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Irvine, California, United States
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Blizzard Entertainment
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AJ Badarni
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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Dan Thomas
Flexibility and productivity for level design is a huge benefit of adopting procedural generation approaches. Let your artists focus on making awesome assets and your level designers on creating awesome play spaces and ditch the faff of having to manually position every element 👍 #GameDev #ProcGen
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Dr. Yves Jacquier
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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Benjamin C.
🎮 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
15615 Comments -
Tibor Repta
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
251 Comment -
Anton Slashcev
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.
12316 Comments -
Anton Slashcev
There's no single right approach to a feature or a game. I learned this lesson early on at Playrix. Years ago, I reviewed a new feature prototype for Fishdom. It was complex, experimental, and heavily inspired by another game. After playing, I felt the prototype missed the mark. The feature didn't evoke the desired emotions like its reference. So, I prepared detailed feedback: • Pointed out the flaws and differences • Suggested changes to align it closer to the reference I was confident my feedback was perfect. I thought I found the only "right answer," as if it was a math equation. Later on, my mentor looked at my feedback and said: 💬 "Anton, your feedback boils down to remaking everything from scratch to get closer to the initial reference. While that may be valid, did you consider finding something that works well and could be developed in a new direction, even if it’s not like the reference?" 💬 I was stunned. I hadn't considered another way except following the reference. And in the end, the team indeed found a different path for the feature. Since then, I've always reminded myself: There are always multiple paths to solve the problem. None are absolutely right or wrong.
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Adam Goodrich
Our new world-building system STORM is coming to Unity for games, sims, and digital twins. It's runtime and design-time capable and works with standard Unity workflows to ensure team productivity. Modules include: * CORE: Manages and accelerates everything * TERRAIN: New terrain rendering system from ground up * ROADS & RAIL: Procedurally generated road and rail networks * RIVERS & LAKES: Procedurally generated river and lake systems * BIOMES: Procedural vegetation, set dressing, rocks, pebbles etc * BUILDINGS: Procedural buildings (with optional interiors) * CITIES: Procedural cities * DUNGEONS: Procedural dungeons * UGC: User-generated content / runtime editing * LIFE: Living world / ecosystem simulator * AI: A bit further out but already super cool * GEOSPATIAL: for real-world geo import (terrain, satellite, roads, rivers, land use, buildings etc) Look me up at #gdc2024 to learn more! https://lnkd.in/gVxv9Xbq
7410 Comments -
Carla Rylance
🎮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.
514 Comments -
Raphael van Lierop
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?
18038 Comments -
Dylan Matheson
Jumped into the targeting system and fleshed it out finally. Now its much easier to use. Also added stamina for the player with the fancy new UI shader system i wrote. Yes there will be sprinting too. Just need some tweaks to cut down on the visual noise and i get to move onto more UI stuff. #unity3d #csharp #ui
21 Comment -
Britain Vanderbush
One phrase that keeps coming up from big game publishers when trying to justify their layoffs and cuts is this, "the market is oversaturated." They're intelligent enough to identify that fact and blame it on enhancements to technology and accessibility, but they don't appear to have been intelligent enough to acknowledge that their habitual hiring/firing practices have contributed directly to the market's oversaturation that is now harming their growth. I can almost guarantee that every one of you reading this knows multiple people who have started their own indie studios, joined an indie studio, or become solo developers following the disillusionment they experienced due to the current widespread job insecurity in AAA games. These companies have identified the problem while simultaneously contributing to the problem, because the ability to think in terms of short-term financial gains does not equate to the ability to think in terms of human behavior. Unless employment in AAA becomes truly equitable - and I'm talking about what will take years of shows good faith, of creating and maintaining steady full time employment for everyone across the board (that means doing away with a lot of temporary contract work), that means no more leaving the creators out to dry - the future of games will belong to Indie developers. There will at some point be a decisive shift in power if there is not active, intentional, and equitable change made by the people in positions of power. I'm not saying this with hope that the indie devs will win out above AAA. Not at all. I want both to thrive, and to everything there must be a balance. I've been far more enmeshed within and therefore very hopeful about the future of AAA games throughout my career, and I still dream of a world in which AAA game devs on every rung of the ladder have steady and unshakable lifelong employment within that world. It IS possible, and it HAS been possible. But as long as greed is at the wheel, that dream will not become a reality outside of independent studios. And that's just the truth of it. What can you do? In whatever capacity you are able, do what you can to create a more honest, decent, and equitable world. You can do this in your company, you can do this in your personal life with the people you meet. Take every little opportunity to do something good, because every good act plants a seed. We simply haven't had enough little good acts, and that shows up in in society in big, big ways. Peace to you. -B
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Michael Fitch
Practice interviews can be incredibly valuable. Especially after you've been through something traumatic like a layoff or a toxic work environment. Find someone you know well, someone you trust; if you don't have anyone like that, reach out and find someone (www.amirsatvat.com has resources). It's important that you pick someone who can give you critique and someone you can hear it from. One of the things that we do in every interview, whether we're conscious of it or not, is to frame our own work in relation to the experiences we have had. There are a lot of potential pitfalls in that beyond the obvious bad-mouthing of people and companies. For example, I've interviewed a lot of senior production leaders over the last few years. Several of them have related situations where they were not able to get higher-level alignment among stakeholders - this is extremely common in game development. But, how you relate that experience makes a tremendous amount of difference. If you focus on how frustrating it was, how blocking the stakeholders were, how impossible it was to make progress because of that issue, that doesn't put you in the best light. As a production leader, I expect you to resolve issues like that. If, on the other hand, you focus on how you got the team to work around the blocking issue, how you got the stakeholders into alignment, how you forced accountability into leadership on the lack of alignment - now we're talking. Every story you tell in an interview gives the people you are talking to a window into what working with you is going to be like. If you're not aware of your own unconscious framings when you're telling these stories, you may be putting their focus on the wrong places. Practice telling those stories with people who have the right ear to call out the false notes that are coming up. Again, especially after a highly emotional event, you're likely bringing emotional contexts to your stories without even being aware of it. You wouldn't walk up to the mound at a baseball game without having practiced your pitch. Get your reps in on interviewing, and it will pay off.
133 Comments -
Chris Klimecky
Tip for publishing consideration submission to Midwest Games... tldr - Send info through our portal (https://lnkd.in/gWtKgpuU), not through email (or LI). I get that it's a little counter-intuitive...you might think you want to put your info right in front of the sourcing decision influencers' faces. But it's actually a disadvantage - especially those of you who are agents throwing multiple titles at us at once. The submission portal goes right to our database, and that database is there for a reason: to keep an organized and consistent record of all submissions in one place. I look through there all the time. I'm reminded of titles I may have overlooked or need to go back to consider as circumstances change all the time. We rarely, if ever, make immediate decisions or even quick deep review/consideration. Our factors for consideration shift regularly. I do not review your particular email regularly, or at some point even remember you sent one. I go to the database. Connection via other channels is good. Discussion about your game over other channels is good. But having your core game info in those channels is not good. Please use the submission portal!
273 Comments -
Katya Sabirova
✨When There Are So Many Layoffs in Gamedev, Should I be Bothered? Maybe It is Time to Consider a Change of Industry?✨ This question needs to be looked at from various angles, reflecting on your professional experience and considering your current concerns. ✨ How worried are you about all the news of layoffs?✨ Does this background worry hinder your ability to function and work normally? If so, you need an action plan. First and foremost, ✨assess the uniqueness and success of your experience✨. Have you been able to bring something new to the company, achieve outstanding results? If the answer is more yes, then you can feel more confident, as with such expertise and experience, even in the event of layoffs, it will be easier for you to find a new job in the industry. ✨Look at the job market to see how in-demand your field and profession are✨. If layoffs were to happen tomorrow, how many gaming companies could you apply to? Make an approximate list of these companies. It's also important to ✨assess your emotional and psychological state✨. If the thought of layoffs, industry crises, or the rise of AI is depriving you of normal sleep, perhaps it's worth seeking help from a therapist. It wouldn't hurt to ✨create a "backup plan”✨, considering how you can apply your experience from the gaming industry to other fields and, most importantly, whether there are suitable vacancies in other industries. Evaluating other industries, check if there's a crisis in them. How promising would your new activity be in a new industry for you? And overall, does the thought of a new industry interest you? It's important that you enjoy your work. If you realize that it makes sense to move into a new field, ✨evaluate your decision from a financial point of view✨: will the new job cover your minimum financial needs at the start, or do you need a safety net/partner's income/temporary freelance or consulting projects? How much time will you need to retrain? If you've considered all the risks and are ready for them, then we wish you good luck! The truth is, ✨money will continue to flow into the games industry ✨ because people have played and will continue to play. The question is just to weather this storm, see the emergence of new trends, and continue to create new hits. If your involvement in the industry and game production outweighs all these concerns, you probably won't leave. But make sure you have plans B and C, just in case!
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Alan Jack
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.
918 Comments -
Nic Vasudeva-Barkdull
Don't want to bum you out but I know I'm not the only one who has noticed the same layoff cycle on LinkedIn over and over. I can tell your future... 1. Studio is shut down, all the devs become active on LinkedIn maybe for the first time in years and do their looking for work posts. People reach out with connections and support emojis. 2. The outpouring of thanks to the wonderful gamedev community. Amir Satvat and other full time LinkedIn influencers are tagged. 3. Nothing comes of all the LinkedIn support. Devs post frustration posts about how hard it is to be laid off and the injustice of the game industry. Many people will later delete these posts when they start to realize studios still aren't hiring them. 4. The reality step. Months pass and prominent veterans are still unemployed, let alone those "juniors" with a mere 5 years experience. At this point, people either give up and disappear, get a job and disappear (rare), or become a chronic disillusioned LinkedIn user. This last one either requires wearing a mask or ranting about capitalism more and more. 5. The laid off devs watch this cycle repeat for a whole swath of suffering people every couple weeks/days. And that's the step I've been on for a few months. But hey I've been working hard on my family and my solo projects. Magehunter coming soon, and AAA Simulator devlogs will be in production even sooner! Make art for yourself and those you love. Don't make my mistake - look for happiness outside this Microsoft product called LinkedIn.
599 Comments -
Seppo Helava
I think one of the things that's so frustrating about Xbox's recent studio closures is that it is stark contrast to the things they *say*. They say they want original, interesting games, but then they shutter Tango. They say they want to take big swings at live service stuff, but then release Redfall in a disastrous state and don't have the bottle to fix it before shuttering the studio. They say they want interesting, original content, but then close studios working on original content to bolster Call of Duty. Xbox needs platform-defining exclusives. But they've also shown they don't have the understanding to ship stuff that can legitimately compete with what Sony's doing with Playstation's first parties. What happened to Starfield? Redfall flopped. Halo Infinite's SP "infiniteness" faceplanted. Halo Infinite's multiplayer took years to sort out a fatally awful progression system, and it still mostly sucks, but who cares because no one's playing it. Forza Motorsport bombed. Where is Gears? Where is the next thing from id? From MachineGames? When it's one studio flailing around, maybe it's the studio. When it's ***everything*** under the Xbox Game Studios banner, it's a different situation entirely. What the hell are they doing over there? But the point is, when you see closures of studios when the platform is totally failing to deliver anything of meaningful, differentiating value to players... it's time to call it. Phil Spencer's driven the Xbox into irrelevance. How you could spend hundreds of millions of dollars to achieve *so little* is genuinely shocking to me.
435 Comments
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