Jason Myers

Creating games is very difficult. And building games is challenging. The process of build requires to compile the code and all the data required in the game in a specific sequence involving many dependencies. As such monitoring the outcome is essential, but not sufficent. What if we were able to predict the outcome of a build ? What if we were able to decrease the required computing resources while increasing our iteration capability ? #Ubisoft #Ubisoftlaforge #innovation

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Do you want to level up your game dev team? Do you want to learn some of the magic that makes some of the greatest games? Alex's course is a great place to start. And if you have designers on staff you think would benefit, I highly recommend this bootcamp. #bootcap #gamedesign

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🎮Monthly External Game Dev Pulse🎮 I’m on a personal mission to broaden my awareness and gain an ongoing pulse into the landscape of External Development in the Video Games industry. Video Games is an industry that I have been employed in for nearly 20 years, with External Development covering much of this tenure. I love it, I live and breathe it, and I’ll be doing this until I’m much older and wrinklier. I care about seeing this industry continuing to thrive, and I believe that the flexibility, scalability, and diversity of expertise in External Development can be a key component in supporting the industry as the landscape begins to (hopefully) restabilize. As such, I am starting a monthly pulse survey to gain regular snapshots in time of the industry-wide vision on External Development, with an aim to provide Video Games professionals the data needed to lean on external development to create increased development stability. To help with this mission, I am asking the community to please take 5-10 minutes completing this 5-question survey. I plan to release these pulse surveys on a monthly basis, and as a thank you I will share key data and insights with this community on Linkedin. This survey is open to participation for those working in External Development in the Video Games industry as a Service Provider, Developer or Publisher. I hope that this personal initiative will help many throughout the industry, whether you are involved in external development, hoping to learn more about external development, or interested in learning more about options for industry stabilization. I hope for a large pool of diverse participants, so if you see the value in this initiative please do share this post with your network. If you have any feedback for how the most can be made of this initiative, or improve the questionnaire for future releases, please let me know your perspectives through a Linkedin message. Thank you.

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I like sharing the good news about the video game industry (because I know many people have been burned by working through it). Although, as a whole, the industry is expected to continue growing year after year. What do you think this means? The concept of diversity becomes the inevitable truth. Growth encompasses variety and innovation, bringing a richer palette of stories and experiences. This transformation is driven by a new wave of creators who are not just making games but also crafting cultural bridges. A fantastic example is the upcoming game 'Rooster', which celebrates Asian heritage in a deeply authentic way. The team behind Rooster has a shared vision of representing this culture through fun and accessible gameplay experiences, which aligns beautifully with broader industry trends toward inclusivity and representation. It seems like they love what they do to boot! If there was a clear path to surviving the video game market while also enriching the social impact of gaming, IMO, it would be to get behind and champion these vital initiatives. #diversity #equity #inclusivity #asianheritage #rooster

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Lyra 8 + Ornament 8 = 🤯🎶. Been jamming nonstop with these two, discovering how versatile they really are. They're not just for noise (though that's fun too 😜). Think of this: otherworldly ambient soundscapes, creepy movie soundtracks or horror video games soundscapes, even unique melodies. Spent the weekend diving into the Ornament 8's logic. It's surprisingly mathematical 🧮 (but in a good way! 😉) and can be tamed to create incredibly intricate patterns. But the real magic is in its unpredictability - the way it generates melodies through impulses and collisions is just pure sonic gold ✨. #sounddesign #musicproduction #experimentalmusic

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🎮Monthly External Game Dev Pulse🎮 May’s game dev pulse survey is now open! https://lnkd.in/g5u25bmM If you are an external development professional within video games, please take 5-10 minutes to complete this short survey.  This pulse closes on Friday, June 14, 2024 @ 5pm PST. I release these pulse’s on a monthly basis, and as a thank you I share the key data and insights with this community on Linkedin. This monthly pulse is used to gain regular snapshots in time of the industry-wide vision on External Development, with an aim to provide video games professionals the data needed to lean on external development to create increased development stability. There are a few differences in this pulse compared to last months: • A choice has been added to determine whether you are a buyer or seller of services. • The questions are now multiple choice - taking the top answers from last month's survey - with room to add other answers if required. • A bonus question has been added based on a response that gained the most intrigue from April’s survey: what can this community do to more successfully highlight diverse regions for services? I hope for a large pool of diverse participants - both on the buyer and seller sides - so if you see the value in this initiative please complete this survey, and share this post with your network. If you are interested in reading the report from April’s pulse survey, you can find a link to it in the Featured section of my LinkedIn profile. If you have any feedback for how we can make the most of this initiative, or improve the pulse for future releases, please let me know your perspectives through a LinkedIn message. Thank you.

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Now that Timbre is officially closed -- and my heart goes out to all those affected -- I think someone should ask WTF Sumo Digital Ltd was thinking in making this drastic cull. You have a team of about 100 folks who -- just based on the outpouring of support and collective love between them; I know nothing about the studio itself -- seem to have been a high-functioning group of developers who had worked together for up to 2 years (obviously some of them were newish, as the median time employed was about a year; I saw some layoff notices from people who'd been hired within the past 2-3 months, so this suggests the leadership team had no idea the closure was coming, unless they are just evil...). Anyone who has built a team understands the value of having folks across many different disciplines who work well together. There is significant value in this, and you don't just throw it away. I understand Sumo decided they needed to make 15% cuts to save costs, but then why not cut 15% uniformly (more or less) across all your studios and the parent org? If you are cutting 250 people worldwide across multiple studios (I count 14 studios: https://lnkd.in/gxmRTJcz), why then cut 100 of them in one place? 250 people across 14 studios is less than 20 people per studio (some of the Sumo studios have 100s of people). You could have cut 15 from Timbre and kept 85 employed. Could they not have sold the studio to another publisher? Or found a buyer from outside games? Both Relic and Phoenix were bought by non-game buyers (private equity in Relic's case, a blockchain company in Phoenix's case), so there's clearly money from outside the industry looking to invest and own a piece of the games business, even in super expensive Vancouver. This doesn't seem like just another "oh whoops we overhired during COVID" story. What, did you set up an entire new studio from scratch and hire 100 people between 2022 and 2024 by mistake? Tencent bought Sumo a while ago. Tencent has more money than anyone. Did Tencent not want this studio? They could have spun it out from Sumo. Microsoft? Ubisoft (they used to have a Vancouver studio...)? Anyone? Nobody out there wanted a team of 100 folks who knew how to work together and had built some amount (maybe a lot?) of a game together before they were unceremoniously shut down? No publisher wanted to pick up the game and continue to float the studio until it shipped? There's been a lot of love being generated from the demise and aftermath of this studio. But where's the rage?

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Play the game in your head before you code a single line. You must imagine every detail: gameplay, flow, visual style, UI, etc. ↳ The clearer your vision, the smoother the development. ↳ If you can't picture it distinctly, development will be chaotic. Because every new game starts in your head, in your imagination. So push it to the limits before spending any resources on development.

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The Sumo Group closures really have broken me a bit, and I need to rant about the state of things. I'm sorry if it seems I'm glossing over all the closures before this one, but so many ex-students went there, so many ex-colleagues passed through there, and so my timeline is just filled with people looking for work. We keep talking and talking about the economic factors involved, Brexit and Covid and this and that ... the thing I can't stop thinking of is that in my life I've watched the world slowly pitch into a place of despondent capitalism. Art has become more about making stars and fame than helping people escape and reflect. A drive for "truth" and objectivity has resulted, paradoxically, in people putting more stock in spreadsheets and numbers than people. I can't help but feel that if you're bleating about finance and trade deals and business decisions, you're ignoring the fact that general support for artistic and creative endeavours has declined sharply and is still declining, even in the so-called "art world". Games are ultimately always going to be the first to fall in a culture war against creativity, because games are ultimately and profoundly pointless things. That's the whole majesty of the medium: they make us feel profound feelings, they help us explore our existence by being separate from reality, but to do so they MUST bring us nothing tangible in return. The truth is that our industry will probably bounce back to some degree, but it's not any financial structures or cost systems that will save game development as a medium and an art form - it's a cultural shift to recognise the importance of expressive and explorative subjective art in the world today, and the need to support creative endeavours without the pressure of financial recompense.

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Something for our gamedev friends here! One of the main features of our own level editor is a script visualizer, which you can see in the picture here. Aaaaand we will be releasing this level editor along with the game! The dates and details are still TBA, so stay with us to hear the freshest info! #IndieGameDev

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Hey folks ! I've been putting in place a small proof of concept / example on how you can use the Python remote execution in Unreal, to link a DCC ( in that case, Houdini ) and Unreal. 🎞 Here is the video: https://lnkd.in/eKir8JyC In this example, I apply a very simple hda on a selected asset(s) in the content browser directly (no Houdini engine involved here). It runs a hython session under the hood to process the hda, spawn an UI blueprint widget to show the progress of the process and automatically closes it when done. See a quick summary of the pipeline in the attached picture 😊. I'm thinking about maybe doing a in depth tutorial on how to do it with a more complex example, how to set up the pipeline as well as customizing the command and its parameters. If you'd be interested in that, let me know in the comments !😊 ⬇ #unreal #python #pipeline #videogamedev #houdini

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I was recently interviewed by Conor Ross about my role at Summit Games Studio , the state of the industry and much more, watch the full interview below

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Horrible news today, with Bethesda Game Studios having announced that Arkane Studios Austin, タンゴゲームワークス（Tango Gameworks）and Alpha Dog Games | Bethesda are being shut down. Roundhouse Games is being merged into ZeniMax Online Studios, and staff of some of the affected studios will be moved into other studios, where possible. To those affected by these closures and reshuffles, please find a comprehensive list of resources, below: 🥇First, Discipline Games Jobs Resources: Over the past weeks I have created nine Games Jobs Resources to find jobs in a wide range of disciplines: 🎨 Art, Animation, VFX and UI This resource contains around 1,300 jobs worldwide across all links. Link: https://lnkd.in/eu2bjadW ⚙ Engineering and Programming This resource lists just over 1,700 jobs worldwide across all links. Link: https://lnkd.in/etPj22BE 🕹 Quality Assurance This resource lists over 440 QA jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/dkiEy8da 📑 Game Production This resource lists around 400 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/d9qfQ5tg 📢 Marketing & Community This resource lists around 380 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/dc-PVb3h 🎶 Audio and Sound Design This resource lists around 180 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/dU8t6Esq 📠 Studio Support, HR, Recruitment and BizDev This resource lists around 300 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/dMdWv4xN ⚙ IT This resource lists around 100 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/df7d-KkR 🎮 Game Design This resource lists around 600 jobs worldwide. Link: https://lnkd.in/d2kKaw95 🥈 Second, the Ultimate list of Video Games Career Resources: This should be your one-stop shop for all information. My dear friend Amir Satvat maintains these documents, he is a legend for doing this - please check them out: https://amirsatvat.com/ 🥉 Third, If you have worked in publishing, please message me. I am looking for quite a few roles right now! ⬅ 🎖 Finally, do not give up. Ever. No matter how dark things may look right now, I KNOW you will get through this, you have got this! 👊 Remember you are not alone. If you need help, advice, or even an ear to listen, we're here for you. Always! ➡ A request to my community, please can I ask you to repost this post to your colleagues and friends, so that we can get as many into jobs as possible! And please comment if you or your studio are currently hiring - let's help each other! Much love ❤️ #layoffs #gamesindustry #jobsingames #arkaneaustin #roundhousegames #tangogameworks #alphadoggames

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🎮 Want a job in the video game industry? 🎮 Begin with the end in mind.* ➡ When you drive to work do you just turn left or right based on how you feel that day? 😅 (I hope you left extra early that day) ➡ When you gather data for a project, do you grab monthly active users, popular breakfast items and breeds of dog? 🤐 (This report might be fun but your boss will not be happy) ➡ When you schedule a doctor appointment, do you call random numbers in the phone book? 🙃 The same applies to...well...applying for jobs. ❔ Do you look at the minimum requirements for a job or do you click easy apply on cool titles? (Although, I might as well shoot my shot for Game Director) ❔ Do you update your resume with your most relevant experience when you apply? What is your desired outcome? Work backwards and you'll see at least some of the steps in a path to get there. This is not easy to do, because there is no perfect way to be the best fit for a job. Everyone's journey is different. What steps have you taken to get to your goal or how have you been successful in your journey? *One possible end goal pictured #Letsgetyouhired #RecruiterAdvice

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UX in video games can make or break the title. When it's great, everything is greater. When it's not so great, the whole experience gets taken down. This is an important role with a major remit. https://lnkd.in/gRNwyVgH #hiring

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🎮 Xbox has evolved from a mere console to a multiplatform game development powerhouse, with recent game reveals from studios acquired by Microsoft showcasing their growing influence in the gaming world. The focus on exclusive titles like Fallout 76: Skyline Valley and World of Warcraft: The War Within at the Xbox Games Showcase signals a shift towards multiplatform game development and away from traditional hardware discussions. 🕹️ Microsoft's strategy of acquiring studios aims to strengthen its Game Pass subscription service, sparking discussions about the future of this model. The changing relationship between Microsoft and PC gamers has seen its share of ups and downs, with sentiments ranging from concerns about consolidation of ownership to the rise of unconventional indie games. Despite these uncertainties, Microsoft's commitment to delivering exceptional gaming experiences is promising, reflecting a potential shift towards a game-centric approach. 🚀 The future of Xbox as a game development conglomerate points towards a dynamic and evolving gaming landscape. Stay tuned for more exciting developments on the horizon! 🌟 How do you feel about Xbox's transformation from a traditional console to a multiplatform game development giant? https://lnkd.in/espmDKFP

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At Uncapped Games I'm helping to develop my favorite game I've ever worked on professionally by far... and surprisingly it's an RTS. This is surprising because I (unlike nearly the whole team who are RTS powerhouses), have basically no RTS experience at all. Fire up Super Smash Bros and I may have a shot to impress, but RTS has been a huge - and fun - mental shift for me! ...and somehow, I've gotten pretty good! (At our game at least 😅). Very excitingly, we're on the schedule to say more about our game at SGF ( https://lnkd.in/e5uDTwZp ) in June, but now, kicking things off so to speak, we've put out a really cool documentary that explains some of our philosophies, hopes, and goals. If you're an RTS nerd - or just curious to learn more, check it out: https://lnkd.in/eQpxP3WZ

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