Jobs, Careers, And Callings

I talk about the different proportion of people in game development who view it as a job vs. a career vs. a calling, and how this proportion has changed.

Videos I reference:

[mattq]

I’m 20 and struggling with figuring out what I wanna do in life. Watching your videos is super helpful and this topic is quite interesting coming from someone with your experience. Thank you!

[Starwarsconnoisseur]

Hey Tim I just want to say so many of your videos aren’t just applicable to the video game industry, but managerial careers in general and I just want to thank you for that.

[StodgyAyatollah]

This is subjective but I've learned it's not really a good idea to let your calling be at the mercy of others. I've gone full circle with this myself. Had a job that shifted into a career then a calling before crashing back down to a job. It was a passion that never died but was crushed by untenable corporate politics I found deeply entrenched everywhere I went. That was many jobs ago and I've left the field entirely. My current attitude is probably comparable to a mercenary. I have no allegiance to any employer and will walk away the very moment it is advantageous for me to do so. I always make sure they know this. Not where I expected to be in the height of my passion all that time ago but life is a strange thing.

[MAYOFORCE]

"when you're at work, when you're at home, when you're driving, while you're walking your dog, you're thinking about games!"
I feel called out on this lol

[jimmianimates]

im 42, i was a tattooer for 21 of those years, the last few years ive left. i loved it, my whole identity in my 20s was tattoo life style. but the last several years has changed and sounds much the same. before it was a job for punks and people that wanted to life a rough pirate life. since those shows and social media, now its about young attractive people and the craft is suffering. no one knows how a coil machine works. people dont know how to make needles. theres also no money in it as there is too many tattooers and not enough clients. its over saturated with trust fund art school kids.
ive made the switch recently to learning coding and game dev. something i wanted to do as a kid but in the 80s and 90s as a poor family, it just seemed impossible. the idea of owning my own computer back then was crazy.

[EternalJedi]

I used to think that I had a calling for working in game development (specifically as a designer). From the time that I played Ultima VI when I was 15, I wanted to make computer/video games. I thought about it all of the time and kept notebooks full of design ideas. When I finally did get a job in the industry many years later, it was great and I finally felt like I'd found what I was meant to do.

For the first couple of years, anyway.

I worked at a couple of AAA studios, and I was a level designer in the early production stages on a fairly high profile game. I found the idea that "time ceases to exist" when it's your calling to be true up to a certain point. Maybe it would have been different if I'd gotten in when I was single and in my early 20s. But I was married and approaching my mid-30s when I got my start in the industry. I could handle those 12-16 hour crunch days for short periods (a week or two at a time). But trying to sustain those kind of working hours just turned it from a calling into a job. Even back then, my body didn't handle 12+ hours of sitting at a desk in front of a computer very well. In my experience, even something that I'm extremely passionate about will ebb and flow over time, and mandating that I sustain that passion 24/7 will ultimately ruin it for me.

When I'm passionate about something, my brain will keep thinking about it even when I'm not actively working on it, and I'll naturally gravitate to throwing myself into it for a ridiculous number of hours. However, no matter what the subject is or how passionate I am about it, I can only sustain that level of activity for so long before I burn out and need to back off for a while. I left that job (and in the industry) long before the game was complete. Just before I left, decisions were made regarding the game engine that would ultimately push the release back by more than two years -- and the team was in crunch mode for that entire time.

I still often feel like game design is a calling and I think about it much of the time. I've messed around with various personal projects in Unity and Unreal over the past few years. I love making games, but there's no way that I would ever even consider going back to the industry.

[GabrielMatusevich]

TBH I think is possible to go through all these stages... from Calling to Career to "Just a Job" ... depending on your trajectory and progression and experience

[PrettyGuardian]

It's a good lens based on your experience in the industry and also the context of carrying a career (general career not specific career vs calling terminology) through rounds of lay offs. In my 20 years of non-game design work experience, I've seen many employers erode the working lives of their employees. Things that seemed like satire for Fallout are not only real but increasingly common practice for corporations.

[petesidtechadventures]

From what I've seen in the IT industry, people with "the calling" can make it worse for everybody else, and for themselves. This is more like an obsession, they work all the time, their brain never shuts down, they have trouble sleeping, etc.. They agree to things like deployments in the middle of the night on Sundays, or working super late / super early hours. And even if they acknowledge that this isn't a healthy way to work, they kinda do resent others for not having the same "sense of responsibility".
Also, maybe it's a bit different for the game industry, but if your job makes up for a 100% of your personal identity, it can lead to extreme situations, like in a corporation my friend works for. A couple of years ago, they had significant layoffs with earlier retirement for executive staff, a lot of higher-ups like regional directors, etc. After a 2-3 years, the company started to receive obituaries and funeral invitations. Some of these people really had nothing but work. When that ended, they no longer felt any purpose in life, basically sat on a couch and died.
Personally, I'm a career person; I like to improve myself and company processes, if I can have a say on that. But I do it mostly on company time, because my identity is strongly related to my hobbies and relationships with my friends and family.

[Balyrion]

As another old timer in the IT industry, what Tim says is 100% spot on. This always comes in waves, massive growth, contraction, growth, etc. I stuck to one area of IT through my career because that is what I have loved since I was a child. I have a calling for that area, but ultimately the industry needs people of all types. Change is always scary and hard in the moment, but every time you go through a change you learn a bunch of new things. It would be interesting to get Tim's point of view on how the changes in his career fueled his personal growth/skills. This might help the people right now experiencing the industry changes, their first layoffs, etc. I know for me personally, I definitely learned a lot, one of the things I learned was I really like small companies.

[mewberthildimew]

It's funny because I participated in a Game Jam recently and teamed up with a kind stranger who was looking for a Jam buddy. We were discussing what kind of project we wanted to make and it segwayed into our thoughts on the industry, and eventually we broached the subject of passion in game development. More specifically, we'd discussed how little drive people seemed to have for it, like the passion had left them. I remember I'd actually quoted you on that story you told about the dev who gave you a 4-week ETA for making a simple aggro system as an example, and how I would've jumped at the opportunity to work on something with a proactive boss like you. I would've had that algorithm on your desk within the hour and asked you if there was anything else I could work with you on.

Looking back at that discussion, I'd called it "passion, " but I felt it was too strong a word, or maybe not quite the word I was looking for. I'm sure there are Job or Career people that are passionate about games, but "Calling" really nails the feeling I have. People who can't stop working on a game because they genuinely enjoy watching it come to life. I keenly felt it on one project where I was having so much fun coding a boss with three mechanic subroutines, that I kept adding details and couldn't stop. I'd add small effects between mechanics, tweak the variables a bit to make sure every attack and transition felt and looked just right, throwing in a few random variables so no two instances of mechanics were quite alike, add some screen shakes, and slight zooms, and particles, and...

And before I knew it, the sun had set and and risen again. I thought to myself, "how could people not enjoy doing this? How could someone just make one pass at this boss and its mechanics and be like 'yeah, good enough' without trying to make it look or feel even cooler?"

And now the answer seems so obvious after hearing you point it out. It simply isn't their calling. It's a paycheck, or a stepping stone, but they just don't get fulfillment out of it in the same way I do.

[C_R_Plays]

I mostly agree with everything said. But will push back on a two points made early in the video about how it used to be harder to get into the industry.
The fact that tools and information about game dev is so widely accessible these days means that the requirements to get an entry level position have SKY ROCKETED. You not only need to have specialized knowledge, you also have to have a portfolio that already demonstrates its application. I've listened to many podcasts about senior people's careers and it's not uncommon for people to fall into positions back in the day. That is just not happening these days when every entry level job gets thousands of applicants - people with 4 year degrees, several completed projects in their portfolio.

On the point that there used to be fewer positions - that doesn't mean there was more competition. As Tim states himself, the idea that game dev is an industry where one can work has spread widely. The number of careers increased, but so have the numbers of extremely qualified applicants.

All that being said - my own bias is that of a person with only 4 years of experience.

[obiwankenny]

Anybody else watch Tim's videos just to hear the dog snore? Sorry Tim, great content but the dog is priceless.

[RewdanSprites]

This video was lovely.

Edit: I couldn't get a job anywhere in the games industry. Only applied for tester roles as well. I usually got "You're very passionate but..." or "You don't have any experience". I registered with agencies, knocked on doors, sent emails and letters. All kinds of things. Didn't have any trouble in any other industry I applied for. Now I'm like: "Well, I'll just do it myself then".

[TheRealJackArthur]

Tim. This is such an important video. Especially for some of us that are younger. Sincerely, thank you.

[farbekrieg]

Its interesting to look at the indy scene through this perspective as you can absolutely see job type people pushing shovelware, "career" people trying to find a way at say 3d realms/New Blood/Apogee and the calling people finding varying amounts of success from dwarf fortress to wrath

[obsidianchao]

Thanks for this video Tim! I faltered in my teens and have unfortunately dealt with addiction issues for 15 years - but prior to becoming an addict, being a game dev was all I wanted to do. Finally feeling like it might be time to return to "my roots" so to speak. I started studying Godot this week, the first effort towards game development I've made in a decade. Appreciate the inspiration!

[memyselfishness]

I am a classically trained composer. I will be graduating in a few weeks with a degree in music. Writing music is one of my passions. I never want it to be a job. I never want it to be a career. I never want it to be a calling. Composing music for my primary source of income would make me lose the passion. As such, I am never going to charge anyone for my music. It will always be freely available in some fashion.

I am also a mathematician. I will be graduating with a degree in mathematics and moving on to a PhD program. Right now, I feel I have a calling to be a math professor. I leave a lecture thinking about how I would have taught that differently. I find myself thinking of explanations and methods of teaching that will not only make me a better professor, but will help more students. I want to increase the number of people that care and know about higher level mathematics.

Sometimes, people can turn their passions into a way to make money. But, I think they're oftentimes separate things.

[WyattsVlog]

I would just like to say... I've been a gamer my entire life. I've messed around coding, did some C++ with MUDs, and some graphical stuff in the 90's with Ultima Online. It's more like a hobby, I've never even considered these things a job or something i could get paid from.

What i want to get at, is this is extremely good advice for just anyone. It applies to me, my entire manufacturing work experience. A calling is something I've had to discover, and while it doesn't exactly fit fully inside the gaming industry. This is solid advice and i would recommend it to anyone, at any stage of their life.

Really well said Tim, thank you. ❤

[TheSocratesofAthens]

Whatever be our passion, we must respect the hierarchy of needs. Without the latter, we lack the ground to build a "career" on.