impossible.bsky.social
Game developer at @unity.com. Prev: Facebook Horizon, Oculus, Funomena , Call of Duty, ShadowPhysics
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This is true in other some places but nowhere in the US that I know of. Some places have tax breaks or other incentives, but that targets big companies or larger indie studios
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I think these posts feel a little controversial and get pushback because he puts the blame on individuals for not doing what he thinks they should be doing instead of systems for not supporting the work that he values, which comes off as privileged even though I don't feel like he means it that way
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I think a lot of Raigan's comments boil down to, fundamentally, people should not have to have "jobs" like this and pursue meaningful work if they want to. Which is nice to think about, but it isn't actually how our capitalist society works.
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I do 100% agree that doing small stuff as a hobby is going to be better for a lot of people than working in AAA. Even if you are a studio creative director you won't get awesome self-directed games because corporate and market forces. Also you're doing mostly management not creation at that scale
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Most of my replies were about AAA vs. indie game development, but with corporate games media, I think it's so hollowed out at this point many people with the financial means and audience to do so are independent or not doing it full-time.
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Lack of government grants and universal healthcare make being indie like that in the US much harder unless you are already wealthy or have a spouse or family member supporting you. Access to capital through VCs was much better, but you can't really do something small and interesting that way
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Yes, its definitely regional. In the Bay Area you have people that were indie but are now working in AAA, big tech or maybe very big indie studios that could probably be considered AA, just because cost of living is insane and forced out most of the small struggling folks that didn't have a hit
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Yes, I think you're absolutely right about this is maybe how most people should live, and its definitely how many people would like to live given a better world, or if they were optimizing for only one factor, but sometimes "trade-offs" are mostly good and the ideal version is actually worse overall
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There are also a non-trivial amount indie devs that go back to AAA. It is not uncommon for indies to be acquired by larger game studios or big tech companies (Nightschool, Molasses Flood, Campo Santo, Beat Games, Mojang)
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A ton of indie devs have AAA experience.
Molasses Flood, NuChallenger, Terrible Posture Games, Number None, Campo Santo, Temple Gate games all come to mind as companies founded by people that are friends or coworkers of mine that worked in AAA before indie.
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You often let your personal tastes dictate what other people think should be palatable, its a recurring theme in your posts. Some people just want to model really high res characters not design a perfect small but deep systemic game. For those people being in the AAA system is probably best
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Alternatively you could take a very high paying job (assuming you can get it) which might drain you but gives you a lot of future runway. Tech or finance jobs could be like this. For some people their skillset/financial match/goals is still best for a AAA studio job
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I think it depends on lifestyle. If you can do like 20%-50% of what you want in a job and get paid 10x-20x doing that, it can still be both better than taking a very low paying job that might still be draining in exchange for 100% creative freedom.
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I worked on a game full of guys like this in my first real industry job. It was much larger than indie but much smaller than modern AAA, probably what we'd call a AA team now (although small AAA back then). We literally had an event broadcasting system and a new input handling system 😂
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Are you sure you don't want to hire a "badass 10x ninja rockstar wizard unicorn guru"?
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ALT VERSION:
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