One Year Out of the Trenches

Last Sunday marked one year since I left my job as a Game Designer at Infinity Ward. The recent anniversary has put me in a contemplative mood, as I reflect on the ways I’ve changed and grown. I can confidently say I’m much happier and healthier than I was a year ago, but the journey hasn’t been easy.

By the time I chose to leave there were many reasons to do so. But the common theme among these reasons was simply that I was burnt out. Burnt out from years of overwork, burnt out from contributing to a corporation whose values didn't align with my own, burnt out from making games that espoused politics I abhorred, and burnt out from staying in a role that didn’t suit my talents or ambitions for far too long.

To survive the burnout, I did what a lot of people do and adopted maladaptive coping mechanisms. My tools of choice were killing brain cells with copious amounts of weed and attempting to control my environment through isolation. Due to a misguided sense of obligation to stick around and an unwillingness to admit that I had taken a wrong turn, I lived contrary to my nature and did everything I could to numb the cognitive dissonance that resulted. When that proved ineffective, I tried to force the job to fit me and what I wanted out of it. I strained to juggle my assigned tasks with extra work that aligned with what I actually wanted to be doing — work that was frequently and understandably rejected, because it was neither asked for nor needed — until, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far, I finally snapped.

I’m a writer at heart. I always have been. But, for most of my life, undiagnosed ADHD convinced me I couldn’t write. As a teenager, I had already started dozens of writing projects, but couldn't finish any of them. I wasted hours agonizing over punctuation and word choice. So, when the time came to pick a college major, I pursued Computer Science. I thought programming would lead to a stable job, and I was good at it. But the real-world technical problems I encountered could never spark my interest. Instead, I found myself daydreaming about the characters and worlds I wanted to create.

Enter video games. My freshman year of college, I realized I could have the best of both worlds by designing games that combined my technical abilities with storytelling acumen and skip the whole problem with words entirely. This was 2009, when the industry wasn’t nearly as specialized as it is today, and game designers still had a large role in crafting the story of their games. The same year, my future boss Zied Rieke wrote the script for Modern Warfare 2 as the Lead Designer. I hadn’t even heard the term narrative designer. So, to give some credit and grace to my younger self, it was a reasonable compromise at the time.

*Cliffhanger (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2), written and scripted by Zied Rieke. Image credit: GameSpot.*

For years I relentlessly pursued game design, teaching myself the principles of design through YouTube videos of GDC talks and Gamasutra (now Game Developer) articles. In 2016, my obsession finally paid off and I landed my “dream job” as a Game Designer at Infinity Ward. And for a long time, I was truly just happy to be there and soak up all the knowledge I could about AAA game development.

But, as I grew more confident in my skills and tried to branch out into the narrative-heavy work I really wanted to be doing, I kept hitting brick walls. I was hired to design and script gameplay, not invent stories. And my attempts to do the latter, however strong my convictions, were imposing on the domain of those who were.

Around the same time I stumbled upon my ADHD diagnosis while pursuing an Autism diagnosis (which was also confirmed). This put my early abortive creations in a new light. I wasn’t bad at writing, I was just working with a handicap. I began to write again, starting with songs for their short length and easily replicable structures. I enrolled in Dr. Greg Buchanan’s Writing Interactive Academy Workshop and wrote a proof of concept for Professional Liars, a passion project about a punk band that I’m still making progress on. And then, in April 2023, I took a leap of faith and quit my job to pursue writing and narrative design.

The timing was less than ideal, to put it mildly. The industry was undergoing its most destructive year of layoffs in recent memory. This didn’t deter me. I was confident in my skills as a storyteller and believed my experience with AAA gameplay and narrative implementation would make me a valuable asset to any narrative team. But I was pursuing a career transition out of a highly technical design role into writing with no demonstrable body of finished work to showcase those skills. From a recruiter’s perspective, I was effectively starting from square one in a job market flooded with talented and experienced professionals.

*Visualization of video game industry layoffs, January 2023-2024. Image credit: PC Gamer.*

My plan was straightforward. I would take a couple of months to finish Professional Liars, then start sending out applications with my shiny new portfolio piece. I had (and, thankfully, still have) enough savings to keep me afloat during this time and could rely on my wife’s health insurance.

But, like all well-laid plans, it didn’t survive contact with reality.

Those coping mechanisms I’d picked up while at Infinity Ward turned out to be nearly impossible to put down, even after I removed the stressors that led to them. After a month of trying and failing to get my shit together, I realized I needed professional help. I underwent a lot (read: a LOT) of therapy, both individually and in groups, and did the work to really examine how and why I was sabotaging my own happiness.

Through therapy, I learned that I had programmed myself from a very young age to ask not for what I wanted, but for what I believed other people were willing to give – even if this was the exact opposite of what I wanted. I then blamed others for not seeing past my carefully constructed façade and lashed out in frustration when I was passed up for opportunities no one knew I was interested in. At the “best” of times I even had myself convinced of the façade. But in order to live authentically I had to admit I’d been wrong, something I was deeply afraid to do. In my mind, to be wrong was to fail, and failure was not an option.

This process of understanding took months. But over time, I began to get better. I developed a consistent writing routine, even though this meant taking a break from Professional Liars (a technically ambitious game) to publish The Mandela Effect (a more traditional work of interactive fiction) while the part of my brain that can code took time to heal from years of abuse. I started going outside and connecting with friends for the first time since the pandemic. I conquered my fears and played songs I wrote at open mics, including at the House of Blues in Anaheim for a crowd of Frank Turner fans (whose song “Try This At Home” inspired me to first pick up the guitar in 2016). I even took up volunteering at Wags & Walks, a local dog rescue, and learned I actually really like being active when it’s in service of furry friends.

*Me (left) performing my first open mic at Jameson’s Culver City, June 5, 2023. Photo credit:* *Justin Dyer*.

In short, I learned to “trust the process” and make the small, daily changes needed to get where I want to be, instead of expecting everything to happen at once.

The job hunt marched on. Despite landing interviews and walking away with positive feelings, my applications continued to end in rejection. So I enrolled in UCLA Extension’s Creative Writing Program to boost my skills and credibility, as well as give myself external deadlines for structure. Eventually, my hard work began to pay off. The magnanimous Xalavier Nelson, Jr. took a chance and vouched for me on my first two freelance writing contracts – something I will forever be grateful for. For the first time, I genuinely enjoy working and receiving the constructive feedback needed to improve.

So, what’s next?

I like the flexibility of writing freelance, although I don’t make enough to cover the bills just yet. But because my work is part-time, I can continue to build my skills with classes and work on my own projects – which, with luck, will someday generate income. And… I’m starting to explore a supplemental career working with dogs, which actually gives me energy to create instead of draining it.

While I would love to work at a studio again as a full-time writer, the opportunity to pursue two dreams at once excites me and gives me hope for a work-life balance I haven’t found in the games industry so far. And, until the fire consuming the industry dies down, getting creative with income streams might be necessary to provide the stability I need to pursue other life goals.

I don’t know if any artist ever truly feels like they’ve “arrived”. I know I still have a long way to go. But I finally feel like I’m on the right path, moving forward one step at a time. And that’s exactly where I want to be.