I started my career on an annualized sports title so it took me about a year to get my first game out. Due to layoffs and industry instability, it took me significantly longer to get my second game released — multiple years and two separate additional …
Hi, I was wondering if you had any advice or tips for someone with a successful career and several years of experience in mobile games to transition into PC/Console. Most studios require previous experience with proprietary development tools or having released AAA titles, which is, of course, a chicken and an egg problem, so I’m curious to know if there is some angle I might be missing. Thank you!
Most game dev experience is fungible. Building a game for mobile has different constraints than building for console, which has different constraints than building for PC, but the fundamentals and principles remain the same. If an applicant already has…
Thoughts on GTA 6 union busting?
From accounts I’ve read, it does seem suspicious. The dismissed employees were not really shown any evidence for the dismissal. That said, these kind of hardball tactics is what union membership is for. I can talk all I want about how things ought to b…
Hi! Do you play the games you’ve worked on after they’ve been released for your own entertainment, or is there a case of “working on this thing has soured my opinion and thus I can’t enjoy it anymore” type of thing goin on?
I’ve certainly played the retail versions of some of the games I worked on. If I’m only working on some portion of it and the game’s scope is sufficiently large, there’s still interesting things to learn by playing through the parts I didn’t work on. G…
as a gamer, i don’t think crunching for game studios is bad at all. almost all games i’ve played where that’s common are some of the best games released. i think it’s something developers sign up for.
Let’s set aside for a moment how callous and entitled that statement could sound to others. That’s probably not how you feel or what you meant, but that’s very much how it comes across. We’re setting it aside. Here’s why you, as a gamer, should care ab…
What advice would you give someone who wanted to direct a AAA game someday? Is there even any sort of regular path for it?
To direct a game, you need a certain set of skills and one key requirement.You need a deep understanding of the game development process from start to finish. This covers the time from the initial pitch all the way to shipping the game and post-launch…
When switching jobs, do you go back and play all the games released by the studio you are joining?
I always play and think about the studio’s more popular games before I interview with that studio. If I know what game I’m interviewing for (e.g. a sequel to game X), then I try to focus on the franchise and the predecessor. This process usually involv…
Any ideas on how to break through crunching culture? I love what I do and I’m very lucky to work in AAA, but crunching is common and encouraged where I work. I and others have even slept in the office at times. I used to feel proud about this, but it’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that this is not the norm and I’m really affecting my health. I feel like just stopping what I’ve been doing will be looked at as not being as dedicated and could even result in some sort of corrective action or even termination.
Unfortunately, the answer is that you really can’t. Unless you’re in a position of significant power at the studio (and you’d know if you were), there really isn’t much we can do as individual contributors to affect things. Team and studio leadership …
Actually begging you to answer this because I really think more professional game developers could offer the most valuable insight here. There is big pushback to the overused Doom tweet of “You choose the buttons you press” in regards to optional gameplay mechanics (currently sprinting in Halo) that potentially muddy the difficulty or pacing. It’s an interesting topic and I would love your extended thoughts as a AAA veteran. Thanks!
This is a prickly question. Optional things are optional, and players can choose the buttons they press. However, we developers have a responsibility to design a game that is engaging and fun for the player. Part of that responsibility is providing a d…
What are the pro-cons of working on live service games as a dev versus working on a new release?
Live service games come with inherent constraints that limit the sort of things we can do. In exchange, they provide stability and sustainability because players who like the game will likely continue to like the game as we make more of it for them. As…