…and now has the freedom to work on the kind of games he has always wanted to make. Something he couldn’t do when he was a full-time game dev.
http://gamedevnation.com/featured/how-to-become-a-part-time-indie-game-developer/
Because so many people want to go full-time Indie I think at least a few folks will find this interesting and perhaps even look at their current situation in a new light.
If you ask me this article is a bit oddly worded. At first I thought it was going to be about him switching from working full-time to part-time in order to become a game developer, but instead he gave up full-time development in exchange for a reduction in stress. It’s definitely different from the normal articles we see that’s for sure.
My situation is similar to this article. I was indie for about a year, I had enough savings for another couple of years, but a life change forced me to look for a job earlier than planned. I found one outside of game development, a 40 hr/week programming job doing business software using C#. This allows me a few hours each day to continue working on my games, since the company I work for is completely unrelated to the games industry, so no conflict of interest, and on top of that, I get to learn about a new industry!
I highly recommend this path, but I must admit that I’m in a particularly unique situation, in that I’m coming off of 10 years at a AAA game studio, having shipped a AAA game, and then off of shipping 2-3 mobile games in a year. The experience of FINISHING a game was essential to me before going back to work. It helps me to better estimate how long certain things will take, so that I can scope my games more accurately. I enjoyed dedicating a full 40+ hours a week to my games, but with the regular job, I set a baseline 5 hours per week (great if I do more, but I’m setting limits). This means that my estimates grow to 8 times my original estimate. I’m okay with that, as long as I can eventually finish, and have a regular income at the same time.
EDIT:
Oh yeah, if anyone is interested in another perspective about it, here is my own blog post on my situation http://undertheweathersoftware.com/plotting-a-new-course/.
I think it is a smart approach. 5 hours per week is a small amount of time but I completely get it. After spending 8 hours in software development for my day job I’m happy to put in any time in the evening. Sometimes I get 45 minutes and other times I get 3 hours in. Generally somewhere in the middle. A person can definitely burn themselves out pushing too hard on this stuff when you already have a full-time job.
Yah I am not sure what i would do if I didnt my inheritance. Being a full time indie is hard
Ideally we will see the article in six months time after he has actually tried to work and do game dev.
At the moment he is simply saying ‘this is going to be awesome’ and yet he hasn’t actually tried it yet.
There are a couple of issues with the article
I’m all for people doing game dev as a hobby. That’s what I do. But let’s be honest with ourselves on how much game dev you can get done at the same time as holding a full time job.
Believe it or not, 40 hour jobs for software engineers do still exist. As far as time and energy, if anyone’s gone through a few gamedev cycles, they’ll notice that non-game industry work is significantly less stressful for a number of reasons. Of course, it also depends on your coworkers and your management too, but for me specifically, it’s surprisingly fair paced, giving me enough energy for a couple of hours each day to work on my current project. Anyway, I’ll let you know in 6-12 months how I’m doing too.
I think the main problem is assumption that with 8 hours per day for work there will be some time left for making games.
Aside from work and sleep there’s a lot of stuff that will eat the free time away. Commute, time needed for chores, eating, grooming, etc. One some days it is possible to get back exhausted and with only enough energy to stare at the ceiling.
full time job offers stability, which is nice, but I think that expecting to have enough time for side projects may be a bit unrealistic in some circumstances.
As a graphic designer and game artist, and even when I’ve worked as tech support… I’d say this :
Is amazingly true for most cases. Now I am a full time freelancer, and I have worked for years in the situation of having first a ful time job + projects at home, then many years with a half time job + projects.
Also, I guess depends on the country, region of the country even, and quite much in the job type (programmer, artist…). In some companies, artists, we were way more overloaded, mostly because there used to be this conception that artists are less “key”(considered so years ago, that has evolved only a little bit (in my experience, I mean), now that mainstream games are so graphic heavy), and coders more important, so they tended to contract as fewer artists as they could, even like a necessary evil, overloading those of us “lucky” to be there…In the other side, more coders than they needed, “just in case”, making me what comes after angry watching often programmers iddle (yeh, many afternoons playing MAME games, believe it or not…), for an obvious bad estimation by the HR department.
In other places, quite the opposite, and even depends on the year or time of the year, where all the cr4p load would flip from one side to another.
But in all and every of the 10 companies I’ve worked at, 40 was never EVER 40. With luck, 60. Often, way way more. Including some unpaid Saturday night demo finishing at 2:00 AM…Which is what made me knew that in some companies, being a game artist is the best way to run away from happiness, to the opposite side, indeed. Hence my wild and passionate defense of indy world, always.
I’ve worked once just at a school library. My jobs was just to be there, care that nothing disappeared, help some kid looking for a book, maintain the library data base. Rare was the week with more than two kids coming for a book. Then YES, was a good time for side projects. Heck, I even did work from projects in the library, to alleviate boredom. That sort of job…yep. But in the 10 companies, I don’t even count this one here… I can’t call that “a job”…
EDIT: My deepest respect for any librarian here… is not the job, is how a company or boss makes it be. Or even just the actual number of customers in an area, etc. Not saying this job can`t be as stressful as any other.
I’ve had crunch-time where I worked til 1 AM (started at 7 AM). and for a long time I just worked 50 hours per week at my day job simply because I enjoyed working… workaholic. But overall, my jobs have been really good. Any more I just put my 40 hours in and get out. There are times I get a call for an emergency or get asked for help near the very end of my workday and I end up putting in some extra time but it is rare.
Of course, there is always more work to be done. I just learned to view it differently… what I don’t get done today I can do tomorrow. And that is what I do now. I could certainly work 12 hour days every day for my job if I wanted to. I’m not sure about the rest of you folks in IT development jobs but truly for the places I have worked at the work is never done. Projects get done but there is always another project. So it makes a lot of sense to just chill out about it. Do some today. Do some tomorrow. Do some next week.
To me “switched to part time” sounds like a sugar-coated version of “got a proverbial day job”.
To be honest, the thing I like most about the article is that it talks about that feeling like a bad or questionable thing at first, but that it’s actually a good and exciting thing in many ways. The security that a job provides is good. The stability is good. The social contacts are good. Getting you out of the house is good.
Edit: “proverbial proverbial”.
Expanding on that last post… it also talks about even those “making it” as full-time indies often having a constant struggle. (Heck, it goes so far as to mention that getting past that stage is a “lottery”.)
Money is important and great because it first gives us security/stability (the important bit) and then gives us more budget to make better projects. If you’re struggling to make ends meet then you haven’t met the security/stability bit, and that makes everything else really hard. If what you want to do is make certain games, but what you’re actually doing is making a bunch of tools/tutes/smaller games you’re not that interested in just to make ends meet then you’re still working a job, it’s just a less secure/stable one. And it’s taking time away from the projects you really want to be doing in any case.
That’s a point of view, but… IMO (from a full time freelance, struggling…depending on the month, lol) it quite depends on if in your area is there a lot of job offers for your specific field/profile (mines: graphic designer, illustrator, and game artist). If there are not (mostly as there’s high unemployment in general and low activity in IT ) then it almost always the jobs you can have are pestered by the usual cons in these situations: Abusive bosses, terrible pay, amazing number of unpaid extra hours, and, well, the work might be often not of your liking when trying to pay everything with it as a freelance, but, and I have long years to compare in both situations, the tasks needed to do and THE WAY you are forced to do them, is, by many factors, extremely uglier and worse inside certain companies. In my field, often leaving out the possibility of realy evolve in the skills that have more future, and actually build a serious portfolio. Getting social, workers relation, yeah, is good, again depends in the area. In struggling companies you often see lots of back stabbing… I could write several books about it, even while being mostly an observer of those. And I can put or diminish the stress into my self as a freelancer, i can actually choose, to an extent what I pick up and what I don’t (if you have enough profiles, there’s not so much shortage of projects. Video games is not the only field for a freelance programmer or artist.) . And this is not said by someone who is scared of stress… after a number of years I grew a thick skin, and I kind of handle lots of pressure surprisingly well.
Yet though, even that all said, I’d point out that freelancing is REALLY hard, difficult and insecure. If my local area would be in better circumstances I’d never have gone freelance. Yet though, right now I’d miss my movement freedom (IE: working from any city or country) , and would need to get used again to work for some boss with ego problems. Of course, I have had too great bosses, but in my personal experience, has been quite a gamble.
When the offer is larger and varied (so I was told it actually is by several artists/coders mates that work now in these places, in comparison, in certain Areas of the US , Canada, and was in UK/France. Right now, I doubt it is even half as good as it was… even for the 4 countries…Still, thousand times better than in a lot of other countries in the planet.) yep, no job is paradise, none is easy either, but they are indeed slightly reasonable, in these circumstances I’d agree with the above post…The 40 hours and leave whatever else for tomorrow at the end of your legally contracted hours is sth that would cause some very sad laughing from any of my ex work colleagues…seriously. And that’s only a small example of the many differences that can exist. I wouldn’t say there is a universal rule that’d work in any case…Even in my area, a programmer might be better inside a company than an artist (they are considered/treated/paid clearly better. ). I make the exception with those programmers mounting a company, if they have a good vision, are very skilled and know how to make the right contacts (again, the country and even country’s region is a key factor). Yet though, will have a harder life. For some of us, even so the advantages would compensate the cons. (and if the person has a family to maintain, any consideration is completely out, is only about getting a solid job…)
Well you’ll have that kind of thing anywhere. Long ago at my first job which was not in IT and instead was commercial cleaning. I was working away and got hungy. So I washed up, locked up went out got in company vehicle and went to local sub shop. Got a sub. Ate. Came back. Continued working.
Next day my boss was in office… “Gar I saw the pickup sitting at sub shop last evening when i drove by?!” Oh yeah?! That was me getting a sub. You should have stopped in said hello. “Well lunch break is at 8:30. This was 7:15” Yes, that sounds right. “Well why were you there?” Well I was working and man I was getting hungry. Sub sounded real good. “So you just left work and got a sub?” Of course! Makes no sense to keep working like that, does it? I was hungry. I saw it as a problem. I solved the problem. Got a sub. Returned to work and was able to really focus becsuse I was no longer so hungry.
And current job has the employee handbook (as usual). Inside it specifies valid times for workday to start and end. It was brought to my attention that I am starting and ending workday 1.5 hours earlier than the times listed in the handbook. “Yep. That works better for me.”
My whole life has been this way. It’s not that places don’t have rules & regulations. I just don’t follow them to the letter if they will be a pain in the ass for me. My view has always been “if you don’t want me working here I can always work elsehwere”. But so far everyone has ended up reasonable because I don’t beat around the bush try to hide these things. Just be up front about it.