Passion vs professionalism

Read a couple of job posting announcements in game dev, and you will see that in most of them the employer is looking for people with a passion for computer games. It sounds very tempting, romantic and optimistic. The announcements tell you how much interesting things are being done in the company, how enthusiastic the games are for its employees - and now they are looking for their fellow colleagues. “Wow!” - a young, naive reader tells himself - “I have a huge passion for games! This job is for me! ”

The truth is that the ads are formulated to lure into the company of young and innocent people with glowing eyes who just love the game. Moreover, a significant number of companies in game development generally exist only because they manage to lure such people to themselves. Of course, ideally, they want to get a super-professional, with experience and glowing eyes of a novice. But in nature there is no such beast. Either you are new or pro, but not both.

The requirement of “passion” is what allows an employer to be pushed around by employees. Your passion implies consent to work overtime and for ridiculous money, which the infamous gamedev industry is notorious for. A great many vacancy announcements emphasize the obligatory love of games. Very few honestly describe all the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed work. Try to search for jobs in gamedev social details. and honey. insurance, vacation conditions, at least some benefits for the family of the employee. The results are depressing. And all because the company-employer is looking for a young man, a man, without a family, with a passion for games and, ideally, not at all ill or in need of vacation.

The results of the publication of such vacancies lead to damage both for people interested in this work and for the HR departments of companies forced to rake the rubble of resumes sent from people who love games, but have no idea about programming, design, etc. There are really a lot of such people, they have hopes that all the dozens of games they have passed already make them a valuable developer in game development, but this is certainly not the case.
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Let's now talk about why passion can really come in handy and why not. Passion is a fire burning inside, it is the highest form of emotion, it is the power of great power. In extreme manifestations, this is just an obsession, and here, of course, there is already absolutely nothing good. Of course, passion can be contained, you can even cultivate it in yourself intentionally. But let's recognize right away - a passion for something does not automatically make you talented or productive in this.

Art requires passion. Real art must come from the heart and the author must passionately believe in what he does. Anyone who tries to create art in indifference to the result - just a dirty deceiver. Well, besides, art requires passion because it is sometimes even worse to pay for gamedev :). But after all, what's the trouble - there is no art in most game devs. For each "creator" that generates ideas for the game of his dreams, there are 200 hard workers, these very ideas embodying up to the stage of the product being sold.

Peter Molyneux is widely known as the creator of quality games, but let's face it - he is not the one who wrote the code or drew models. Most people in the industry do not have the ability to create, do not have a choice over what to work. The company says “we are releasing new races by the beginning of 2014 and you will be making wheels and mufflers in them”. You can do it, and you can quit - that's the whole choice. There are so many stupid monkey jobs in game devs.

There is one more trouble with passion. Since this is a pure, unstoppable emotion, it is not a fact that it will harmoniously coexist with the other qualities of a person. If my passion tells me to do the game in a certain way, and the producer's passion dictates a different path - a collision is inevitable. Games are not films where the personality of the director alone determines the path of development of the created product. Games are created by joint efforts of people, each of whom considers himself to be a creator to some extent, the work requires compromises and diplomacy.

How can you keep all this burning enthusiasm in yourself when your position requires a lot of monotonous, routine work, a lot of compromises and concessions? The fact is that you do not have to do this. When the passion goes out, what leads you day after day along the way to the result is called professionalism.

Professionalism is a combination of factors. One of them is the desire to adequately fulfill its part of the work, because if an employer adequately rewards your work, you want to meet his expectations. Another - the desire to look decent to the consumer. A player is a person who will use your product, judge it, enjoy it. Well, in the end, it is he who ultimately pays for your work. Another - and probably the most significant factor - the desire to do their job well for their own sake, to be proud of themselves.

Professionalism is the knowledge of your craft, the ability to do it well and be proud of the result, even if you yourself would never have bought the resulting game. As the game market is continuously expanding, fewer and fewer buyers will have tastes and interests similar to developers. Few of the game developers are old ladies or little girls, but these groups of people also sometimes don't mind playing games, which means we should be able to create a suitable product for them, not so similar to us, just like we do , creating something like Gears of War for people very similar to us.

I recently consulted one important “game” being developed in the Netherlands. It was designed to train future surgeons in a slightly more fun way than standard training programs do. The game approach retained the attention of the students better, better trained the coordination of movements (which is very important for the future surgeon). In addition, the company-developer wanted to release this product (possibly with modifications), as a real game for the general public (for which he hired me). I myself did not see the point in this and would never play such a game. But what of it? I was hired to do some work, and not to express opinions about the feasibility of product release. And I did it.

I often heard from many people phrases like "I would never work on a project that I don’t feel passion for." It sounds very nice, but the more the project becomes, the less people in it can boast of such luxury. All the rest is driven by professionalism.

I worked for many years in the field of creating sports simulators. They have never been, and even now are not my favorite kind of games. Once I started this work, because it was a huge step forward compared to my previous work - I moved to a well-known company, to an excellent team. I found a niche in which my talents have significantly improved the product being developed in the area for which I was responsible. Was I passionate about my work? Not. I worked out of professionalism, I tried to do my job honestly and well. I discovered a whole range of ways to make a sports game better , and I was very happy to know that many players consider our game to be the best on the market.

Personally, I would prefer to hire a calm professional, rather than a passionate person. A professional will do his job well, in any case, a fan in passion can work day and night, give a bunch of ideas, but it’s not at all a fact that at the end of his work you will get at least something practical. I would prefer a person who stably works in any genre to a narrowly focused genius of a certain type of games, who tomorrow will refuse to work on something that does not cause him positive emotions.

Passion and professionalism are not mutually exclusive. One of the best examples of their connection was Vincent Van Gogh. There are many works on the psychoanalysis of his paintings from any upstart psychologists: “his creations are so distinctive and original, because he was crazy” and so on. But Van Gogh was not only passionate and insane. If you read his letters, you will see that he was a stupid man with a good school in the background and a significant part of his style was an analysis of the ideas of other creators. His passion drove him forward, even when no one bought his work, but his professionalism did not allow him to sacrifice quality on this path. As for his madness, it didn’t help his works at all to get better - on the contrary, the attacks prevented him from drawing, and, if his works were filled with expression, it was not due to his illness, but in spite of it.

I think it's time to introduce a moratorium on the publication of vacancies with the phrases "a person passionately in love with computer games is required." It sounds cool, but it means only that they will pay little for this job and demand a lot, which in the end will come out sideways for both the employee and the company. Passion does not guarantee talent, quality or discipline. Abilities, pride, organization, knowledge, communication skills are much more important than just craving for games.