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Cain on Games - Tim Cain's new YouTube channel

StrongBelwas

StrongBelwas

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Wants to talk about having a job vs. a career/calling and how over the last 40 some years Cain has seen the proportion of people in each category change in the game industry. Something he has seen people make comments on, like it's just a job. Some people don't just view this as a job.
What does Cain mean by people viewing this as a job? They usually do tasks usually assigned to them, sometimes the one doing the assigning but that is there job. They get paid for it, outside of work they don't think about it. Doesn't occur to them, doesn't define them, they don't go to people and say hey I'm a game developer. It's something they do to support the things they want to do outside of work

There are the people who consider a career. Like the job people, tasks they do or assign out and they want to get paid, but they have a bigger picture. They often think about how these tasks fit in the whole thing of the product/game, or a line of games or genre. They think of them as things they are doing, but how can they be done better or the game be done better, what will they be doing in 5/10 years? What role are they expecting and how do they plan to get it. A big difference between career person and job person is career person considers those things outside of work. What can they do to advance their goals? Maybe learn a new skill, or ask specifically to manage a group after reading some books on the idea or attending a class. Their goal is to get better.

Then there are callings. Game developer is part of their identity. It's what you do, can't really imagine doing anything else. Always thinking about games and games design and so on everywhere, at work or not, and it's because you love it. Of course you want to get paid and you want that pay to be fair, but that isn't the point. The calling people absolutely love what they do. They get emotional fulfillment out of it.

All three of these types have been in game dev as far as Cain can remember. However, the proportions have changed. 30 or 40 years ago, the games industry had a huge barrier of entry. Not a lot of game jobs, hard to get them because you had to learn a lot of stuff on your own and had to demonstrate you knew those things. Do you know how to access the video card? Do you know how to optimize your software for a good framerate? Your average programmer back then didn't have to think about that. Really had to be your calling to get into the game industry, so in the 80s and even the early 90s Cain would say for most of them it was their calling. They really wanted to do this. They made active decisions in their life to get there.
Entering the 90s, the game industry is growing and becomes more profitable and stable. Wasn't unusual to hear people working in the game industry. Suddenly careers are possible. You go into the industry with a role in mind, whereas in the 80s you were probably juggling a lot of roles. In 90s roles were separated into artists and designers and producers, new way to think about it. People showed up expecting to be hired as QA or a Producer, not just a desire to be in the game industry. Books began to be published on how to code for games or design something, schools started teaching for it and degrees were offered.

Starting in 2010s and up to now, projects are huge. Tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions, approaching a billion dollars spent on one project. Job insecurity, because if these massive games don't sell well it's a huge loss, you aren't going to make it back on the next game. This loss of job security led to some career people becoming job people. Once you get laid off a few times, you stop thinking that far ahead, why think about your future at the company if you aren't even sure you will be there in a few years? Cain has been watching that happen.

Does Cain think the shift from calling to career to job is bad? If you've watched him long enough, you know how he feels; it's subjective. Each of the three groups feels justified in being the type they are. Job people say companies don't care about you and your job isn't secure, be there for the paycheck. Career people want to think about themselves but also where they will be in 10-20 years. Calling people know that is important but want to make a game no matter what. As games got bigger and bigger, both in budget and team size, when you have hundreds or a thousand people on one game, you can't expect everyone to be totally in it. By necessity, some of those people are just going to be jobs people doing their task and getting paid. That may even be desirable, as a thousand people all super passionate about the game and trying to insert their own ideas in would be chaos. You cannot have majority input on a game with hundreds on it, somebody has to steer the ship.

That kind of environment leads to people moving into the Job mindset, particularly the career people. A career is hard to have and plan for when your job is not secure, when layoffs are common or you doubt the company will even be around, 10 year plans are hard. Cain sees a lot of experience being lost as career people seek new industries. A good producer with management skills will move into some other creative industry or something else entirely, knowing their managing abilities will transfer over. Cain sees good programmers move to a none game dev programming job where they will get better pay and stability.

Cain, as the old guy, has seen this always happen. People say it's terrible now, it was terrible during the 80s console collapse, as a lot of people left the industry not by choice, just as it is happening now. Not good, losing people with good experience, but it always happens. Should not let it affect your decision to be a job people or career person,. it is a constant. Personally, Cain kind of misses the old days where he was surrounded by people who considered game development their calling. Led to a different game development environment, but Cain admits it may just be nostalgia talking. Maybe it just felt different because it was a small team where Cain knew everyone really well and they were always talking about new ideas. Easy with 15 people, harder with 100, almost impossible with 1000. Cain won't say it was better or worse, but it was very different, and Cain wants to bring it on the channel so you can use it as a lens for what is happening in the game industry. Has happened before, is happening now, will happen again in the future. Not the only lens to look at it with, but an interesting one.
 
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Zed Duke of Banville

Zed Duke of Banville

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NecroLord said:
New Reno whores also mention Chris.
Click to expand...
Tim Cain didn't work on Fallout 2 (except for an "additional programming" credit) or Fallout: Tactics, so can't be expected to explain the Avellone references in those two games, but he could shed insight into the Avellone references in Fallout (1) and Arcanum.


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