Tales from the wild: Dark days
It has been an awful month for the games industry.
Out of respect for the many affected, I choose not to deflect the subject or try to find whatever positive side. Not to add to the doom fog, but to join my colleagues in search of a way forward.
Here I was, staring at an e-mail, reading and re-reading the numbers in a sentence that ruined the day of thousands of people. Almost 2000 colleagues were about to lose their jobs. That one sentence.
My team was safe, I learned. But my mind circled around other thoughts. Contingency plans. What will I do if (or when) it is my turn to be carried by this tidal wave? Should I already start pursuing a plan B? What other careers could I possibly venture on?
January isn’t even over yet and the number of game workers affected by layoffs is already at nearly 60% the total amount of the entire year of 2023 - on itself a dreadful year with staggering numbers. The news keep coming in with more studios being accounted for. 15 people here. 100 there. Every day.
What we need to face at this point is that this industry might not have the bandwidth to reabsorb all the people that are now looking for new jobs. We are going to lose talent, talent who will migrate to other careers because there is nowhere else to go. People who are prematurely leaving on their own account to save themselves, because they are tired, and frustrated, and angry. We don’t have enough unions in enough territories to strike and carve a big enough dent.
It looks bleak, because it is. I love making games. I am truly grateful that making games has been a part of my life for so many years, but what do you do in days like these, when you feel there is no room not only for yourself but for anyone? When you realize the layoffs are not a sign that the market is doing poorly - because quite the contrary, it is thriving - but firing people is just part of the business?
The wave may pass at some point yet the hurt stays. The scars deepen. Indulge me while I quote Game of Thrones but damn right, the North remembers. We joke that game devs lose the spark in their eyes after a few years because we've seen it all before and keep seeing it happen. We're schooled - yet the community, somehow, can never be prepared enough. Although our community has been biting back, from the small things like ratio’ing an insensitive Linkedin guru to organizing unions, not to mention the collective and unshakeable efforts of signal-boosting every game job opening out there.
The biggest cost of a dark month after a dark year is human. The emotional burden we all carry to our everyday jobs and that dims the light in the smiles we give our loved ones. I want to feel proud of working in games again.
But it will take time.
-Maíra