that extra time to work on their project or figure out their secondary income is

going to be always i feel a leg up on their colleagues right i feel no matter what worst case scenario that person who is unchaining themselves will always be put in a position where they have more options and i think overall in my personal experience that has that have worked well i mean i worked on big companies right and uh last week i kind of hinted at you know these there was these life-changing bonuses and of course i i know for a fact my colleagues because i would not crunch because i just get my done on time and leave early right uh i was swiped cheated out of a bigger bonus but in the end because i spent all that extra time at home doing all the side stuff i feel compared to colleagues that are still working on those places and no hate on that

you know because some people just enjoy work and like doing things outside of work and that's their life and that's fine but i still feel personally if i were to compare myself dedicating all that time on my full-time job instead of myself i feel comparing to myself that i'm in a much better place i'm at home man i'm at home i make my own decision i learned a shitload of business stuff this past year past two years that i had no idea had never had any interest i had never even popped a book uh open about it and just kind of learn it through experimenting and failing if there ever is a day that i have to crawl back into the workplace and work for someone else which i highly doubt for two reasons my ego won't allow me to and uh practically i have so many

survival skills that i've learned especially through epidemic i've always said this at the beginning of this it's like man if i can manage myself and my family and my companies through this pandemic i am never going back to work because i i figured out something that is a lifelong skill that i would always be savvy um because of the skills that i've attained to figure it out without having to uh go back and work behind a desk anymore and i'm glad to say i'm on the other side of that i mean like the epidemic's still going on but in terms of months ahead i am good to go um yeah so david you're mentioning the attitude you've never put all your eggs in one basket yeah completely correct and this is this is actually very pertaining to game development right what we're finding here um and my business is that um the generalist

specialist is a lot more valuable the the times of working in an office at a triple a company have changed where where it used to be cool where you're really good at texturing and that's all you know that's all you do all day every day you're the texture guy it used to be like that but now to be even more competitive and to kind of justify the salary that they're paying for and to uh feature-proof yourself from layoffs you're going to have to pick up some side skill within the company to be more resourceful so multiple eggs in many baskets so a generalist specialist is pretty much if that texture guy was really good at texturing but you know understand environment and world building and all the other stuff that pertains to texturing

that person is a leg better uh a leg taller than any colleagues that he's sitting next to right and that is the essential now for being a game developer and essential for uh being a business person right when i say business person it's not just you know what i'm doing but also for indie developers right so you know i i still have that itching itching and i'm working on something right i'm telling you guys like hey take advantage of this time even though i've always been working from home for the last year and a half uh with even with pandemic uh and even me like like kind of like my bucket is full of tasks that i want to get to you know i'm a game developer at heart and i want to make a game to call my own and i have plans i i know what i want to make i know what's going to be cool haven't haven't had the time but i'm

using this opportunity this pandemic opportunity it's weird to call it epidemic an opportunity but that's what it is this extra time to make something by the end of the year right uh to release a prototype uh by myself um to kind of scratch that itch right there's so much so many things you can do during this time sorry about that and you're gonna have to take advantage of that so david so david's asking did i have former schooling for game dev yeah man i um i went to the art institute of california in orange county that doesn't exist more uh our institute used to have like 50 campuses in its heyday i call it the game development gold rush where there suddenly was all these schools having a you know offering degrees for game development so i got suckered into that

um typical school it was privatized for profit so it was thankfully i had a scholarship and stuff to kind of help me with the the payment and everything but it was it still ended up being like 60k for three years i think a lot of my colleagues and students nowadays are 100k plus just to get a degree and was not worth it um overall although you know my experience for for meeting lifelong friends and you know learning things uh with a guide and forming relationships and friendships um could have done that on my own that's why it was one of the biggest reasons why i created game school online to kind of help students avoid all that and successfully um we're in the four or five year mark where students are finding jobs without having to pay or do any of that so that i'm very proud

of that as a side passion for for everything i'm doing besides the podcast but i'm also kind of helping them and i'm very much so the game dev on chain podcast is a mixture of students and and professionals i would say larger proportion are professionals who are listening to this um and that's why a lot of my conversation is tailored towards you know if i were to talk to myself um at a job at a at a desk so even though you guys are technically unchained right now because of the pandemic i want to remind you guys and i guess share my personal stories with me it was so worth it to have started five years ago on a little pet project and um and see it grow and uh and it wasn't about you know getting

all the numbers it wasn't about downloads it wasn't about viewership it was about how can i keep something going improve on it from feedback and uh constantly work on making the product better that that that loop helped prepared me for all these other business adventures and showed me the importance of how how time can slip past you right it's like a snap man we were just it's near the end of the year right it's the end of the year 2020 and because of the pandemic it just completely ate up a whole year and when i think about when i quit my full-time job to go fully in my business ventures that was over that was over two years ago

or almost a year and a half was it a year and a half jesus yeah it's like almost two years now that's crazy man and we're not getting any younger the industry is getting tougher you guys and gals oh to yourself to unchain yourself and my journey is in my opinion still starting there's so many things that i want to do to give back to this industry to make my own game uh to i'll do all these things within the industry that is worth my time and uh the ability hopefully this pandemic has taught you the taste of freedom where you can make your own hours basically you know outside of those scheduled zoom meetings your time is your own and it's all about the work just getting done and there's nobody no producer breathing down your neck every second if they are doing that

through production boards or gear tests or whatever i apologize but in most cases it sounds like you're getting a taste of what it's like working for yourself and kind of charting your own destiny i want you guys to uh i just highly advise you guys to really hold on to that take advantage of it and build off of it because that taste is what got me started with the podcast and everything that i'm doing to get me to this place right um don't don't don't swat that away don't just dedicate your whole day to to work and then just play games at night you got to take advantage of this this is the perfect time to kind of figure out because i i really do feel the game history this year in particular has been weird that um that when in the midst of all these layoffs from all these other jobs in the industry unemployment rate is super high the game

industry as a whole who is known for laying off hasn't laid off anybody that is crazy um that is just leading up to something bad uh it's not like we suddenly figure things out uh and then with all these news of companies delaying their games and milestones internally like i'm very fearful uh for for all everybody that that hopefully they don't do that before the holidays but you know as as history shows that's that's the best time for these game companies to lay people off and that's gonna be crazy scary um and i hope you guys have a game plan when that happens or be okay enough with temporarily taking december off so um yeah that's why i'm i i felt like it was a perfect time to

kind of dedicate this week's episode to me being in a soapbox talk to you guys about uh you know status updates of what i've been doing what i've been up to and uh my plan for the rest of the year so g dux redux is coming back with a different form i'm still planning it for november but it's kind of like a revamp of the website you know i'm not one to repeat uh what's being done right i'm a trendsetter so last year we were one the first virtual conference and now because every year or the whole year has like completely got dumped on by virtual conferences i just want to remind people that gdex has a bunch of resources already so there's a lot of exciting things on that side that i'm doing um so in tradition though starting from last year for the first

time in my 13 plus years of in a career i took december off just completely unplugged just played games the whole time and just didn't think about work never had that before even with plenty of vacation time it was like two weeks max but not the whole month right gonna do the same this month um probably the week of thanksgiving is when i'm gonna start just taking everything off but don't worry still gonna have weekly episodes waste you know i like there's about like 20 g ducks episodes that haven't been played for you guys are incredible um that i can't wait to share with you so that that time of absence until 2021 and january is when i'm gonna be coming back but uh yeah up till up to them those gonna be awesome guests coming on super excited and uh to share with you guys but um yeah it's cool to kind of see people

discovering the the podcast in recent months uh this year and starting from episode one so uh it's nice and i've always been a fan of time capsules um just never had the discipline to do daily journals or to bury a note to myself and in some ground around my house but the podcast i've always in addition to getting great professionals with real advice uh to help you with your career and your life problems uh it is a way for me to kind of reflect back where was my opinions my ideas uh for this week or the last week or the week after um always permanently on online right for me to kind of rediscover what i was thinking so it's always

interesting to hear listeners from way back kind of especially the roundtable episodes kind of like um confirming a lot about my silly prophecies right i i i gab on but uh with with precision though so i hope everybody in general will hang on for the rest of 2020 i i hope that your company is not uh is secure enough to kind of carry everyone forward past this pandemic but regardless of that hope my last words are you know unchain yourself right work on that side project you've been putting off do that thing that you've always wanted to do even start your day doing what you want to do and then getting to the full-time work and getting that done right

wherever whatever rhythm whatever scheduling you got to figure out figure it out and and stick to it because this is the perfect time to do it and this is the scariest time not to do it and even though everyone's safely at home it's a ticking clock something's bad it's leading to something bad so if this year short of uh donald trump not dying from covet have been pretty this is this has been a pretty lit movie if you're into drama and disaster movies uh and we're not even in november yet so it's it's gonna be a crazy last two months and i want you guys to be fully secured going into those last two months uh having some some fun project that you're working on that is one day going to be valuable and self-sustainable right

so that's it i want to thank you guys for your time thank you for live viewers for asking questions uh usually i film these on tuesdays uh 11am this is a little later uh but you can catch live games recap episodes i'm starting that back up starting tomorrow at uh at 10 i don't walk out of the theater yet i'm still in my apartment man i'm not i'm not in in some place i'm just in i'll be in my apartment hanging around but um yeah games recap is coming back so many news uh that have to be covered before our roundtable news episode every month uh so games recap is coming back to kind of give like quick 10 minute glimpse of my thoughts of what's going on um the valve thing was pretty surprising you guys should definitely check that out maybe i'll dedicate the first one about that but yeah the best way to prepare yourself is to kind of pay attention to what's going on

obviously and not just about politics um who cares about that you're a game developer so worry about like game development stuff uh something that you have control over uh and just read the news we'll see what companies doing great what companies are hiring and constantly be out there be competitive yeah the the worst thing you can do as a game developer is being complacent it's not the industry to do that so i hope you guys are finding this hour helpful and i look forward to hearing all your guys's great success stories all right as always see you guys on discord uh today uh to great success the last month we've been doing a lot of game night thursdays so on the discord channel you can find more info about that and to find the discord channel you can go in the link description or go to gamedevonchain.com and you'll find the discordant channel through that way to talk to other

listeners find out um and then chat with me to be honest but gay night thursdays to to kind of like throw it out there i don't think i publicly kind of talked about it in an episode i just game with you guys on thursdays last week we played rocket league uh weeks before that we're playing warzone and we try to pick games that are free so everybody can buy and download it or i mean download it for free right and it's been fun man it's great to kind of game with you guys shout out to all the the rocket leaguers that i've been playing with uh i've been sucking man i've been trying to get back into this uh just gaming in general and just trying to be social about it i mean because uh it's been boring dude any chance that i can talk to anyone that isn't uh my wife and or a 10 year old kid i i welcome it and i'm at that place so uh thank you guys for for talking uh jumping into my apartment

my messy apartment i gotta clean that up at some moment but uh thanks guys have a good one [Music] you