Editor’s note: After two layoffs this year, I thought I had a good understanding of today’s job market. But I really don’t have a clue. Steve’s been looking for 9 months after losing his game development gig in Chicago, and he fears his cerebral palsy makes it easier for employers to pass on him. I wish you the best of luck, Steve. -Jason
Sitting sleeplessly at my PC at 5 a.m. on a Saturday gives me time, welcome or not, to reflect on my current situation. It’s been a frustrating year, and I’ve frequently felt the urge to throw up my arms in disgust and defeat.
For the first time in my life, I find myself on unstable footing, entirely unsure of my future and looking into my past, and trying desperately to figure out how I arrived at my current situation in an attempt to somehow figure my way out.
I’m a game developer, and I’ve been unemployed for 9 months.
Or am I still a game developer? If someone has been out of work for as long as I have, can they still be considered a professional in that field? Especially when that person has only been in that field for a relatively short amount of time (in my case, three years). And this is where I’m at…am I still professional game developer, or is it time to move on?
Friends and family have suggested that I take a break from a career in the game industry and find a job in a field that’s actually hiring. I can’t blame them for making this suggestion; after all, I do have bills to pay. But the thought of giving up a career in the game industry is heartbreaking.
I have a fairly common physical disability called cerebral palsy, and because of it I have a speech impediment, very limited use of my hands, and typically use a walker or wheelchair to get around. I often think of how grateful I am to have been born in this era, for without video games, I would have had a very boring childhood.
Many people joke about how rough it must have been growing up a century ago without today’s forms of entertainment. But in my case, it rings particularly true. As a child I couldn’t play sports — I couldn’t even play tag or jump rope. Even getting out of the house and being mobile was a bit of an issue.
And as far as indoor activities go, I couldn’t play cards or most board games, and I couldn’t hold the pages of a book open to read it. If it weren’t for video games, I’m honestly not sure how I would have entertained myself.
Some of my earliest childhood memories are of playing Outlaw on the Atari 2600 with my father. Who knows how many hours I spent grinding away at Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior after I got home from elementary school. It was a bittersweet moment when I sold most of my NES games to a friend so that I could buy a used Sega Genesis at Funcoland. I had my mother photograph the credits at the end of Mortal Kombat on Game Gear as proof that I had just beaten the entire game using only Johnny Cage’s high kick. I remember being absolutely blown away by the 3D awesomeness of Super Mario 64 on a display unit at a Toys ‘R’ Us.
These were defining moments of my childhood, and by the time I graduated high school, I was certain that I wanted to be a game developer and possibly play some small role in creating memorable moments for others.
Luckily, I have some natural talents that are well suited to becoming a game developer: proficiencies in logic, math, and computers. As an undergrad I studied computer science and excelled at it, so much so that at the end of my senior year, I was voted student of the year by the faculty of the computer science department.
Skeptical of landing my dream job after graduation, I decided to go to graduate school and get a degree in computer graphics…if nothing else, I figured it would buy me a couple of years to figure out how to get into the game industry.
Shortly after I began working on my graduate degree, I managed to land an internship at a well-established video game company. After a year and a half as an intern, they hired me as I was wrapping up my graduate degree. For two years I worked on a game title, from prototype to completion, and almost every day of those two years, I woke up looking forward to work. It was my dream job.
Then came the world economic downturn, and unfortunately, the game industry wasn’t as immune to the troubles as many analysts thought it would be.
My company had already been in the red for nearly a decade, and the crumbling economy only served as a catalyst for the inevitable. For months, many employees and I could see what lay ahead in our not-too-distant futures. During those few months, instead of waking up looking forward to the day ahead, I approached it with trepidation, wondering if today would be the day that I lost my job. Finally, that day arrived in the middle of December, the day when half of the staff, nearly 200 employees, became “redundant.”
Almost 9 months have now passed, and it’s safe to say that the realities of being an unemployed game developer have fully sunk in. Being an unemployed game developer is rough enough because in the past year, hundreds, if not thousands, of developers have lost their jobs, flooding an already competitive job market.
On top of that, I live in Chicago, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S. And Chicago has only about half a dozen small to mid-sized game development studios. As much as I’d like to stay in Chicago, I wouldn’t give moving a second thought if it meant the difference between employment and unemployment. However, because I’m physically disabled, moving away from my friends and family isn’t an option.
Since I’ve been unemployed, I’ve had numerous interviews, but I haven’t managed to land a job. I like to think of myself as a competent and capable individual, and my coworkers from my previous job seem to be more than willing to act as references and give me glowing recommendations. So, what’s the problem?
As much as I hate using it as a scapegoat, I believe the honest answer to that question is this: my disability. I’ve been in interviews where it’s been pretty obvious that the interviewer has been very uncomfortable with me. And in my experience, people in general are often uncomfortable dealing with disabled individuals, because they’ve either never had to before or just don’t know how to behave in that situation. And it’s hard to blame people for being ignorant.
If you think about it, I’m interviewing for highly technical jobs, and many people working in those fields are of the nerd/geek persuasion and prone to social ineptitude. So, it makes sense why many of the people that I interview with are unusually uncomfortable with me.
But understanding this hasn’t made it easier for me to land a job. I already try to be open about my disability and to put to ease the minds of interviewers. Understanding this, in a sense, does give me a certain peace of mind.
But what it comes down to is this: “Why bother hiring a disabled person who I’m not comfortable with and may have to make accommodations for when I can hire one of the other dozen able-bodied applicants?”
My only hope is to convince employers that I’m far more qualified than other applicants, and in the highly competitive game industry, that’s not easy to do. It’s this aspect of my situation that’s the most disheartening and frustrating — that my disability seems to be the largest hindrance in continuing a career in game development.
So I’m at a crossroads — do I stick with it and stay unemployed until the stars align once again, or do I toss out the majority of my higher education and professional experience to start a new career? Oh, how I wish there were an easy answer.
This isn’t intended as an exercise in self-pity…hopefully, I’ve been able to tell a story from a unique point of view, one that may be relevant to your interests as consumers of the gaming culture.