Jace B.

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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I want to demystify how ASGC tracks games industry job cuts so you understand what goes into the numbers The way we track industry reductions is far more rigorous than most people realize. I occasionally see comments wondering if we only use public announcements, WARN notices, or that we miss contractors, co dev teams, and non traditional roles. I understand why people might assume that, but that is not how our system works. Collecting jobs data is the most resource intensive process in our community because it shapes our support too. Step one is public information. We monitor news reports, company statements, WARN filings, and government notices. That is just the starting point. Step two is direct community reporting at scale. Every year I receive 5-10K+ messages, just related to job cuts, across LinkedIn, Discord, and email from people sharing what happened to them, their teammates, or their organizations. Much of this never appears in the press. It includes contractors, co dev partners, support studios, and indirect roles, not just FTEs at major publishers. Step three is individual signal tracking. I regularly review posts from professionals who are suddenly open to work or referencing team changes. These signals confirm patterns or reveal cuts that were not announced. All of this flows into a large internal tracking system that helps me understand not just how many roles were affected, but who was impacted, where, and when. That context allows our community to reach out and design support that matches reality rather than headlines. Is it perfect? No. I am still working to improve visibility in regions where transparency is lower. But I can say sincerely this process goes far beyond public records and is more comprehensive than any single external source. You may notice that, for a few years, I no longer publicly name organizations when cuts happen unless they request a Games Org support post. That is intentional. My goal is to avoid errors and avoid shaming, because I recognize that not every reduction comes from bad intent. Sometimes funding ends, contracts fall through, or projects conclude despite leaders trying to do right by their teams. Also, my approach is to build bridges and encourage quiet, meaningful accountability. I regularly hear that organizations know ASGC tracks layoff decisions and understand their actions will reach me, even with smaller or less visible cuts. That awareness, even without public callouts, can influence how situations are handled. Most importantly, workers know their experience is not invisible. Individual data is never shared publicly. People trust me with personal information, and I take that seriously. What I share are patterns, totals, and insights that help us mobilize support. So when we talk about industry cuts, please know this is not casual scorekeeping. It is the result of thousands of conversations and careful tracking to make sure every affected games person counts.

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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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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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Quiet wins don’t get enough credit in game development. A risky feature cut that keeps the schedule on track. A producer who clears roadblocks before they escalate. A teammate who rewrites a doc just so it’s clearer for the next person. None of it makes headlines, but it’s the kind of work that holds projects together. Not every contribution is flashy — but the best teams I’ve worked with are full of people who show up, solve problems, and make the whole thing feel smoother than it should. Those quiet wins stack up. And they matter.

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If you've never hired a game developer to a non-games role, you are missing out on some of the smartest, hardest working, most adaptable employees out there. These are people who have to completely re-learn their craft every few years as technologies and tools change rapidly. They know how to work smarter. They don't panic. They don't say "that's not my job" Every game dev I've ever known that's left to other fields has been an immediate rockstar anywhere they went.

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A fair few folks I spoke to at PGC said they're skipping GDC this year. Mostly not for broader political reasons, but a mix of border risk and cost. Many basically don't want to risk either being turned away or being questioned because they feel in either event it harms their ability to visit later down the line. A few also cited being unsure whether GDC was "the place to be" any more, preferring to focus on Gamescom and its Dev arm. I also noticed that many aren't aware of the revised ticket structure for GDC. This is the part that I'm most excited for, as although it's more expensive to the Expo-only crowd it means most attendees can gain access to talks and panels in a way that they haven't been able to for many years. We may finally see some cross-pollination between the different camps of GDC, which I think can only be good for the conference (and the attendees) overall.

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Once again another hard day in the gaming industry. I'm so heart broken for so many people affected across the industry. I'm doing my best to help however I can - though networking, hiring into the roles we have open, and sharing candidates' information with others who may be hiring for positions that better fit their skills. My goal, my joy here at Blizzard, is to match people to the right roles & match the right roles to the right people. However I will say as much as I love games, please, please, please know it's OK to pivot out of games. And it's OK to do it right away if you need to. Paying the bills, feeding your family, and keeping a roof over your head are the most important things and that's absolutely OK. A little bit of research shows that rapidly growing industries right now are renewable energy, healthcare (healthtech more specifically), cybersecurity, software, IT and financial services. There are others on the list you can find with a quick search. I don't want to discourage you from applying for jobs in gaming. But limiting yourself only to game jobs right now may be like cutting both your hands off and maybe both your legs off, too. It can be scary stepping outside of your comfort zone, especially when your resume only covers one area of experience. Learning how to format your resume for new types of roles you may start applying to will be extremely important. It's ok to have more then one resume. When I wanted to pivot into recruiting from 3D Artist, I had absolutely NO recruiting experience. However after much research-and soul searching-I learned how to format my resume (& cover letter) to highlight skills I already had. Skills like hiring, interviewing, project management, and stakeholder/client-facing experience from previous roles that I had held that could be paired with my background as a 3D Artist. Then a stellar studio called The Third Floor liked what they saw and took a chance, brought me in for an interview and the rest is history. I never would have had that opportunity if I hadn't reformatted my resume to catch their eye for that recruiting role. I see a lot of resumes that don't pivot for the job the person is applying for. And it genuinely bums me out; it feels like a missed opportunity and wasted effort. Often, the resume doesn't show the skills needed for the role. I bet if they had taken some time and spent some time tailoring their resume for that type of role they were applying to, they would have had a better shot. Don't just list off the hard skills, make sure to cover your soft skills from previous roles as well! Those are important! You don't need a custom resume for every job application. Just create two to three well formatted versions, each tailored to different types of roles you’re pursing. A bit more leg work in the beginning, helps pay off more later. I hope that is helpful during this time. And no I'm not selling you a service. You can do research online to learn this stuff free.

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It seems like if you're working on a unannounced project or one that has been in dev for several years, you should be updating the old resume. This industry is not what once it was. #nothingnew #notprofound #chinup #dumpsterfire

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Survival in the Games Industry Cooperative Base-Building Survival FPS StarRupture has sold over 500,000 copies on Steam. 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 mid-sized 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. Base building, resource gathering, exploration, environmental threats, and long-term upgrades naturally create replayability. You get emergent stories without having to author every moment. That’s a massive scope advantage. The data backs this up. When you look at which indie games actually break through on Steam, survival and survival-crafting titles show up again and again. They punch above their weight in reviews, concurrent players, and long-term engagement. Palworld is the obvious recent example, but it’s part of a longer trend that includes games like Valheim, Subnautica, Terraria, and countless others. What’s important is why players respond to them. Survival games offer meaningful progression without requiring cinematic production values. You’re always working toward something tangible: a safer base, better tools, new biomes, deeper systems. The sense of forward momentum is constant, and players tolerate rough edges if the systems are compelling. That forgiveness is rare in other genres. They also scale well with both solo and multiplayer audiences. Survival games thrive whether someone plays alone for dozens of hours or jumps in with friends for shared goals. That social flexibility gives them a longer tail and makes them easier to market organically. Compare that to oversaturated genres where supply vastly outweighs demand. Survival games, by contrast, still have room for differentiation through theme, setting, mechanics, or tone. The takeaway isn’t everyone should make a survival game. It’s that survival as a genre structurally favors indie teams. It rewards smart system design, procedural content, and long-term progression over brute-force content production. When survival works, it works at scale, and that’s why it continues to be one of the most reliable paths to commercial success on Steam.

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