Other Side

“I don’t get to choose what I am working on; I get told what to do, and I do it” says Sophia Moore. 

Throughout the Pixels and Paychecks project the life of an indie game developer has been thoroughly explored, along with the freedoms afforded by being your own boss. However, for most people working in game development, the situation is much different. 

Sophia Moore is a technical artist for a large “Triple A” game studio, who asked that the name of her workplace be excluded, however her teams most recent project has sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide. Sophia’s work is focused down to only working on the hair of character models in the games produced by her team. “It’s actually very interesting how complex we can get with just one models hair, even when it isn’t as detailed as some other projects on the market.”

Sophia’s job is much like any other job in computer science, she goes to an office a couple days of the week and works from home the rest of the time, gets paid time off, and works around 40 hours a week. Overall, it seems fairly mundane, but her passion for her work is as deep as any indie developer. “I have always wanted to work in game development; it was my dream.” Moore says. “It was a wake-up call when I got my first job.”

Sophia was very up front with the downsides of her work, and as it turns out, indie developers love of being their own boss may be very warranted. “There have been weeks where I worked 80 hours a week to meet deadlines.” Moore laments. Crunch culture was a viral issue for the games industry only a couple years ago, and while most companies have done much to mitigate the issue of crunch, the issue persists in studios like Sophia’s.

“The longest reported average was 95 hours a week.” Writes Sophie McEvoy for Gamesindusty.biz in an article titled “Survey finds more than half of game developers experience crunch”. McEvoy writes that in surveys conducted by IATSE over a quarter of respondents reported working more than 40 hours a week consistently, but crunch culture is rarely consistent. Often coming and going depending on when deadlines are set. “I know when deadlines are coming; so at least I can see the longer weeks coming ahead of time” Moore explains.

While the potential for crunch and lack of freedom in one’s roll may seem like deal breakers for many, for Sophia Moore and those like her, the trade off is worth it. “I love my job – there are bad days and bad weeks, but I love what I do.” Moore says. She continues, “My name is on projects that everyone knows about, that feels really good.”

Sophia Moore’s perspective is interesting, but it would be foolish to think that it is the only perspective in the world of commercial game development. In the modern age of developing games, many studios take the form of contractors, providing teams of developers and artists to larger in-house names on a project-to-project basis.

These contracted teams are often well paid, and separated from the issues of feeling connected to a project personally that often leads to teams like Sophia’s being willing to put up with occasionally excessive overtime. “Everywhere I work crunch has been beaten out – “ Luke Davenport, Senior Procedural Technical Artist for Jetpack Interactive explains. “- but the pressure gets replaced. A lot of people have a lot of fear of any kind of failure.” Davenport laments.

Davenport’s team currently is contracted to do work with Sony Santa Monica Studios, the studio behind titles like “God of War (2018)” and “God of War: Ragnarök (2022)”.  “We don’t work for Sony but we are working on their projects. I have to do what the client needs done.” Davenport explains. 

Davenport’s company Jetpack Interactive is what is known as an “Outsourcing Studio” to many in the industry. Companies that provide services for studios who need extra work done in particular fields of their projects, who are not looking to hire on more permanent team members. 

“It is usually easier to hire an outsource company with already trained professionals than to spend time and resources doing everything yourself.” Writes Dmytro Marmalyuk for retrostylegames.com article titled “Comprehensive Guide to Game Development Outsourcing”. “Co-development is an outsourced game development model in which we, as the game outsourcing studio, and you, as the developer and founder of the project, work together.” Writes Marmalyuk. 

Jetpack Interactive could best be described as a “Co-Development” Style of outsourcing studio, working long-term with Sony Santa Monica on multiple projects. These kinds of game studios also offer a lot of opportunities for growth for developers.

“Overtime a senior owns multiple products and runs multiple pieces of software, and I can make the calls of where my focus needs to go.” Davenport says while discussing the benefits of his position and the company he works for. 

Davenport has been in the industry for many years, and given the various issues discussed in this article that are present in the games development industry, it was interesting to hear Davenport speak about his work history. “I have ducked in and out of the industry already. I have done freelancing for tools development in the past.” Says Davenport. The skills present in games development work often are fairly general, and can lead to many different career paths if someone chooses. 

As for Davenport, “On my bad days I definitely think like ‘you know I could work for a bank or something and be more stable’ but on my good days I remember that I am a specialist and not many people in the world have the skills I have to do the work that I do.” He explains.

There are many different paths in game development, and while many people may see commercial development as restrictive or difficult to work in, like all things, it has its pros and cons. The consistency between developers like James from Chunderfins, and Sophie Moore and Luke Davenport, seems to be love of their work. 

As Davenport puts it “In the grand scheme of things I am very happy and proud of the work I have done.”