What do you think about Godot's job prospects?

General
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In one year, I will finish my degree in Computer Science and I have realized that I want to become a professional game developer. Eventually, I’d love to become an indie dev because I want to develop my own ideas and have full creative control over my games. However, it is almost impossible for me to do so in the short term because I lack the experience and knowledge (and money) to make actual comercial games.

For those reasons, I think that I should follow a plan similar to this:

  1. Work on personal projects while finishing the degree (I’m at this point right now).
  2. Try to be hired as a Godot developer in a studio.
  3. After an undetermined period of time, use my money and experience to start my own professional projects.

Since I only have experience making games in Godot, this question has arised in my mind: is it a good idea to specialize in Godot? Are there any companies hiring Godot developers? I’m from Spain, but I would consider moving somewhere else to persue my dream :wink:

Also, I’d like to read what pieces of advice can other professional gamedevs out there share to anyone wanting to start their own career as a gamedev.

Thank you for reading!

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From what I’ve read in the Press, if you become a professional game developer for a commercial studio, you should be ready to work long, high-pressure hours for low pay and severe job insecurity, and be prepared for stressed-induced premature aging.

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As of now, few Godot jobs. Mostly Unity, Unreal, or custom. I think that could change in the near future, but I am a wishful fanboy.

Network with people in the industry and find out what is good to have on your resume.

Solo projects can be good resume fodder. Employers want to see shipped games.

Learn about the different roles you can have inside a studio and practice all of them to see what you like and build your resume.

As noted, it is a brutal industry.

Another option you have is to land a well paying CS job that doesnt burn you up and is 9 to 5 and just always enjoy the freedom of being a solo indie in your spare time with your spare money that your nice job provides.

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Well as a hobby I like that its easier than other stuff.

And compared to Unity, its much more decent license should I decide to publish.

There is no reason for creative, well thought out hobby projects not to be successful.

Think Dwarf Fortress.

What you love is what you do best. Studying for a subject, thats your, else why the degree?

Worrying about work and money, me very bad at this. Glad all stable. But thrown off for a week by a warning letter at work.
That stuff’s made to get your amygdala get creative with all kinds of bad scenarios.

So I would never work for Paradox etc.

Hope thats in some way helpful.

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Wow. Good to know, I’ll try to prepared and will keep this info in mind :saluting_face:

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Thank you for the advice!

Having a CS job while making games in my spare time is definitely my plan B

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I’m sure we could make a large list of games made by one person that went well.

Stardew Valley
Brotato

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I can’t tell if that is sarcasm or not.

But either way, choosing to be solo indie, or working for a company (small indie or large corp) depends on what you want out of it.

Do you want to make the games you want to make? Make art for art’s sake? Or are you happy just executing someone else’s investor controlled vision?

If you want both, are you the kind of person that can spend all week working on someone else’s vision and still have creative ambition at the end of the day to build your dream?

Maybe you really dont care what you work on, you just like the work and would be happy just doing corp work?

Do you like crunches and layoffs? Be sure to plan around those. Or be careful to only take jobs that are less likely for that to happen (what is the trade off with those?)

Do you want to be guaranteed to make money no matter what? Or are you okay with the possibility of making a game that only costs you money?

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I’d make that a plan A :slightly_smiling_face:

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No, it was not sarcasm. I actually enjoy CS and can see myself making a living out of it. However, I have always been interested in game making and jumped into it about 10 months ago and realized that I’d love to pursue it professionally.

My dream scenario would be having enough money, time and experience to make my own games and make a living out of it. I know that getting there is going to take a lot of effort and time, and that’s why I created this topic, to see if I could learn from others more experienced than me and design the optimal career path for my future self.

I know the chances of getting there may be low and that’s why my actual plan B is having that 9 to 5 CS job and doing games in my spare time, but as I already enjoy trying, I don’t really mind trying and failing with that plan A (which would be aiming for Godot jobs from the beggining or something like that).

Again, thank you for reading and for sharing your thoughts with me :slight_smile:

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I’ve been on job hunt to start my professional game dev journey for a while now. Here are some things that I learned:

  1. Most studios are using either Unity or Unreal for their game projects. With the fairly recent changes to Unity’s monetization, I think Unreal has become the front runner. Godot is still the underdog in professional game dev and I’ve only seen small indie studios use it. And even that is rare. Hopefully there will be more studios using Godot in the future but that will still take a while. The industry is usually slow to adapt new things.

  2. This isn’t to say your Godot experience will be useless. Many skills translate and most recruiters will recognize this experience. However, they won’t hire anybody with zero experience in the engine they use either, especially if there are other candidates that have. Being versatile is the key here. Feel free to use Godot with your personal projects but also learn the basics of other engines. Participating in game jams or working on passion projects is usually a good way to bridge the downtime and improve your portfolio.

  3. The game dev scene seems to be one of the most laid back working environments there are. This might sounds like a good thing but that isn’t always the case. The amount of times I have been ghosted by a studio is unreal (get it ;> ), whether it is recruiters seemingly forgetting about you or applications not being answered in the first place. This is, of course, gonna vary from company to company, whether it’s indie or Triple A and how staffed they are. It’s just something you need to be ready for because it can be quite demoralizing.

I know reading all of this might seem sad but don’t let this discourage you. If this is what you want to do then go for it and persue this career! >:D You just need to be ready for things not working out perfectly and remember: A game dev job is still a job.

I hope these insights help! :>

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well this is all highly depressing,

it seems like games made by 1 person are like singer becoming a rock god, really hard to actually pull of.

all the AAA and places that pay are unity and unreal.

the main advice seems to be get a CS job doing something outside of game dev and do game dev in your free time as you try to pull off becoming that rock god.

I have a idea that might help some of us.

we should try to make and find teams to make games in godot.

like the pirates of old with a ship we come together to do a few raids and get shares from the raid they went on.

some teams have members strong on not starving to death and having money to live and pay the rent. but are short on free time to work on the
team game.

some teams have members strong on free time but have to drop out when they find any way to bring in some cash to sustain their life. so contributing members suddenly becoming unavailable is something they might have work around.

some teams will want to work on parts that can be integrated in to their secret life long dream game.

some teams will just work on bullet hells endless chain of games that are just the same bullet hell game perfected and expanded. like civ 7 or any ea game just resell the same game. it’s the closet thing to a 9 to 5 this team model could get, every week a new bullet hell will come on steam like clock work, this time with red sprinkles, next time with blue sprinkles, eventually with rainbow sprinkles that are just all the sprinkles mixed.

or that team that perfectly fits together with you providing exactly what you need and you providing exactly what they need.

I think it could be really fun if we did it right and maybe we would not strike it rich or what ever but we would all learn a lot. if we made a environment with lots of teams any drama or politics can be resolved with just finding a different team before the feelings happen.

let’s find that one piece our greatest treasure that we don’t yet know.

this would be the part where Huey would hand me the bulletproof vest for how it will turn out. obviously for the bullet hell game.

anyway could anyone please just watch my bad apple made with godot auto-tiles it got like 14 views likely 7 or more from me in like 3 months and I knew going into it would be a waste of time but like still…

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Hey! Thanks for sharing your experience and for encouraging me, that’s really helpful : D

I remember reading a post where someone said that it is also a good idea to apply for QA jobs or similar “to get closer to the industry” while building your own portfolio because having experience in game dev is not that crucial in that context. Have you considered that path or have any opinions on this? I have never thought about it before and actually don’t know how big the demand on QA staff is or what requirements it has.

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Yeah, I guess that networking is definitely an important matter in this industry. I liked that pirate ship thing, teaming for a game jam or something similar seems fun and a great way to learn and meet new people :smiley:

Btw, that Bad Apple video is very cool, congratz!!

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QA is definitely a good starting point too. It requires less technical knowledge, yet is still a good way to get a look into how studios make games. In comparison, starter coding jobs are usually hard to come by as developers are, rightfully so, careful to let new people into their code base. As a beginner, it can be quite hard to prove yourself and your skills to recruiters and gain their trust.

I don’t know if a QA job would be the right thing for me personally. I wouldn’t pass on a good QA offer either, but you do need to keep in mind that it is a lot of paper work too. QA isn’t just testing new levels or balance changes. It’s also reading bug reports and tickets, trying to reproduce them, writing reports, etc. It really depends on the kind of QA they ask you to do.

So to answer your question: Yes, I have thought about doing QA but I’m not considering it as my primary option at the moment. I myself am currently more interested in how professional devs structure their games, what systems they use and how they work together. Hence I am looking primarily for development jobs as coding is probably my favorite game dev discipline to do anyways.

Just remember that a job isn’t just about what you can offer to the company, but also what kind of experience they can offer you. :>

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Gonna say good luck with this…you are likely to have zero interest in developing your game after spending a full day developing for someone else. You just won’t have any brain trust left over.

That not withstanding. it’s the safest route, at least insofar as having a job while developing games on the side.

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Well, you may be right. However, I won’t know until I get to that point. I guess there’s little I can do about it but continuing to work on my dream until I feel like I’ve lost all motivation. Maybe it sounds sad, but not for me. I already enjoy trying, so any amount of time or money invested is worth it, regardless of the outcome. If I ever feel like I have to chase another dream, it’s no big deal, I’m sure I could say I gave my best and enjoyed the journey :cowboy_hat_face:

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Hi Wender… I hope you still want to get some advices… And I’ll give you a perspective of a nearly 40y. old dude working as a programmer…

Just a bit context of my history…

I came from a country that had no real gaming market, but has a lot of IT. Still some people made the dream of becoming game devs… So I moved to Canada and studied game dev to switch my career… In the end, I was not able to do so, for a couple of reasons and that’s fine… I’m ok with that… but… I came to make some connections and got friends in the game market… so let’s break it down a bit…

If you want to make games, you won’t be able to do so while working for a game company. They own your ass, and they will put that on your contract. So in the end you will have to quit the company to make you own game.

Second of all… the game industry is under a lot of scrutiny recently… bad releases, unbelievable tight deadlines, an understandable but highly risky looking for a game as service, crunching with no overtime pay, layoffs here and there, and so on and so on…

You might want to keep going no matter what, and that’s fine… we all are entitle of our dreams and are free do pursue them as much as we want.

Or… you can go a different direction… work on something else that you also like, and give a decent pay… IT, Finances, Engineering, Health…whatever… and work on games on your own time…

Every career you choose will bring you stress, and a level of uncertainty, of course, but some will do that most than others…

I don’t work on the game industry and like I said, I’m fine with it… Sometimes I still have to crunch(but I get paid for that lol), I have my weekends off always, and I have my 4 weeks of vacation every year(looking to get my 5th week), and I get paid a good amount of money… Maybe even more than a Senior Game Developer, and my job is quite stable…

You also can go in fully indie like Ska Studios, Vlambeer, and others around there…

In the end… my suggestion would be to go outside game dev career… and just work on it as you go… you can learn a lot from forums and youtube…

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Most of the answers on this post say that it is better not to fully commit to gamedev and it saddens me a little bit, not gonna lie…

But still I am grateful for getting to read your honest opinions. I have this dream and I can’t help but trying to fullfill it. Therefore, learning that it may not be the dream life I am imagining is very helpful because it makes me mantain realistic expectations and think about what other things I could do with my life.

Also, despite reading that it’s very complicated to make a living out of gamedev, there’s a lot of people in this forum enjoying and sharing their experience, even though many of them do not make games professionally. Somehow, that comforts me.

As I said, I am still going to give it a try. Fortunatelly, I have an amazing environment that has my back in case I fail. I know that my family and friends are going to support me regardless of what I decide to do. Even if I try and then find myself unable to pay the rent, I could always go back to my parents’ house and try again through a different path.

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I think that is good. If it is in your heart and you chose not to pursue it, you would likely regret that more than trying and failing.

But also getting realistic expectations is super helpful. Otherwise, if you jumped in blindly the dissapointment of it not matching your expectations would be very crushing.

Good luck out there.

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