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GDC 08: The Biggest Problem Facing the Industry? Lack of Senior Talent

By Alex Petraglia on Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 3:00 PM EST  

While attempting to draw up a list of things I enjoyed most about GDC week, I came to the realization that overhearing others’ conversations ranked pretty high.

Sometimes these moments would result in extreme humor (or horror), as was the case with one overzealous gentlemen who proclaimed a tad too loudly “It wouldn’t be the first time I traded sex for food!”

Other times, I’d catch wind of a noteworthy piece of information that brought to focus some of the major issues the industry currently faces.

Case in point: While waiting for one conference to begin, I overheard an upper-level developer from a team which released one of the most highly criticized PlayStation 3 titles of 2007 say that his team was having a serious problem hiring developers with experience.

Andy Campbell, CEO of Specialmove, a gaming industry recruitment firm, echoed a similar sentiment in a Q&A piece published in a special EDGE Magazine GDC supplemental that was distributed at the show.

Said Campbell:

“I think ultimately what everyone says is ‘Where’s the experience? Give me programmers, give me artists who have been there and seen it’- people with a number of titles under their belts, who’re experienced in working with large teams, to the demands that new consoles are placing on production these days. So experience is counting for a huge amount- that’s the biggest thing that’s on everyone’s wish list: experienced candidates, especially in programming.”

The man I overheard went on to speculate the reason for this dearth of senior talent was the ever-increasing demands of the industry as a whole. It wasn’t so much that these individuals don’t exist, but that they were being burned out from crunch cycles that seemingly never ended, were moving away from the gaming industry, and were quickly being replaced by recent graduates, who could serve as some kind of perverse renewable energy source.

The topic surfaced again outside the W Hotel on Thursday, following Suite Night. One individual I met was eager to tell me “I used to work 80 hours a week at Sony and was miserable.”

Now, he only works a mere 60 hours a week at his new position at EA and is consequently much, much happier.

(Ed. Note- The header image above is of the W Hotel’s lobby, taken during Suite Night at this year’s GDC. It was the most relevant image I could muster.)

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