Fighting Game Dev Burnout With More Games

Hello! Can you tell us who you are and what you do?

Hi! I’m Gabriel Cornish, and I’m a senior-level game designer who makes games as a hobby and a living. I have around 30+ games published in itch.io, and I’ve worked with studios like Paradox Tectonic and Jam City to create games like Panda Pop, Twists and Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery.

I’ve been working on games for more than 10 years, and I’m happy to share with you all what I know!

What’s your favorite game to play?

My favorite game to play is the original Star Wars: Battlefront from 2004. It is so much fun. It's one of those games that you can pick up whenever because it’s so accessible. The design has lasted the test of time. It is still as fun to play today as it was back in 2004, and it's constantly in my game rotation. It's one of my comfort games. Imagine, you're having a hard day, and at the end of it, you can play a little bit of Battlefront and it's going to put a smile on your face.

What makes a game timeless

I think the thing that makes timeless game design are clarity and accessibility. I think the holy grail in that regard is being easy to understand but hard to master. And I think games that invite players into them in an accessible way, in a way that's not intimidating, and then slowly start to reveal their depth and complexity over time, I think that's beautiful design and it has a higher likelihood of standing the test of time.

A great example is Nintendo. Nintendo is just phenomenal at making accessible games that are easy to get into but have created lifelong fans and their games. Obviously they stand the test of time. So yeah, I think it comes down to clarity and accessibility.

Growing up with games

I grew up watching my cousins play video games, on the arcade or the NES and other stuff. I was the kid that they would hand a controller that wasn't plugged in just so that I could feel like I was actually playing the game, but I was not actually playing. I was also the kid that if I didn't have quarters to put in the arcade, I would still push the buttons and watch the loop on the screen.

So that was kind of my introduction to video games. I was just fascinated with them from the very beginning. I loved the idea of playing games, and then once I was actually playing games, it was game over. It was just like, “Ah, this is it for me. I don't think I want to do anything else. And now I just got to find a way to turn it into some kind of career or to make a living.”

How did you end up on the path of game development?

My falling into game development was kind of gradual. There were clues throughout my life that it was a path, but I don't think it was until I was almost done with college that I realized like, oh, it's actually a viable path. It’s something that I can do. When I was in the 5th grade, I would make little paper board games and things like that just to kind of entertain myself. I played a lot of games and I was always fascinated. The thing that always fascinated me about games was the story of the developers. So I'd always follow all the articles on how games are being made and stuff like that.

But it wasn't until college that a good friend of mine was making Flash games and that's how he was making money. He would make a game and I think like Armor Games or Kongregate would pick it up. And I was flabbergasted. He just sat in his bedroom in the summer, cranked out a game and Flashed, and then sold it for a bunch of money. And I was like, “Oh, I guess not only can you have fun making games, which I think is an important aspect, but you can also make a living doing it too.”

And I think that was kind of the catalyst that made me really want to pursue it. But there were still a lot of hurdles there, right? I had gone to college for marketing. So I had no experience with programming or doing art or any of those kinds of things. But I started to see the landscape was changing and that game development was being democratized, and the barrier of entry of actually making a game was getting lower and lower, to the point where it kind of finally clicked and I was like, “Well, why wouldn't I do this?”

Can you tell us more about your creative process?

I think it's still evolving, but I have kind of started to lean into certain pillars of game development that I feel are sustainable and fulfilling. You know, one of the things that is kind of near and dear to my heart is I want more people making games. I think that more people making games from different perspectives just creates a better industry. And I think in order for that to happen, two vectors need to occur. 

One is the accessibility of making games, which I think is there now. The barrier of entry to making games is the lowest it's ever been. But it’s also important to show people how to make these games sustainably so that they don't burn out. It should not be stressful. They should not be blowing through their savings in order to do it. 

They should be doing it as a way to grow themselves. They're doing it as a way to further their career. They're doing it as a way to experiment with new ideas and bring new experiences to players. But ultimately they're doing it as a way to have fun and to have a fulfilling creative outlet. 

So I think that's kind of how it's changed for me. In the beginning, I think I was very career-focused and wanted to enter the industry and break in and all of that. And now that that's happened and I've been in the industry for 10 years, I've kind of set my sights on how to make this career sustainable for people. How do I get to continue to do this for the rest of my life? And then how do I help other people continue to do this for the rest of their lives?

On making many games

Funnily enough, the thing that I learned about making like a lot of games is that I have no idea what's going to be good and bad. I've put games on my itch.io page that I'm just like, “This is terrible. I don't know what I was thinking.” Like I'm really unhappy with how this turned out, but ends up getting played by thousands of people, gets a ton of reviews, and even Youtubers take it up.

I think I had like one game get picked up by Rock Paper Shotgun and they wrote about it and I really didn't see that coming. I went in, I put that out there, but I didn't think it was very good. You know, I didn't think anything was going to happen from it, but it resonated with some people. So the thing about making a lot of things is you become less attached to the thing you're making, which is very liberating. You feel so free because you don't put as much pressure on the creative process. You're more willing to make mistakes. You're more willing to put things out that are imperfect, trusting that even if you make something and nobody but one person plays it and really enjoys it, there's value in that.

And yeah, so I think that's maybe the thing that I've learned about like making a lot of games in short succession. You really don't know what's going to turn out well until you're finished. And some of the things that you don't think turned out well would surprise you as they may actually resonate with people. So when you realize up is down and down is up, then you're kind of free to just do whatever and enjoy yourself.

Sustainability of a game development career

I think one of the biggest problems in the game industry right now is one of morale. I think there are a lot of developers out there who aren't really having that good of a time making these games. And it can be for a number of reasons, like having a game canceled, getting laid off, or having your studio shut down. 

In my case, all three of those things have happened in the last month. But it can be also other things like working on another sequel for Call of Duty. Not knocking Call of Duty, but if your whole career has just been one Call of Duty game after the other, you may start to dislike and tire of the process of making that game. Or maybe you're an indie and you really need this game to succeed because you put so much of yourself into it financially, emotionally, all of that, and that can diminish the enjoyment of developing a game.

There are so many different factors that can contribute to that. And I think there needs to be an antidote to that so that you can continue to work on those games while also growing your career and putting food on the table and all those things. We need to have people understand that there is another path forward that you can take to feel fulfilled and sustainable that doesn't necessarily entirely depend on commercial game development, which can be really, really difficult, as I think the industry is starting to see and realize.

What are your ideas for improving the sustainability of game development as a career?

I can relate it to one of my own experiences. So when I was working at Jam City, I was working on Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery. It was a very successful game, made a ton of money, had a ton of players. And I had just come off of releasing one of the biggest features of that game, which is the Quidditch mode. It was a really long process. It was a lot of work to kind of push that through and get it designed and get it out there in the players' hands. And at the end of all of it, and this isn't to say anything about the process itself, I just felt burnt out and I was like, “You know, I just designed something over a course of a long period of time. It was successful  and players were enjoying it. It did really well. It made revenue. Why aren't I happy?” 

Well, all things considered, it checked off all the boxes. I should be fulfilled right now. I should be happy, but I wasn't. And so that's when I started to turn to freeware game development, which had already always been there. But back then, it was like a means to enter the industry. And then once I entered the industry, I was like, “Oh, I'm here. I don't really have to continue to make my little weird internet games.”

But in letting go of that practice of just doing game jams and putting things out there for free and exploring weird creative ideas that were never going to be commercially successful, I started to lose a bit of the joy of game development. And so the thing that I always recommend to people who are maybe feeling a little bit burnt out, or maybe they're contemplating whether they still want to be in the industry, or maybe the development process has just been an absolute nightmare for them; is to do something that they want to make for themselves.

You'd be surprised how much energy you give to keep going in your career, to keep going on whatever you're working on. And it doesn't have to take up your whole life. You don't have to give up anything for it. It can slot in nicely with whatever your unique situation is. So yeah, that's that's my advice. 

If you're struggling in the game industry right now, seriously consider starting a side or passion project. Take up something that you just want to make for yourself and then you're going to put it out there for free and it's going to cost you $0.00. And I would bet good money that you will find a lot of energy in that and you'll start to find a lot of fulfillment and happiness from it.

Advice on not being able to start a side project

My advice would be to essentially pick a short deadline for this project. Lower the barrier to entry to like making something. So just say like, “I'm just going to make a game this week and I’m going to reduce the expectations.” It's not like you’re aiming to make a game that gets played by a million people, or one that's going to make a ton of money or that you’re going to use to go and pitch to a publisher or something.

Just be like, “Hey, you know, I'm going to make something and it's going to be flawed and it's going to be imperfect, but I'm going to optimize for my enjoyment of the creation process.” Use the tool that you want to use. Use the programming language you want to use. Use the art tool that you want to use. Go create an entire pipeline that’s just for fun. Just go make something that you want and aim to finish it on whatever day.

And on that day, you can choose whether you want to share it with someone or if you just want to throw it into a hard drive somewhere in the back of the closet. I have hundreds of games on hard drives in the back of my closet that were just like maybe a couple of day projects or a week project or something. They will never see the light of day. I would probably be embarrassed to show them to anyone. But it doesn't mean that it didn't have value for me. Those were actually the games that got me through the toughest times in my game industry career.

Overcoming perfectionism

This is one of the the hardest things to overcome because especially if you're working in the game industry, you're expected to show up and be perfect, right? Anything less than perfection could result in layoffs, could result in studio closures and other stuff. So the pressure is so high to always try to knock it out of the park also so that you can hopefully set yourself up for the next project.

So then to switch into like a personal project and then turn that off, it’s a really, really difficult thing to do, right? Because you're going to go into that personal project and you're going to bring your work energy into it. And you're like, it needs to be perfect. It's hard, and I think the only advice that I could give is two things that I think are kind of optimistic. 

The first is to just accept that your vision is always going to be ahead of your execution and whatever is in your mind is always going to be better than what you're capable of doing. And honestly, I think it should be that way because it means that you are striving to get better over time. You're striving to close the gap between what you're envisioning and what you can actually do. That is the journey that is actually going to be the most enjoyable part of the process. So I think the sooner we can accept like, okay, what's in my mind is going to be better than what I can make, I think that that makes it a little bit easier. You give yourself permission to be a little bit more imperfect.

And then the second thing is to know that it's always easier to fix something than to create something. So for example, if I need to draw something and I'm hesitating to do it, I would almost rather just make a bunch of random marks and a mess and then start to fix that. It's like… make the mess first and then clean it up rather than trying to make something clean from the beginning.

Are most of the games you’ve made freeware?

So on the personal side, like on my personal game development, yes, it's been 100% freeware, meaning that the game cost me as close to $0.00 to make. I think that's a really important factor here because, I don't know, there's something weird that happens once you start spending money on your game, and the expectations start to change along with the approach to making the game.

So kind of one of my best practices for personal game development is to try to keep it as close to $0.00 as possible and then release it with the intention of making $0.00. You're not charging for it, you're not putting ads in it. It's a gift to the community.

But on the professional side, like the stuff that I actually get paid for, half of my time was spent on mobile, working on two games for Jam City that were commercially successful and have millions of players playing them every day. And then when I switched over to Paradox, we were working on a really complex and sophisticated life simulation game, kind of like the PC strategy management mechanics that Paradox is known for like Crusader Kings.

And I was working on that for like four years. So, you know, I think the personal side of game development has been very separate from the professional side of my career. But I will say that 100% of my personal game development has made me a better developer in my professional career because I approach things from a different perspective.

I have past projects to draw on, especially like once you've made like, you know, over 100 personal projects, I started to get an intuition for like what's going to work and what's not going to work, or what's going to resonate and what's not going to resonate. And that can only come from going through that loop of making something, releasing it over and over and over again. Because on the professional side, you're lucky to release a game every two years. You're likely to release once every three or four years. And so that iteration cycle is much slower. It's more of a marathon.

What do you think are the most glaring problems in your industry aside from morale?

I think there's a lot of theories floating around in terms of what is broken in the industry. I'm coming from the perspective of how can we have happier developers. Because I think we need the game industry to have a happy and fulfilled workforce if we are to have a chance of producing games that resonate and bring joy to players. 

On the economic side, I think the ballooning costs of game development make it so that the pressure to have a return on investment that is unrealistic is too high. And I think that's why we're seeing so many studio closures. Even those who made games that are good, right? Even games that release and players love them and they may even be profitable is still not good enough, right? And so I think when you have those situations, you really have to kind of take a step back and think like, “Okay, what's wrong here?”

But I think the challenge for a lot of developers, like if you're in the industry, if you're working at one of these studios that's either been shut down or you're kind of living in fear that it may shut down or your project may get canceled or that you're going to be the next to be laid off… I think you need something to help you to keep going. 

Because I think what is happening is a lot of developers are scratching their heads and being like, “Is this worth it? Should I even be here? I have a family, I have responsibilities. I gotta keep food on the table. I gotta pay rent. I have health insurance and medical bills that I need to pay. Is this really the industry for me?”

And for any developer that ends up leaving for good, that's a shame. That's brain drain for the industry. But you can’t help to sympathize and understand. It's not like it's not unreasonable, but I think as developers, we need to find a better way forward. We need to find a way to make and produce these games in a way that is sustainable and enriching to the workforce. And in a way that keeps them feeling safe, having a good time and able to show up to their job in the best way possible. That way, they can make the experiences that they want to make and the players can play the experiences that they create.

What are you working on right now?

Yeah, so I have a couple of freeware games in the works, and I'm looking for a job. I think it's a testament that personal game development can be sustainable even when you've lost your job and you're still looking for something else. I have a kid at home, but there's still a way to slot it into my daily life. 

I'm working on a game with some friends over at HomeTeam. I am currently in a game jam for a community around a tool called Decker. That game is going to be released at the end of the month. I'm helping some friends, they have an indie project called the Snap Quest that they're trying to release at some point, maybe next year. And I have a prototype that I've been kind of kicking around in the background just to learn Unreal and help build up some of my skills. 

So that's kind of the loop; make games, look for work and the next opportunity. And I think the thing that I've added to that is helping and trying to be more of an advocate for developers taking on freeware game development as a way to weather the storm of the game industry that is occurring right now.

What’s your opinion on freeware vs. commercial games?

The line can get blurry. I think in a lot of ways they complement each other. I think freeware game development and commercial game development complement each other. Especially if you're making games on the web, as I think the web is a beautiful place to make games because the distribution is so seamless. You can just give someone a link. A prime example of this is Wordle; you just go to the site and just play it. You don’t have to download anything, you just show up. You play. 

Getting your ideas out faster, I think, is one of the greatest things about developing web games. You can make something maybe in a weekend or a week or a month or whatever. You can put it out there, you can iterate on it. People can play. You can just start sending out links, whether it's through e-mail or on your Twitter or whatever. And that can give you clues about when to start transitioning into the commercial scene. 

Because if you make a web game and all of a sudden it's like popping off, that's a pretty good indicator that you may have something that is viable for a commercial product or a commercial game. And I think this isn't new. I think especially back in the Flash days, there were a lot of Flash games that ended up becoming PC or console releases. And I think a lot of developers kind of transitioned from freeware game development into commercial game development with that. Because with freeware game development and fast distribution on the web, you can validate something really easily. So it helps you know when to double down on something as opposed to guessing or hoping something is going to be successful.

Other ways of earning a living that game creators aren’t capitalizing on

Yeah, I think one of the spaces that I'm really curious about is the Patreon space. So there's a collective called the Sokpop Collective. And their whole thing was that they were releasing a game every month or something like that. I may be mistaken here, but I think they were releasing them for free either at first or whatever. But just from that alone, they started to build up an audience. And then the audience started contributing to their Patreon and their Patreon started to grow to the point where it started to become a sustainable revenue source. 

And I think that that's a really interesting way of selling video games because you're not selling just video games; you're selling your creative output and you're building a community around your creativity. And I think there's a harmony there. I mean, as long as you’re not burning yourself out trying to keep the content treadmill going, I think there's a harmony between getting to make what you want for your paying supporters who are interested in what you're making and the process behind it. 

It may not be a full salary, but you know, if you can pay for groceries with it, that's a little bonus too, right? So I think the indie space is starting to find new and unique ways to not only connect with their unique audience but also find a way of making a living. And I think that's really encouraging.

Where can we find you to learn more about you and your projects?

Yeah, so you can go to gabrielcornish.com, that's where I do a lot of my writing or write about freeware game development and justice, more sustainable fun ways to develop games. I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm pretty much Gabriel Cornish everywhere on the internet. So if you just look up my name, you'll find me. 

And if you're interested in learning more about sustainable game development practices, definitely reach out to me. I'd love to talk about it. I'll talk about it all day. And I'm happy to help anybody who wants to make personal game development more of a part of their life.