Cyril Rebetez

The Sumo Group closures really have broken me a bit, and I need to rant about the state of things. I'm sorry if it seems I'm glossing over all the closures before this one, but so many ex-students went there, so many ex-colleagues passed through there, and so my timeline is just filled with people looking for work. We keep talking and talking about the economic factors involved, Brexit and Covid and this and that ... the thing I can't stop thinking of is that in my life I've watched the world slowly pitch into a place of despondent capitalism. Art has become more about making stars and fame than helping people escape and reflect. A drive for "truth" and objectivity has resulted, paradoxically, in people putting more stock in spreadsheets and numbers than people. I can't help but feel that if you're bleating about finance and trade deals and business decisions, you're ignoring the fact that general support for artistic and creative endeavours has declined sharply and is still declining, even in the so-called "art world". Games are ultimately always going to be the first to fall in a culture war against creativity, because games are ultimately and profoundly pointless things. That's the whole majesty of the medium: they make us feel profound feelings, they help us explore our existence by being separate from reality, but to do so they MUST bring us nothing tangible in return. The truth is that our industry will probably bounce back to some degree, but it's not any financial structures or cost systems that will save game development as a medium and an art form - it's a cultural shift to recognise the importance of expressive and explorative subjective art in the world today, and the need to support creative endeavours without the pressure of financial recompense.

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Roblox is making significant changes to their parental control system 🎮 Their long-standing PIN system is being replaced with accounts that have 'Parent Privileges' - a new tool giving parents deeper insight into their children's Roblox screen time. Through this new system, parents will receive access to: - Screen time analytics ⏰ - Friend list oversight 👥 - Spending limit controls 💰 - Content maturity management 🔒 What makes this notable is the shift to remote management - parents can monitor and adjust settings directly from their own devices (on their own Roblox accounts). Rolling out next month for parents of under-13s in 'most regions', this update represents a more meaningful step forward in digital safety and transparency. Is it in reply to the Hindenburg report? Maybe. Either way, it's a nice addition for parents (if they understand how to use it of course!) Video from the founder of 'RoSeal' - @jullianrblx

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Oh wow, you do not hear that often.... The entire staff of Annapurna Interactive, the video-game publishing division of Annapurna studio, resigned this month following a dispute with its owner. Annapurna Interactive President Nathan Gary and his team had been negotiating with Megan Ellison to spin off the video-game division as an independent entity. When Ellison pulled out of the negotiations, Gary and other executives resigned and were followed by around two dozen other staffers. “All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned,’’ Gary and the group said in a joint statement. “This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly.” (source: https://lnkd.in/ehvi33Wg) To those who have resigned, if you are looking for new opportunities, please check them out here: 🥇First, reach out to us at People Can Fly Studio, we have many roles open right now in Canada, the UK, Ireland and Europe, please check them out here: https://lnkd.in/eWpV5PbA 🥈Next, Discipline Games Jobs Resources: Over the past months I have created 9 (at time of writing) Games Jobs Resources to find jobs in a wide range of disciplines, and I would urge you to check them out, if anything just to see what would be available to you: https://lnkd.in/ePywd2kq You can find over 6,000 jobs there. 🥉 Third, the Ultimate list of Video Games Career Resources: This should be your one-stop shop for all information. My dear friend Amir Satvat maintains these documents, he is a legend for doing this - please check them out: https://amirsatvat.com/ I urge you to check out the areas in particular about CV support and mentoring, as these will help you no matter what industry you are hailing from or are looking into going next. 🎖 Finally, do not give up. Ever. No matter how dark things may look right now, I KNOW you will get through this, you have got this! 👊 Remember you are not alone. If you need help, advice, or even an ear to listen, we're here for you. Always! ➡ A request to my community, please can I ask you to repost this post to your colleagues and friends, so that we can get as many into jobs as possible! And please comment if you or your studio are currently hiring - let's help each other! Much love ❤️ #annapurnainteractive #resignations

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⚠️SCAM ALERT⚠️ Please be aware that scam recruiters using the email domain "[email protected]" are impersonating Hinterland and other Canadian game studios. If you receive any correspondence from this email address, please report it. SCAMMER RED FLAGS 🚩 AND ADVICE‼️ 1) NEVER send MONEY‼️ NO RECRUITER WILL OR SHOULD EVER ASK YOU FOR ANY‼️ 2) NEVER include PERSONAL INFORMATION without verifying the SOURCE, the COMPANY, or the REASONING. An application should be enough, and NO applications should include passport, ID, or BANK INFORMATION. 3) RUSHED. SCAMMERS like to get in and get out and don’t like taking more time than needed, so they will want you to ACT FAST, this is so you don’t figure it out. Most job studios take their time hiring, in fact they’re ridiculously slow in most cases so that should be a red flag 🚩 4) TRUST YOUR GUT‼️ If it’s too good to be true, it probably is fake. 5) VERIFY THE RECRUITERS NAME AND THAT THEY WORK FOR THE COMPANY. If the person who contacted you can’t be found, that’s a red flag 🚩 If you can find them, then try to reach out to them and verify it. “Dear (name), I received your job offer email, and I’d like to discuss it further..”

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This is an interesting, thoughtful article with a glaring omission: there's no mention of the role of games UX and playtesting by experienced researchers. The main focus is on the potential issues with opening the game up to early access - and the player community - for earlier feedback in the development process, and how that shapes the developer's creative vision for the game. But look at this paragraph: "it's a delicate balancing act and potentially a risky moment, opening development up. At that point, the idea no longer solely belongs to you. You are handing over some control of it. And whereas before, it might have had a very unusual shape, soon it might be smoothed - by the sea of opinions around it - into a pebble that looks like many others." We have to talk about games user research here, because this is what it does so well! It provides a method for gathering feedback and insights that the developer can act upon (or indeed choose not to act upon: because the researcher will have the evidence to show the consequences of that decision). Other points I'd like to see discussed from all this: 🎯 Is it hard for smaller dev teams to access expert research services? How could that be improved? 🎯 Lowering risk: it doesn't quite ring true that the consequence of opening the game up to players is 'risky'. Not getting player feedback is also risky. Again, the role of the researcher in managing those risks. 🎯 Research provides evidence for decision-making in the creative process. This is the answer to concerns about how opening up the process smoothes out the pebble. Am throwing no shade on the author here either: it just hammers home that research services haven't broken through into the mainstream perception of game development. In fact one of the comments is the closest thing to representing games user research: "I think it’s possible to have a vision, hear 15 suggestions, and have the ability to figure out that 2 of them fit with your vision and the other 13 don’t. But I do think that is a specific skill that not everyone possesses." https://lnkd.in/e6AsWVNb

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Coaching is so valuable and can be truly transformative. It is so often framed in the context of career growth, but nurturing mental well-being is extremely important too. When so many of us in the games industry are going through challenging times this workshop is a really great opportunity.

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"I'm releasing three weeks of work on Steam after restarting my game of 2 years" 10/10 Reddit title but also could use a bit more context: Having spent 2 years on and off developing a personal project now, I have an Unreal Project with heaps of content, systems and time invested but also about 10x that in tech debt. In that time there's been many iterations of scope creep - What do fully living/simulated NPCs feel like in a survival game? - How can you make more engaging dynamic dialogue? - Surely I'll fix this bad script later. - Networked Physicalized inventories are a really good idea right? That's why no one's making them... So the easiest way to avoid all that tech debt and keep the good times rolling is just start a new unreal project and take the learnings forward, get some core systems network stable and hit release on steam (once they approve the margins on capsule_header_final_final_final.png). I think there's value in the "learnings" made along the way though so here be a thread ---

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In the Aftermath of #SeptemberSurge 🎰 I am one of the final candidates for 2 roles now, with 3 of 9 active interviews sending regrets and the the other 4 quietly sitting out in the past few weeks. I also have started talking with 4 new studios, as I cannot afford to stop until there is an offer and my green #opentowork banner comes down. The final payment of government employment insurance benefits to support me and my family during unemployment was deposited in the past week, too. My total application count reached 17 in September, which also resulted in half of my active interviews during this month. Subtracting those 4 applications plus 3 additional immediate rejections, leaves me with applications for 10 studios that I have not heard from, yet, or have already booked me for initial screening appointments in October. 📞 Almost 60% of my September applications alone resulted in scheduling a first phone call. ✔ I completed 13 calls and panel interviews. I finished one design test quickly, and the other I had to <painfully> abandon; after 2.5 weeks of all my extra hours outside childcare and interviews went into it. ...but this is all a lot of work. I know you are working through similar struggles, too. ⚡ Once again I'm in awe of your powers if you've achieved 30+ recent applications or side-door convos with studios in the last 4-8 weeks! That's regardless of your success rate or other numbers. Always take breaks as needed, but I know you can get through this. So keep making the best decisions for you, even if that means you ignore the state of the #gamedev industry. One last reason to celebrate with me today. 👾 Earlier this week at UnrealFest, the playable arcade cabinet version of my game Broken Wing was on display for the public. I am grateful to Ed Bennett, Robert Percival, and Dan Johnson for troubleshooting many of the fellows' games so they would work on the machines... instead of spending that time enjoying the conference! And also for capturing some evidence of Broken Wing being played for my amusement.

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My talk from Develop Brighton 2023 about our focused approach to automated testing in Rollerdrome is now free on YouTube. I talk about approaches you can start using now for very little investment, and still see a return even if the project is close to shipping. For instance, we had a bug where a single exploding barrel in a single level wasn't exploding (after all is it even a videogame if there's no exploding barrels). After debugging, we spotted its physics layer was wrong. We could have fixed that barrel and moved on, but future barrels might swap layer by accident and the problem would come back. To be sure, before shipping, QA would have had to explode every single barrel on every single level by hand! Instead we added a simple automated test that just opened every scene and checked every barrel for the layer. The build server did this on every push and would fail if it spotted a bad barrel. QA would never ever see a build again where the barrels were on the wrong layer, completely eliminating that concern for them. Watch the video for more tidbits like this! https://lnkd.in/eU-hhzyh #automatedtesting #testautomation #gamedev #gamedevtalks

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For the free act of dropping this man a Sub, you will be investing in what will be a treasure trove packed full of useful information! This man knows his stuff, I highly recommend checking out the few videos he has out already.

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Processes are valuable but can freeze us in time; conversations are what move us forward. I found a bridge between process and conversation talking to the Better Conversation Foundation. In game studios, the go-to solution for change is often revising processes and organisational structure. But to make real creativity and productivity thrive, better conversations are key. Processes are an abstraction of the relationships within any organisation, offering several tangible benefits. They are easier to create, time-efficient, and scalable. Processes are also easy to measure in terms of adoption and adherence during rollout. These are all good things. I've worked in environments with a lot of processes, others with minimal processes, and places where I created and implemented processes. Success often hinged less on the presence or absence of processes and more on the messier and less measurable factors surrounding relationships and conversations. The power of relationships and productive, empathetic conversations is well-documented. Moving conversations from functional and transactional to empowering and innovative brings benefits, although these are harder to quantify and roll out than processes. Recently, I started a "Better Conversations" course with the Better Conversations Foundation. Over the years, I've taken numerous courses on conversation training. While valuable, sustaining and embedding the discipline has been challenging. I’d lose 50% of the habits within a month and was lucky if I retained 20% long term. Repeated training is beneficial. The course’s model is easy to understand, solid, and free. It’s accessible and well-run (shout out to Simon Coles, Chandima Dutton, Johan Nordin, Dan Parsons). The six-week spread keeps me engaged much longer than a single session. I enjoy a good process, but solving challenges around complexity and scale seems rooted in how we approach conversations, connection, and understanding. Benefits of better conversations include: * Successful Processes: Better conversations will increase the chances that new processes are adopted, and tailored for success. * Enhanced Creativity: Collaborative discussions lead to more innovative ideas. * Stronger Relationships: These build trust and understanding within teams. * Improved Problem-Solving: Diverse perspectives contribute to more effective solutions. * Greater Engagement: Teams are more valued and motivated. If you’ve reached similar conclusions, I’d recommend checking out courses like this as a practical and sustainable approach to fostering connection and group creativity, and facilitating deeper, richer conversations. I’m interested in complementing the practicalities of change management with what I believe to be one of the true drivers of success: meaningful, empowering conversations. Under pressure, processes can risk stopping us listening. Maintaining genuine and generous conversation is imperative in allowing productive change to stick.

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For anyone interested in the navigation design for the new Gamingbible website this is for you. Whether you work in design or tech this short read gives an insight into requirements and build of an intuitive and effective site navigation. Shout out to all the team involved: Callum Eddisford Cat Miller Kieran Duff Thomas Hawes Paulina Orawczak David Harrison Tim Barrett Ashley Hills #userexperience #ui #microanimation #CSS #navigation #Gamingbible

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Sadly, Friday was my last day at Creative Assembly. I will miss so much about that place, and I learnt a great deal during my time there. These are tough times for the gaming industry, and I see more and more Quality Assurance testers left stranded after such huge waves of redundancies across so many big companies. So I ask, what does that mean for the future? Will stakeholders and companies consider the rising financial gains from a national or worldwide crisis in the future? If it happens again, should the company's growth be halted to allow an internal safety budget to be built up to protect workers from this in the future? I hope we all learn from this and aspire to do better, as Quality Assurance is an integral part of the gaming industry. To lose so much so fast is a huge blow to the industry, not to mention the lives of people who dedicate their time and talent to achieving a smooth and secure product. The cost of making games is constantly rising, yet the cost of buying them has remained the same since 2010! Thats over a decade of money rising into development costs but not increasing the product prices; consumers want more for less. But they want better quality games more than that. I think it's time the industry had a shake-up. I will miss my time in CA so much, but I will not give up on this industry. We're gamers as well as developers. I would be pretty rubbish at QA if I didn't try to diagnose the issue the industry faces. QA isn't a last resort. We're a necessary resource and work alongside development to ensure our customers get quality games because we're passionate about games ourselves and we want to enjoy them for years to come. Somewhere, we seemed to forget that it was always about Quality and not Quantity. So I think it's time we rebalanced that original structure and try stabilising this industry again. There will always be games and people to play them, so let's make them better together.

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Two weeks ago, I attended Interactive Futures, a computer games outreach event held in Leamington Spa, UK. It changed the way I use AI in my workflow. Despite spending over 20 years in the industry, five of them locally, this was my first time at the event. I’m glad I went and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There were several highlights worth mentioning: * A great introduction to the vibrant games community around Leamington Spa and the West Midlands. * Opportunities for real, practical conversations with games industry professionals. * Engaging panel talks on industry hot topics. Of these, the panel talks stayed with me the most. I was particularly interested in the discussions on the future of games, especially the role that AI will play (many thanks to Clare Green, Laura Steel, 🕹️Csaba Berenyi, James Norris, Hernan Polloni) Over the years, I’ve attended many talks on AI and have a reasonable understanding of the subject. However, one comment seemed to challenge me directly: how much have I integrated AI into my workflow? The truth was, I hadn't—at least not to the extent I could. I knew of tools, the usual suspects, but they weren’t genuinely part of my workflow habits. Not as much as they might be. Since then, I've started to recognise and integrate the practical power of current generative AI tools, which feels like the sweet spot for my personal use. I’m now incorporating AI more into my daily routine—as a sounding board, a visualiser, a time-saver, and a productivity booster. This shift has led me to rethink how I view AI right now, even if my grander hopes for the possibilities remain. Initially, I saw AI as a grand intellectual game-changer, something that would mark a paradigm shift in how we perform jobs, but essentially unfinished and kept at arm's length. It might still be that huge leap in the future, but for now, for me, it’s more of a practical tool that I can weave into my approach rather than something that completely transforms the game. From a workflow perspective, it’s less like moving from two-dimensional to three-dimensional chess, and more like the introduction of metal rackets in tennis, DRS in Formula One, or VAR in football. The game remains fundamentally the same but, to play it well, you need to understand the changes, even if they aren’t immediately apparent on the surface. Because before the huge change, as is common, there will be a number of incremental changes for those who are looking. My goal now is to ensure I’m really looking. If you are interested in further insights into AI’s impact on tools, as well as the possibilities in the future, I'll include some links in the comments.

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People skills training… for game studios is exactly what Game Studio Training does. So let’s have a chat about what you need for 2025 so I can fill up that wall chart behind my desk with lots of lovely talks, conferences, masterclasses and leadership development programmes as well. I can help your team to unlock their full potential. If you could wave a wand and upskill yourself or your team in 2025, what would you focus on? #peopleskills #gamestudiotraining #andycoley #softskills

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A few years old now, but this is a super interesting talk on the value of playtesting for iterating on specific design challenges: https://lnkd.in/ezNHKzRM There are loads of incredibly interesting takeaways, but to me the key thing is utilising playtesting to close the gap between the design intent and the player experience. This is true for all platforms and genres, but is felt particularly keenly in VR, where there's a much closer mapping of 'real world' expectations to the game world. According to Christine Phelan, playtesting allowed the team to see how players behaved in novel situations, and integrating that behaviour into gameplay. One great example given was players can cover their mouths so they didn’t cough and attract the enemy’s attention - this was something they observed players doing naturally in playtests, so integrated it as a mechanic. This was added very late in development (a matter of months before release). It's never too late to playtest! #GameDevelopment #Playtesting #GameDesign #UXResearch #GamesUserResearch #UserExperience

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Hey fellow game designers! I'm prepping for a talk at the German Dev Days Conference, aiming to empower aspiring game designers with impactful insights. But I need your expertise to make it truly shine. Your tips, advice, or cautionary tales could be game-changers for budding designers. Here's how you can contribute: A) Leave your wisdom in the comment below. B) send me a PM. C) Fill out this quick form: https://lnkd.in/egtquMhT During the talk, we'll follow a junior game designer on the journey of their first feature from its initial pitch to its final implementation. I'll focus on key moments, such as director's reviews and incorporating player feedback, to shed light on common pitfalls and provide actionable tips. Spread the word so we can harness the collective genius of the game design community! Your support is invaluable and means the world to me.

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