Be A Launchpad For The Industry

For every 10 kids with a dream and a notebook binder full of Super Mario levels or Batman sketches, you have 1 or 2 jaded and burnt out games industry veterans, and 8 or 9 people working in a different industry. I saw a LinkedIn post recently about someone at a AAA studio finally getting to pursue their dream of being an associate game designer after 15 years in QA.

The industry is full of extremely excited and passionate people full of new diverse ideas, but the meatgrinder of application processes and the catch-22 of needing industry experience before being hired into the industry has resulted in a historic culture of gatekeeping that has only recently begun to be cracked.

The Old Guard Problem

This has been made worse by Old Guard not embracing new technologies, processes and thinking as they come into the field. There is a ray of hope though. We’ve seen lawsuits and EA Wives put a crack in some of the bad behavior of these studios, and new paths have been forged by great learning institutions such as Digipen. We think there’s still room to do better.

Plenty of industry veterans are excited at the opportunity to work with new engines such as Unity and Unreal but don’t have an easy path to do so while working their 9-5 jobs, and recent graduates and hobbyists still need to find ways to pay off their new college tuition while looking to get started in the industry.

A Natural Fit

We think there’s a great natural fit here. Given our targeting of small-scoped games, and our staff augment and co-dev focus, we believe that we have great opportunities to help these aspiring industry hopefuls find their footing and launch their careers.

The reality is that in today’s markets no one lasts forever at their company, and so by building strong training processes and tools, we make a robust environment that can handle existing talent maturing out to other studios, while still having advancement opportunities for those who want to stay at Manafold and join our Asset Development Teams.

Rising Tide

Ultimately a rising tide lifts all ships, and we hope that by being the launching point of lots of new careers within the industry we can have strong ties with other studios, and carry our best practices and the germ of our strong ideas into the industry as a whole.