Industry strugglin'
grand marshal polycounter
Whats up peeps, hope everyone is doing well.
I wanted to get this up here and get a discussion going about how much our industry is struggling at the moment. Thankfully I still have a job, so this post isn't about that. However, every day (no exaggeration), I'm seeing news of copious amounts of people being laid off from games, VFX and animation studios. Projects getting cancelled, studios shutting down... I have to say, this is my first "winter" in the industry.
I just can't for the life of me figure out what is causing it. You could say the writers strike, but that shouldn't affect games. People are still buying games. So what gives?
I wanted to get this up here and get a discussion going about how much our industry is struggling at the moment. Thankfully I still have a job, so this post isn't about that. However, every day (no exaggeration), I'm seeing news of copious amounts of people being laid off from games, VFX and animation studios. Projects getting cancelled, studios shutting down... I have to say, this is my first "winter" in the industry.
I just can't for the life of me figure out what is causing it. You could say the writers strike, but that shouldn't affect games. People are still buying games. So what gives?
Replies
My assumption was that it was all an extension of the bigger tech layoffs (meta, twitter, etc), which scared some adjacent industries; but I can't pretend to really know. Also jobs in many other sectors are booming. Retail, etc, can't seem to find people fast enough.
Curious to see what others have to say too! In the past, I've never had this much difficulty finding work, or even interviews, despite my portfolio (while still lacking) being considerably better than in previous years.
I heard that during COVID, there was a lot more hires in general which is part of why there were so many layoffs this year.
I think also for games, development costs are so expensive, and there is so much investment money on the line, that when a project fails it breaks the company, leading to mass layoffs.
I rarely see anything for juniors, probably because there are plenty of senior level artists willing to take the same job.
Steam is a brutal, unforgiving marketplace.
Subscription services are generally pretty bad deals for developers - you get paid a lump sum which is almost certainly less than you would earn in regular sales.
Risk is higher, returns are lower. So, you're seeing higher prices on games. There's all sorts of psychology around price points where an extra $5-10 feels too high for a consumer, but could make a lot of impact on revenue.
On top of all the industry specific things, the world isn't the most stable place right now, so a slowdown on investment in entertainment isn't surprising.
Currently..
The world economy is in the shitter so people are spending less on things they don't need
The consequences of spoiling your games to force growth has started to really hit the large publishers
The Covid bubble that made us all rich over 21/22 has popped
The upshot of that is that studios aren't hiring at the rate they have been because they don't have enough money
Personally I hope we're moving towards a few years of AA success stories
and - once again.
Robots aren't going to take your job unless you're useless.
With interest rates blasting upwards, it is a lot higher risk to fund speculative projects these days, when money is cheap you have all the big boys throwing cash to start studios, fund smaller teams with high risk projects hoping for the next big 100x return. with money no longer being cheap 1-2% interest rates, even the largest publishers are locking down their risk management.
there has also been a huge amount of trend chasing going on, first it was live service/battle pass games but I think its been pretty evident no one is unseating the top titles like fortnite, COD, or destiny for live service games. The next trend to be chased was the extraction shooter given the success of Tarkov and now you have big players like COD releasing titles in that space, which makes it almost impossible for smaller games with less marketing budget to break through and capture audience share, especially as most of them tend to feel very similar and 3-4 years into this trend it has lost its luster a bit, right as those trend chasing projects finish their dev cycles and no longer will make a splash.
for the last couple years my inbox was flooded with recruiters every week trying to snag talent and that has definitley slowed down a bit, where it used to be 5-6 a week now its about 1-2, especially as more studios move to hybrid or forcing talent back in house, which I have zero interest in. This also usually goes in cycles when tons of projects are ramping up but given the amount of studio closures and layoffs at the moment, I would guess there are a lot less projects moving into their full production phases vs speculative pre-pro.
Like I said, the pendulum tends to swing back and forth every few years in line with the economy and trends so I would guess we are in for a couple years of rougher seas. However, there definitley is still a demand for high end talent, people with bangin' portfolios are still getting hired it is just more competitive. This also happens in waves where every few years people with mid range skillsets and who just want to have a good job and coast tend to leave the industry and get weeded out either from burnout or waves of layoffs and not being able to find work. Back in 2009 roughly 1/3rd of my friend groups in the industry either quit or lost their jobs and ended up changing industries after not being able to find a new gig.
My advice would be what it normally tends to be, focus on the things you can control, the quality of your portfolio and making sure it is actually at the level of current industry standard quality, with interesting eye catching work. Also jobs that are closer to the player experience that really need to be done in house due to iteration speed like world building/level design, lighting and anything gameplay related will probably be more in demand vs asset creation which can be outsourced for much cheaper in a weaker economic situation.
students with a basic portfolio of a couple brick/rock substance designer shader balls, a generic AK47/M4 and a couple basic props like a fire extinguisher or scifi crate are going to struggle. I always recommend specializing and showcasing a very focused set of skills that shows a higher level of mastery in a given niche job than a very basic generalist skillset. Yes generalists can still get hired but you tend to see those people with a very high level of skill across the board and a portfolio filled with much more complex assets and scenes due to having a senior level of experience.
I would say the games industry is turbulent due to Global Events and the huge shifts of uncertanty post Covid. On top of this Seasonal Trends and so many different Technology Shifts going on. I have students making Assets for Dekogon with polycounts that I could only have dreamed of. Then there is the Economic Factors, Development Cycles, Market Demand, Studio Growth and Contraction, Outsourcing, Regulatory Changes, Mergers and Acquisitions its hard to work out what is going on.
Some good news from TIGA
Here is some good news from the UK, Employment in the UK games development industry rose 15.2% between December 2021 and April 2023, a new report from trade body TIGA revealed.
According to TIGA's Making Games in the UK 2023 report, the number of full-time employees went from 20,975 to 24,155 during that period, representing an annualised rise of 11.4%.
New figures published today by TIGA also found that 51.9% of full-time staff are employed by foreign-owned studios, up from 40% in 2017.
8.8% of UK studios are owned by parent companies headquartered overseas, compared to 6% in 2021.
According to TIGA, the "headcount growth rate" for international studios with five or more development staff was twice that of UK-owned studios between December 2021 and April 2023.
There were 159 overseas-owned studios as of April 2023, and they grew by an average of 25% compared to 10% for UK-based studios.
Overall, the number of studios in the UK increased by almost 18% over the same period, from 1,528 to 1,801. According to the data, annual investments made by studios rose 27.7% from £1.3 billion to £1.66 billion.
Overseas games companies invested £2.5 billion in UK games production over the past five years. They reportedly contributed over £5.5 billion to the UK economy "before any additional impacts of acquisitions are taken into account."
TIGA estimated that the "combined direct and indirect tax revenues" generated by the UK's games development sector increased 25% from £1.2 billion to £1.5 billion between December 2021 and April 2023. Overall, the game development industry contributed £3.68 billion to the UK's GDP (compared to £2.9 billion in December 2021).
The report also found that nearly 80% of the UK's games development workforce lives outside London, where only 22% of employees work.
Approximately one-fifth of development staff are located in the South East, 12% in the North West, 10% in the West Midlands, and 9.1% in Scotland.
The Making Games in the UK 2023 report was based on extensive surveys with UK games businesses, along with analysis by Games Investor Consulting.
Source Article - gamesindustry.biz
TIGA Source Article - https://tiga.org/news/studio-numbers-employment-rise-in-uk-video-games-industry-new-tiga-research
Like in my previous job which was in 3D character art, it was my experience in QA and Dentistry that helped with data entry and managing hundreds of character models that needed to be modified synchonously to match references.
I was doing character art but the art pipeline is proprietary so a lot needed to be learned on the job and it needed unwavering discipline and commitment.
In that sense the experience that needs to be measured is overall competancy since the role depends on a lot more than what studio you worked at before.
I also feel that the practice of poaching artists from another studio should be secondary to hiring new talent.
And they really ought to drop the junior, mid, senior metric, everyone at the studios I've worked was junior in something or the other and had to figure a whole lot of stuff out as a team since the needs of the project always changed.
Their seniority was more in being adaptable, but I'm not sure how that connects to work experience gained at another studio.
In that sense I sometimes feel that the whole idea of hiring seniority and poaching may have more to do with justifying funding and investment, meaning you pitch that you hiring top talent when in reality that top talent is still watching tutorials on the job and needs a helping hand from time to time just like any other employee.
What I consider to be genuine seniority and genius in art are the likes of Keos Masons, Vitaly Bulgarov, Mike Butkus and they work independently as they rightly should. (Also must mention Paul Pepera and Mike Nash who we'll always look up to RIP)
Also students graduating from game dev programs do have work experience starting out given how the programs are structured. This ought to be considered.
Though I fear that a lot just gets lost in translation in a competitive job market.
I didn't even know that epic was about 5000 people ?!
With that work force the Unreal documentation is probably really good.. really really good.
https://www.gamesradar.com/fall-guys-studio-mediatonic-hit-hard-by-epic-layoffs-director-shares-logo-rearranged-to-decimation/
https://80.lv/articles/dneg-is-offering-employees-to-choose-between-pay-cuts-salary-loans/
If you can afford to live and do that it's an extremely good way to demonstrate you have the capacity to commit to a project and have seen a production cycle through.
University courses are generally far better these days but cannot recreate the pressures, the benefits or the timeframes you see working in the real world. If you've worked on something that shipped commercially in working order - even if it turned out to be a financial failure - you are eliminating a very large question mark about your ability (as an inexperienced person) to make a positive contribution to a team
Obviously you need to make sure you're not getting screwed over by the people running the project - there's no shortage of scumbags or incompetents out there.
As @PixelMasher mentioned, I came to realise lately that specialization is needed. This is not what I was being told a few years back trying to get my foot into the industry. It was more like 'learn about everything to make your self more appealing'. Now, all the connections I reach out to, asking for work, all tell me 'what do you want to specialize in'. The answer is simple. Whatever the heck the studio needs. Why specialize in some niche by myself, then search for a studio that wants it? I would be glad to do it the other way around. This just cannot be communicated to a studio before, or even during an interview (if I ever get one, at this point. By the way guys, if you can get me an interview with a gaming studio, I will send you baskets of flowers, beer and candy)
But my 2 cents and frustration about hiring in this industry, everyone wants a Senior that can take choices and act independently, be able to work in areas more than art itself, while they get paid a mediocre salary and work on a mediocre project. The hypocrisy I see on linkedin makes me even angrier. 'Our hearts reach out to the artists, and we're hiring all levels' then applying for juniors and they don't even want to interview you, even if you have experience.
I guess that's because so much talent is unemployed, that even if you are good enough for that junior position, they will decline you because a 'Senior' in need can grab it. So top talent will get hired first, then veterans, and whoever has survived after that point, might be given the leftovers. I was literally thinking of applying for an internship again, but if they wouldn't keep me after it ends, that would be the biggest farce this industry has to offer at this point.
Another thing that is happening around Europe, studios with successful titles are being acquired, because of the stable income with minimal effort. Then the studio gets closed down, as they only needed the title. Beep boop, we don't need the people who made the successful title anymore.
That's how special forces does it anyway and they are like the 1% that actually makes any difference. A lot of times anyway. I guess there is probably some sort of projects where you just need "bodies" to pump out stuff like fortnite skins and that sort of work might be more attractive to somebody who just wants to sit and grind art without thinking about a lot else. But if you just wanna be a meat machine then you'll always be easy to replace because the team doesn't really depend on you at all so it seems like you are really putting yourself at natures mercy so to speak, rather than being master of your own ship.