What COVID19 Closing all Game Dev Events Means for Indie Dev with Renee Gittins | Game Dev Unchained

I [Music] what's up everybody welcome to another episode of game dev Unchained the number one podcast about game development and the lifestyle thereof I am your host brand and fan and joining me a very special guests already messing up Rene Gittens how I do and Rene hi it's a pleasure to be here thanks for talking with me today I Rene this is a part of the podcasts where our guests such as yourself introduce yourself to our listeners and viewers out there of where you're from where you are where you're headed yeah so I am the executive director of the International Game Developers Association the IG da I'm also an indie developer I run a company called stumblin cat currently I live in

Baltimore Maryland though I'm from Seattle Washington but with game development I've traveled all over the place alright so this is a very special episode I kind of brought you on because of the recent events right obviously everyone's kind of quarantine in our homes right now and people might think that this is kind of like not much of a slight change to do game developers especially indie game developers but it is quite making quite an impact to us out there with a game developer conference just recently cancelled well I mean over three weeks ago and major events like III and pretty much future events for the rest of the year in my own opinion I'm very hesitant to even thank GDC is gonna be rescheduled for August it's kind of like waiting even other major events outside the industry like the Olympics have been postponed can you kind of talk about

what the landscape is looking at like right now with all this happening yeah definitely this is certainly in strange time for the entire world and especially for the game development industry while with quarantines there are more people playing games it's had a really negative impact on people who are pre-launch particularly people who are looking for funding and networking connections GDC and III are really important events for game developers especially those who are currently looking for publishers or funding and that puts them in a really hard financial place to not be able to go to those conferences and make those connections in person additionally many developers who are indie or just getting in the start in their careers invested a lot of finances in attempting to attend GDC with GD C's postponement

unfortunately there's many non-refundable tickets and hotel reservations which is negatively impacting those developers who invested that financial amount into those into the attending GDC and now see that as a loss and they might not have the finances to attend another event or to make up for it so what are the methods that are you seeing like these game developers kind of grasping with this sudden situation like you mentioned a lot of these games are looking to release this year or the near future but these events are kind of partying their marketing efforts and they put a lot of money like you said and funding into these events and therefore they are at the biggest loss and are kind of taking quite a hit so what kind of ways are they coping with this situation right now well we're really seeing our community come together the IG DEA has partnered with game dev dot world to

assist with their fundraising they're working with wings to provide financial relief for developers who've been affected financially by the Cova 19 pandemic so they are doing a online event they're doing a it co bundle and they're doing other fundraising to try to get funds to help make up financial loss and burden that this is been for various developers additionally the IG da has been working on providing a lot of resources to support the community while we have our discord with over 1,300 active members that can help provide community and a place to talk for those who are trapped within their homes we also have been putting together resources such as information from the World Health Organization from local governments

different types of funding and other financial relief opportunities both within the US and other places in the world and we've put together our own recommendations for how to work from home in a way that best supports your career and your mental health it's awesome besides that - in addition to that there were some talks at least before GDC got cancelled how game developers were still kind of thinking of gathering I think as the situation gotten worse as it was leading up to the week of GDC that people were slowly realizing yeah this is business as usual we can't just still show up do you know a little bit more detail about what did people even bother going at all as the week was coming close or did they just alright let's just cancel the whole

thing and let's not even meet up because you know the whole city was quarantined by the time there were various plans together with in San Francisco despite GDC s cancellation however as the situation escalated those started canceling themselves I heard at least one person say that five developers gathered together at one Hotel in San Francisco but certainly there weren't any large gatherings not that I was aware of that occurred during the week of GDC images are you seeing you guys you were mentioning like steam charts are shooting up there's a lot of people that turn into video games and entertainment such as Netflix usually in recession times where they're especially at home a lot what kind of Vantage's are you seeing with any developers looking at innovative ways to kind of get their

games in front of people now that everyone's at home but they're mostly relying on Internet resources the age-old marketing planet yeah yeah I mean certainly marketing in these days is very different than it used to be a lot of it is very influencer based versus printed in digital ads however I've seen a lot of indie developers coming together not only to try to market their game more but to try to provide relief for people who are quarantined so I've actually seen a lot of developers doing the maximum discounts they can on their Steam games and on other platforms just trying to make sure that all the people who need games to help bide their time have access to them additionally I think we really see the value of a lot of indie games in a situation like this for

example kind words which came out this last year was remarkably popular because it shows how to provide empathy and kindness to other people and I think in these times that's something you really need yeah most certainly you're talking about a couple events that you guys are helping out with game dev world a lot of relief efforts a lot of community coming together which is the bright side of this side of the story where everything seems to be coming out well a time of a certainty right yeah where do you foresee it for the rest of the year I mean people who are kind of more up-to-date to the news and kind of seeing how like other countries are kind of deal with it or at least have a tell end of things it feels like the rest of the year is done like we're just gonna be hunkered down and and this is this is 2024 for everybody

do you see ya impact of it really extending beyond 2020 because it doesn't feel like business gonna be as usual after everyone recovers I think that there will certainly be impacts of this lasting beyond 2020 regardless of how long the quarantines and outbreak occur and I think that's mostly because right now we're seeing a huge shift in technology and a lot more people working remotely as someone who has worked remotely for four-and-a-half years of the last eight it's something that I'm very familiar with and I'm very familiar with the social effects of that I think that we'll see more people and more companies supporting remote work and remote workers and because of that we'll see those remote workers desirey and more online communication so I think

we'll actually be seeing a growth a continued growth of online games especially ones that support communities that really can collaborate and work together it would not surprise me in fact if we saw MMO is becoming much more popular in the next few years it definitely seems that what people are kind of snatching up Assassin's Creed and games that like sends a lot of playing time in the last few couple weeks and what's interesting is that a few about a month ago we were kind of discussing on the podcast about the the California a b5 which is a bill that was passed recently in this state how is the fracking contractors everywhere and and then shortly after this this virus kind of spread and it's really forcing companies kind of look outside of physical work environments right and how

do you feel that that this is gonna be the pros and cons of this effect of forcing remote work and removing the stigma with remote work but also looking outside of the physical area of a company for for talent and extending that talent beyond the the that the projects deadlines and stuff yeah I mean I think even outside of game dev the advancement of remote work is going to be really good for technology overall because more people will be working remotely we'll see even a bigger push for having strong high data internet connections and that is clearly beneficial to games as games tend to be

the things that make the highest demand of those internet connections at least on a regular basis for studios I think a lot of studios have generally been comfortable with outsourcing but we're potentially going to see a rise in that especially as remote work Rises that can be both positive and negative it certainly gives a lot of opportunities to people all over the world but it does mean that local laws can be I guess skirted this is probably a word that could be used so for example with a B 5 and B potential I would potentially encourage people to hire remote workers outside of California instead of within it however I think it's important to note in cases like a B 5 while there were a lot of questionable parts and

vagueness within that law a lot of the biggest concerns were actually already covered by laws that were active within California it's just that not all employers were already respecting them yet definitely one of the biggest discussion because we had a you know our our local lawyer consultant kind of come on to talk about a b5 and the impacts of that and naturally he gave us a short term and long term idea of what it could look like affecting game developers we're you know it in a good way it could really help contractors not be taken advantage of right and in the short term there are a lot of issues that can be skirted around like you said and then with this with this rise of remote work everyone's

at home anyways it makes no difference if you're Californian or or not as long as you have the talent which opens a lot of opportunities for people outside of the country cannot work with these big game developers where they used to be very NDA protective of their property as they should but that also leads to another thing that I I've been reading more about when we naturally think about game developers we think about the art resource technical resource that makes up a team but then there's a huge department that helps really ship a game like the QA department shipping products and these guys are not really getting the type of fair remote transition and some companies within the United States are still forcing them to kind of come in because they simply do not trust these guys to kind of bring home the the intellectual property and continue play

testing is there any news or not developing yeah yeah I definitely saw report that some QA houses were requiring that their workers still come in physically to their office and I think that is definitely a health risk and unfortunately you know it's something that the IG da definitely discourages we encourage listening to your local government in their regulations and I think that we will see local governments responding to two companies forcing their workers to come in for unsafe conditions for non critical tasks non society critical tasks I think that there are definitely some technical challenges that I can understand you know when you are doing QA testing you

are sometimes really limited on the devices you can use you know especially if we're looking at the next generation of consoles those def consoles can be very expensive and there might not be you know one per QA person but I think that it is the responsibility of those companies to work around and to find solutions because there are many other QA firms who have found ways to support their staff while still supporting their customers and making sure that everyone stays safe is it another question I do have when it comes to this I feel like any developers have a better time with development because they're more used to remote work in communication through resources online made available but they have the marketing challenges right without these events without the physical presence of these events on the

flip side Triple A developers I feel have all the marketing efforts it's already figured out but it's the development that is an issue because a lot of Triple A developers aren't used to remote work it's been kind of taboo so what are you seeing from that um from that with the result of what's happening do you foresee a lot of games being pushed back on deadlines because telling 300 people that used to be in an office shoulder to shoulder together now working separately and kind of putting the responsibility on them we're already seeing not just within our industry's help people are kind of looping their zoom video conference to kind of stay attentive so there's a lot of shortcuts to kind of make it feel but there's no way that suddenly everyone's gonna be so efficient in games they're gonna be shipped on on time along with all the challenges with QA testing and all the other departments kind of not being able

to kind of smoothly transition how do you roll this being effective for 2020 I definitely think we're gonna see a lot of game delays it's just really difficult to do this development transition especially for triple-a companies that were working in an office - then go fully remotely and it's not just the difficulty of working from home in terms of self management of time but for example a lot of studios especially triple-a Studios need to VPN from their home computers into their work network in order to do development especially if they're doing console development and unless they have a VPN network that was already set up to manage their entire staff they're gonna be running into technical issues there and in fact I had

been talking with a triple-a studio that was running into exactly those troubles they were not prepared to suddenly have their entire staff hitting their VPN from home so they were scrambling to get their IT to expand the bandwidth of that additionally even though there's difficulties of working from home especially with kids being home and finding you know time to focus making sure you're separating your work time from your home time we have to note that this is an extremely stressful situation even for those not working from home or whose lives are fairly unaffected like my own there is you know so much going on in our society you know all these things are changing we're worried about our friends family and their health and all of those little stresses come together and affect

the mental health of everyone including name developers so I think that it's not reasonable to expect people to still be game giving their 100% because they're 100% really is just not going to be the same level it was when they were in their normal groove of things when you know society wasn't burning down around us so yeah I think we're definitely gonna see a lot of delays the IG da is actually also partnering with take this take this is a mental health advocacy organization that provides mental health supports to gamers and game developers and we're gonna be publishing a lot of documentation and resources together as well as doing a webinar series to help prepare both game developers and studio heads for managing their teams working from home from managing their own mental

health and self-care during this time and to make sure that they're supported in both their careers and their lives as they go forward through this turbulent time and speaking on that turbulent time I'm kind of victim to this as well you throw kids in the mix we're all schools are kind of closed everywhere and suddenly having to be self efficient with kids running around in the background it definitely takes a toll on your efficiency in concentration and being able to not be distracted by everything so the game industry has always been like faced with these challenges of delays and what delays also means is just this impending doom of crunching right ah it's I don't know this is a first workers are told to crunch I don't know what that looks like maybe it's healthier at home but I have no idea can can our industry handle these

multiple months of delay in shipping these games where before it felt like we went through trials of questionable trial is to kind of push our game out there now we're kind of faced with while every industry is facing this at a loss thankfully I don't feel like our industry is in a position like other industries where there's a lot of unemployment that's happening more than ever digital goods are on a rise so how what are your thoughts about what this possible future of these game delays what does that exactly mean for game developers are we going to be negatively affected in our usual way of handling things or not I think that you're going to see as I noted before a lot of games which are already shipped being very successful and I can only hope that publishers and the other

people who are making profits off of these game successes are willing to invest it back into the game industry and help the developers who are pre-launch and who will be struggling during this time with those delays and with those lack of funding it's hard to say exactly what will happen a lot of this depends on how different governments are going to support the industries that are affected by this I mean even if you know most of the game development team can continue working and it will you know cause delays it will cause financial burdens I think that the game industry is still going to go forward strong and recover from this but I think this is a time where we really need to support each other so I think it's really on you know publishers to make sure that they are being flexible with milestone deadlines and

times like this and it's on Studios and game developers to just try their best to push forward now when it comes to crunch in particular I think that crunch anytime is really negative now there is you know pushing really hard for two weeks perhaps doing some extra hours to meet Deadline and then there's months and months of working 60 plus hour weeks and that's just not tenable that's not something that supports the game industry or good mental health or quality of games or even those workers when you get in situations like that I think that studio heads and management we really need to reassess and look at changing the approach of their products or even the scope of their products to make sure that they are supporting their team as much as they're trying to support the product itself I wonder if

you can entertain this this myth right how the game mystery is recession-proof right of course a twenty two thousand eight which is at least before my time right I think I entered an industry that year actually where the housing crisis happened and that was the only recent thing that our industry has faced a similar issue where there was economic downturn uh I'm looking at that I don't know if you have any information about at least your thoughts like how did we it's a different time that's only ten years apart we're way more online than ten years ago digital marketplaces I think was only beginning and we're completely most of our revenue comes from digital storefronts now we're in a better place to kind of take on this kind of challenge I wonder if you kind of give your your your thoughts and analysis about why we're different from ten years are we better off than ten years ago are we actually the recession proof is that

a myth that everyone keeps throwing around to make ourselves feel better or are we set up for something like this that we're gonna be okay and any any opinions would be greatly appreciated yeah I don't think any industry is necessarily a recession proof especially depending on the cause of the recession however yes games tend to be insulated against recessions because people turn to entertainment and distractions when they're going through difficult times and games themselves happen to be a very immersive and very good escape when things are not going quite as you'd like them to in your life now when it comes to this particular situation I think that in general yes the game industry is going to do quite well because of these quarantines

because of this social distancing and social isolation people are going to be turning to games not only to distract themselves but to connect with other people so I think that we'll see the game industry overall coming out quite strong even if some companies are put in difficult positions and situations because they're pre ship I mean that's good I mean we are seeing those kind of examples all over the industry right now a lot of developers who have shipped games are enjoying the the quarantine the force quarantine you know streaming from all accounts Netflix gaming steam everyone's just spending that time to sell fast away from the isolation with their families right we you need that time apart especially countries that

that have lesser space right kind of just talking about the overview of what's happening are there any data outside of the United States that you guys are aware of that is contrasting what we're experiencing at this phase that you feel like you can kind of point at the United States we're probably gonna be there in a couple months that are there a little they are faring a little bit better than us based on where their location yeah I mean certainly we've seen some countries who enforced really significant lockdowns and finally sort of decreasing the amount of people who are being identified as infected with covin 19 it seems that a lot of Western

countries have not taken the same precautions as of yet now perhaps that's because they expect that with more for example just less density of population within the United States than in other places that we might have some innate advantages there but it's you know it's really hard for me to say I'm not a specialist when it comes to infectious diseases and so I am really just looking to the CDC and the World Health Organization to see what their predictions and recommendations are so we're starting to see a shift from all parts of game development right now right we're talking about initially how the conventions are kind of being pushed back I'll be surprised to even see GDC happening in the summer of

August it seems like it's gonna fall really close to when we're actually gonna see some progress right and 2020 if anything it's gonna be kind of scarce game developers as we were mentioning are just coping with how to remote work or at least like we said indie developers are kind of coping with how to be creative with their marketing efforts do you see other companies like steam steams kind of doing like their front storefront for any games where they're kind of just letting 40 Premier titles demos right to kind of give some light to their situation do you see other efforts like that that are happening that is worth mentioning right now to kind of highlight any titles that they are not really having that opportunity anymore well I know that there is that HIO

bundle that game def dot world and wings are working on to support other indie developers I mean that's always a great way to find new indie games and to sort of breathe life into indie games that have already shipped I am not quite as aware of other situations and and other other marketing opportunities and other ways that indie games are getting out there right now and then loui I have been pretty nose down in creating resources for game developers and trying to provide more individual support mm-hmm and that individual support is actually something we can definitely expand on something the last year we've been having a lot of people on we had Jason Moore on talking about the indie but pocalypse the I mean more than ever we're super saturated with indie games

and so it's less scary if you think of it as we're more dependent on ourselves more than ever than other digital storefronts or other third parties to kind of promote our own brand or whatever it feels like more than ever now we're kind of forced into this thinking's like well you're on your own it like it's always been and if you master that you're gonna be able to overcome any challenges that throw your way anyways if you're good at promoting brand or talking about your product or you're really putting yourself first instead of hoping someone else will come in and talk about your game as passionately as you are so we can talk about at least some of those lessons that you feel in the last couple years have always been helpful for game developers to remember like hey despite of what the situation is this is these are tried-and-true methods that really

helps promote yourself and your brand without really depending on other factors right I guess what what my belief is when it comes to marketing and promoting yourself and your brand is making connections making connections with the in within the industry making connections outside of the industry fostering passionate fans all those connections are so very important I actually ran a successful Kickstarter for my own game development project potions a curious tale and this was in 2016 sort of after the Kickstarter heyday for video games when people were much more selective about the games that they were backing and we're I think only 8% of games actually got funded and the approach that I took during that time

was prior to launching my Kickstarter I went to every single game development event that I could and I took every speaking opportunity that I could and I wrote articles whenever I could I really put myself forward they're not only putting in four in my game but putting forward myself putting forward my story and in fact the first types of press coverage that I got for my game was focused on my story as a female game developer making a game featuring a young female protagonist so when the Kickstarter finally came around I had actually done over a year of research into how to craft a Kickstarter the best rewards you know how to avoid having physical Awards at low tiers and

then running out of money because you're spending all of them on shipping rewards and I really focused on activating my network of connections I had made so many friends within the indie development scene and the game development scene in general when that Kickstarter finally launched they were all helping me really put forward that information put forward my Kickstarter and it helped me get funded that's fantastic it's super impressive because kick-started like you said have been different lately it's just another reason yeah yeah and more than ever now no one really mentions Kickstarter it's just a it's just a funnel now for for your own audience to go to kind of finance my follow-up question would be well two questions right um I would love to kind of hear I always like talking to any developers or developers that are

promoting themselves what their typical day looks like in terms of the balance right because any developer if anything is comprised of very small team of they're doing very specific things to make sure that the project gets through right but at the same time you're taking on a lot of roles to fill to make sure that when you are making the noise that there's gonna be people there to actually hear it and buy into it read your ass the yeah what's the balancing percentage there in terms of branding promotion and and developing the game itself because a day it feels like you're doing five people's worth of work with one person's ability which can sound sound like a lot yeah yeah so I think the best marketing advice I've ever received isn't as much on how to

market its when you market you need to have something actionable so while building your brand is important you have to build your brand and direct those people who are interested towards a purpose so at first it was hey sign up for our email list and then it was you know hey subscribe to our Kickstarter and then I was like hey back our Kickstarter and right now pre-launch our focus isn't as much on marketing because there isn't an action we're actually about to ship our alpha and while we're gonna be marketing our alpha and talking about it to our Kickstarter backers it's really not until we're getting into the beta that we're going to start pushing marketing hard towards the general public because once the beta is is live it'll be a lot easier to push people to sign up you know put the game

on wishlist on Steam or be more prepared for immediate updates on how to purchase the game or pre-purchase the game or even support us in some other way you know we're potentially looking at creating swag or plushies or something and it is this kind of evaluation of balance that I think is important instead of you know pushing marketing the entire development time that doesn't necessarily work but I recommend keeping fans informed you know so we still do Kickstarter updates we still let people know what's going on we still share teasers we just know released a new song now when it comes to the balance of development I do think that is very interesting I've four indie game developers because they wear so many

hats on my own team I should go on my own team I do all of the design programming and then the management and business management and marketing and then I have teammates contractors who do art and audio and assist me with writing and it means that I have a lot on my plate especially because my game is a very system heavy game with a lot of custom scripted bosses enemies and spells so it's a very content heavy game which means there's so much programming in there when I was working on potions full-time I probably spent 70 to 80 percent of my day just doing straight codeine and then the rest of it was a balance between

management marketing and design work depending on what was needed at the time these days however as I am the executive director of the IG DEA I work for the IG DEA from about 8:30 to 9:00 to 5:00 to 6:00 is my goal sometimes it ends up being later but I try not to crunch too and then after that I try to put in at least two hours or so on potions however it's mostly during the weekend that I sort of get in and can get some you know really good code in there as as most programmers know it's hard to sit down and build out a big system in just an hour - it's much easier when you can fully immerse yourself and that kind of thinking so I want to kind of dig into

your your more your back story there was game development have always been your your goal has it been something you've been training since college or before college when did you know that you wanted to get into this industry yeah um so this story is actually why I I started supporting the IG DEA I have been a gamer my entire life I think it was about four years old four or five was in 1994-1995 where my dad got Wolfenstein 3d and I sat next to him and watched him play Wolfenstein 3d and then do and then Duke Nukem 3d and then I finally got pokemon yellow but then we started playing half-life together so I actually I start out really young and almost purely on first-person shooters which is definitely not the background that most

people my my age have I didn't even get a Nintendo console until I was like 12 however despite being really really into games and math me and my favorite subjects I didn't know that game development was an option for me I knew nothing about what the creation of games was like and I didn't even think that it was a viable or potential career path and it wasn't until college wasn't until college that I even understood I liked programming I had considered changing my major my freshman year from engineering actually I got my degree in engineering to computer science but at the time I was I was at a very competitive school where they 70% of the people were Sally dick torian's or valedictorians and most of them went to private schools and all of these CS majors had been programmers

in high school and I thought that maybe I was behind on the ball on that maybe I wouldn't like sitting in front of the computer all day you know I really liked working in the shop and help me make prototypes on the engineering side I so I decided not to change my major then my senior year of college I actually made a lot of friends within the game industry and at that point I finally realized that game development was something that I could do and then I could do for a living unfortunately was my senior year so I actually graduated as engineering major with a focus and mechanical engineering and project management and I took to programming classes my entire college career one my freshman year one my senior year so outside of those I am a self-taught programmer I graduated from college and I started working in biotech

I worked as an industrial design engineer and then as a system and design engineer and while I was working as a system design engineer I started I started learning programming on the side so I actually start with JavaScript and then I was luckily given the opportunity to design small games to judge the cognitive ability of children who might get concussions so they were pattern matching games like click the blue butterfly kind of games and it really ignited that passion and showed me that yes I could do game development so after I left that role that's when I dived really full time into getting into the game industry prior to that I had actually been volunteering and working at various indie Studios both as a producer and is a back-end server

developer but when I started on my own I didn't know what I wanted to do I knew that I could do programming but I didn't know if I perhaps wanted to be a designer and that's when I started just trying to design some games on paper and one of those game ideas actually ended up becoming potions curious tail it's a very inspiring story I think a lot of listeners who are game developers and a lot of students don't realize as often is that we're still an industry that is talent first so depending no matter where your background is as long as you have the passion in the talent you're gonna find a job or a place in the industry to prosper that kind of leads me up to follow with all these kids sitting around at home now what recommendations apps resources that you have for children to kind of get started in programming and I think a lot of parents out there would appreciate this

just to kind of put them in front of a iPad or something and be like be part of the future yeah there are so many wonderful opportunities to teach yourself programming I personally like code Academy that's what I learned on it's a little more on the technical side and you can go really quickly I'm someone who just sort of wants to to attack it there are some really great games though where you put programming like you do simple scripting code in order to fight enemies and I am a huge fan of education games I love mass blast math blasters and like geometry mystery mansion or whatever it was when I was a kid and definitely they helped give me my love of math so I would definitely look into those code teaching games

unfortunately I can't remember any of them off the top of my head and then for for kids who are looking into making games there's a lot of really great resources out there there's RPG Maker there's game maker you know if you're a little more advanced you can even try doing Unreal Engine and unity games and these days there's so many tutorials there's so many resources and there's so many communities that you can find support if you want to join the IgD a community and get help we have an advice channel and you can meet some really wonderful people who will help you find your way and point you to the resources that you need fantastic we are nearing the end of the our podcast in my my videos kind of stuck so I'm gonna switch it back to you this is a new segment

that we're trying at the end where we have listeners and viewers kind of email in advice or suggestions for advice or asking for advice so I'm going ahead and I'm gonna read this and this is from Corey I'll leave his last name I don't know if he wants to be completely Elstad so the subject is need advice so he's asking hello I've been a listener of the podcast and started and have sent you a message before last year recently I've been thinking of going to school at Full Sail move up from my solo in the and tried to get into a bigger studio but I find that my parents and other family and friends don't support the idea deja vu and are trying to tell me to go for something else and I need some advice on it do I ignore them and follow my passion or not and be just another minimum-wage employee at a dead-end job that I hate as that is how I support myself now the hardest part about full

sales that I was home school so my parents have to get my transcripts and I'm afraid they won't get them if I keep wanting to go to the school I want for the job that I want so I'll go ahead and let you handle that one first and I'll follow up yes so full sale is definitely a really great school and it will set you up well for a career within the game development industry but it's possible to go to a traditional school or to even not go to school at all and still get into the game industry if you're looking to be a designer or a programmer within the game industry I'd highly recommend getting a CS degree and you can get that at Full Sail or a local college or Stanford you can go anywhere and that degree will treat you well if you're even looking at being a tech artist the CS degree would be great too if you are looking to be an artist or a sound

designer or composer I would look at colleges that support that I mean obviously wholesale does but potentially you could go to a different place if full sales expenses or their parents are really against it the most important thing is to just look at what your resources are look at how much that you might have to take on and to take it one step at a time what is more important than any degree is a portfolio a good attitude and proof that you will teach yourself and you'll always be constantly improving I think that if you go into any triple-a company you can show them a strong portfolio and a mastery of the skills and knowledge needed they aren't going to care where you got your degree from even if you

have a degree okay well there you go Corey I complete sign off on that just look at the end game right so if a student care where you're from and just care about your portfolio there's a lot of ways to get to that and like Renee said explore the options that are best for you and if you need that setting which is the advantages of being at a physical school to be around colleagues that constantly push you to motivate you people thrive better around those settings others are fine with online resources and our self motivators and at least in my own experience those guys are the scarier ones that are able to kind of learn on their own and then continue like Renee here and extend beyond the physical workplace and really push their knowledge the farthest that they want to go

yeah I've seen at least in my experience those people who wear multiple hats can do multiple things and never stop learning are the ones that are usually self-taught and it's worth I think testing that a bit give it a few months try that method try that path to see how you fare before you know thinking about taking on debt and in taking on that type of responsibility and and quitting Midway because I've been through those type of schools and the percentages that have actually gotten jobs after those are mostly due to the students not being serious about it I won't even put the blame on schools themselves it's just the students didn't take it seriously enough and just figure that out too late right and so at least if you try to do it on your self learning path you least come out of it a little bit warm or more money in your pocket which is I think the goal every day that you should go for just at least

give it a few months a self starter path and if it's not working out because you're finding yourself getting lonely well I mean right now you have no choice there are no physical schools that are taking you right now so I think it's the perfect time to kind of try this out before doing anything else I do want to ask Renee it is a weird time with with gaming and game development and most importantly fortnight and all these type of games kind of making game the game industry at the forefront of conversations now it's not just a geeky nerdy thing I mean the times have changed I am still surprised that I guess not too surprised but I am Elise well made aware of people appearance or who are still seeing like game profession is not really professional at all I mean do do you see this a lot

where parents are still not getting it as a serious job I have I mean what ways have you seen students or kids kind of combating this this thought because the parents are playing such an important role in their career decisions yeah um I've seen I've seen many of my peers have parents who didn't fully accept their careers especially if they started out sort of on the indie route you know not making as much money you know a lot of them do finally come around but I think especially as games are becoming more and more popular I mean the game industry is bigger than Hollywood I think that parents will start to figure out that but having a job in the game industry is a completely

legitimate career and a fine career choice and opportunity now if parents are concerned about the stability of the game industry or that programmers get paid less in the game industry than in other tech fields that's something and that's something that the game industry is currently working on fixing but overall I think that as time goes on as we see more games become popular that all of this doubt around game development as a career is going to be a thing of the past well thank you for answering that question Cory there you have it sleep on that I do what I don't want to expand this any further but I kind of want to have a follow-up question to what you're saying the game industry is a weird entertainment industry because at least compared to movies other entertainment

media I do feel like the the amount of people that is needed to kind of ship a project is a lot less comparatively but the pay gap feels like on average isn't where I mean we get paid well right we do okay right I'm not complaining about that yeah but in terms of like we can do more based on how many people that actually takes to kind of ship a game you kind of mentioning that it is gonna improve it's gonna get better when well I mean what kind of what kind of factors that needs to be in play for us to kind of see the increase in programmers especially I feel like I have a lot of friends and I'm sure you have a lot of friends that have spent years in the game industry but because of what's happening in the game is tree they are forced to go to Apple the forced to go to Facebook which compensating them really well but we talked to them five months later they are really bored because you know game development is

their passion it's what excites them there's our challenges there that you don't see at Twitter right so hahaha so when do you think it's gonna change what needs to happen for it to change to kind of seed them as as equals I'll see you guys as equals Restless isn't closed yeah well I think that probably the the biggest issue when it comes to paying the game is supply and demand there are a lot of people especially people who are just starting out their careers who are really passionate about joining in the game industry and there's not always that many opportunities for them to pursue so I think what's going to happen and what we actually see happening is that game development studios are slowly starting to learn two things one is you

can't replace years of experience having somebody who has five plus years experience within the industry is super valuable and so Studios are realizing that they can't crunch their workers as hard because the leave that they do need to pay them more that they need to make sure that their work-life balance is good so that they can see their families and the IGA runs our developer satisfaction survey on a by yearly basis where we look at the age of people in the game industry their families their money and we're seeing really promising signs we're seeing that game developers are being paid more on average that game developers are now becoming older on average that more game developers than ever have families have children and we're seeing that crunch is going down as well so I think that it's just really important that we keep repeating crunch

is bad you want to keep your workers pay them well treat them well because it's really true that that's what's needed for the health of the game industry and as long as we continue on this path it's going to be better for everyone both the game developers and the consumers who are gonna be playing games that are built by healthy happy people which are going to be more fun more compelling games and I think that's the perfect send-off for everyone that is kind of sheltered in their homes right now as long as we ourselves stay healthy and both on the game developers side and the employers and keep that as the goal and keep our head you know our focus ahead and work together we can totally get past this I mean our industry of anything is getting hit very lightly compared to all the industries I'm sure within your own network my network we're starting to hear people just losing their jobs left

and right because of the service industry there's no one to service right now and so I mean that's a that's a big thing to be thankful for uh I think what you said before is completely true after all this remote working is gonna be on the rise people who are already as IT are scrambling wires because they're already overworked right now and trying to set everybody up at home they're not gonna thoroughly abandon what they've just done the last this this next 3-4 months sending people situated at home they're not just gonna completely abandon that Network and be seeing that as an extension of their workplace going forward so that's a very exciting thought that people can finally crunching is bad but I think in between no crunching and crunching there's gonna be crunching at home which is something I'm excited for it's like I'll be okay with that for the time being I mean I would love for for us to not crunch at

all obviously so I want to thank you Renee for coming on and before I I kind of yeah before I send you off there is one thing I all usually do with our guests is that I hand the mic over to you where I shut up and this is your place to kind of promote talk about anything that you want to give attention to for our viewers and listeners out there yeah if you're a game developer or you're interested in game development my entire job is supporting you so please look to the IG da you can find us on a GTA org we have so many resources and we're trying our best to support everyone through these times if you'd like to sign up to be an IG da member it's only $60 a year and you get access to all sorts of discounts and benefits and a wonderful community that is going to do everything it can to support each other through these times

perfect I know where my $60 is going so everybody go over there sign up and support the industry and be informed I think that's the most important thing that you can do right now there's a lot of misinformation out there just stay up-to-date to what's going on and what's really going on Rene thank you for coming on and talking with us and see you next week guys [Music] you [Music]