Out of job

[Thorwyn]

Sooooo....
After messing around on the freelancer market for 15 months, I finally had to pull the plug and quit my job. There was just not enough work to do, the games biz has changed drastically over the past few years. Quality and decent game deisgn is no longer needed, the focus is on low cost products with a high monetization rate. There is a high demand for game developers over here. But unfortunately, the demand is just for those people, who are willing to work for 1200 Euros...pre-tax of course.

It´s obvious that I can´t stay in the biz, so I have to find another solution. I could go back to my "old" business (engineering), but since I´ve been working in the games biz for over 13 years, I basically lost 13 years worth of experience in the "other" job.

Things are looking pretty grim at the moment. Made an appointment with some job consulting dude next week, but I´m not too optimistical about that either. At any rate, some interesting times ahead...

..and no, I don´t want cheese with that wine.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Very few good games companies use lots of freelancers, it's all in-house. Go for an in-house role, quality is still very much in demand.

 

[Punishment]

Very few good games companies use lots of freelancers, it's all in-house. Go for an in-house role, quality is still very much in demand.

This

 

[Thorwyn]

Very few good games companies use lots of freelancers, it's all in-house. Go for an in-house role, quality is still very much in demand.

I worked in-house for 11 years. There are no reliable jobs left, companies are going tits up left, right and middle. Boxed games are pretty much dead, regardles what E3 wants to pretend. There might be room for a few dinosaur companies, but the small and middle-sized companies are just russian roulette.
Steam has opened an entirely new market segment for independant games, but the same applies here: it´s too risky.

 

[Gwadien]

Why not trying setting your own game and contacting Steam? - Could be a thought, there was a bloke I spoke to who made a steam game called called Bucaneer: Pursuit of Bucanny or something like that, and he was in a similar situation as you, was a very small company who made, it who made a bit of cash out of it

You're right the power of downloading games, and Steam are closing many doors...

but at the same time... they're opening some too

 

[Lamp]

You're doing the right thing. Go to agencies & get your CV out on the net. Something will come up.

All the best

 

[Wazzerphuk]

I worked in-house for 11 years. There are no reliable jobs left, companies are going tits up left, right and middle. Boxed games are pretty much dead, regardles what E3 wants to pretend. There might be room for a few dinosaur companies, but the small and middle-sized companies are just russian roulette.
Steam has opened an entirely new market segment for independant games, but the same applies here: it´s too risky.

Sorry but that's just not true. There aren't a lot of jobs going around, but there are plenty who are still hiring and while some are going out of business, plenty are still thriving.

What has boxed games got to with anything to do with the availability of industry jobs? You're talking nonsense. The games are still being made, delivery systems are slowly changing but do you really think no-one needs designers because of this?

A lot of your points don't really relate to your search for a job, are you just giving up on the industry because it looks a little tricky right now?

 

[Zenith.UK]

Sooooo....
After messing around on the freelancer market for 15 months, I finally had to pull the plug and quit my job. There was just not enough work to do, the games biz has changed drastically over the past few years. Quality and decent game deisgn is no longer needed, the focus is on low cost products with a high monetization rate.

Just a silly idea, but you know your stuff and understand game design.
Why not design your own iOS/Android mobile game, get a couple of young enthusiastic coders and graphic artist on board and make some money?

Put another way... Jeff Minter is still making games and still selling them (if you don't know who he is, you have no place in the games biz!). Gridrunner Revolution is on Steam and includes the original VIC20 and C64 versions as well. His latest release is Space Giraffe and seems well received.
http://www.llamasoft.co.uk

 

[Chilly]

Top end games devs are generally 1337 c++ hackers with mad optimisation skills, you could probably go down the dark side and get a job at a bank doing high frequency algo shit. It's all about real time, low latency, blah blah - same shit as games.

 

[DaGaffer]

The 228 games developer jobs I'm looking it on datascope.co.uk must be for some other games industry then? Salaries posted don't look that bad to me (£45K and up region).

A take your point that the industry is changing, but I'd say its the middle managers and the sales & marketing types who'll struggle most to adapt; if anything I'd see more opportunities for devs right now.

 

[Bahumat]

I hope you get everything sorted out Thorwyn. WOrst case you can buy 7 daoc accounts and PL+farm gold.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

I don't think there are any reliable jobs in most industries. Its the time we live in.

Design a game of your own for a mobile phone. Sell it for 50p a pop. Gimme a shout I'll do you some music for it. Actually, design one for Web OS, beat the competition to the punch

 

[Keitanz]

The indie-game market is growing very fast at the moment, might be worth a poke

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Where are you based, anyway?

 

[Tom]

Learn how to write Android apps and write me a Digital Timecode Slate app. I'll buy it

 

[Chilly]

Learn how to write Android apps and write me a Digital Timecode Slate app. I'll buy it

I've just read up on what you meant by that. How do you initially sync the audio TC generator to the clapboard?

 

[Tom]

You don't, traditionally you use the digislate to generate the timecode, and slave everything from that.

There's an iPhone app that does the job, but I don't have an iPhone.

 

[Chilly]

so it needs a way of being sync'd FROM by the audio system?

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Smtpe?

 

[Tom]

so it needs a way of being sync'd FROM by the audio system?

No. The digislate app generates SMPTE timecode, displays it as numbers on the screen, while the headphone socket outputs those numebrs as an audio track that can be read by other devices.

That's what timecode down a wire is, just an audio signal, and simple to create. Remember how an old C64 game used to make those noises when loading up? That's a bit what TC sounds like.

See:

YouTube - ‪iPad DSLR Slate App + Canon 7D‬‏

 

[liloe]

If I understood correctly what games you worked on, you did a really good job. I have to admit that I have no clue how much they pay game designers nowadays. I know that Gameforge (Karlsruhe) was looking for people not too long ago, but then again, not sure what you're looking for =)

And what about major companies such as Blizzard or MS? And if money is short right now, have you tried contacting the VHS in your region? (Winter semester starting in 2 months I think) I'm sure there are always kids eager to learn some "game programming" stuff. Even if they think it sucks after the 3rd time, a payed course is a payed course

Well and of course if you rock maths as well (and are interested ofc), you can apply as teacher. "Quereinstieg Mathe/Informatik" is pretty much sought after at the moment."

Well, that's my 2 cents =)