Ben Serviss

Another big publisher set to fire 600 employees. This post is intended to support those who were recently laid off. Please share it within your community and tag studios and recruiters who are actively hiring. "We'll hear troubling news from the offices of Zynga, Gearbox, 2K, and even Rockstar—a far cry from earlier statements about layoffs from Take-Two's CEO." To combat, I am adding 5 resources below for all impacted professionals : 1) Our flagship Full-stack game programming bootcamp worth $11,000. We're giving course content out on 100% scholarship for anyone who's willing to transition into game programming or upskill in programming. (Mail: [email protected]) 2) Join our Discord Community and help professionals who are asking questions related to portfolio building, job seeking, interviews, and broadly their next career step. We have added help roles for programming, Unity, Unreal, DSA, Careers. Pick these roles and only get notified when someone asks questions related to your expertise. 3) Your team is hiring? Here's a list of 900+ professionals who were laid off recently: https://bit.ly/49Ah2vT Do them a favor by sharing this list with your 1st degree connections who're hiring. 4) We now have 14368 gamedev jobs from all over the world. https://lnkd.in/gerWUkc5 5) Become a volunteer: If you're a senior professional, you can mentor these professionals, conduct mock interviews, assess their portfolios and give feedback on what would work for them and what wouldn't. Join by adding your name here: https://lnkd.in/gwPhHen4 Get more out of Game Dev community on LinkedIn 🍄 Amir Satvat is back on LinkedIn with the OG list of resources. 💼 Caitlin Cooke is the fastest source of fresh jobs in the industry (yes, remote jobs too) 🎤 Follow Jordan Mazer for greatest tips and pointers around game jobs & interviews. 🔥 Hailey's feed will keep you updated with everything that's happening in the gaming world. 🔝 Connect with Arin Goldsmith and be part of her amazing #SocialSunday initiative. #games #gamedev #jobs #layoffs

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Conference Drama + Cringe 🙄 I could use some hugs or LOLz 🤗 I wasn't going to say anything, but I'm still hearing from folks still expecting to see me at the Innovate QA Events conference. ***To be clear, I will not be there*** I don't want to be part of any 'false advertising', as I'm still listed on the program @ https://lnkd.in/g-Zh3P_n . I'd asked to be removed right away, and asked that they would make sure folks knew that i wouldn't be there, and they said they would. But, I'm still on the public schedule, haven't seen them tell folks I won't be there, and people are reaching out to me expectig me to present and wanting to meet at the conference. They'd asked me to speak, and I agreed to do it for free, on whatever topics would be helpful to them, In the interest of supporting the #testing community in the #seattle area. Cringe: They told me they were kicking me off the schedule. Which is super awkward, never happened before, but OK. The crazy thing is the reason I was told I was booted 😂 --I don't want folks to think I bailed on them, or I'd done something weird. What I was told: They took on a sponsor, who thought I was "competitive", and demanded that I be removed from the conference or they would pull their sponsorship. Super strange I thought, and unprofessional at best. Crazier, the conference actually agreed to do it. 🤡 I guess I could think of it as a backhanded compliment? There is only one sponsor right now, and the company name rhymes with testRigor, as in "Rigor mortis". Extra dissappointing, is that I remember trying to help the founder of that company at a conference a few years ago encouraging him to not give up over dinner at a mexican restaurant and picked up the bill. I even helped edit his pitch deck and gave him advice on fundraising--when he was officially a "competitor". 🙄 More awkard, testRigor just had a webinar related to the conference that was, well, it was a poorly executed sales pitch were when he tried to demo the integration of AI into his product, it failed to execute a test step correctly, and kept clicking seemingly random things, eventually gave up, and essentially mumbled that, well the AI does strange things all the time. That video might be available online. That said, I hope the rest of the conference goes well, just know that I won't be there if you were expecting to hear about "Testing for AI Safety", or "AI can Test". And, I guess I won't be attending/supporting the conference or related #Seattle meetups. Felt I had to share so folks knew I was a 'good actor'--it could look strange from the outside, and I don't want folks to be surprised, or decieved. I intended to be there and follow through, and not my fault. Maybe karma isn't a thing, but at least I have my time back 🤔 🤷‍♂️

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Great read! Lot's of practical insights. You should follow Michael, he is rich in insights but also - a dope human (I vouch). So far, I am in this "building a studio" from scratch journey for a little over a year. It's hard. But I want to put this last statement (it's hard) in perspective. It's all hard. Getting hired and making games is hard. Staying employed is hard. Building your own studio is hard. It's all different kinds of difficult but it's a challenge you will face. Other factors to consider are luck (which for me is preparation meeting opportunity) but that's another topic all together. Something to consider...(just pondering) If you are more inclined to need that feeling of "achievement" then building your own studio might feel VERY difficult since wins are going to be a bit more harder to grasp. But if you find yourself more inclined to need that feeling of "striving" (you value the struggle) you might find yourself enjoying the process of building something from scratch since you are fighting for every inch of progress. Back to reality: Check out Michaels post!

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What's the real cost of not involving developers early? ...Yes, involving developers early means more meeting hours. But the cost of NOT involving them? ↔ Constant back-and-forth clarifications ⏳ Rework and delays ⛓ Team disconnection 😑 Frustration ❓ Anything you'd add? Question for you Product Leaders out there: What's the costliest 'hidden' expense you've seen from leaving developers out of early product discussions? Do you agree that we should involve developers early on? What positive examples have you seen from involving developers early in the product process? Thank you so much to Eric Cussen for enriching our recent webinar. #ProductManagement #Agile #Leadership #ProductDevelopment #EngineeringCulture #ProductStrategy

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This is a little embarrassing, but up until last year I had never attended a gaming event! I know...crazy right? The event? Wisconsin Games Alliance's M+Dev. I met a ton of great people and sat in on some insightful talks. Don't forget to pick up this year's tickets for the event in November. Let me know if you're going :) I'd like to connect with more likeminded folks, play up and coming indie games, and see if maybe I can help a few people along the way by sharing some of my experience along the way. What kind of experience? Well...starting up a new indie studio, selling a game IP, signing a new game with a kick ass publisher (hi, Midwest Games!), building remote teams, the difference between game dev as a hobby and as a business, pitfalls starting a project as a solo dev and then scaling up to bring in others, etc etc. So...what events would you recommend? They don't have to be massive endeavors like PAX, but any suggestions are greatly appreciated 🤘

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Friends, I wanted to take a moment to address a common question I receive about how prioritization decisions are made within our community. Whether it’s choosing between offering community passes versus all-expenses-paid visits to events like GDC, or deciding who becomes part of our mentor network, the guiding principle behind every decision is simple: utilitarian impact. When we started this journey two years ago, our focus was clear. 30,000 people were affected by cuts. Even today, there are easily over 10,000 individuals stuck looking for work for over a year. If we broaden the scope, that number is even higher. My mission has always been to maximize the number of people we can help. In a good year, our community can enable 1,500 to 2,000 people to find work. With such overwhelming need, our number one priority must be to help as many gamers as possible find employment. For example, when deciding between $200 community passes versus a $2,000 all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid visit to GDC, the choice is clear. With a donation of $10,000, I can either help 50 people with community passes or just five with all-inclusive, all-expenses-paid visits. Every time such a decision arises, I opt to help more people, knowing it might mean some compromises. Our community is global, and while there might be a slight bias towards the U.S. and a few key cities, we strive to offer a diverse range of events and opportunities to reach as many people as possible. Some may suggest that we’re not helping gamers equally, but I assure you, we have thousands upon thousands of people who are all in equally serious need of finding jobs. And as we saw last year with GDC, our community is far more resourceful than you might think. People found ways to attend—they carpooled, shared hotels, stayed with friends. As a result, all 220 tickets last year went to people in great need. Had we done all-expenses-paid visits, we could have only helped 22 people. Our network is diverse in every sense, from geography to background, and that’s intentional. But at the core, our true North Star is this: the more gamers we help, the better. With so many in need, it’s crucial to stretch every dollar and every hour to have the greatest impact. This approach is why we’ve been able to help 1,500 to 2,000 people each year find work, and it’s a number that continues to grow. So, while I deeply appreciate all feedback and know it comes from a good place, I encourage everyone to consider the broader implications. If you were in my position, would you choose to help one person at the expense of helping 10? For me, the answer is clear. By focusing on maximizing our impact, we’ve been able to create a community that truly makes a difference. This core mindset explains how we help 1,500-2,000+ people annually find work. If i made 10x efficiency tradeoffs, we would never achieve our impact. Thank you for your support. Our goal will always be to help as many gamers as possible.

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This is good advice.

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Making all tests pass by slowing them down is not acceptable. When teams realize that slow tests are a death march, they knee-jerk move to speeding up the tests by the trickery known as mocks/doubles/studs/you-name-it. That's the worst possible approach. Instead of jumping head first into witchcraft/voodoo trickery, go for the root cause -- lousy system design. Fix that, and you'll fix the slow tests.

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One of the biggest hiring mistakes: Assuming that work experience at a top company equals a top specialist. This isn't true. Top companies employ tens of thousands of people. Statistically, most are decent, but not exceptional, as HR often assumes. Small, successful startups are more interesting. They can't afford mediocrity. They need true talent to thrive. So, the likelihood of finding top-tier talent from a small startup is much higher than from a big company.

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Product is fun, complex, messy, and there are no shortcuts. Once you accept that—and embrace it—amazing things happen to your career. Cat Hicks, PhD puts this better than anyone: "Doing research with developer teams, something that really strikes me is how much people look for ways to make complex problems easy rather than make it easy to work on complex problems What I mean is, sometimes it's really useful to admit we just are trying to accomplish tough things. Asking how we can support our teams who NEED the time and space to work through that, it's often a much more tractable lever than trying to change the inherent nature of the work I think it behooves me to say as a psychologist here that I think people are actually really excellent at working on complex problems! It's one of the reasons research with developers is so great. Overall devs love to learn, love to be curious, love to innovate. It is core stuff. What would it look like if we could ask, "how do I make this the absolute best environment for complex problem-solving" instead of "how do I take away all these annoying hard problems." The stuff we want to accomplish in the world is hard. But can be joyful to accomplish."

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Complaining won't get you hired. Sending hundreds of applications without a reply sucks, I get it. And job hunting in game development is tough in 2024. But hear me out: No one hires out of pity. People hire because you show value. Instead of complaining about the market, focus on creating value for others: • Share common best practices • Contribute to professional topics • Create useful solutions or courses • Make a tutorial on a complex issue Or go a step further: prepare a list of recommendations for the company you want to join and send it with your CV (and also share it publicly). How so, you might ask? Do something for others for FREE? Yes, absolutely. It's called "content marketing." You create value upfront, become more recognizable, and gain a reputation. And then you get hired easily because you provided value upfront. If you're willing to spend hundreds of hours on interviews, spend some time creating value for others. It'll pay off in the long run.

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A lot of companies are going to learn quickly that having principal/staff PMs aren’t a silver bullet. If senior PMs can’t make reasonably good progress in a company, you have problems elsewhere. Principal/staff PMs are more experienced, obviously, but a lot of work doesn’t require principal / staff level experience (or shouldn’t require if, at least).

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I was in a 1:1 today where I mentioned that I wanted to do away with our weekly defect status reports. Why? Because no one likes a wall of text that has a bunch of risks and call outs. Folks get blind to the things that really matter and they become bogged down by repeated pings in the same spots. Our solution: Use the triage sessions to delegate status. Ping only the most important action items in the big channel. Make sure ownership is felt and not just seen.

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This is not just any "hey, we are looking for a dev" post. This might be one of the most exciting engineering roles we have ever hired for. Let me explain why: I have the great privilege of being the product lead for the exceptionally brilliant Rendering Engine Team at Miro. Several months ago, we took a bold step to revamp our foundational rendering technology from the ground up, setting an ambitious vision far beyond what Miro is capable of today. Building a highly performant rendering engine for a product like Miro is not trivial though. You are dealing with an infinite 2D canvas with potentially thousands of multimedia objects, all while multiple people collaborate in real-time. We want professionals & creatives to spend the majority of their working days in Miro. Unfortunately, every lag when panning a large planning board, every jiggle effect due to low FPS when zooming out from a large planning session, and every slight delay when selecting hundreds of multimedia objects not only results in lost time but also slight frustration. It's that small, annoying feeling that something felt slightly slow, slightly not instant, slightly irritating. A products performance is not just about the time you lose; it is about the feeling this product gives you. On the other hand, we all know the feeling of delight when you do something complex in a product, and it happens instantaneously. That feeling that no matter what you do, no matter what workload you throw at an application, it will be responsive, fast, and instantaneous. This is what we envision: A rendering engine that continuously surprises you with its snappiness, making work feel light and delightful. We are looking for someone who is as equally annoyed by these issues as we are and wants to take the lead in solving them. We aim to build a rendering engine that raises the bar for what people consider possible on a web-based canvas. A computer graphics professional who wants to take on the challenge of working on a renderer that powers the day-to-day work of millions of users and some of the most creative and innovative companies in the world. If you work in the field of computer graphics and want to contribute to the heart of a product that aims to amplify collaboration and creative work, give it shot. Feel free to DM me for more information or directly apply below:

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I'm a massive Fallout fan. Going back to Wasteland, then the original Interplay Fallouts (FO1, FO2, Tactics), and into FO3 (still the best in the series, IMO -- don't waste your time talking to me about NV), etc. I've talked a lot about how FO3 was a big inspiration for TLD. So know that I am as big a fan as probably can be. I was really interested to hear from both gamer and non-gamer folks in my social circle who really bounced off of the Amazon series, due to what they described as the "extreme violence". This includes people who are fans of the game, and people for whom the TV series is their first entry point into the IP. I've only seen the first episode so far, but I have to say...I agree with them? It's very clear that Nolan/Joy are huge fans of the IP, and I know the show was developed under the watchful eye of Bethesda, as it should be. But IMO, they really missed the mark on the depiction of violence. It's massively overdone and 100% unnecessary. And I think it speaks to the challenges of adaptation from interactive to non-interactive media. Over-the-top violence is a hallmark of the Fallout IP, no question. Actually, I think it's fair to say that "OTT" is really the core pillar of the Fallout IP in general. There's a huge wink behind everything in the game. And you accept it, because you're the one pulling the trigger. You're the one choosing the "Bloody Mess" perk so you can see enemies literally explode (which I have to assume is an homage to Wasteland, and the "___ exploded like a blood sausage..." combat description). But this stuff just does not translate well to linear media. When we are playing games, we are immersed in those worlds, and we don't stop to think of how brutally violent we are in them, how casually we dispatch hundreds or thousands of enemies during the course of completing a game. We are desensitized to it in the game. And it's ok, because we know it's not real. It's part of the magic, part of the covenant we have between ourselves and the game. TV isn't real either. But it's made of the "real world". Amazon's Fallout is not animated or 3D, it's live-action. It's made of pieces of the world we live in. We can see ourselves in this violence. As OTT as the IP is, and as successful as the show has been so far, I personally feel that they missed the mark with the depiction of violence. I think they have unnecessarily alienated folks who would have otherwise really enjoyed the show. (And yes, I know videogame violence doesn't translate to violence in the real world. I'm not talking about that.) I'll keep watching, but for me I wish Nolan/Joy and Bethesda had had the foresight to recognize that straight up adapting the level of violence in the game was not necessary for the adaptation to be successful. I don't think the game fans would have enjoyed it any less if the violence had been less graphic, and I think a lot of the folks who are newly discovering Fallout might have had a better experience with it.

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Fun thought experiment: what would actually break down (and when) if each team at your company used two simple tools: 1) A single google doc, and 2) a basic flat tasking system like GitHub issues. I've been running this fun thought experiment with teams and the surprising answer is "Very little" in most cases. It is amazing how much extra stuff we add that isn't really essential.

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Great observation from a Senior PM currently on the job market: "the roles where they highly value domain knowledge I find to be not very versed in product and just go for what they know." When you don't understand the value of product you revert to looking for domain experts.

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This is the kind of crap we need to be fighting against. Pretty sure that 79 million would have covered a decent percentage of those workers livelihoods, but why do that when we can make our CEO even more staggeringly wealthy than he already is? 🙄🙄 This is a huge thing my studio Reboot Interactive LLC is and will be fighting against for as long as we draw breath. We have had enough of games designed by suits, Predatory business practices, and the industry treating us like disposable napkins. Microsoft Gaming laid off over 2,500 workers this year, but it still found enough spare change to give its CEO a $79 million bonus https://lnkd.in/eGVpFXA9 #indierevolution #gamedev #microsoft #greed #gamedeveloment #indiegames #AAA

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