AAA game development and motivation.

Roomper

Hi, everyone.

I've been working in the game industry since 2012. But most of my career was in mobile games. That's not why I started learning 3D and came to game development. I plan to stop making mobile games and move to another country for some single player AAA project in the future. I am not really interested in outsourcing and that's why I should  take my portfolio to the next  AAA level by myself.

I saw great and complex works on ArtStation from those who're currently working on AAA and have free time for their own projects. I'm just wondering - How do you do that? Where do you get the power and motivation to finish it? Do you live in a world where art is the most important thing in life? How do you manage that?

I  always thought that working on AAA it's interesting but hard and you won't have  free time for other stuff. Always crunches,  insomnia, broken health etc.

Thanks for the attention.

lluc21

Well, I don't have much experience in AAA, but from what colleagues and friends that have been working in AAA for a while tell me, crunch and bad organisation is not necessarily a common thing. There is crunch of course, specially when getting close to release, but it's not like you're working 16 hours a day every day forever, independently of the development stage.

There are also different kinds of people in regards to work/personal project balance. I'd say the people that get out of their 8h 3D job and keep doing 3D at home are definitely not the norm, and I don't think you need to be one of those people to get into AAA

oglu

The trick for me is todo something every day. Even if you spend only 30min. Make it a habit. You can do a lot in 1h laser focused work. Even 20min renaming objects in your file or collecting reference images is something. 

If you spend 5h a week you have 250h you can work on private stuff a year. You can do 2 to 3 high end chars in that time. 

poopipe

If you want to be really, really good at something you have to do it pretty much constantly. 
Its no different from wanting to be a world class athlete really - they get up and train hard every day and sacrifice all sorts of nice things in the name of being the best they possibly can.

On the other hand, you don't have to be world beatingly amazing to get a AAA job, you have to be good but the crucial part is having a  mindset where you can grind away at things until the art director is happy /it's perfect 

Meloncov

Almost no studios are always crunching. Even at studios with bad crunch, that normally means a few months of crunch interspersed with periods of normal forty hour work weeks. At better studios, it's more like a few weeks.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a problem. A few months of crunch can still wreck havoc on your relationships and physical and mental health. But it's not like you have zero time for anything besides work. 

garcellano

Just try spending some extra time learning something, or going through some tutorials. If not during the week, just whenever you're free during the weekend. I never really made any big scale environments when I was at a game studio or AAA studio. Most of the work I did on the side were all materials, props, etc. I plan on diving in on UE5 soon. It's mainly just time.