Hey, it’s the very first post on Game Dev Career Quest! Yay!
In this post, I’ll go over one of the most important pieces of game dev career advice I have to share: How to develop and tell your professional story.
But before I get to that main point, I want to give a brief overview of the state of games industry hiring in 2024.
The Current State of Games Industry Hiring
Game dev hiring is borked right now.
Seriously, though, I’ve been working in games for a long while now, and this is the worst I’ve ever seen things. Sure, it’s not like layoffs and uncertainty are new to this industry. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always read about project cancellations, studio closures, “re-alignments,” redundancy layoffs, and mass layoffs in general. I’ve been through multiple layoffs myself.
But the current period feels different. It feels worse. So many people I talk to are saying they’re having a tough time finding work. And the sheer scale of the layoffs happening across the entire industry is the biggest I’ve seen.
Here’s a PC Gamer article from February 2024 that shows us the numbers:
The impact of 16,000 games industry layoffs, in one chart
Our own estimated total for 2023’s layoffs was 11,250 people (the Obsidian tracker posits at least 10,500), while in 2024 we had already reached nearly 6,000 layoffs (5,900 on the public list) by the end of January. More layoffs have been reported in the early days of February, including an unknown number at Visual Concepts Austin, which Take-Two acquired in 2021.
As many observers have pointed out, the industry is already halfway to 2023’s total layoffs just one month into 2024. 2023 was higher than 2022’s estimated 8,500 total layoffs, and the wider tech downturn that these games layoffs spun off from was already underway by the end of that year.
These were the numbers as of February 2024. Now, five months later, there have been even more layoffs. 2023 saw record-breaking game dev layoffs, and even though 2024 is only halfway over, it’s already eclipsed the previous year’s numbers. A lot of people are out of work and looking for game jobs, which means that competition for those jobs is probably steeper now than ever before.
I’ve recently learned about a phrase that encapsulates the anxiety game devs are feeling right now: “Survive to ’25.” In other words, struggling devs are doing what they can to persevere and make ends meet until 2025 in hopes that things get better by then. But nobody really knows when things will get better.
So games industry hiring is so borked right now, it even has a catchphrase. (Whenever a moment in history has a catchphrase or a catchy name, you know it’s big. Like Indiepocalypse, quiet quitting, or Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour.)
But that’s enough negativity. On to the positive part!
I think that’s enough negativity for one post. I want this blog to be positive and useful, so let’s move on to the positive and useful stuff.
Job Hunting Can Be Fun, or At Least Tolerable
Generally speaking, people don’t like job hunting. We don’t like writing resumes or cover letters, we get really nervous during interviews, and the whole application process is often seen as a super stressful and demoralizing experience that’s loaded with rejection after rejection after rejection.
(Wait, I said we were done with the negative stuff, but that sounded negative…Okay, we’re moving on to the positive part, now. I promise!)
Believe it or not, job hunting can be fun, or at least tolerable. For years, I dreaded job hunting, but I recently figured out how to adjust my perception of it so it feels more fulfilling. Now, even when I get rejected — and boy howdy, do I get a lot of rejections! — I brush the rejection off, treat it as a learning opportunity, and then move on to the next application.
Younger Me would think that Current Me is crazy for saying this, but I actually enjoy job hunting now. And I’m eager to share the techniques and “perception adjustments” that worked for me in hopes that they’ll prove useful to someone else, too.
Let’s start with…
Your Professional Story
We all love stories, right? I think it’s human nature for us to enjoy stories.
I think that the job hunting process revolves around developing and telling your professional story. After all, your resume is your professional backstory, as well as a list of your proudest professional achievements written in a formal and concise format. Your cover letter tells prospective employers who you are and why you’re a good fit for a job in a friendlier format. And during interviews, you should be telling the interviewer how awesome you’ve performed in past jobs and how you can perform awesomely in this job, too.
It’s all storytelling.
And how do you tell your professional story? You already know the basics because you’ve been living your professional story for however long you’ve been studying for and working in your career. In fact, you’re already the best person in the world at telling your story.
However, even though you’re already the best at telling your story, there’s probably a lot of room for improvement. Let’s get into ways you can improve.
Focus on Your Accomplishments
First and foremost, remember that your professional story should center around your accomplishments. What are the successes or wins that are unique to you?
Often, when I help people with resume feedback, what I see is a list of tasks they performed in past jobs, not a list of accomplishments. Tasks are what you find on a job posting. Tasks are boring.
Accomplishments, on the other hand, are exciting and they show employers what’s unique and awesome about you.
Artist Example
Task: “Did 2D illustrations for [insert game name here].” — That sounds boring. Every 2D artist has done that.
Accomplishment: “Created dozens of stunning, horror-themed 2D concepts for [insert game name here], which was downloaded and enjoyed by more than 20,000 players.” — That sounds exciting and unique.
Producer Example
Task: “Used [Jira or other project management software] to track the team’s progress.” — That’s boring. Every single producer in the world does something like this.
Accomplishment: “Managed the 30-person design team of an unannounced AAA project and ensured their work was consistently high-quality and delivered on-time.” — That sounds unique and exciting.
Start thinking about what you’ve done in past jobs or past projects that make you feel proud. Include every single win, even the small ones, because we all have to start with small wins before we get to the big ones.
- How did you make your teammates’ jobs easier?
- What did you do to improve a workflow, an art style, a tool, or the overall project quality?
- When did you finish a tough task or whole project within schedule and within budget?
- How many game projects did you complete in college? (Because every single completed game project is a win to feel proud of and to include in your portfolio, including college projects.)
- When have your teammates — including your managers — complimented you on your work?
- When were you the lead of a team, and how did you lead your team to success?
- What did you do to earn a promotion?
- What are the most impressive numbers or metrics from your past jobs?
- How many downloads did your most popular games get?
- What’s the highest number of positive reviews you’ve gotten on one of your games?
- What’s the biggest team you’ve led?
- What’s the highest number of assets you created for a single project?
- What was the budget of the biggest game you’ve launched? Better yet, what were the sales numbers of your biggest game?
- Things like that.
Start thinking about your accomplishments now and always be mindful of new accomplishments. Because ideally, we should all continually improve and continually accomplish new things to feel proud of.
Your Professional Journal
No one knows your story and your accomplishments better than you do. However, it can be easy for us to forget some details, especially after we’ve worked in games for many years.
To help you remember all your most important accomplishments and other details of your story, I recommend you write and regularly update a professional journal.
Now, I realize that when someone hears the word “journal” or “journaling,” they might think of a little book they keep under their pillow that they write their most intimate thoughts or secrets into — where each entry begins with “Dear Diary”.
I’m not talking about that kind of journaling. A professional journal isn’t supposed to contain intimate information that you don’t want to share with anyone. No, a professional journal contains notes and anecdotes about your professional experience and your accomplishments that are meant to be shared during job applications.
Remember that the goal here is to develop and tell your professional story, and a professional journal will help you do that.
How to Start Writing Your Professional Journal
In your professional journal, start writing down every accomplishment you can think of. Like I said before, write down any win, big or small.
Quick Start
To make things easier on yourself, just copy and paste your current resume into your professional journal and start building off of that.
Think about every past job, every personal project, every game jam, or every school project, and write down what you accomplished under each of those experiences.
This may sound daunting at first, but believe me, it really isn’t. When I started my professional journal, it only took me an hour or two to have a lot written down. I started by copying and pasting my resume into Microsoft OneNote (my favorite note-taking programs are OneNote, Google Docs, and MS Word), and then I went down my list of past jobs and wrote down my accomplishments under each.
In addition to listing my accomplishments job-by-job, I also wrote down quick anecdotes about those accomplishments. For example, I wrote down a recent experience in which I helped an Art Lead resolve a conflict within our team. I wrote down the core details of that story so I’ll always have a reminder of it.
Start your journal today, and chances are you’ll find yourself with a decent journal after only 1-2 hours of writing.
Update Your Professional Journal Regularly
After you’ve got your professional journal started, you then have to update it regularly.
The more we work, the more we improve. The version of us from today should be at least a little bit better than the version of us from yesterday. And the version of us from 2024 should be way better than the version of us from 2014.
We should be continually improving, and we should treat our professional journals as living documents to reflect that improvement. I suggest that whenever you achieve something new to be proud of, write it down.
If you’d rather not update your journal every day, then that’s okay. You don’t have to update your journal daily or even weekly. Once a month should be fine. Once every quarter is fine. Only once or twice a year is pushing it, but maybe that’s still acceptable.
The important thing is that you regularly update your journal with new notes, new anecdotes, and new accomplishments.
How to Use Your Professional Journal
Okay, so you now have a professional journal that’s got an outline of your work history and a list of accomplishments under each job and project. What now?
For starters, use what you’ve written down to improve your resume. If your resume is full of bullet points that describe tasks rather than accomplishments, then start deleting the tasks and replace them with accomplishments. Under each job or project, choose the accomplishments that you’re most proud of or the ones that sound most impactful, and insert them into your resume.
Next, you can use your professional journal to help you prepare for interviews. Whenever you have an interview coming up, spend a couple hours the day before or the morning before to read through your professional journal and remind yourself of all your wins. By doing this, you’ll have your accomplishments freshly loaded into your mind for the interview.
Better yet, recite what you’ve written down, out loud. During interviews, you’re going to be asked about what you’ve done in past projects, so you may as well practice talking about it.
Everything’s about practice, after all. The more you practice telling your professional story out loud, the more comfortable and natural you’ll sound as you tell it.
Action Items
Okay, to sum up:
- Start thinking about your professional story and your past accomplishments.
- What are the things that make you most proud?
- What things are unique and awesome about you?
- Start writing your professional journal right now. Go through your past jobs and projects and write down your accomplishments.
- Write down every single win, big or small!
- Update your professional journal regularly. Whenever you achieve something new that you’re proud of, write it down.
- Use the accomplishments written in your professional journal to update your resume. Replace bullet points that only describe tasks with bullet points that celebrate your wins.
- Re-read your professional journal now and then, especially when preparing for an interview. Recite your accomplishments out loud to practice for interviews.
The more you develop your professional story and the more you tell it, the better it will sound. And if you enjoy telling your story, then you might make find yourself having fun on your job hunt.
Oh, and one more super important action item:
Keep reminding yourself that you’re awesome!
You need to be your biggest cheerleader. To do that, you need to regularly remind yourself that you’re awesome, you’re unique, and you deserve to get hired.
Thanks for reading, folks! Good luck on your quest!
