Today, I woke up to this.

The usual caveats about not reading the comments apply. For those unable to follow the link, it’s the press release about layoffs at Zenimax Online Studios, the most recent in the unceasing string of games industry terminations.

I have a lot of feelings about this. It’s where I worked most recently, and I was there for more than five years, which is an eternity in the games industry, and I’ve been there recently enough that a good many of the people hit by the layoffs were my close, personal friends. Most games industry bloggers don’t really talk about the layoffs in specific, because it’s expected– the games industry is “volatile”. It is the biggest, most important thing to internalize for anyone planning on entering the industry– steel yourself for the things you hold dear to get put through the wringer. Whether that’s your own creative output, your sense of your own skills, your hobbies and free time, your family, or your very job itself, be ready, because they will all happen.

To my friends who find themselves without a job, now or whenever, my condolences. It’s never, ever easy, and I hope you land on your feet quickly.

This volatility is hard. It’s the result of highly demanding projects that require large staffs to complete, constantly moving targets and shifting priorities, complex creative tasks, and some amount of guesswork and hope. There are no safe bets in the games industry; even the biggest, most well-beloved franchises can release games that flop, or, more likely, succeed but not enough to continue expansion.

The oft-cited average career length in the games industry is five and a half years, a figure which I see repeated frequently and, anecdotally, seems to hold true, but I can’t find hard statistics to back up. If it is an accurate number, it means that game devs have careers right in the same window as football players in the NFL (NFL Player’s Association says 3.3 years, the NFL proper says 6 years). For a non-physical (read: non-injury-prone), technical, creative industry that a person should be able to retain skills at for an entire career, that number is insane to me.

It’s because we love making video games, and we’re often willing to put up with the associated terribleness that goes with it. I know a lot of people who I’ve worked with who say things like “I don’t know what else I could do”, and indeed, that’s something I’ve struggled with myself. Eventually, though, something wins out. Family, mental health, a more relaxed and better-paying job in a more stable industry. It’s a brutal Catch-22– in order to succeed in the games industry, you have to be smart, adaptable, creative, technically-minded, and possessed of a broad skillset… exactly the combination of things that would make you very attractive outside the industry.

The industry is starting to feel this, I think. Crunch is still omnipresent, but I’ve heard fewer extreme horror stories lately than I had previously. Companies are emphasizing experience more and more, looking for those industry vets (the ones who left the industry for greener pastures after 5 or so years on average). That volatility, though, between the sudden long hours and the unexpected layoffs, burns people out. A big part of the reason I left my last job was because I wanted to take classes, get my Master’s degree, and I couldn’t do so with the volatility of my schedule (much less the possibility of getting laid off and possibly being forced to move across the country again). I’m now in an environment where a majority of the people are taking classes with special dispensation by their employers to work slightly fewer hours to cover class and assignment time, and that’s de rigueur.

Game companies, generally, aren’t interested in assisting their employees’ career growth unless it fills an immediate gap in the company’s needs– this is a result of that volatility, and at the same time is a contributing factor to it. What game devs have instead is the network. You keep in touch with your friends from your various jobs, and everyone understands and tries to help out when one company lays a bunch of people off or goes under. It’s a never-ending cycle of paying it forward, to push against the never-ending tide of volatility.

There has to be a better way, but the people whose interests are immediately served don’t have the stability to work it out, and the companies who would benefit long-term lack the flexibility to experiment. I like to hope that a solution will surface, but I don’t know what that would look like or how long it’ll take.