Can game job ad data foreshadow major release delays?
Surfacing the utility one of the gaming industry’s most under-utilised datasets.
The global video game industry is surprisingly flush with data. There are charts that measure the hype of games on Steam, monthly trackers of most-played games, and financial reports and sales — whenever they leak — from the major gaming companies.
It’s not all serious stats either. Last year Larian Studios, the makers of Baldur's Gate 3, announced that players spent a grand combined total of 88 years in its character creator on the game's opening weekend and then proceeded to lambast them for spending so much time making dull generic fantasy avatars.
So in an industry attuned to figures, how hard is it to gain recognition for just one more set of numbers? That question is at the heart of Colin Macdonald's work at Games Job Live, an arguably under-utilised dataset that tracks job vacancies in the game development industry.
In economics, job vacancy data is used to measure the strength of an industry or a country's economy. In the games industry, however, Macdonald believes it's a bellwether for training requirements and career choices for developers. Its greatest sell, however, is that it can provide additional insight into a studio's movements around a new game release.
Changes in a developer's hiring habits on a macro level can hint at a change of direction or even a delay for a major game. This is in an industry where all major game studio movements are major stories.
"I wouldn't be betting my house on release schedule changes based on jobs data alone," Macdonald says.
"However, certainly in hindsight we've seen layoffs, acquisitions, and release date changes all seem to be the reason behind some big movements in the jobs data but which we couldn't explain at the time."
There's no doubt that this is the most interesting application of the dataset, as a rare forecast into an industry that rarely gives anything away ahead of time. However, Macdonald places a stronger emphasis on the data's applications for labour trends in the games development industry.
"By collecting and categorising jobs data over time, this resource reveals evolving trends that are highly relevant to the games industry," he says.
"This insight enables game studios to better understand the labour market, adjust training programs to meet emerging demands, and helps education providers align their offerings with industry needs. Additionally, regional and central governments can make informed decisions on sector support and skills gap initiatives." The only limiting factor for the data, and perhaps the core reason why it isn't more broadly used, is its reach.
Currently Games Job Live's dataset only covers four countries: the UK, Australia, France and Belgium. It hosts a handful of US listings, but those are largely from UK-based game developers with exposure to that market.
So what does Game Jobs Live data say about Australia's game development industry?
As Infinite Lives covered earlier, Macdonald flew down to Australia last month for the Game Connect Asia Pacific Conference to present on three years of local data. Here are some of the latest report's findings:
Australia has largely buffered the bulk of redundancies — now reportedly totalling over 14,000 globally this year — due to the majority of our gaming industry being indie-focused. Macdonald explains that the UK is more exposed to this as most of its game development industry is focused on AAA games.
Most developers are looking for "experienced" talent to work on games, suggesting both a shortage and a requirement for larger developers to train existing talent internally into roles as opposed to trying to hire for experience.
Coders are always in demand, but compared to the UK, the Australian games industry has a healthy appetite for art specialists. Again, this checks out as art style can make or break indie games.
What do you think of Game Jobs Live data? Or just the use of data in the games industry? Let me know in the comments below.
What I'm Playing: Alan Wake 2, Night Springs and The Lake House expansion
Blasphemous I know, but when I played the original 2010 Alan Wake for the first time game over a year ago, I bounced off it in less than 90 minutes. The game almost has a cult following tied to it, but it just didn't catch me.
Playing as an aggrandising author, self-narrating his experience through a hellscape didn't intrigue me at all. And like most shooter titles, it hadn't aged that well.
The sequel, however, is an entirely different story. Yes, there's still a lot of self-narration. But the mechanics are solid, and the storytelling — a lot of it done through live-acted cutscenes — is top-notch.
Alan Wake 2's rock musical segment, where the entire plot of the Alan Wake saga is transposed into a live-acted and choreographed musical, will possibly go down as one of my most memorable moments in gaming. (This was later performed live at the 2023 Game Awards).
So I leapt at the chance to play more of this game, and of course its complete set of downloadable add-ons arrived just before Halloween. Night Springs landed a few months earlier, but I can confirm that it was well worth waiting for The Lake House to arrive before taking the plunge. So let's break down both.
Night Springs is essentially a video game version of The Twilight Zone (or for those not familiar with that, similar to Marvel's What If series). It's three smaller stories based on characters in the Remedy universe of games — mainly Control and Alan Wake — that explore funky hypothetical situations.
Each of the three games leverages Alan Wake 2's mechanics but takes it in a new direction. The trio of storylines are interesting, not too difficult to complete, and there are some cool mechanics bolted into each. But given each is less than an hour, by the time you get into the swing of them they are already over.
The real prize of this package, however, is The Lake House. It loops in with the main Alan Wake 2 story, following the path of Federal Bureau of Control agent Kiran Estevez, ahead of your encounter with her in the main game.
She's investigating a Control facility, The Lake House, that has randomly gone dark. To catch you up on the lore, Federal Bureau of Control is a US government agency that essentially researches and polices paranormal activity. It's got all the hilarious tropes and politics of the public service, but with a backdrop of horror. For instance: Lake House's admin chief mandates that all six-digit PC codes change daily and not use birthdays or anniversaries for security reasons. Several that you discover are in fact variations of both dates or are "123456" in protest of this.
It won't surprise you to hear that the lead researchers at The Lake House, an ambitious married couple, went too far in their investigations and experiments trying to outdo each other, and it becomes Estevez's job to clean up their mess.
Most horror games revolve around the protagonist encountering horrifying situations for the first time. Estevez, however, is a trained agent of the Federal Bureau of Control — handling the supernatural is her day job. So her take on everything is fascinating.
"Remember your training. Six deep breaths," she says, as she steadies herself for the next encounter. Every so often she'll snipe at the game's lore and multiverse logic. "More shifting geometry... great," she says, regarding the game's many maze-like areas. You can't help but feel like Estevez is hanging out for her pension. But it's a great subversion of what you encounter from protagonists in other horror titles. At times it feels like she’s more annoyed than scared.
Both add-on, like the main game, are excellently voice-acted and incredibly rich in storytelling. They also come bundled with banger music tracks that play when the credits roll. Fair warning: the Night Springs track is an absolute earworm and will occupy a place in your head after one listen.
Available on: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, GeForce Now, Microsoft Windows
Worth trying if you like: Alan Wake 2 and want more, the recent Silent Hill 2 remake, Resident Evil series.
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Interesting topic! I will admit it is not something I’ve ever considered, and appreciate the graphs comparing AUS and UK.
When it comes to BG3 - I don’t have the patience to spend much time with character creators, lol. Great reporting as always!