That Time The Gaming Industry Worked Me To Death
Working 9 til 5(am), what a way to make a living.
I think it’s a given that, when you’re in a job you love to do - a vocation - you just work for the love of it.
But the games industry isn’t like any other calling. Every colleague I’ve discussed this with, regardless of whether we were working in small, independent groups or enormous, thousand-dev teams, agree that this is an industry that’ll swallow you up if you’re not careful.
Behind the veneer; the projected image of a “big, happy family” that you might see on a company brochure, there’s a more deep-seeded, insidious layer of competition which remains... even if some might deny it.
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Starting Out & Working At Rare
I was in my early twenties when I got my start in the games industry. I got a brief but very eye-opening period working at Rare, where I learned that I was not, in fact, a total badass in my chosen field, as I watched some true masters create 3D Jiggies, piñatas and Sargothans (major props if you got all three references).
It wasn’t disheartening, though - it spurred me on to being better, to the perfection of my craft.
If these guys could be this good after only five or ten years in the industry, maybe I could be as good... if not better! Hell, I’d always been an overachiever, the golden child - why couldn’t I eclipse even these behemoths of the industry?
Several years later, I had hopped between several game development contracts, with a lot of positivity sent my way as I picked up contemporary techniques and some insider knowledge. But it wasn’t to last, as at the start of the 2010s, the industry in the UK hit a “job drought”.
Some companies folded and went into liquidation, including the one I was working with, and suddenly I was met with something I hadn’t had to endure since I was a teenager - unemployment.
Cont.