One of the things that is often not understood about game development from the wider audience, is just how much of the job is NOT about making games. This can vary wildly company to company, but can also spiral out of control.

Let’s say you are a brand new Junior Designer working 40 hours a week. You might have a 1 on 1 with your manager or co-workers, a company wide meeting, a department meeting, stand ups each day, or other meetings. Again, this varies company to company but I’ve seen this range from 4 hours a week to 15-20 a week for a junior designer. When it gets high up like that, that doesn’t leave as much time for actual development which can be a problem.

This only gets worse as you move up. Something like a Senior Design Manager for example might have 4-8 direct reports they meet with, those same meetings and standups the junior had, plus more leadership versions, meetings with stakeholders and their superiors, long term planning meetings, and more. The actual amount of game development someone in that position does can range from as much as 30 hours a week, to as little as 0 in extreme cases since their job is team support. It’s pretty wild what it takes to run a company and business beyond game development sometimes.

Again, this varies person to person and company to company pretty wildly. Everyone’s experience here is likely very different, so if you know a game dev, ask them about theirs. It might surprise you. If you are currently a dev, my recommendation is take a look at your calendar and figure out how much time you’re actually not in meetings. If it’s not a number you’re happy with, aggressively prune back the meetings you aren’t getting value out of. Work with your manager, and get it to a spot you are happy with so you can enjoy working on games.

Ok kind of a high level post today, but hopefully useful. Hope the B patch improved the game for everyone (glares at Yone), and have a great weekend. I’ll be on stream talking about the game as usual tomorrow. Until then, take it easy 🙂