Living a creative life in the games business

Considering last week's events, it's probably not surprising that the APB post-mortem at GDC Europe today was cancelled, but fittingly replaced by a session from game designer Bob Bates on addressing the realities of being a creative person in a high-pressure business environment.

Thousands of people enter the games industry believing they've found their dream job, said Bates, but within five years half of them have left. Bates has conducted his own private research with around 60 leading games professionals - "many of them household names" - to find out how they have handled creative output over years of change and consolidation.

The first reality is that you can work in the games business for five years and not have anything to show for it. Projects are cancelled, or staff move from one job to another and don't complete a game. You can't stand up and point to a section of a game and say "I made this" because creating games is such an intensely collaborative process that your own contribution is tiny. You will lose your voice.

Bates attacked the premise: "Boo hoo, poor little us", pointing out that creatives in games development have it easier than painters, sculptors, authors - all of which expect to live as starving artists. Some of the people he spoke to took an even harder attitude believing that high turnover in the industry is good because it weeds out those that can't handle the work and shouldn't be in the industry in the first place, and even that being unhappy makes us happy and inspires the creativity. Basically, you're a big cry-baby.

The biggest misconception of those new to the industry is that playing games is fun so making games must be fun too. The reality is that everyone starts as a cog in the machine and even when you move up you are still a cog. "Maybe Will Wright is the exception," said Bates.

The feedback he'd found from the majority of the professionals he'd spoken to was to embrace being a cog and tackle the role. Put in 10,000 hours of work because that's how long it takes to earn your dues as a creative person, he said. You're in the best possible position, surrounded by experts in the field and with world-leading tools on your desktop.

Bates subscribes to a 'vacuum theory'. In the games business there are a lot of jobs that go undone, said Bates, and nobody is assigned to do them. Take on these tasks and you'll find a natural pressure, coupled with the encouragement of managers, that will suck you upwards in the company. Become known for doing that one important thing that no one else does and people will come to you as the expert.

Bates admitted that you'll sometimes feel completely stuck. He said he's worked on over 400 games and knew that some were "complete clunkers" but the thing that got him through the work was to find something to be excited about. "I would find something that I would learn from, something that I would enjoy to make it worthwhile."

He then addressed the anxiety of change. If moving companies you should ask yourself, is this new company stable? But in truth there is no way ahead of time to know whether a company will crumble or not, said Bates. Projects come and go at all levels and all stages of the creation process. But staying where you are can be riskier and the threat of redundancy can be overwhelming. He admitted there was no way to manage that risk, other than to think intelligently and understand that people shouldn't feel like the victim and think "this happened to me", because it does and will happen to everyone.

Moving up within a company also brings the anxiety of whether you will lose the creativity you have. You need to ask yourself do you want to have a direct influence on the audience as an individual or direct a group of people who will have a bigger influence on the final game?

Management brings its own rewards, said Bates, but there will always be a million half-done tasks. The further up the company you go the less you feel in control. But there's a different joy from that - the pride in seeing the accomplishments of those you've helped. This mentoring was seen by some professionals as almost parental and more important that expressing yourself creatively in a project.