A Brief History:
Game Dev Career Pursuit
The Degrees
2011 > 2014 - Degree
2014 > 2016 - Adrift in space
2016 > 2018 - MA
When I started University my aim was to go into concept art, since drawing is what I’d always been pretty competent at and got praise for from my peers. Unfortunately I’d lost all my confidence as a concept artist by the end of the course and left University feeling utterly unprepared to go into the industry. I sort of drifted through life for a while uncertain what to do; tried IT, tried Social Media, tried a Call Center.
2 years pass and I went back to University to study for an MA, and it was amazing! I see my MA studies as a turning point in my life, after it I embraced being studious and have maintained and fed that curious mindset ever since.
Post MA
2018 > 2022 - Trying to make games.
Long story short, I learnt how to use Unreal Engine 4, tried to make a few games and kept failing, starting again, and failing, burning out, complete an Udemy course = confidence boost, new project, fail, rinse and repeat. This was my life outside of socialising and the day job for a solid 5 years. Of course there were periods of time where I took a month or so break from any game dev to recuperate.
I didn’t really have an aim, I just thought; “If I make some games, then I can apply for a testing role and then… well like do some games design stuff eventually, maybe do level design? Let’s deal with that tiny detail later”.
It sounds like a sour time, it was in the moment, but now I honestly look back at all those ‘fails’ as excellent learning material, I learnt loads of ‘What not to do’ and got pretty decent in UE4 during the process since I was using it almost daily.
New Year Break 2022
2022 - Career?
I decided I needed to focus my career trajectory as I was getting to a breaking point feeling trapped in a design(ish)/production day job unrelated to my interests and not being in a career or profession I genuinely cared about and could grow as a designer within.
I had a deep think about what I actually wanted to do as a career. Level Design pretty much stole the spot light, it was clear because looking back at my Degree and MA the work I had most enjoyed was designing worlds, levels, stories, puzzles, obstacle courses, reasons for doors being locked, and cool places to explore.
Now
18:07 26th July 2024
Over the last year I've experienced a sort of revolution in my mindset which has been like rocket fuel for my work output and far more importantly, my enjoyment of working on my projects no matter how challenging they become.
So here I am now with a portfolio, finally in a position to pursue my dream career!
If you read all that then thank you, if you read the first sentence and then skipped to this bit then thank you too!
Defeat and Triumph
2022 > 2023 - It's not good enough
2023 > 2024 - It's good enough
Great, so I had a mission: create a level design portfolio.
14 months later I still didn’t have a portfolio. Why?
Well it wasn’t because I wasn’t trying, in fact it was the opposite, I was trying far too hard. My ‘acceptable work’ standards were ridiculous. I had this mindset that because I was older than most new games industry recruits that I had to produce work that justified my age, and qualifications. I felt like I had to make up for all the time I hadn’t been in the games industry by producing meticulously crafted to absolute perfection work, or in an interview I’d be asked “What have you even been doing since your MA? Do you even like video games?". This was a dreadful mindset, it turned what used to be fun creative work into a painful self critical exercise.
I felt as if I was trapped between a day job I was deeply resenting (for taking me away from my precious projects) and then flogging myself over perceiving my projects as endless time consuming failures, yet I couldn’t stop forcing myself from working on them or ‘I’d never get a good job’.
Eventually this mindset got on top of me (surprise) and I had to seek professional help. This was quite literally life changing. I took a 2 month break from all game dev related work - except sketching the odd idea now and then - while I completed a daily practice assigned to me.