Chad Moore

85% of game studios have ditched degree requirements. So why is everyone still complaining they can’t find the right talent? The truth: Removing the degree was the easy part. The hard part is vetting for the high-level skills and "architectural minds" that actually move the needle. We’ve moved from "Do you have a diploma?" to "Can you actually solve this specific architectural hurdle in a live environment?" The talent is out there, but they aren't looking at your job boards. They’re being headhunted. #SkillGap #Hiring #GameDev #TalentAcquisition #Education #WorkplaceTrends #GameRecruiter

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85% of game studios have dropped degree requirements. So why is it still so hard to find the right talent? 🧐 The truth is, removing a barrier is only half the battle. When you open the floodgates, you get more applicants, but not necessarily more *qualified* candidates. Without a degree as a filter, the burden falls on recruitment to identify "Maker DNA": the innate ability to solve problems and ship products. AI tools are flooding the market with generic resumes, making the search even harder. This is why "Surgical Recruitment" is no longer optional. You need a partner who knows how to spot a closer, with or without the diploma. Is your screening process overwhelmed? Let’s find the signal in the noise. #GameRecruiter #Hiring #GameDevelopment #RecruitmentLife #TechTalent

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We've been implementing Neural Texture compression in #Assassinscreedmirage. The overall benefit results in better quality textures for less GPU memory usage (links in the first comment). If you followed the topic since our GDC2024 presentation ,this a very practical application of La Forge's mission to bridge the academic world with Ubisoft. #ubisoft #ubisoftlaforge #innovation 👇 "If you've been thinking, like I have, that we're still some way off seeing AI being used in games for more than just upscaling or frame generation, then it's time to think again" (...) "Enter stage left, neural texture compression to cut down on that memory demand. Given the state of the DRAM and SSD market right now, you can bet your last dollar that a whole heap of game developers will be looking closely at what Ubisoft has done to see if it can help out in their games, too"

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Game art asset factories aren’t enough anymore. Pretty models mean nothing if the shaders won’t compile. True co-development requires technical art literacy. If an external team can’t debug a pipeline, they aren’t helping. They’re generating high-fidelity technical debt. At Artchop!, we build with integration in mind from day one. The real question is whether studios are looking for true integration partners or just capacity. #GDC #CoDev #TechnicalArt

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Well, that's my 31st GDC in the books (if you count the remote version in 2021). This year's version was a reflection of the industry in many ways. For many years, you could see the industry and conference relentlessly growing in unison. This seemed to accelerate sharply with the aggressive entry of venture capital in the Facebook gaming era and ramped up through the pandemic. This year, the crowd was noticeably smaller than in just about any Moscone year I can remember. The tourists have fled the field (h/t Chris Heatherly). Outside of the students and early career folks, it was a committed core of game makers from around the world who were there to meet, learn, and do business. Oh yeah, and knock back a few drinks. AI was at the center of a lot of conversations, and rightly so. It is already changing the shape of the workforce in our industry in significant ways. I am personally looking forward to seeing some mind-blowing new forms of gameplay in the next few years that couldn't have existed without AI. The folks who figure that our first will make a huge impact on our industry. The conference was smoothly executed and the fistful of sessions I attended were rock solid. I attended some fun new events, including one featuring some pretty serious TV folks and some Magic: the Gathering matches. (Thanks Joshua English!) And I definitely met a lot of cool new folks. Although the conference may change and the way I interact with it may change as well, I think it's fairly safe to consider me a GDC dead ender. Even though game industry conferences have proliferated and some mobile-focused conferences may be more important for my business, GDC is still the place where the game industry professional world comes together and I love spending time in the midst of it. #GDC2026

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“If you strip all the genre debate down to what consistently works for indies, survival games keep coming up for a reason. Open-world survival and crafting isn't just popular on Steam right now, it aligns almost perfectly with what small and midsized teams can realistically build and support. Survival games sit in that sweet spot where systems do the heavy lifting. Instead of needing 30 or 40 hours of handcrafted content, they rely on mechanics, progression loops, and player-driven goals.”

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For those of you who might be interested, I am giving 3/4 of a talk at GDC this year along with Brad Hendricks, the CEO of Blind Squirrel. Our talk is about "building a global development team" and my part of the exercise details some of the production practices we use to manage our different teams in different locales around the world in a consistent manner. In particular, I'll be deep diving into how we capture and utilize KPI's from our teams to try and avoid issues in advance of them occurring. The date and time of this extravaganza is: Thursday, March 12 | 11:50am - 12:50pm. Location: Room 3002, West Hall. I hope to see you there!

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The open secret back in the IDFA days was that publishers were contacting their biggest spenders to purchase currency in bulk via bank transfer to avoid the 30% Platform fee and get currency at a more favorable rate. “VIP services”

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This isn't the matrix, it's Steam. Every single AppID since the beginning of time. In total, 25 years worth of PC games coming in at 253,105 unique entries to date. What's even more fascinating is being able to see which were the first ever games available, at the inception point of one of gaming's biggest platforms.

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At UX is Fine, we grow our UX and UX our growth. This didn’t happen by accident. It’s how we’ve always evolved: by listening closely to our clients and delivering what they actually need. We started with UX, then expanded into UI, art, motion graphics, implementation and engineering, tech art, and full-stack development. Lately, we’ve added several services to help our clients navigate smaller budgets, shorter timelines, and the need to balance innovation with lower risk tolerance. Small playable prototypes help teams evaluate fun before moving into full production. They’re a natural extension of our approach to intuitive UX, immersive UI, and real, in-engine implementation. Audits, including competitive research and reviews of design docs, concepts, prototypes, and vertical slices, surface risk early, clarify direction, and avoid expensive wrong turns. Content pipelines and tools focus on systems that are easy to integrate and maintain, designed to unlock content creators and reduce long-term production cost. Oh, and don't worry… This is in addition to the great UX, UI, and Implementation work that you already know us for. Let's talk at DICE! Calendly and contact info are in the thread. #DICE2026 #prototyping #audit #contentpipeline #intuitive #immersive #inyourengine

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