The Midlife Game Designer Crisis

My name is João Beraldo, and I’m part of an endangered species in Brazil.

Right, so that’s a bit dramatic, but bear with me. You’ll understand where I’m going with it. I’m 36 now, half way towards 37. I made my first game at 12 when I was an intern at a software company. When they gave me a hyperlink documentation software to test (think offline Wiki in 1991), I made a gamebook-like adventure in which you had different text and options based on which character you played with. I decided to be a game designer and fiction writer around 2001 when I decided to make my own space sim. I began slowly: a mIRC-based RPG using a simple map and combat script for support. Wing Commander: Frontier had around 35 players from 10 different countries. To my eyes that was a huge success. Play turn serious when, a few months later, five friends and I assembled to make that space sim for real. We worked on it on our off-time for around two years, creating some gameplay, story, mission scripts and some 3D art. We even had a tech demo made (shown below).

Now, you must understand: in Early 2000 no one was making games in Brazil; or at least that was what it seemed. There are some pioneers who made games in the 80’s and 90’s, but there was almost no way to sell them, much less advertise them. That meant we had to learn from trial and error with almost no mentorship. The internet was our only source of information, and there really wasn’t a lot of it back them. In fact I once got called by HR on the company I worked for because my browsing history shown I had visited a lot of a ‘porn site’ called Gamasutra. Things were slowly starting out here in Brazil. We got caught to talk about game development on two big federal universities in Rio de Janeiro and later on one of the first ever game development events, SBGames, around 2003. Only much later we’d get to meet other people also making games in their own isolated caves. One of them was a studio in the southern state of Santa Catarina. They contacted us because they were also working on a space sim, but theirs was a MMO. At some point during that our programmer got a job working for them and, a few months later, so did I. Our game never got finished, and that other game ended up been the biggest budget game in Brazil so far, probably the first to draw attention from the international media as it was revealed at E3 in 2010. Time went by, and so did new jobs and new games. MMOs were traded for social network games, then mobile games and, eventually, serious games. At each new cycle I’d learn new things and get new job opportunities.

The problem is, time goes by, but some things never change. Not enough, at least. Almost 15 years after I started my career, there are still almost no job vacancies for game designers anywhere in Brazil. Most studios are made up by a couple of friends on their backyard. Big names like EA, Ubisoft, Glu and others closed their studios in the country due to high costs and lack of support. In 2007 I moved with family and furniture from Rio to Florianópolis to work as a game designer. In 2011 I moved to São Paulo for another similar job. A couple of weeks ago I refused a job in Rio de Janeiro. You see, the Midlife Game Designer is a father and a husband, which makes things a bit more complicated. The Midlife Game Designer also has a lot more costs to cope with, so he needs more pay and less risk, which almost no company in Brazil is able to offer. That, of course, if they even consider hiring a game designer at all. So, this year I went to the 3rd Brazilian Independent Games Festival (BIG) in São Paulo. Reality check: I realized I didn’t know almost anyone. Right, so there are some of the new names in game development who added me on Facebook, but... where is everyone? I mean, I worked for literally hundreds of people in these last 15 years. Where are they? That’s when it hit me.

For the Midlife Game Designers in Brazil there are only 4 options:

• Leave the game industry;
• Leave the country;
• Become a professor;
• Open your own studio.

No, I’m not leaving the industry. If it depends on me, I’ll never do that. No, I won’t leave the country. I did get offers, especially to move to Europe, but right now they are as undesirable as moving to Rio de Janeiro was two weeks ago. I can’t picture myself in front of a class. Yeah, I have been mentor to junior game designers before and spoke about game development in a few universities, but the classroom is not for me.
Opening a new studio is the sort of thing I hear NOT to do from all my old friends who had been (secretly) making games 15-10 years ago. And let’s be realistic: once you open a studio, you’ll be doing everything but game design, and that’s not what I’m looking for. So, I figured, what about making up my own option? Two weeks ago I refused that job in Rio, then I quit my job in a serious games company. When I got home I emailed the two USA companies I have been doing the odd game writing freelance jobs to tell them I was unavailable. I hired a freelance 2D artist. I’m making my damned space sim.

Maybe I’m crazy. Making my own game doesn’t give me money. In fact, it costs me money. Neither does it give me stability. But it keeps me home with my family and, maybe the most important thing for the MidLife Game Designer, it allows me to make the I want. For 9 years I have worked exclusively in the game industry and for that long I have made the games someone else wanted. Now it’s my turn. Because, you know, if I don’t do that now, I’ll probably never will. I’m not completely nuts, though. All those years of sweat and tears gave me the means to survive for a few months without a job. The Midlife Game Designer has savings and a supporting wife (who now happens to have a stable and well-paying job. As if the game industries was ever either of those two things.) And I learned quite a lot during my career, most of all how to define a viable project scope. I’m doing it in 2D. Yeah, a 2D space sim. I’m going to make that game. And I’ll release it by the end of 2015. And it will be worth it.