#just assures me that my work is unseen and I’m a worthless piece of trash.

[vronism]

Violent “I’ve had enough” vent under the cut because I feel like an absolute crap today and after getting a denial letter from a non-profit that could sponsor my attendance at GDC in the US I just feel like pitying myself for a moment.

I have been in game dev since I’ve been 20. I’ve started as a QA, thinking it’s gonna be just for a moment, but it wasn’t. I’m still a fucking QA.

I worked on big projects, and I love, love working on aaa titles. I do. I love this industry with my whole heart, and I feel I have more to offer than it wants to take from me, and it’s just awful. I work on an indie project on the side, but my “big fish” work takes most of my time. I stay overtime out of my free will. I did weekends and nights in my previous company out of my own free will. I have no respect for my personal time, because I love this shit so much. But it’s not enough, it’s never enough, and it’s not “babies first encounter with capitalism” either, because I know how it works, I have been mobbed, I have been laid off. And yet I keep coming back.

QA gets paid the least. You do the job of a tester, personal helper to the team you’re assigned to, pre-reviewer, even some minor production work, but you get paid the least, and you are always get looked down upon, because it’s “just” qa, the lowest of the low entry points to game dev. I’m highly specialized. I do one field, or should do one field only, which is character art, but because there’s a shit ton of work and not enough people experienced enough (? Where did the entry point job go, huh?) I do narrative now as well. And VFX quality while I’m at it. And rigging, too. And I don’t mind. I love it.

I do mind though I cannot develop where I would like to. I cannot do art, I cannot do anything creative, I’m just stuck looking at other peoples work. I work on my own project after work, some people from work help me, too, after work, but it’s not much, I know it won’t change anything.

There are programs to help. Of course they are. One is for girls in highschool, so a decade younger than me, and when I was their age, it didn’t exist. As a QA I have no chance of speaking on events; nobody cares what I have to say, and I don’t feel like an authority with something worthy to say in the qa department. I do my job and I do it good, but I couldn’t give less of a fuck about it.

And nobody would listen to a stupid QA speaking on art or character building. I have no authority there either, and absolutely zero credentials.

It feels like a fucking inescapable limbo. I don’t get grants or outside help, because I put my all into my day qa job and I barely have time to work on creative projects, additionally I’m bound by depression and audhd so bad that I just dissociate and stop existing for stretches of time. I live in a small town, with no car, so getting to some drawing lessons in the bigger city is barely possible, especially that they cut off public transport.

I feel like my art sucks. It’s on lower level than it should be by now. I feel like I’m too old for the industry already, I have no chances of changing anything, and I’m left to fend for myself by the only non-profits that could help.

The luckiest thing in my life right now is that my company kept me for a year now and is not planning layoffs anytime soon. But that’s it.

It’s awful. I feel like shit, I just wanna do more, but I’m never given a chance to. It’s demotivating, I’m from a shit country with bad art schools, bad perspectives, and no help. I’m completely invisible to everybody.

I don’t have great thoughts right now.