Mike Renner

Bit late talking about this one but huge news coming from 343 Industries, both a re-brand to Halo Studios and confirmation that they are switching development to Unreal. 🗞️ This comes off the back of 343's struggles with development of Halo: Infinite. We've seen many other studios move away from their own engines to Unreal, notably CD Projekt Red! Are proprietary engines going out fashion? 🤔 For those who have worked on both proprietary engines and Unreal, what have you found to be the key advantages of working with Unreal? #gamedev #unreal #halo

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Know anyone that might know someone? Asking for a friend 👀 https://lnkd.in/g44DSCP8 #'s for the #'s #TheMattBarney #VideoGames #GameJobs #GameDevJobs #Unreal #UnrealEngine #GameEngineer #PrincipalEngineer #RemoteJobs #RemoteEngineeringJobs #RemoteEngineer

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TONIGHT AT 6:30 PM join us for an improvised version of PVP Circuit and help us rebuild our local community brick by brick. I still can't believe I get to work in the video game industry. My 6-year-old would laugh, and then cry once she realized what it means to work in the creative technology sector. That's why IMO everyone could use some levity during these unprecedented times. Join us for a fun evening to raise funds for the Trevor Project. Event link >>> https://lnkd.in/g7tBuP6d Frequently Asked Questions: What if I can't attend the event? - If you can't make it, please consider purchasing a ticket to help us raise money for charity or get one on behalf of someone impacted by layoffs. What if I want to join but can't justify the cost? - If you want to join but find the cost prohibitive, DM me and we'll make it happen (see point above). Do I have to pitch at the event? - No, you don't have to pitch if you prefer to observe. It’s a great way to see how it's done. Will there be another event like this? - We plan to host our community again, but I can't specify if this event will be the focus. #gamesindustry #event #comedy <3

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80 GameDev Tools for Everyday Life. I wish I had the tools available today when I joined GameDev 12 years ago. Shoutout to Anton Slashcev for this one! Covering crucial 20 areas including: • QA • HR • IDEs • CI/CD • 3D Art • 2D Art • Sound • Planning • Analytics • Narrative • Animation • Playtesting • Networking • Localization • Whiteboard • Game Engine • Monetization • Documentation • Communication • Market Research What tools do you use every day? Let me know below ⬇️

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Happy Wednesday all! Today I want to talk about hiccups setbacks and what to do when a troll enters the dungeon! Today as I was prepping an exciting review meeting with my technical artist on all the amazing VFX applicants I logged in and saw nothing. All gone! Poof! Not sure what happened possibly a glitch in the matrix or what not but plans had changed for the entire day and rest of the week in a flash. All I could do was to try and get things moving forward again. Can’t get mad about a setback no time! So I hopped on here sent the SOS to all the amazing individuals interested in the VFX role and stated the facts. -emails gone -review delayed -follow ups complicated And now it’s on to being a bit humble and asking for support. Anyone interested in the SENIOR VFX ROLE please reapply 🧡. Mistakes happen and hiccups and delays are all part of the startup life. It’s important to remind oneself to be professional under the hardest of times but also keep the larger picture in mind. This may have flipped my week upside down but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the weeks, months, years ahead. Much love everyone!

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Hi all. I want to share another magic item I've created for an upcoming D&D 5th edition supplemental item module that I'm working on. This item is called Viridis, which loosely means Green, and is inspired by Emerald Dragons. Since I'm not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast, I'll be removing any Forgotten Realms lore I desribed when it's included in my upcoming module—it's just for my current campaign haha. About the weapon, I wanted to make it a Halberd because 5th Edition D&D doesn't currently have any unique magic halberds ha. I've always been interested in some of the less used weapon types in D&D. D&D Beyond Link to the item: https://lnkd.in/eex9H2mP

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After nearly 5 years of placing people in gamedev, here are 3 surprising things I've learned along the way: 1. It was always hard to be a junior Today there are 282 vs 1777 jobs on hitmarker in favor of Mids and Seniors. But even when money from investors was flowing in ungodly amounts, studios were more inclined to hire experienced people. My conspiracy theory is that junior people had it easier back then because regulars and seniors just weren't available for studios. Sometimes because salaries were inflated, sometimes they literally couldn't land the hire, because there were multiple offers on the table for candidates.  Instead of saying it's not a great time to be a junior, we should just admit it's not a great industry to be one. 2. Most people are playing less than I expected When I started I thought everyone here played games all. the. time. And I thought I was the odd one out with my heavily limited playtime. Turns out there are more people like me, who are just playing a couple of hours per week or sometimes not at all. There are of course the opposites who wish they played more (looking at you Michal Witkowski 😎) 3. You kinda need to be into games Even if your role has nothing to do specifically with production, having an interest in games or playing them in your own time it's ALWAYS a green flag. I knew it might be the case, but what was surprising is that it's true for literally every role in a studio. It's not like not playing them eliminates you from getting the accountant job. It doesn't (I hope). But the topic "What are you playing" somehow always finds its way and sneaks into the conversation. What are your surprise learnings?

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Amir Satvat's Games Community Support Content - Upcoming Schedule All Resources Cited Available @amirsatvat.com 11/8 - Helping Hands  (Resource #4) Spotlight on community members who have been searching for a job for over a year. 11/9 - New Games Jobs Update  (Resource #11) I've held off on loading new roles for a few days due to everything happening in the world, but expect hundreds of new roles to be available for application soon. 11/9 - Full Weekly Update (Resources #1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #16) Full refresh of all resources on the community website. 11/10 - Creator Partner Program Interest Check (Resource #18 - TBA) I will solicit participation interest in our new proposed Creator Partner Program for Amir Satvat's Games Community, highlighting those offering free games support to the community - based on your 94% / 6% in favor community vote. 11/11 - A BIG, BIG, BIG Surprise for Our Games Community Also Coming Soon   - A full study on job cuts by location (and more) from 2022 to 2024 YTD. - A concise one-page reference for all our key games job insights and stats. - Started a full update of the Games Jobs Directory (Resource #10)

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Awesome tips from Ori! Check em out and add some layers to yours 👇 #3danimation

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The pie game is still in the oven, but here is a slice (get it?) of some audio parameters for the latest addition to the enemy ranks: the Gourdian (get it?) The Gourdian is a big lumbering pumpkin who eats your units if you don't stop it, so I wanted it to have a layer of menace in the audio, so having its footsteps be audible off-screen while it approaches your walls foreshadows this. To give the illusion of distance, I could have used an attenuation curve in FMOD, but thought I'd give a manual approach a try. Three automation curves at play: volume, reverb, and a lowpass filter. Far away= less volume, more reverb, applied lowpass Near= more volume, less reverb, no lowpass More to come for Revenge of the Tartans: Rise of the Crust Artwork by Renee Ryckman Architect of All Things Nick McKinnis #RevengeOfTheTartans #gameaudio #indiegamedev #pixelart #middleware

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Hello friends. Last month, I was looking for more work and finally secured some on Reddit from a guy who needed help with preproduction on his Tabletop RPG / Card Battler. After a meeting with him, he showed me what he had and it was quite impressive. He had a prototype of a card-battler using a tabletop RPG battle system, but he had little to no documentation or planning—he's been chiseling away at his game for a few months in his spare time after work. I suggested that before I dive into art, we flesh out the game design and the rest of the game up to around an 80% mark and let the last 20% be changes, additions, and that sort. As your game evolves, it'll come into it's own and you'll find things that need changed or added, this accounts for that. He agreed and I asked if I could work on all this since I did that with my game Alligori and lead the team from start to finish with our vertical slice, and I know tabletop RPGs very well. He agreed and we did the whole song and dance with paperwork, and he sent over a retainer and I began work the following Monday. Three weeks go by and we're working great together. I'm fleshing out his game, adding some meat to the backbone of his prototype with classes, abilities, etc. My goal was to write out as much as possible and then trim content to fit it into a 1-year development cycle. So I flesh a bulk of his game out, and then categorize it more into a game design document that clearly conveys concepts, ideas, and mechanics. Catching up, last week was the final week of my first month and payment was due. He just up and disappears like a fart in the wind, I have no idea if he's alive, incarcerated, on vacation, or what. He didn't remove me on Discord, so I don't entirely suspect malicious intent, but he gave no notice. That's the risk you run with working 1-on-1 with a client remotely, one day they can just up and disappear. I do have paperwork, so I may pursue legal action. If he doesn't log on by Friday, I'm going to publicly release all my documentation and the GDD I wrote on here.

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Tip for publishing consideration submission to Midwest Games... tldr - Send info through our portal (https://lnkd.in/gWtKgpuU), not through email (or LI). I get that it's a little counter-intuitive...you might think you want to put your info right in front of the sourcing decision influencers' faces. But it's actually a disadvantage - especially those of you who are agents throwing multiple titles at us at once. The submission portal goes right to our database, and that database is there for a reason: to keep an organized and consistent record of all submissions in one place. I look through there all the time. I'm reminded of titles I may have overlooked or need to go back to consider as circumstances change all the time. We rarely, if ever, make immediate decisions or even quick deep review/consideration. Our factors for consideration shift regularly. I do not review your particular email regularly, or at some point even remember you sent one. I go to the database. Connection via other channels is good. Discussion about your game over other channels is good. But having your core game info in those channels is not good. Please use the submission portal!

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In today's little bit of progress, we're working with a little bit of music and setting up some Enemy Animation Blueprints- just with patrolling and idling for the time being. These are called Agonized Hunters and probably for good reason. Lore is so fun to come up with, by the way. I suppose all the stories I started to write even as a kid should've been a grand sign towards my liking of storytelling, but I definitely know about it now. I thought it would be a nice touch for the light to turn red/add in some invincibility frames when the player comes in contact with them, as well as adding in a sliiiight distinction between the breakable platforms and the ones you can walk on regularly. On a semi-related note, something I only learned fairly recently: the Nav Mesh Bounds Volume in Unreal only registers traversable ground. That's why it's only the ground that turns green when you preview it and not the air that the volume may also be in contact with. If you're working with flying enemies you won't want to rely on those or the functions related to them (like GetRandomReachablePointInRadius and co.), since they will bring those flying guys right to the ground at best. You'll want to look into the Math function RandomPointInBoundingBox instead. ✨

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I’ve heard a lot of praise and positivity for unionization in games lately, but is this really the best path forward for the industry? I’m honestly uncertain. Obviously, things are bad for the industry right now. And the knee jerk reaction is, change, any change, is likely better. But hold on; change can be for the worse. We need to understand why things got so bad, rather than simply blaming the fact that games up to this point have not been unionized. If we had done so sooner, would the current situation have been avoided? AR/VR and Web3 were new developing tech that tied games, gen tech, and other tech/entertainment sub-genres tightly together, creating a hype cycle of funding (and subsequent falloff) never before seen in games (but common to Silicon Valley and tech startups). Not tobmention COVID lockdowns meant at-home entertainment was the only entertainment, creating a bubble that was obviously unsustainable. The industry started to hire more and more, and funding for everything was available. And at the macro level, loan rates were near 0. But it was all temporary. The current situation in games is now the inverse of all of that bloat. Projects cancelled, studios shuttered, mass layoffs, rates super high, scarce funding. Would unions fix any of that? I don’t think so. Unions could actually make some situations worse, resulting in studios who could’ve survived if they made big cuts, instead shutdown, costing ALL of the jobs instead of just some. That all said, about ten years ago, it felt like the IGDA was close enough to a union that the industry was able to self-manage without larger players, but if anything, it feels like every year since they’ve lost relevancy and clout. The reduction of in-person events like E3 further weakens club membership appeal. Walkouts as a form of protest at major studios have become increasingly common place. Most other entertainment industries have large unions. Is this the inevitable path for games? Let me know your thoughts. I’m open to arguments or perspectives from any and all sides. Especially any unique takes that are incongruent with the ideas I’ve laid out here. I’m sure many of you have great thoughts to share. I’m hopeful for a respectful sharing of ideas, and ideally supporting evidence and sound logic that can get me over the fence in a direction, because atm I’m firmly straddled on the top of the fence.

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Do you love Autochess? Of course you do. Do you love Arkanoid / Brick Breaker? Rhetorical question, everyone loves those games. Now what if someone were to combine those two things? Well I did that and it was pretty cool. BRKRX combines the shop mechanics of autochess, the physics gameplay of arkanoid, and some JRPG influences into a unique roguelite experience. Read the full design breakdown of the prototype, and try it out yourself, at the link below. https://lnkd.in/gr824QPq

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My take on why it's hard to make a story trailer for a game based on backstory and lore. Also, hi I'm back making YouTube videos! (We'll see how long this lasts, haha 😅) #gametrailer #gametrailers #gamemarketing

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Hello.   I've been looking at the studios shutting down and the layoffs and wondering what on Earth my contribution to help amongst all the chaos could be. The only thing I can really offer is my experience and enthusiasm around all things game production and operations. I set up game-production.com some years ago and occasionally splurge articles and YouTube learning vids on it, but if there's sufficient interest, I'd be happy to kick off a weekly or monthly Q&A session one evening (UK evening that is). I can try and help with any questions, issues etc around game production. I'm also happy to invite others to come and present their own perspectives.   If you would be interested, could you let me know? A simple Yes response would be awesome, or you could let me know what areas would interest you, or if there's specific questions or help required. I could prepare beforehand a little bit then ;)   The format would probably be me chatting with Miro open so we can map out some stuff, recording the session and sharing to YouTube afterwards along with any output material.   I can cover (or ask others to come help): game production, leadership, portfolio and program management, risk and issue management, estimating work, kanban vs scrum vs waterfall vs hybrid, interviews, general experience of leading teams, what it's like to need to look after multiple studios vs best ways of handling remote teams. Anything really. I can talk about my little kids for hours too if you just want light relief, or delve into the world of Don Reinertsen and the origins of lean product management. Whatever you want! I could even shut up and let others speak too, you never know.   So there it is, let me know your thoughts - or just reply YES. Don't feel you have to tell me NOs! (You can sign up to my newsletter to keep informed of this sort of stuff in the future)   Thank you.   Liam

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Creating games is very difficult. And building games is challenging. The process of build requires to compile the code and all the data required in the game in a specific sequence involving many dependencies. As such monitoring the outcome is essential, but not sufficent. What if we were able to predict the outcome of a build ? What if we were able to decrease the required computing resources while increasing our iteration capability ? #Ubisoft #Ubisoftlaforge #innovation

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