You've got a very professional attitude, and obviously high skill in your craft. You will likely continue to have infinite job opportunities. Keep it up dude!
This video just popped up on my home page. Something like 8 years ago I reached out to you while I was in college studying animation. I asked if you would give feedback on one of my (very very bad) character animations as I was learning. You were very kind, and I really appreciated your insight. For the past 5 years I've been working as an animator in the advertising space, so a lot of C4D motion graphics kind of work. I'm glad I got to see this update and I'm gonna keep an eye on the game you're working on now!
That's a massive maybe. Just do contracting instead of looking for a full-time job. We're in a recession so all of the work will go to India, Poland, China, etc.
IDK man, I've been on a job hunt for a year now with 8 years of experience behind me, I was told by my ex art director I'm skilled, talented and good and yet. Now finally after 1 year I got a job offer, where they told me to be more confident because what I did for art test was impressive and good. I told them it's hard to be confident when all you get is rejection e-mails and no art tests at all. So idk. Either they are lying and I'm actually not that good (which I feel like myself that I'm just mediocre and have a lot to learn still) or something is very wrong with the industry and the hiring practices. Or both. But I see no point in lying about such things so yeah. I have no clue whats going on with the industry. I got more art tests when I barely had skills 4 years ago with almost nothing good in my portfolio than now. Weird times. Edits: typos and weirdly structured sentences
I just want to say that you are so fortunate to have found a job a month or so after your layoff. I amongst hundreds of animators have been in 8 month grinds to find work. My last studio was Disney in August of 2023 and with 13 plus years of experience I bounced from two different temp jobs to finally land in a senior gameplay animator role. Its really tough out there. Feel blessed and keep animating and teaching! For those who are still on the search, keep working on your animations, love for the craft will carry you through. If you dont love it anymore, take some time off and explore, find what you love to do outside art... and then if art or animation calls you back, you will know what to do. ❤
I was laid off from the games industry in April and it's taken me until this week to find a new job. Applied for 50+ jobs and interviewed for around 10. The constant rejection takes a toll on your motivation, but keep going. You are more than talented enough to find a new job.
I almost felt like I was reading my own thoughts here 😅 laid off in April myself, character artist here, looking for new work. My recruiter mentioned September-October is usually a good time for hires as new dev cycles as starting, but maybe he was just trying to make me feel better 🤣 hoping we see a surge of more jobs soon, who knows
Everyone used to have big dreams of being a game developer, but unless you work for a Japanese Corporation or under a Publisher, the risks are huge, the turnover rates of studios closing down is depressing.
Appreciate you sharing all this Mark! It was interesting to hear. I've been through a layoff myself not long ago, and luckily landed on my feet again as well after few months. Feels like getting another chance in life really!
As someone who has been studying animation for 2 years and getting toward that edge of starting to apply for jobs, hearing you talk about this was very helpful. Thank you!
@@joshberkin5567 I would say yes IF you can get in to it. Its pretty much impossible unless you have had experience in the bizz or know someone who can introduce you.
@@joshberkin5567 I have a friend who at this point has worked on every major VFX movie in the last 25 years. But I remember how he got started..he used to hang around the pubs where staff from a vfx house to use hang out and made friends with them and then got in to it from there lol
I'm glad you bounced back from the Layouts! I too was laid off in January this year from ABK. Prior to that I was also working on EXODUS! Such a great project. I can't wait for it to come out so I can finally show all the concept art i did for it!
I ran into a similar issue with my YT channel. I've been going job to job, contract to contract in gaming for awhile now and the instability of not knowing that you're going to have a job 5 years from now makes it hard to get back to YT videos when the back of your head keeps telling you to add more to your portfolio, and constantly prepare for that next job hunt.
Hey Mark, just finished watching the video and amazing to see you sharing your perspective on this as there's so much of it going on in the games industry at the moment is heart breaking! Glad to see that you are keeping it positive and that you are still posting here on YT regularly as I could relate a lot with the fact that your professional life has an immediate correlation with how motivated you feel to share your knowledge on RU-vid. Keep strong dude!
Hey Harvey! Thanks for checking out the video, and your kind words, it means a lot! Yeah the industry has been tough lately, and sucks seeing so many talented people affected. Hopefully things start to improve across the industry!
Thanks for sharing Mark! Many of us are struggling and it's great to keep it up! Doing something different on the side like you do with cycling is so important to keep a good mental health. At the end it's a passion and "just a job", keep the passion, the job will come back.
You are very skilled. I am a 3d artist also. Not as good as you. Thanks for the motivation. I also go through these painful days where I feel drained. I have a 9-5 as a videographer but I push to do my 3d work in my free time. Glad you see people you keeping up the Designer Spirit.
keep at it, I do the same I work a full time job but I am learning blender on the side because I just want to create cool stuff. I wan to see where it leads me.
Even during challenging times, it's important to remember that after every storm, a rainbow emerges. The current industry difficulties and layoffs are temporary, and better days will come. Let's stay optimistic and hopeful for the future. 🙂
Thanks for sharing your story. I'm sorry to hear you went through that. I'm not professionally in games but software and had 2 redundancies happen within a year so I know it's tough. I wish you well in your new job!
Thank you for sharing your story. A lot of my friends got laid off at Blizzard and at my company. It's been a rough year. Hoping things get better soon
Great take packed with insights. For any creator out there who needs to hear this. You can relax into it all. The brain must leave the body and heart alone sometimes and let things flow naturally. Taking good care of health before all else can be the difference between keeping a passion and watching it die for good. Discipline, inspiration and motivation can help sometimes but water do not need motivation to flow. Keep doing what makes you happy in life.
Thank you for sharing! I am glad and happy you have found a new job fast! Coming from VFX film Animation, doing it for 2 decades, unlike what you have described as weekly interviews... For me, since End of January after being laid off as well, I did not have as many interviews at all. I did get plenty of rejection emails on a Sunday night! I am talking about night night. As in 10pm night emails rejection. There might be workaholic recruiters. But, Sunday night eagerness and love of the traits? not sure... First time in me career that I get that number of rejections, ever! The self worth doubt, of course, is the first thing that starts creeping in, the confidence and what's next? As both VR gaming YT creator and also an UE5 YT channel creator, I am also suffering and can't bring myself to release content at this time. Especially tutorials for the UE tutorials. As life is a pendulum, I hope the dip is at it's prime and we are on the way up of the pendulum. Again, thank you for this.
I read the first three words on the thumbnail, and was happy at first. Then I read the last word and felt sad lol. Thank you for sharing all this. Everything is crazy everywhere as far as I'm concerned. Entertainment industry more than anything else, and gaming is going bonkers. In some way I'm glad I went for "simpler" employment some time ago, but I do still have a passion for the industry in my heart of hearts.
I hope to see more indie studios step up and take risks to make amazingly unique games the big studios wouldn't try. Also, do the people laid off have just like tons of savings? How do people not default back into some crap job ? ..or be an indie and survive? The college degrees are so inspiring, but I didn't do a full college degree or anything, so.. building my portfolio, but also wondering if those affected by tech layoffs are also good at budgeting.
thanks for sharing your story. I worked on a couple of things that never saw the light of day and i know the feeling ( was layoff years ago also) . You just have to keep going forward, if you love what you things will work out in time
It's funny how easy it is to see things clearly in hindsight. We all knew the industry was self destructing over the last 15 years, with the rise of corporate execs and bad hiring decisions, but people were still paying for games, until they weren't...
Hey Mark, thanks for your insight on this. It definitely helps in keeping up the motivation for those who are dealing with it right now. Keep doing the great work and educating the community with your experiences.
Thanks for opening up about this disturbing industry situation. I’ve gone through a similar experience but was lucky enough to find something around the same time. Still, it was such a stressful period. I think it would be really interesting to know if your online or RU-vid presence helped you secure interviews, or what strategies you used to make it work since you mentioned you didn’t have any recent work in your demo. Thanks again!!
Depending on situation I'd recommend diversifying your skill set; animators are skilled artists and capable of doing more than just animating. At a game studio, sometimes there is a big downtime for animation depending on the projects planned. Learning how to be useful is huge. (Especially for a small studio; it becomes less necessary in bigger ones). Things an animator could learn & definitely help with are: Lighting, VFX (not all VFX is super technical often getting good timing is key), Cutscene recordings/ using cinematic tools, and also helping fix small art errors within an engine (maybe an object has the wrong texture or shader or the mesh connection was broken etc). This is happening in our studio currently. We want to keep the animators but there's literally 0 projects for a while that currently require animation.
Hello mark :) Your videos has always inspired and motivate me to chase being an animator. To be honest , I am surprised that very skilled animators can be layoff ... which is very heartbreaking. I believe that after bad times there will be good times as well, so I am crossing fingers for you and everyone else that has been afflicted by the layoffs. Thank you for sharing your opinion!
Layoffs are nothing new but what's disconcerting though, is the amount of incredibly talented people involved lately. In any case, glad you could recover from that quickly. Also saw Nicholas' cancelled project. From getting Dauntless EG exclusive at the very last moment and now this, Phoenix Labs just keep disappointing :T
As a Game Designer I also got laid off - the only reason given was ''they needed to show financial responsibility'' to the investors. Which makes me both angry and.. I have no hope for the humanity :D Thankfully got a new job and its all good, but man.. industry is so crazy right now
Man I feel like the industry has no place for someone like me. I'm not an exceptionally skilled individual I'm a Graphic Designer who tries his best and wants to get into illustration and character design alongside my graphic work. The fact is I am mediocre compared to already well-established people in the field. I started this late at 30, and graphic design at 28, I'm years if not decades behind many people. I don't feel like there is a lot of space in the industry for someone like me. But I've shifted my focus to creating my own space and making my own game projects however small or insignificant to make my own job. I realise in the modern age there isn't a space for everyone in work no matter how much ppl tell you not everyone is skilled enough to compete when competition is so hard nowadays, some people have money, some are gifted, some have connections, some get lucky.
Just do freelancing, man. I'm a 3D generalist and game developer. I work on multiple types of projects, mostly in 3D architectural visualization, to make a living while working on my own game in my free time.
I'm a blender beginner here about 5 months in. I know I got a long ways to become skilled and knowledgeable in this industry but my plan is to learn the foundation of 3D and still work my every day job and hopefully get to free lance 3d stuff. Hopefully I can do both and enjoy both I don't think that's too far fetched. Glad it seems to be working out for you, seems like a solid setup you got.
They are an unfortunate, but necessary step for the industry to heal. We gamers will no longer tolerate all the DEI and other woke crap. This is difficult times for honest devs, but it will ultimately lead to a much better situation down the line, except for incompetent, manipulative DEI hires.
@@20fersthe does have a point. gamers dont want to play cringe garbage. guarantee star wars oulaws would be in a better place if you werent forced to play as a lesbian
In games industry for 25 years, layoffs come with the business unfortunately. You have to have a surfers mindset; the waves are not always good, but you can stay in shape, work on your balance, study the horizon, and set yourself up for the next set of waves when the surf returns.
Thanks man, really helpful to hear about others going through (or have gone through) the same struggles I am. Funnily enough I found new motivation in cycling as well! It really brought me back to life. I'm curious your thoughts on freelance. I would love to be back in a studio but freelance seems to be the only option right now. Is that ever something you considered during your down time?
Great hearing the update. You've had an amazing career and no doubt it always only gets better :) I wonder if you think your location may have contributed to your candidacy for layoffs or not. In general, I am interested on hearing how people in the animation industries are finding remote/on-location pros/cons with studios in the post-covid world. Great content as always!
The over hiring during 2020, paired with tighter lending from higher interest rates is a cascading event. Its good to see previous Blizz Project Managers put out fun games with other studios and developers. I love Blizz IPs but the projects have really languished.
Mark I really enjoyed your story it is really tough out there thank you for sharing it with us. Games are pretty difficult depending on how large the game is and what kind of game it is. I was wondering is your new job still looking for developers?
Sucks that happened man, but thanks for sharing. I've come to see it is just the ugly nature of the business. I killed myself on a high profile show for two years that was cancelled so I know that pain. I powered through many late nights because I convinced myself it was going to be a huge career boost, etc, 'sacrifice it all for the project'. Now I tread a lot more carefully with my 'passion'.
Start your own studio, getting layoff is a blessing sometimes. I think the game industry needs smaller studio creating new IP, instead of remaking old games. Take smaller risk by working on smaller scale project.
The unannounced survival game going off and Samwise Didier retiring is essentially the end of an era for Blizzard art as a whole, the chapter is closed. New blizzard games like Diablo 4 and beyond will never have "that" blizzard look and feel.
its scary to see these lay offs, seems to only be hitting the huge companies. i work for a smaller studio and things are going pretty well ( knock on wood). Nothing is set in stone though, ever. Unique Skill sets and overall raw talent (wearing many hats) are very attractive to smaller company leads.
I am not totally ignorant about all of this, have seen some here and there, but is there a specific reason why animators are among the most affected? Just out of curiosity, because it seems one of the most relevant, and needing experience and technical talent to really work. (as a note, I was a 3D enthusiastic many many years ago, including games/mods, animation was really though to do, regardless the amount of great tools we had/have)
I did 10+ years with EA and DISNEY. After my experience with the entire studio i was working at being shut down in a "strategic business decision", I decided not to go back into the industry. Glad I was gone before this whole DEI infestation really hit hard. I still work on games on my own, hoping to get something to release on a small/tiny scale later this year. I'm finding it really fun and enjoyable again! And I do it for love of the process, not for the money!
Hey Mark, thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts. Its is really hard to find the right motivation as well. Do you have some suggestion for someone who is going through same but cant show any of the stuff in their demo reels because of nda's? How should we reach out to companies
In the UK, redundancies are nothing to do with the person, it's about whether the company feels that it needs the job position that person happens to be filling. It's also nothing to do with any individuals pay, since it's not about the individual.
Skilled workers get paid more, now they can hire 3 unskilled workers for the same price but drop in quality and increase in how long it takes to do the task It always comes back to corporate greed.
Companies often do layoffs just so their financial stats look better for the shareholders. Ideally the company must be always hiring to provide the illusion of the constant growth, and you can't hire if you haven't laid anyone off. Big and famous companies like Activision Blizzard can afford losing even skilled artists because there's never a lack of applications.
Video games being an "industry" now and the recent production from companies like Blizzard are why historically few people care about your layoffs, btw.
Imagine now working in Design / Architecture studio 10 years and have almost nothing to Show everything is NDA. Few year ago Wife convince me to do Postcards for Christmas to at lest 2 times in year i have something to put in my portfolio : ) .
Nowadays, game industry jobs are just project based and can never guarantee job security. Once a project is done or cancelled, that's the end of our job.
@@MarkMastersAnim I've kinda given up on the industry throwing me a bone so I'm just starting my own studio with some other folks who got laid off with me. Fuck it. The AAA scene doesn't have much for me in the long term, and that's where the career canon launches anyone who enters. Why the hell would I waste my time making skinner boxes that ruin kids' brains when I came here to make FUCKING ART? I'll happily wallow in squalor till I sell one goddamn game if it means I get to contribute to a product that *isn't* designed to be a glorified store platform.
@MarkMastersAnim Listen Mark, I know it feels bad for you. But imagine that some game developers will never have any chance to work with Blizzard, no matter how hard they work or how much they learn. Only because our location is in Europe, not in the US. And you know, I really feel sorry for you. But since most of the worldwide game industry is still centered in the US, you will always have more chance to find game related jobs, than us, European developers... So I understand your struggle at one point, but I don't understand in some other points. You will have luck, because you're american. Then why do you cry actually? I would need to relocate to a different continent to be able to get the same amount of recognition in the game industry as you. You were born into the right place.
Seems like it is the same story with all major publishers. They all grew and hired a lot of people during the Covid boom. Now it's recession time unfortunately. I think there is still plenty of opportunities out there with smaller companies. I think it will all normalize again in the future. Atm it's tough for a lot of people unfortunately. Entertainment industry is very volatile in it's nature and basically non essential.
Can you turn .exe install file the back in dev code right at home? Within 5y you will be able, for sure. What can stop you from taking your game, that will be dead (already 3month after release) and fix it. Really made it how it's supposed to be! I hope within 5 y you will be able to do it on your own, at home. We will be doing games like in the Existence movie.
Mark...sorry buddy but you are in the wrong industry. Video game companies treat developers and animators like expendable garbage. You much better off working in tech in the Sillicon Valley. I work with VBA scripting using excel VBA for a tech company and I am earning over 200K base and 100K bonus per year. I would say that VBA programming would be a lot easier to learn than learning your advanced gaming animation. I realized a long time ago that it is not about what technical skills you know but it is about selling your worth to the company. Use my VBA programming skills to automate complex licensing reports with our software piracy program. We are able to recover millions in revenue and my automation tools saves countless hours manually calculating complex licensing estimates. I am able to prove my worth to them and that is how I was able to negotiate for my salary. I have working and saving for over 10 years and I am looking to retire early within the next 5 years. Time is so precious and short that we have to make good financial decision if we ever hope to retire early. Good luck to you.
Been playing games all my life and in the more recent years i've come to both have a great respect and lack of respect for devs. To make it simple, since more than a few years back, i have a blacklist of both developers and publishers which i NEVER pre-purchase from, even rare still that i actually buy a game from them.. at all, *Ubishit* being one of them. And i simpy have no respect for talented developers who wants to throw their talens away working for a company that constantly releases broken AAA titles . And more recently we have these RL agendas being forced into games.. the DEI , the woke, the lgbtq .. all these agendas destroying games, and any devloper who's OK with this... imo has no integrity. Here's a situation that happened at Bioware during the development of Anthem. Anita Sarkeesian visited ... and started making some pointers and comments, when she knows NOTHING about developing a back - and she's a hardcore agenda woke feminist . The devs at Bioware Edmonton were pissed - for a good reason - she had as much to do there giving pointers as i do at an astro-physics class.. I find the best games are nowdays indie games made by small teams of talented new developers or even veteran developers who quit their company to start a new with likeminded devs who just wanted to make a good game... and they end up doing it. Look at Blizztard, they've been hemoraging their veteran staff for years .. seasoned developers and project managers are leaving blizztard like rats jumping a sinking ship. I think being a developer is like being in a bad relationship, if you're not happy and you can't work it out.. LEAVE and get something better, being at a workplace you're not happy, destroys your soul. Look at Crate Entertainment and their mega-hit Grim Dawn, i followed that game from backing and early access when max lvl was 15 , but i stuck with it and donated money because of the progress i saw and the communication the devs has with the supporters. Now that game is considered one of the best ARPG's in recent history... and what's even more funny is that they had ex-blizztard developers contact them for employment because .. they liked what they saw.. So in the end. If you're a developer who worked on a DEI/woke infested game that utterly *bombed* at sales and people got layed off... i couldn't care less, i would actually be happy . A DEI-game that bombs at sales.. is a *victory* for game industry and gamers. But if you're a developer that either officially quit your studio in protest of some forced DEI Agenda crap , i have the outmost respect for you - same if you're part of a small team and you take 6-7 years to make a *great* game - i tip my hat to you, give you my money ...happily. /Edit. I just checked your game *Exodus* , and it really looks awesome, i hope you have great progress, an amazing launch and sales. Goodluck.
As long as major western devs and publishers focuses on pushing DEI & LGBTQ+ driven narrative in games it will continue to be big financial loss for them. The lay-offs is just the collateral damage. I hope creators like you start to push back against the higher up decision on this issue.
Firstly they have so much money they kind of don’t care about profit loss… ideology has been more important and it is intentional to destroy western hero archetype… but I always try to tell people that if they had not been so cruel to gay people in the last 80’s and early 90’s it wouldn’t be so bad now… but everyone rejected gays and when you reject something it doesn’t go anywhere, it it still there, and so the gays that were cruelly attacked and isolated and cast out have turned against the masses… and it didn’t have to be this way but people hated gays in early 90’s as though they were lepers because worst way to die in 1991 was AIDS
Unfortunately, you are collateral damage to the woke idiocy that's been plaguing games (and media) for years now. You'll just have to trust us gamers to fix the problem with our wallet. Capitalism still has the advantage of allowing consumers to choose who they support. It will be hard on some developers for a while, but down the line, you will be in a much better situation once we have eliminated all the unnecessary "messaging".
