It's been a hellish few years for people employed in the video game industry, as big studios have been laying off workers every chance they get while smaller studios are just straight up closing. We’ve all read the stories, and scanned the numbers of people affected, but what happens to the individual in the wake of their career (and life) being upended?
A career video game developer's first instinct upon being laid off--or quitting a job that had become too much--might naturally be to go and find another job in video games. That's how previous boom and bust cycles have tended to work in this business. But as the layoffs continue and funding for new studios dries up, in 2024 the math simply doesn't add up. There just aren't enough jobs for all those looking.
Leaving those affected with a dilemma: they can either keep trying to find a job in the cruellest game of musical chairs imaginable, or they can walk away and try to do something else with their lives. For some, this means feeling pushed away from the career they'd once given their lives to, but for others it’s a chance at a fresh start that won't condemn them to decades of secrecy, turmoil and exploitation.
As part of our Back to School week we spoke with a number of video game developers who, over the past few years, have been forced out of their jobs and are now trying something new. In doing so we're not trying to advocate for people leaving video games, nor are we trying to glorify the act of pursuing something else; each story is an individual story, some of them full of regret, others grateful at new opportunities.
There is a joy in doing something you are really good at, and I miss that feeling.
Bruce (not their real name) has had a rough few years. Having left a small indie studio whose funding fell through in 2022, they'd been working as a level designer on an online multiplayer game before being laid off in April 2023. Deciding to walk away from games entirely, they're now trying to find a desk job, in particular one as "boring and stable as possible".
"I'm currently doing a state-sponsored web development program for unemployed people, which is about 630+ hours and is basically a condensed, fullstack web dev course aimed at developing web apps (like storefronts, managing employer databases, etc). I wanted to pair it up with a two-year program of the same type, but since it's a very popular course I couldn't get a spot. So I'm probably going to do some more certifications and try and get a job in web dev early next year."
Saf Davidson had been Lead Narrative Designer on a project (now cancelled) at Eggnut, a studio that closed down a few months ago. She was laid off on Christmas Eve, 2023. After spending a few days feeling "super miserable and terrified of the future", she woke up one day and just went "nah, screw this".
"I'd been travelling around the States visiting family/friends for a few weeks before getting laid off, and the whole time I was there, everyone kept remarking on how much I knew about plants and how big of a nerd I was being about the different ecosystems", she says. "I think that kind of triggered the unconscious thought process of 'hey maybe I'd like to do something with this'".
Having finally snapped after being "treated like shit" in games, she decided to go back to university and study plant science. Albeit, with some inspiration from...games. "Halo's Dr Halsey is one of my favourite characters in the world, which I know is insane to say because she's absolutely not someone to idolise as a scientist, but there's a biologist in the last episode of season 2 of the terrible terrible Halo show who says something like 'Doctor Halsey is the reason I became a biologist' and I've never felt more called out in my life.
"Halsey's got pretty awful morals, but I have to admire her work ethic, you know?", Davidson says. "I can also trace wanting to be a botanist specifically back to playing Control when it came out. The person/people who did the plants in that game put an insane amount of love into them, which broke through my plant blindness (a real thing!) and made me really start paying attention to plants. Not sure I'd be here without the adeniums of Control. So it's largely thanks to games that I want to be a scientist, for good and bad reasons."
...you really do only live once. So I saw the layoff as an opportunity rather than a dire end.
Frank (not their real name) had been a Senior Concept Artist in video games who, after struggling for months with an IP director who did everything from ask "extremely unprofessional questions during team meetings" to uploading the team's NDA-riddled work to AI platforms without the artist's permission, was recently laid off. Having originally planned to spend a career working in games, their experience has encouraged a dramatic workplace shift.
"The interactive story element of games has always drawn me in", they say, "but my heart breaks to see this medium stolen by people who only see dollar signs. The game industry won't get better until we profoundly unionize, which I'm hopeful (and doubtful) for, but until then I need to take care of my own.
"The experiences I had at that game studio did so much more damage than mentioned here. Two therapists have now been so shocked and appalled by what I've relayed that they've been stunned speechless."
They're now hoping to transition to live-action movies, and are currently working on an initial film, with dreams to turn it into a franchise. "I wanted to do this for decades now, honestly", they say. "My work in games was a career, but it was never my life goal. It sounds silly, but you really do only live once. So I saw the layoff as an opportunity rather than a dire end."
Anna Willoughby worked in UX at Blizzard, but after being laid off recently has decided to leave not just games, but the tech space entirely.
"The games industry is just such a mess", she says. "There's WAY too much enthusiasm around generative AI and generally scammy vibes coming from the C-suite at these companies. Creators and developers are just being abused left and right. The community is amazing but the management is awful. I'm also disillusioned with tech more generally right now, and am just not sure where to go from here".
Anna is now working as a line cook. "My current role was kind of just…I needed some money and knew I wanted as physical a job as possible. I've been at a desk for 20 years. It's wreaked havoc on my body and brain. My brother was working for a family friend at a country club restaurant and I was like…please let me do some manual labor, I need to move my body [laughs]".
While Anna would love to return to games if the industry is "regulated a bit more, and the labor movement keeps building", she's not holding her breath. Instead, she's hoping to soon open up her own food truck.
A lot of game dev career changes are actually really difficult because a lot of disciplines are super specialized to games.
Devon Wiersma had been part of an indie studio in Canada called Beans, working on a game for Devolver Digital. When the publisher pulled the plug on funding in early 2023, Devon--and around 30 of his co-workers--were laid off. While he's now able to work on his own personal games in his spare time, he's spending most of his days as a Course Director at a local university, while also applying for part-time jobs everywhere from libraries to fast food.
"I used to work at McDonalds for years before getting into game development, and ironically over the years I worked in game dev the prospect of working in a kitchen has become more appealing than being in games", he says. "My reasoning is that at least positions like these would allow me to actually spend my day getting some amount of exercise (vs. game development where I spend all day trapped sitting in chairs) and I always felt it was just more personally fulfilling to help feed people as a baseline."
While many of the career changes highlighted in this piece might seem swift, Devon reminds us that moving out of video games into something else isn't as easy as driving an Uber or going to the beach for a year. "A lot of game dev career changes are actually really difficult because a lot of disciplines are super specialized to games", he says. "The remark I always hear from programmers in games is that if they didn't like working in games they'd simply go off and work at a bank, because it's boring work but pays way better, or how UX designers might just leave games to work on apps, or webdev, or products as a last resort.
"For disciplines like Game or Level Designers (which is what I'm specialized in) it's a really tough thing to do without significant retraining, because our skills are so specialized to games; while soft skills are helpful, some of the closest parallels to Level Design outside of games, like architecture or city planning, require super specific training that would involve diving back into post-secondary education. I just often see the sentiment of 'If you don't like games then work somewhere else' and well...for some people in this industry that's nearly impossible to do without reshaping your whole career."
Chris Ory, a veteran developer who had spent over a decade in video games, was recently laid off twice in one year, both times at companies with what he describes as "unbelievably toxic work cultures".
"After almost three years of toxicity and struggle I was completely burnt out", he says. "The idea of rolling the dice interviewing to join another possible shit show was paralyzing. I couldn't even step into my home office without a feeling of dread. I still don't go in there. I've given it to my wife as an exercise room. There were not a lot of interesting options encouraging me to fight through the negativity and get back on the horse. Also I am 46 and looking at my future in a notoriously ageist industry, I started calculating how much longer I was even going to be marketable."
During this time Chris, a vintage BMW bike enthusiast, inadvertently stumbled upon a new, very different career. Moving from Wisconsin after the second layoff, he sent his '81 R65LS to a place called Boxerworks, one of the few shops in the entire United States that specialised in old BMWs. "Shortly after I got laid off the second time Nathan, Boxerworks' owner, called to let me know he had found an engine I had been waiting for. We started talking about my situation and it came up that he was looking to hand his business off to the right person.
"It was very important to him that someone would come in and continue his legacy, run the shop as a mom-and-pop operation and maintain the reputation, quality and positive work environment he had cultivated over the years", Chris says. "The opportunity to take over something so established and well respected in a hobby I loved seemed too rare to pass up. I took the plunge and came down here to see if I was that 'right' person. Four months in and things are going well."
Despite living over four hours away from Boxerworks, Chris is making it work by staying at home for four days then commuting to the store and staying overnight for three. As rough as that is (and it's something he's looking to rectify by opening a second shop closer to home), and as unpredictable as owning a small business can be, when I ask him if he'd ever be willing to go back to games, he's not so sure.
"That is a question I've been asking myself a lot over the last few months", he says. "There are lots of feelings mixed up there. I've seen so much of the games industry and been through the grinder enough to know the industry is pretty much as shit as it looks from the outside, but there are amazing people in it and working with them can be absolute joy. That makes it hard to think rationally about diving back in.
"I was very good at what I did. I was a great designer, I was a great design manager, I really deeply understand player behavior, player needs and the business of games. There is a joy in doing something you are really good at and I miss that feeling. But I feel an incredible freedom not having the whims of some tech exec be in control of my livelihood for the first time in a decade. Completely changing careers with little forethought at 46 is terrifying. I have so much to learn before I could even begin to take Nathan's place in the shop. I am totally over my head in a way that I have not been in nearly 15 years, my income has been decimated, I have 6 employees I am responsible for, a 75 year-old man's legacy in my hands, and I am happier than I have been in years."
...my heart breaks to see this medium stolen by people who only see dollar signs.
Trudy (not their real name), a writer, left their job in games earlier this year, and are now pivoting away from the industry given not just everything that has happened in the last 12 months, but everything that's been happening in games for a lot longer than that.
"Harassment and abuse has become an occupational hazard with a high mental and emotional cost, which makes it difficult to do the work with a clear head", they say. "Pile this on top of the contracting industry and the cost-benefit analysis doesn't add up."
With a background in education, they're now returning to that "to remind myself how rewarding it is to help people directly", while pledging to continue making games on the side. "A job in the industry doesn't affect my ability to make games for myself. Games is as much an artistic practice as it is a career path, so I'll protect my peace as much as possible."
Remember, every time you read about 10, or 100, or 1000 layoffs in the video game industry, they're not cold statistics. Every one of those figures is a person. A life that has been upended, with enormous consequences for not just the individuals directly involved but their family and friends. Every single person affected by layoffs and departures has their own story to tell, their own history in the business and their own motivations for pursuing whatever comes next.
As we've seen here, sometimes a move away from the video game industry, with all its toxicity and uncertainty and exploitative working conditions, can be the best thing for a person. Other times it can be a traumatic experience, a lifetime's worth of expertise and passion crushed in an instant. Regardless of the circumstances behind someone leaving video games behind, I think the one thing that's clear hearing everyone's stories is that the choice, no matter its outcome, should have been theirs to make.
Back to School is a week of stories about changes, nostalgia, and learning new things. It's part of our big goals for 2024; if you like what you see and want to help us get there, please consider subscribing.
