There’s a perception that you have a binary choice: make games for a living as your full-time paid job, or leave the industry. That’s bullshit. There is a huge spectrum of choices, including having a different paid job and also doing game jams or having side projects.

The idea that you leave the industry if you aren’t in a paying full-time game job is to the benefit of company leadership that wants to continue the POV that getting a paying game dev gig is a privilege and not something you’ve earned via hard work and talent.

I use the word “talent” intentionally because it absolutely does matter. So does “passion” but they’ve twisted that word to mean being OK with endless crunch, to back up the idea that a game dev job (especially AAA) means you’re willing to sacrifice everything else in your life.

Talent does remain important and so does staying current in tech, tools, technique. Here’s a hint: a non-exploitative company will pay for training and give you time during work hours to learn, because they want to invest in you as a long-term employee.

Many game companies have restrictive IP ownership contracts and side project restrictions for the same reason: they want to own you and everything about you, exclusively, and you are expected to gladly sacrifice that for the honor of being “in the industry”.

It’s pervasive and hard to shake those unspoken rules, even when you start to see behind the curtain. I spent a year feeling super weird and not knowing whether I could consider myself part of the game dev community anymore when I started working for Microsoft—and not in Xbox.

I struggled with it, not just mentally but also emotionally, especially around sharing the keynote stage at last year’s GDC. I had to think a lot about what “excuse” I could give for being on that stage. Even while being under paid contract for a side project game!

I finally realized: wait, I’m an indie dev now. And with that thought came a rush of relief. I’m still a real person. I still count.

It was almost a year later that I stared examining those emotions, realizing how brainwashed I’d become by 20+ years as a AAA core game dev.

The moral of the story: make the right choice for YOU. If you choose to have a paid gig outside games, you’re still “in the industry” if you do game jams, have a side project, stream gameplay, write about games, teach or mentor. All of that “counts”. We are all “real” game devs.