Daisy’s Diner isn’t dead (yet), though I may be taking another extended break while I figure out my next steps. There is more to the current chapter to tell, but so much has happened since I’d started that it might just be better to move on to another story.
Back in May, my family suffered a tragic loss that continues to hit in waves, several months later. Someone you watched come into this world now being gone, when they had such a bright future within reach… I’m choking up just typing this.
In addition to grief, there are other factors that have me in a “why bother?” mood, lately. Generative AI is one major culprit. I could spend hours, days, weeks, or longer on a particular task, when a magic theft machine can pump out slop in far less time, and to a greater degree of polish to untrained eyes… and those untrained eyes largely won’t care whether they content they’re consuming is human-made or not, or whether the machine’s training data is largely stolen. It’s a shiny new toy they get to play with. That real artists need to compete with that is insulting, especially when the companies embracing it demand that we not only use it, but also train it to replace us.
Nearly every company I’ve freelanced for, would always be looking for cheaper labor. More often than not, that ‘cheaper’ labor ended up costing them much more, in the end – the results would be so terrible, they’d have to return to people like myself to fix it or do it over. But, no matter how many times it happens, the only thing they ever learned was to keep trying. Now those companies are being offered prompts that promise to make everything for them faster and cheaper. Whether or not the results are garbage won’t prevent them from trying it.
So many “AAA” games have already been generic slop for years. Developers have been chasing hyper-realism to the point that two games from different publishers can be difficult to tell apart. They use the same game engine, their characters were likely made with Metahuman, asset stores give them nearly everything they need to kitbash their game… Why wouldn’t they start using AI?
…I don’t know that I have a career, anymore. It’s been over a year since my last gig, and I haven’t been looking. The talent pool has been flooded by waves of massive layoffs in recent years. The chances of standing out seem so miniscule, why even bother?
Looking for work also means cutting together a new animation reel. That last game I’d worked on was cancelled, and everything I did remains under NDA. The next most recent game I’d animated on, was the one that’d burned me out a few years back. There was also a lot of technical work I’d done for that game, that I’m not sure how to demo.
Maya is another thing I may need to brush up on. I’ve barely touched it in the past two years. It used to be I’d spend my downtime tinkering, developing my own tools, and learning new things. After that one job, the desire just hasn’t been there. Now I may not only need to refamiliarize myself with the software, but I will also need to rewrite my scripts – with their 2022 release, Autodesk upgraded Maya from Python 2 to Python 3. The differences may be minor and relatively easy to fix, but the other issue is that Pymel is no longer packaged with Maya. I used Pymel extensively, so now any tools I might share with clients may need to be rewritten to use Maya Python instead. That is not a small change, and again has me thinking “why bother?”
I’m considering finding a different line of work. My nerves may simply be too fried for creative work, at this point. Even entertaining a potential commission gave me a panic attack, a couple of weeks ago. It happened during one of my grief waves, but it still happened.
I’d probably be happier doing something “mundane”, that doesn’t engage me on any creative level. If that job provides health insurance, that will be even better, as my current premium is set to increase over 800% next year.
The real challenge would be that any “normal” job wouldn’t offer the same degree of freedom that I’ve been enjoying for over 15 years, now. I wouldn’t be able to take the summer off to go camping with friends or family, or spend weeks traveling across the country, or even visit Disneyland on a whim. But the alternative is I attempt to stay within the game industry, and speedrun towards my next burnout.
