Where are you from and how's game development there?

Hi guys! I'm curious on the demographics of the forum, and was wondering people from how many different countries may be participating in game development with Unity and this forum in particular. So I created this thread, where you can share where are you from (continent, country, city, depending on the amount of information you're willing to share online) and how's game development like there!

I'm from Córdoba, Argentina; I was born in another city in the northern border with Brasil and Paraguay, but I moved here years ago to study computer science. There's not much game development here, I have to say, so it's hard to find people with the required skills to build a team, but I still like learning and having projects. What about you?

 

I started when the whole computer industry didn't really exist (8 bit era) so there wasn't any internet, and there wasn't any help. But for all of us starting then, it was just fine! We loved it.

So there aren't any issues, worldwide really, from my perspective. Got a computer? go for it. Simple.

 

You could always try organising a local game developers meetup on Meetup.com. There isn't one there now, but I bet you could probably find a few like minded people locally through that. Barring that, you could also just reach out to online communities.

 

I'm in Melbourne. Probably has more game development going on of any other city in the southern hemisphere. We have a government body that funds creative arts. Our own local sales reps from Unity and Unreal. We have an international games week, which includes Unite, GCAP and Pax. We have monthly IGDA meetups with 100ish people in attendance. Massive global game jam events every year. Several big game schools. And there is always a steady stream of job adverts for game dev positions filtering through.

On the flip side game dev pay is poor. There are more graduates from game schools every year then there are people who work full time in the industry. With such a glut of supply, there isn't much incentive for companies to pay top dollar. Also the high Australian wage and unfavorable tax position has driven almost all of the AAA developers to close down their Australian studios. Most of the industry is run by small start up studios. Some of them do really well, others only last a few years then run out of cash.

Prior to Melbourne I was living in New Plymouth. The town had three game developers, one of whom could never leave the house due to anxiety. The two of us still managed to run monthly meetups. We tied in with some of the local video gaming community and got a bit of a social scene running.

 

Oh, Australia... A good number of decent games came out of there. Just to mention one made with Unity, I played a year ago this game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/580200/Yonder_The_Cloud_Catcher_Chronicles/

which is made by an Australian studio. The game is very decent; though it seems childish, it has a sweetness and
delicacy that one can't but enjoy. A great example of what three experienced game developers can do if they keep it simple and well oriented. The game nearly has any textures, for example; most of the models are colored simply by materials. The final product of this is very nice actually.

 

I'm from Budapest, Hungary and I have moved to San Jose, California, US four years ago.

As far as I know there is a sizable community is going on here, although I haven't had the opportunity to go to meetings so far. Will see next year (I always make new years pledges but usually I don't hold them, so will see).

 

Don't we all?

 

I know people who does not make any. And of course I'm not taking mines seriously either. I learned this a long time ago.

 

Dear god, why? Lol

 

Well, I almost wrote some political stuff on the forum. But let's just say there is more sunshine here than it is in Hungary. (and then 2016 happened... but still more)

 

Literally there is more sunshine, metaphorically I can't see it in that area.

 

Stockholm here, silicon valley of the north

 

I'm living in Hollywood North. It's kind of cool seeing parts of the city disguised in different shows. Although Deadpool 2 made no attempt to hide the city and even has a map of the city displayed at the end.

There is a lot of game dev going around here (EA is here) although there has been some major shutdowns such as Capcom. I'm not plugged into any of it and have been developing on my own.

One of the suburbs has opened up a new health and technology district by one of the hospitals and my day job just happened to open up a location in the building. I've been meaning to try and get involved but I have been too busy with my day job. I've started to make a concerted effort to reduce the amount of work that I am accepting before Christmas and I have geared up development on my project. I'm hoping to start full bore marketing in the New Year.

 

San Rafael, California here. It is just across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. The area is pricey, so you pretty much need to be doing indie game dev as a side gig until you're well established or you won't be able to pay the rent. There are lots of talented people in the area, so if you want to bring on other people into your project or your company you will have no shortage of available talent. This is especially so just an hour away in the South Bay.

Just a bit of local trivia, but no one local refers to Silicon Valley by that name. It is called the "South Bay". In the same way that no Americans refer to our country as "The States", it is a label generally only used by outsiders.

 

Well, then I'm still a bit outsider, I occasionally use both terms. Hey, I'm trying!

And now, let's talk about "Frisco" versus "SanFran".

 

Neither, it is "The City" of course

 

Only when people from the states are around. The names we call you when you aren't here are much less polite.

 

Here in socialist Sweden they seem to be enemy no 1

 

Why y'all live in California?

I am from Chile, but now I'm living in Miami. I'm trying to get a hold of all the Unity developers here because I don't where they are xD. There are a fair amount of devs here that use Unity but apparently, they don't like to communicate. In Miami, there are meetups however for the other engine that starts with U. But not for Unity :c. I'm trying to change that.

 

Game design and art are largely the same regardless of engine. Here around Washington DC devs use a variety of engines, or none at all. There's still plenty to talk about with the non-Unity folks at meetups.

 

Isn't game design more about mechanics, etc, etc?

 

Exactly. It's nice to meet up with other Unity folks, but general gamedev meetups are just fine to discuss design, art, etc., such as IGDA South Florida meetups for those like @BrewNCode in Miami.

 

Ah read it wrong, like those two are the same

 

A (sort of) funny story: I was working at a front desk for a hotel this past summer, when we were having a conference staying with us. The group was all from Poland, they specialized in Mathematics.

They got visibly annoyed every time I greeted them with "Howdy!" (no joke), to which I just laughed. I can only imagine they were thinking to themselves "Damn yankee". lmao


EDIT: This comes to mind:

 

Bloody Yanks is the correct term

 

i was a co-organizer for a growing and thriving group in the Tampa Florida area. Now we are living in northern New Jersey. I had expected it to be easy since NYC is so close but having a very difficult time meeting other game developers. We joined a group south of us and it is a great group of people but it is very small and no room to grow. It is difficult to find places to meet and while I loved meeting at the Microsoft Store (may daughter gave an art talk that day), the rest of the group did not like it.

Anyone in northern New Jersey out there who would like to get together? I contacted the User group folks at Unity as I thought we could start a User group here, but no response. So not even sure they are sponsoring the groups anymore.

 

I was born here and just never came up with a good enough reason to move somewhere else.

 

I like challenges. I was dreaming to live in the US and specifically in CA in my entire life. You know kinda' gold rush without gold and stuff.

 

I dunno how close you are to CT, but I'm part of a public group over here that started doing monthly meetups a few months ago. We're still finding our footing but you can check out our website which has links to our social media accounts on which we post updates for our meetups. Our meetups happen at public libraries and serve as informal co-working / playtesting sessions.

https://gamedevct.com

Even though it's not in NJ, I thought I should still mention it as we're still in the tristate area. Also we host our meetups on weekends to accommodate people who live further away and can't just swing on by after work.
An issue I've run into a lot is that even though there are so many meetups in NYC, most of them happen during the week while I'm at work

Edit: Does northern New Jersey also have any public meetup groups that happen to meet on weekends? I wouldn't mind making the occasional day trip out there on like a Saturday afternoon. I always love meeting other game developers to talk game design with, bounce ideas off of, and get feedback from.

 

I'm from Southern Texas. Almost everyone here is extremely stupid, I don't trust any devs from down here. I can kill snakes and other dangerous things though, so it's a fair tradeoff. Massachusetts bound.

 

I'm from Singapore, and the game dev industry here is pretty bad tbh. Not a lot of indie game studios, and there's only Ubisoft and Bandai Namco here. Most likely game-related jobs you'll find is simulations or visualization.

Also, Unity's legal headquarters are in Singapore, apparently! So yeah, we're the ones holding back open source and dark skin. Welcome!

 

This reminds me of my old home too. I didn't kill them (I don't like killing animals, as dangerous as they might be), but once every two or three weeks I found myself removing, armed with the power of my broomstick, a snake that thought of my bathroom as a nice place to rest from the terrible temperature (it could get to 55 degrees of thermal sensation in the summer). Venenom ones, I might add: bothrops alternatus, for those curious on zoology.

As in your case this sweet rural adventures were the tradeoff I got in exchange of the narrow-minded, conservative way of living of my little town.

 

Haha, I think I just got my second brown recluse bite in two weeks. The cold is bringing them all in at night.

Pro-tip: Prids black drawing salve is a wonder material.

 

Rural Australia. Game development is as strong as the mobile phone reception is.

 

Lucky. Our dangerous things are pretty difficult to kill. Plus most of them are protected species.

 

Dropbear?

 

You guys have nothign when it comes to dangerous animals, we have the Tick.

 

I'm from New Zealand, I live in Auckland, although the majority of game dev seems to be happening down in Wellington, where companies like PikPok and CerebralFX are doing most of the hiring, in Dunedin we have RocketWerkz, owned by Dean Hall who made Dayz, and TenCent has a big stake in it.

Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile) is in Auckland too, but other than them not much else is going on sadly.
Gameloft used to have a branch here employing 100 people, but they closed it down.

The last GDC we had was about 500 game developers, and its getting bigger every year.
But still, more money to be made in software development here, not much game dev contract work going around, and the cost of living in NZ is very high, so I choose to contract.

The NZ game dev association is trying to get the government more involved in funding games, but little progress has been made, although the government gives huge grants for movies and such, but not really anything for games.

 

I think I'd be insulted if I cared what anyone thought.

@AndersMalmgren

You mean this guy?

 

No this one is waaaaaay more disgusting

 

Just realize there was a working link on the construction page!

We may be close enough to travel there on the weekends, but not sure where you are in Connecticut. There is a small game guild in NJ that meets on Saturdays but it is really struggling and has not yet found a steady place to meet. They meet at a clubhouse at a apartment complex but are constantly kicked out for unexpected parties that they did not know about. lol Until things change, I do not suggest driving all the way here. I am trying to help, but feel like I might step on toes, especially since some of them are young folks.

You can send me a PM with your group meeting times and place. I could try. If nothing else, my son lives in Connecticut and might be interested!

Thanks and very nice to meet you! Hope that Unite is on the east coast next year so I can meet other people in the area.

Edit: You are about 2 hours from us so might be a bit far but maybe we can make it out there sometime. Still getting used to driving in the snow again so might be a while. Thank you so much for the invite.

 

Tell me about it. We had a lot of those bastards back east. They carried Lyme disease too, some of them.

 

Yeah or TBE which is even a greater danger, F***ing hate those

 

I'm from Croatia, and im 3D character artist, not developing games by myself (yet), instead working for others as freelancer... It's small country, but there are few games and studios from here that reached global fame. Latest such game is Scum made by Gamepires studio. Just released two months ago or so. It was top selling game on Steam in first few days after release... It's still in alpha, but it got more then one million sales in first two weeks or so... Then there is our veteran studio Croteam, with their Serious Sam classics and Talos Principle. Then there is mobile game development studio called Nanobit... Other then those big shots, there are quite a few indies. I don't know exact numbers. But many of them are gathering at one of biggest game convention events in Europe "Reboot infogamer" which is hosted in Croatia every year. http://www.rebootinfogamer.hr/en/

Given the small population of this country and many bureaucratic obstacles (worst of which is non exsistance of tax agreement with United States so you get taxed double unless you open company in US or some other country which have agreement), our game dev scene is much better then one could expect.

 

Oh the site is under construction but the links to our social media accounts are still there in the meantime. Just click on the Twitter icon to find our Twitter Info for our next meetup should be in the currently pinned Tweet.

And yeah it sounds like that meetup wouldn't be worth the 1-2 hour drive for me. If you wanna help them, I would recommend talking to public libraries about meeting spaces. That's what we did and the people we talked to were very receptive to the idea of a game development meetup happening at their library. It could provide your group with a consistent meeting space and give them more visibility.

I also hope that Unite comes back to the east coast. When it was in Boston, that was when I was first getting into game development and it was the first time I heard of the event, so I assumed it was always in Boston. I missed my chance to go :/

 

Tiny town in Missouri, USA. I know of one other person into game dev somewhat and that is because I inspired him to get into it. He uses GMS. Used to talk a young fella that worked at the local deli a year or so ago and it came up at one point that he is interested in learning to make games and I asked what are you thinking of using, Unity? He said yeah how did you know?! Ha ha. He left many months later and just ran into him in town a few months ago. He got a much better job more money etc and didn't seem as interested in getting into game dev now. Lol

Other than those two I know nobody into it. I think here people generally see such things as foolishness "get a real job" kind of thing. Maybe not but I *think* most would see it more for something teens would do. Just my impression but this is a small sort of country town people make their livings with their hands mainly doing "real work".

Now about 100 miles away over in Saint Louis there are several game companies and probably some meetups and such. I used to think about trying to start some local game dev meetings thing but I don't have time for that. Besides I can come on here and other forums and ramble and listen to other people ramble about game dev.

 

I am from a tropical sunny caribbean country.

Beside myself, we probably have like about, 1 or 2, or probably
a few solo indie game devs here. Yeah I know. That's not much at all.

I don't know if they have released, any games yet though.

 

I'm from Northern Saskatchewan, Canada. As far as I know, there are not many dev houses in my home province, but someone's gotta start the ball rolling, right!

Thanks!
Don Cathcart
Lead Designer/Programmer/Bottle Washer
Dumb Bunny! Studios

 

Endnight Games is from Canada. I wouldn't call those folks an indie studio per se, but their team was of only four people when they developed The Forest (with Unity). A very good game they made, I might add.

 

What part of sesakatchawan??

I am from a few different places in Montana, USA. I have some family in another town, so I head back there every once in a while to visit.