Game designer Laralyn McWilliams on permanent moves: "I burned my life on the altar of development"

Many developers often have to move from place to place, which in the end can greatly harm mental health. Experienced game designer Laralyn McWilliams (Laralyn McWilliams), known for MMO Free Realms, wrote a big thread about this problem. She told how it affects her personal life, and how moving leads to burnout.Laralyn McWilliams

The main thing from Tred McWilliams

She notes that she has changed 10 cities in 27 years.

• Due to her work in the gaming industry, she managed to live in Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco and Raleigh.According to McWilliams, such a life harms the career of your partner / spouse, since they have no chance to gain a foothold in one place for a long time and, accordingly, regularly receive promotions.
• Also, due to constant moving, it becomes more difficult to make new friends every year — especially if you are an introvert.
• One of the unspoken taxes of being in game dev is having to move frequently, especially in AAA.

Since I started in pro game dev, I’ve lived in Raleigh, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Chicago, LA, Austin, San Diego, San Francisco, LA again, and Seattle again. That’s 10 moves in 27 years.

— Laralyn McWilliams (@Laralyn) June 26, 2021″I burned my life and my husband’s life on the altar of development,” McWilliams writes.

• However, she does not regret it, because games are an integral part of her life.McWilliams notes that without a passion for games, it is impossible to stay in the industry for a long time and create good projects.
• However, sometimes companies use passion as a carrot and stick, luring, underpaying and controlling developers.According to her, passion for games becomes especially important in leadership positions.
• McWilliams does not understand when creative directors or design directors do not play the games they develop, do not take third-party projects and do not participate in jams. “How can you effectively manage a team if you don’t put yourself in their shoes at least periodically?” she asks.Given the constant moving, without passion for your business, you can eventually lose touch with reality and burn out.
• McWilliams notes that for many years there has been virtually no choice of managerial vacancies in the gaming industry.
• “There could be only 5-6 vacancies of a creative or design director in the whole world. So you had no choice but to move to other cities,” she explains.According to McWilliams, the list of vacancies for game designers can be especially small compared to other professions.
• If it will be relatively easy for an art director to switch from children’s games to AAA titles, then it will not be easy for a creative director to change his specialization so radically.Attention to tred McWilliams was also drawn by journalist Jason Schreier.

He noted that dozens of developers told him similar stories about the problems of frequent relocations. “This is one of the most important reasons for burnout in the video game industry,” he notes.

Yeahhh from my conversations with folks so far it seems like a lot of AAA companies are very much open to hybrid models, but resistant to allow full-time remote work unless people have specific justifications

— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) June 28, 2021