The Realities of a Career in Video Games

This is going to be a rambling, stream of consciousness type of entry. I’ll talk about what my game company’s working on, how it’s going to affect my schedule, and the status of what’s been accomplished so far! Also a Fez remix album just came out that sounds cool.

As happens so frequently in the video game industry, Signal Studios has entered a period of crunching. While I adamantly oppose the crunch practice that seems embedded to the bone of video game creation, I also need to get paid earth dollars to continue living. So I go along with it. Which has impacts on my ability to do side projects. Specifically, the next Flash short will probably not make it out by April. I’ll try my best though. It’s still coming together.

I really dislike crunching as a project tool, and it feels like it’s one of the big things that drives people out of the industry. It’s no secret that programmers can get larger salaries with more humane working hours (and even better benefits) from non-video game companies. A lot of people bail and go work for one of those companies which is why a lot of metrics indicate that game companies skew really young. It’s hard to get pumped up when you’re older and have an active life going on outside your workplace. But crunch seems to be here to stay at least in the short term.

Anyway, if you want to see what I’ll be spending the next week working too long on, there’s this whole website someone made about our game Ascend: New Gods. It’s going to be free and the beta tests should be starting soon.

And hey this is cool: my friend Sara told me I should mention Disasterpeace’s new Fez remix album, Side F. A bunch of artists remixed the Fez soundtrack and this is the first of two albums. The second one is supposed to be out in May. So check that out too!

Progress has continued on silly YouTube video game commentary/Let’s Play videos. I’ve been playing through with my girlfriend Meredith who has no online presence but points out when I’m wrong about stuff. We’ve been playing through Bioshock Infinite and thinking about the use of historical racism and American Exceptionalism. Which is like the exact opposite of what everyone on YouTube is interested in, so it might not get very noticed! Who knows. I will bust out a separate page for that once I get all the video production done.

That’s all at the moment. Come back for more!

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MrMortis

A videogamesman making some video games.

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