What the hell am I doing?

Today my wife and I went to see "Up in the Air", a movie about a guy who fires people for a living yet sleepwalks through his own life without connections to family or maintaining any personal relationships. George Clooney plays the lead, Ryan, whose character arc initially celebrates the freedom and anonymity of his lifestyle then subsequently challenges its meaning and worth. Along the way a whole lot of everyday cubical drones and middle management folks at nondescript white collar tech shops get fired. It felt real, it felt grim, it makes me cringe at the prospect of getting into my car on Monday morning.

I've been working in the video games industry for the last fifteen years. When I got started, back in 1996, this was a niche, hobbyist field focused on creating engaging, singleplayer PC games like Wing Commander or Civilization. Console systems like Playstation and Xbox changed the field and today everything is focused on online multiplayer experiences led by mega-corporations such as Sony, Microsoft and Electronic Arts; it's become cold and corporate, it's a grindhouse for a whole generations of college kids. The creative end of the industry - designing and creating cool game experiences - has been eclipsed by the need to "spot a market opportunity" and "hit the quarter". Things change, I get that, but it's not what it used to be, and I'm not the ambitious kid I once was either.

Today's top games (such as "Modern Warfare" or "Assassin's Creed") are made by development teams that number 100 or 200 programmers, artists, writers, musicians and producers. Famously EA's "The Godfather" game grew to over 400 developers, many of these were contractors brought in late to ship the game on-time, while working nightmare hours - or "crunch", which is both a term and a grim reality for anyone who's experienced it firsthand.

Video games typically take 18 to 24 months to create and ship to retail (console games generally fit this model), though Facebook games by companies like Zynga or Playfish can be produced in months or even weeks - but these are much smaller in scale and often rather derivative. If you're an individual "dev" on a 100-man team your slice of the pie, that aspect of the game you have influence over, is pretty slim - and it's only getting slimmer.

I'm a Producer. My role entails coordinating all of the programming, art, sound and writing into a single, cohesive whole. In practice it's a bizarre combination of plate-spinning, cat wrangling and lion taming - pick your metaphor, there's an angle in game development where it fits. On any given day I'm managing a schedule, holding meetings and trying to keep everyone informed from moment-to-moment. Depending on the project this can be fun, intellectually challenging stuff... even exciting at times. But over the years, as the industry has become more segmented and specialized, a Producer might only be focused on voice-over dialog or motion capture - yeah, that's pretty narrow. On my current project I'm "producing" the back-end, such as Server Operations, Customer Support and Player Moderation. That's right kids, making video games is not a whole lot different than selling life insurance - but I do get to wear t-shirts and jeans instead of a suit and tie. Keeping that glass half full do take a little faith.

So, we're walking out of the movie today, it's a Saturday and I'm already dreading Monday morning. That's not a healthy way to live, I know, I get it. The level of frustration and stress I'm dealing with is significant, I'm up to a daily headache and an eye twitch - and it's only the start of month three on this latest project. So you're reading this and thinking, quit your bellyaching, at least you've got a job, right? Fair point, I shouldn't complain. But I'm not happy. This isn't what I thought I'd be doing fifteen years ago. I sure as shit can't fathom doing this fifteen years down the road. So what the hell am I doing about it? Writing. This blog is a part of that. So the moral of this sad little blog is: change the game and figure something out and you won't be unhappy. I surely don't want to be that sad motherfucker in the movie who started crying because he's 57-years old and doesn't have anything else. I'm doing it. Writing is what I'll do. One blog post at a time. By my reckoning I've only got to write another 9,998 of these to develop mastery of this trade. Fuck it, I'll get there. I don't like to lose.