I'm back with an end of year hiring market update as we prepare for a line-up of exciting guests in 2025.

Tune in for news and hiring trends across games and tech with plenty of advice to help steer your next (or first) career move.
You can also get the latest on the projects I'm working on.
Thank you so much for the support this year and have a great festive break. I'll see you next year!

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CATCHES

Funding announcement

Today's episode is a hiring market update across video games and tech.

I pick up where we left off in March and cover off the rise in solo game devs along with the latest tech funding news and implications for the wider job market.

You can also get the latest on the projects I'm working on.

HELIX Team - Careers

MANUAL - Careers

Isaac Olander is a Swedish artist of Gambian heritage with a background in 3D character creation for video games and film.

He is the founder of Tallgran, a 3D character and production studio best known for the quality and cultural accuracy of their work.Isaac was a key contributor to Dove's Code My Crown initiative and delivered a solutions focussed presentation at GDC '24 about authentic representation of black hair in games.

I talk to Isaac about his motivation for contributing to these 2 projects because I know first hand they have already inspired the next generation of independent video game developers and I for one cannot wait to see what they build.

Isaac Olander - Instagram

Code My Crown (includes open-source code to create your own characters)

Tallgran

⁠GDC Vault ⁠

Today's episode is a hiring market update across video games and tech.

It’s been 3 months since my last update where we covered off some of the reasons for a large number of redundancies in the video game industry, why tech firms are operating with smaller teams and how employer expectations of employees have shifted in the last 18 months.

I’ll be picking up where we left off in December and offering an optimistic outlook on the months ahead as we head into GDC season.

Studio Vision

Digital Vision

Newsletter

Jace is a solo game developer and content creator. He’s best known in the video games community for his contributions to the team at Coffee Stain Studios where he spent 9 years, initially joining as a programmer before stepping into the community management role for Satisfactory which has gone on to sell in excess of 5 million units.

I talk to Jace about his journey into the games industry, community management and taking the leap from a steady job to become a solo game dev.

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Splash Damage are the London based AAA video games studio who are working on the upcoming Transformers:Reactive title. They're best known as the creators of Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

They've launched a work experience program for both school age and university students who are curious about working in video games.

Applications are open now so I caught up with Chelsea Ferdinales who created and runs this initiative.

Apply for work experience at Splash Damage

Jason is CEO of Hardball Games. Prior to launching Hardball Jason led a studio through to acquisition by Disney and was part of the founding team at Boss Alien. They delivered CSR racing in a team of 11, a franchise that netted Natural Motion in excess of $500m in IAP's alone. 

I talk to Jason about navigating his career and launching a studio. We recorded this episode shortly after Disney announced a $1.5 billion dollar investment into Epic Games so I also get his immediate take on this. 

Outrage on Steam

Christian is an author and journalist. His work has appeared in New Statesman, Vice and The Guardian. He also authored The Unmapped Mind in 2018 (The Inward Empire for US listeners).

He's best known in the video games industry for his contributions to Edge magazine and Eurogamer. 

I talk to Christian about his journey into the games industry, navigating multiple sclerosis and LSD trips in the forest. 

• The Unmapped Mind
• Eurogamer - Features