#pulling the age card on survivor australia is a choice

[cirie-won-thirty-four]

Also gerry babe there is a whole winner in your specific franchise that was only like a year younger than you! You’re not special!

[gamedadmatt]

I’ve Left Stirfire, so What’s Next?

After working with Stirfire Studios for 4 years, I announced my resignation last week. 2018 has been massively challenging for numerous reasons, and it had a huge impact on my physical and emotional wellbeing. My self confidence took a hit, and my desire to work in games was shot. There was a time that I honestly considered whether I even wanted to work in games anymore, and went and started looking at maybe studying psychology or counselling (my career of choice before I’d got into game development).

That’s why I made the decision to move on, and try something new for a while. Working in games, I’ve been putting money away every pay so that I have something to fall back on while I work by myself (and pay other people from - more on that later). You never know when things might fall apart and you need that safety net to break your fall. For me, it was more a matter of needing to rebuild myself and fashion a future for myself out of this industry, and I couldn’t do that while working for another company that I had little power to change from within.

So I decided 2019 is going to be a fresh start with a clean slate. I’m not leaving the games industry. I’m sticking around, and have a goal: be the change I want to see. And that takes a few forms. Be the sort of developer I’d want to work with. Run the kind of company I’d want to be a part of. Provide the kind of help I wish I had

This year has been an incredibly bad year for game developers, with stories of crunch, studio closures that nobody was prepared for, unpaid hours, and the news that Australian studios were seeing people paid below minimum wage. I can’t change these things for my community (especially not that last point), but I can work and operate in such a way to try and better things for myself and those I work with. And there’s a few ways I want to tackle that.

I’M MAKING A GAME

There’s nothing groundbreaking about going off to make a game, except for the fact that despite everything I’m still making games.

Leaving a games studio to go out and make a game by yourself is kinda like deciding to leave a well armed group of Zombie Apocalypse survivors to make a go of it on your own instead. The outlook isn’t great, really. Games are highly competitive and hit-based and I’m not willing to bank everything on making some groundbreaking title with my first effort straight out of 4 years of employment.

The game idea that I’ve had rattling around in my head for ages now is like this itch that I know I won’t be able to ignore. I really want to get it out and make it a reality. I’m fairly confident it’s a unique concept that should be fun for people to play, and it’s the sort of thing I feel pretty good about being able to make from start to finish mostly by myself.

I’ve already got plans for taking the idea to kickstarter once I have it more fleshed out, and I’m crossing my fingers in the meantime that Western Australia gets some state funding for videogames that I can take advantage of. And then at that point, I will start looking about dragging in other people to work with me on it on a more consistent basis.

As for what the idea is, there’s not much I want to say about it just yet except that once I have something in a prototype form, I’ll start talking about it openly. It is a narrative driven game though - something that I can build on my own, without much emphasis on the art or programming. And no, it’s not going to just be a Twine game. It’s a bit more involved mechanically.

It’s a story about an artificial intelligence that is the only sentient life left on earth. I’ll leave it at that for now!

BUT A GAME NEEDS A STUDIO?

Now, “studio” I use as a loose term here. Right now, it’s only me working on this game, and I intend on keeping it that way until I have some plan on how I am going to reimburse other people for their time. I have savings I can draw from and intend on using to pay people occasionally for very brief stints as contractors or consultants on my project, because that money also needs to be used to pay myself. So that means it’s a limited scope that I have to try and achieve on my own.

Sure, I could go out and start pulling in people and saying “here’s this really cool game idea I have, come work on it with me!” But when I am unable to pay them, what sort of message does that send? It’s massively important to me that skilled people be reimbursed for their time. And as much as I might like the idea, I can’t expect people to live off of a good idea. Even if it might feel good having equal ownership of it.

That’s why I’ve been working on some studio values. I want to from day one be projecting forward the kind of studio I want to be running in future. If I were to somehow find success or the money tomorrow to pay a bunch of staff members, I’d be scrambling to establish these things. So even if I am only working on my own, it’s massively important to make these values known and hold myself to them.

After all, if I can’t hold myself to my values while I am working on my own, why should I ever be able to establish a studio caring for other people? This is one way I can improve things for those directly around me, should I start working with others (and I will, at some stage, even if only temporarily).

And speaking of caring for people…

PRODUCTION CONSULTING

The idea to do Production consulting is something I’ve been building on slowly for quite a while. When I started off with Stirfire, I’d already had some experience in managing a small team when I interned with Scitech WA. In the past 5 years I’ve seen a variety of issues that small game development teams (as in, less than 20 people) can experience. And this is only first hand. Second hand, I’ve seen so many Aussie teams suffer from a lack of production insight in a variety of horrible ways.

Even when they have money, smaller studios often struggle to balance the need for a Producer with operating the way they’ve always operated. It can be difficult for them to justify the cost of getting on a dedicated Producer when they may only be a team of 3-4. But this doesn’t mean that the Production insight isn’t valuable to them at all. They might just not be able to afford it all the time.

That’s where the idea for production consulting comes in. What I love most about being a producer is seeing teams grow and excel together, and working to their strengths as a cooperative. But sometimes all you need to do to get a team even slightly more functional is to show them what they are doing wrong, and teach them how to account for their weaknesses.

So the intent would be to embed into a team for a short period of time, and focus on whatever their goals were. Maybe they want to make sure they aren’t setting unreasonable expectations in a schedule they created. Maybe they are going to Kickstarter and want to sanity check the budget they have created to ensure that it is reasonable from and outside perspective. Or maybe it’s as simple as just ensuring they have a good methodology in place.

This idea is still in the early stages and I’m putting together the materials for it, but you can read the beginnings of my plans here. Right now my working title for the idea is “Burndowns, Not Burnouts” since that’s cute and gets across the idea. But if you or your studio are interested in having a chat, or have a problem you want to see if I can help with, please get in touch with me!

ANYTHING ELSE?

Stuff I hope I get the opportunity to do, but I’m not about to go announcing anything until I know for sure whether or not I’ll get the opportunity. But I am at least intending to get more involved in the Perth game development scene than I have been these past few years while I’ve been entrenched with Stirfire.

I’ve also not forgotten about the card game I was talking about before! But at this stage, it’s more of a side project that I’ll be doing with my partner in our free time. I’d considered making it my big focus, but for as much as I know about game development, there’s a lot I don’t know about making physical card games. There’s the potential of taking it to kickstarter, but I think it’s better placed as a fun little hobby project while I focus on the stuff I’m stronger at.

So there you have it, that’s my plans for the coming year! There’s the potential of picking up some work lecturing or such on the side to make ends meet, but my major priority is working on myself and trying to build something I can be proud of. Expect to hear from me much more often on this blog over the next 12 months!

-Matt