How I feel about getting laid off in 2024 like everyone in the game industry 

Now this is yet another bad, bad new. But this time, it’s for me. Most of you probably guessed it but I’ve been waiting to post this. I wrote this a few weeks ago, when I learned the new, but I had to wait for things to get official. And I needed to get things off my chest, because I held it pretty much since the beginning of my career, because I was scared the luck would pass. 

It passed. Now this reflects how I felt in early September, which was mostly: sad.

I’m the anxious type and sadness really is a relief in my anguished metabolism, so I decided to post it anyway, but there is no revelation about the state of the industry. This is about how I feel. tl;dr : bad.

After 5 years, I’m being laid off Goblinz Studio, along with other colleagues.

I don’t leave empty-handed, and I swear this will be my only dramatic post about this. But I need to be real here for one second. 

I was wondering how the global crisis affecting the industry would domino to us. This is it. Most of us will have to put back our resume on the resume mountain. Zombie walk alongside the unemployed crowd.

Really, it was already pretty bad. My fiancee is unemployed too, after a disastrous burnout in the marveling workforce of childcare. So I had to work for us both, freelancing on leave days. Sometimes at night. 

The book industry chew me and spat me out, so my more-than-full-time video game work was keeping everyone afloat.

I know I was lucky to have that for a few years.  

I worked on projects where everyone’s voice mattered in the team. I felt intimately invested in Sandwalkers. It helped me to get through existential dreads. We receive praise for the universe we built together. Some even write songs about it! I worked from home, in my hometown, where I was born, where all my small and fragile and disabled family survive in the same kinds of situations. And yet, it was NOT easy.

Oh, I know, opportunities! I already had to consider leaving it all behind to relocate. I’ve been offered freelancing for almost half the price I used to ask. And, considered leaving the industry entirely. Eh. Stopping writing. But can I even do that? I don’t see how! 

Most of the time now, I’m thinking, I hate video games. I hate books. I hate my own work, I don’t see the value of it anymore. I don’t believe in my own talent. I’m pretty sure other people believe in it way more than I do myself. But it has become my entire personality, and I only keep doing it out of spite. There is a name I can’t recall for this bias about the work we keep doing because the cost is too high. And we expect something, anything to get better. 

I’m 33. I’ve been living most of my life considering things could actually never get better, so I might as well not wait for more and just keep grinding. So that’s what I’m doing.

At home, we all chose career paths that are currently in crisis and seem to lead nowhere. Today, the future looks like a dead end. We’ve been waiting for things to get better, so we can get married, buy a house, live our love, and maybe have another kid. But even though we worked our ass off, things keep getting worse. Everyone is scared. 

But, eh. Still not dead.