How Many AAA Character Artist Positions Are There in our Industry?

JacqueChoi

I was wondering if anyone has actual numbers. For either studios they work at, or know the numbers of.

(I had an interesting discussion with some friends, and we feel that number is REALLY low worldwide). Not including outsourcing houses.

If you know the actual numbers for any studios, let me know.

I am NOT trying to push any kind of agenda here, so please don't be mad at me. Also, I am not including the plethora of indie studios, contract positions, or temporary work situations in this (even though there are PLENTY).


**I'll try to keep this first post updated*


Studios:
104

Character Artist Positions:
468


Montreal/Quebec:
Eidos Montreal - 7
Square Enix Montreal - 2
Warner Bros Montreal - 8
Gameloft Montreal - 10
Activision Beenox - 5
Bioware Montreal - 3
Behaviour Interactive - 2
Ubisoft Montreal - 25
Ubisoft Quebec - 3
Sarbakan - 1

Edmonton/Alberta
Bioware Edmonton - 10

Toronto/Ontario
Digital Extremes - 3
Torn Banner - 1
Ubisoft Toronto - 9

Vancouver
Capcom Vancouver - 2
Relic Entertainment - 3
EA Burnaby
Big Park
Black Tusk

Boston:
Irrational - 2

North Carolina:
Insomniac - 2
Funcom - 1
Epic - 4
Redstorm

Maryland
Zenimax - 10

California:
SledgeHammer - 4
Carbine - 7
Riot - 12
The Workshop Entertainment - 5
Naughty Dog - 8
SCEA - 4
Blizzard - 30
Concrete Games - 4
Trion - 2
Molten - 3
Ready At Dawn - 4
Cryptic - 7
Visceral - 3
Waystone - 2
Neversoft - 4
Sony Santa Monica - 7
EA Maxis - 8
Insomniac Burbank - 4
S2 Games Rohnert Park - 7
Kojima - 4
Treyarch - 9
Zindagi - 5
Crystal Dynamics - 2
Obsidian - 3
Respawn - 4
Tell Tale - 1
Toys for Bob - 1
2k Sports - 2
Double Fine -



Texas:
Id - 2
Gearbox - 5
Kings Isle - 13
Retro Studios - 2
BattleCry - 3
CryTek - 3
Arkane - 1
Bioware Austin - 5
Certain Affinity - 3
Portalarium
Edge of Reality
Red Fly

Washington
Suckerpunch - 3
Bungie - 10
Arena Net - 6
Runic Games - 1
Signal Studios - 1
Hidden Path - 1
Zombie - 1
5th Cell - 1
Her Interactive - 1
SnowBlind - 1
Airtight - 3
Cat Daddy Games - 1
Motiga - 3
5th Cell - 3
Undead Labs - 2
Valve - 6
343 - 5
Monolith - 6
Turn 10 - 1

Illinois
Volition - 5

Atlanta
Hi-Rez - 7
Xaviant - 3
Tripwire - 1
CCP

Sweden:
Machine Games - 2
Massive - 1
DICE - 5
Avalanche - 3

Finland
Remedy - 3

Poland:
People Can Fly - 5
Project Red
Techland - 3
City Interactive
cdp.pl

Amsterdam
Guerrilla Games - 3

UK
Splash Damage - 3
Creative Assembly - 10
Rocksteady - 6
Climax - 2
Crytek UK - 3
Evolution - 1
Reloaded - 2
Ubisoft Reflections - 2
Ninja Theory - 5
Codemasters Birmingham - 1
Rockstar Leeds - 2
Rare - 3
Criterion
Ghost (Although I don't think Need for Speed has Characters)
Soho
Media Molecule
Evolution
Sega Sports
Hardlight
Codemasters (although I don't think Forza have Characters)
Climax
Frontier
Headstrong
Warner
Rebellion
Sumo
Traveller's Tales

Russia:
Nival
Mail.ru

Czech Republic
2k Czech - 3

France
Quantic Dream - 7
Ubisoft Montpellier - 2
Cyanide - 3

Germany
Crytek - 7
Yager - 4
BlueByte - 2

Japan
FromSoftware - 8

Vietnam
Gameloft - 12

MM

couple of these that i noticed a while ago and still seems to be open i think.
however, i can bet that actual number of open positions are almost twice of advertized ones. most companies don't advertise actively.

valve (seattle, WA):
http://www.valvesoftware.com/jobs/job_postings.html

kojima productions(LA):
http://www.konami-digital-entertainment.com/jobs.php

JacqueChoi

Oh, im not looking for openings. I'm actually looking for the number of fulltime Character Artists employed at every 'major' studio.

MM

oh ok. nvm then
now i am curious what the discussion is about ...

D4V1DC

That is small, well at least we know now, hope more people come forward this will be very helpful, why not all positions so we can see what we are all working with.
Though this does not include indy positions, I know AAA but indy also plays a part doesn't it? I mean a position is a position after all, or we can't really log that information?
Just curious and wanted to ask about the other positions, in-case others wanted to switch over to something else they will love to work with.

Everyone dreaming about Valve aren't they, well the not hired folks are.

JacqueChoi

Lets just say 'Major Studios' in paid full-time Character Artist jobs then.

Jason Young

I think we've got 13 at KingsIsle. That's across 2 live mmos and other projects.

JacqueChoi

sweeet

sprunghunt

In the bay area EA, Toys for bob, 2k sports, telltale games and the new 2k studio all have between 1-2 dedicated character artists. That's about 5-10 extras there.

just searching for it on linkedin gives me 82,000 hits - although there's quite a few contract positions.

DoubleLeaf

Hmmm I can only imagine the number is pretty low all around

JacqueChoi

I think the number we were guesstimating was around 300-400 worldwide. When you think about it, is INSANELY low.

WoW has 15 Character Artists on (scope wise) is the LARGEST game in the world, with no outsourcing.
LoL is the most popular game in the world, and they're at 12.


From a quick look, most single player games (without a Character Creator) seem to average between 2-4 with outsourcing.

Bigjohn

I don't know about 300-400, I think maybe a bit higher, but my guess would still be at under 1,000. I remember having the same thought at the last good Dominance War. Even looking at just the number of entries that are at industry-level for the time, and multiply it by something crazy like x10, you'd still get less than 1,000.

jam-i-am

8 on our team at Naughty dog, which i thought was huge coming from insomniac Burbank which had 5-6

leslievdb

i guess this is why we need to be versatile as artists :P

sltrOlsson

We got three full time character artists here at Avalanche Stockholm. Don't know about NY.

Xoliul

DICE has 5 full time + an intern. They're looking to replace the sixth one that left recently I think.

And Splash damage had 4 full-time I think. Might be down to 3 now.

marks

CA has 3 on our team, not sure how many on Total War projects.

Mark Dygert

I think you guys might be right, somewhere around 300-500 but that's if you broaden the definition to anyone who makes characters for any kind of game, if you look in the mobile market you have artists who make characters but wear a lot of other hats too. If you limit it to just full time character artists its probably a lot lower.

I can think of a few local studios that would have at least one full time character artist but I would have to pester people to get actual hard numbers.

3+? Arena Net
1? Runic Games
3+? SOE Online
1? Signal Studios
1? Hidden Path
1? Zombie
1? 5th Cell
1 Her Interactive (confirmed)
1? SnowBlind
1? Airtight
1? Cat Daddy Games
?? Epic Seattle (might be tech programmers only...)

That's probably 10-15? Someone in Texas or California could probably think of a few places.

There are markets too outside of North America, South Korea, Japan, China? Places like NCSoft, SquareSoft, Kojima, Riot Games, Spicey Horse, Konami and probably a few other companies that are wildly popular in those markets but unknown outside of there? What about Europe, Norway and Iceland?

Still, I'm not thinking it goes over 500.

skylebones

Guess that number makes sense when you think about it, feels shockingly low though.

nyx702

skylebones wrote: »

Guess that number makes sense when you think about it, feels shockingly low though.

My thoughts exactly.

Justin Meisse

for more shock, count up the number of FX artists!

skylebones

Justin Meisse wrote: »

for more shock, count up the number of FX artists!

Ha! no kidding!

Blaizer

or texture artists...

JohnnyRaptor

i believe theres

6 at rocksteady
x at crytek uk
several at ninja theory
2 of us at Climax studios

Leb

Damn that's a bit of an eye opener when someone starts listing the numbers.

Boonta

we have two at Trion + outsourcing. 4 at our peak.

ScoobyDoofus

We've currently got 3 here at Molten, and might add more soon.

disanski

This is very informative I never knew what the numbers are....damn looks very tight so far. Kind of scary.

SA_22

gulp!......

cw

marks wrote: »

CA has 3 on our team, not sure how many on Total War projects.

We have 6 atm Mark.

bugo

We have 4 I think here at Ready at Dawn. And Airtight has more than just 1, not sure about the numbers there tho. Maybe 4?

nazeil

There's just me here at Arkane Austin.

Kbrom12

This is very informative, and shocking...would be nice to have an environment artist breakdown.

Vorge

Visceral Games has 3. Waystone Games has a staff of 2. Both of these studios are at EA Redwood Shores.

imyj

Pretty surprising to see the number! I'd be interested to see what other disciplines are like.

nathdevlin

Evolution Studios in the UK have 1 character artist.

Indeed this thread is scary when the global numbers are surprisingly low.

Justin Meisse

Holy cow, why does it seem that higher spec art = less staff?

ThatDon

4 Full time Character Artist here at Neversoft, including myself and my lead.

Ferg

three at motiga

rino

environment art here i come.

seriously that's scary low.

nathdevlin

My guess at these low numbers is the relative "ease" to outsource self contained assets such as characters compared to outsourcing fully playable environments and the quantity of assets that goes with that.

Justin Meisse

art schools produce roughly 10,000 new character artists per minute - this is just a guess

LRoy

Justin Meisse wrote: »

art schools produce roughly 10,000 new character artists per minute - this is just a guess

that graduate with 100k debt. that's aprox 500 zillion dollars a year.

rawkstar

It may seem a little shocking at first, but there are whole regions that are completely not represented on here, and some that are not as well known to the general public here in the US, like whats going on in Eastern Europe? Russia? China? India? Korea? Japan? I have no clue, but there are games coming out of there or being made for their own market with quite good art. And if you include outsourcers the numbers would swell considerably.

Here in the US I would guess that most non mmo AAA studios would have somewhere between 2-5 character guys, but I don't know what that looks like elsewhere, for all i know there's an army of badasses somewhere in rural China all sleeping in some warehouse working in overlapping shifts constantly cranking out awesome.

Also you have to consider only games of a certain size need dedicated character guys, I think the vast majority of smaller game developers don't need that amount of specialization, doesn't mean those games don't have characters, or even good art for that matter.

And yeah, there are much fewer FX artists, lighting artists too... I think mostly because at most places general artists do this kind of work as part of making the game.

haikai

Some WA studio info:

• 5th Cell has at least 2, 3 if you count the lead.
• ArenaNet is probably 10+ if you count those on contract too (I think at least 5 are full-time, but I'm too lazy to confirm).
• Airtight Games has 3.
• Undead Labs has at least 2.

It's pretty slim pickings considering all of the people out there wanting to do this kind of thing, but there are a lot of freelancers and artists working at smaller studios too so I'm sure the number of positions out there is probably quite a bit higher.

EDIT: oh, yea, and I'm pretty sure Bungie is not 10! I'd be surprised if they're even at half that at this point.

Barbarian

Was Bioware Austin mentioned? Sony Santa Monica has at least six.

There are smaller to mid-sized studios with two to four character artists, but this list is about AAA studios.

Some graduates can end up eventually doing movie characters (Josh Herman went from Gnomon to Marvel Studios and there are others such as those that worked on Trollhunter), characters for simulations, etc.

CrazyMatt

Definitely can say there are 6 full-time at Valve.

JacqueChoi

Barbarian wrote: »

Was Bioware Austin mentioned?

Nope!

You got a number for us?

mfleuret

Insomniac Games Burbank CA

4 currently and one more in January

Tits

We are around 5-6 here at Beenox activision,
some are doing only character and some do some other stuff like props or environment when there is less to do

arshlevon

We have 7 at Sony Santa Monica.