Ubisoft's Game Developer 'Limbo'

- it's hard to invest all your self into a "new project prototype"/"quick indie game"/... because: you totally don't know how much time you have (1 day? half year?) till you're "hired back"/"given new work"; and also there's huge probability the corporation will totally ignore your result however awesome it is, and at the same time you can't legally take it away and reanimate on your own because it's company property (done on company time). So, there's a strong feeling you might pour lots of hard work into project doomed to stupid failure and done on totally unpredictable schedule.

- you start to have feelings of "I'm worthless -- nobody needs me" -- because that's actually the truth: nobody needs you (at this moment - but maybe longer? maybe that's an allusion?). Also, in consequence, you start to lose confidence and trust to others: you were so strongly needed just days before (in the intensive project while you were "fully hired"), but then they threw you away so quickly and lightly... so were they lying from the beginning and did never really need you? or maybe you only thought you are good but are poor and they were relieved to get rid of you? think, why did they choose to get rid of you, not this other guy? also, why they didn't tell you anything straight in your face? And then after all of this, when living in this official "limbo", you're 100% surrounded by a band of similar "pseudo-loosers-maybe-not-really-but-often-feeling-so", many of whom feel similarly, resulting in a self-reinforcing echo chamber... (not to say the article notes that the building itself is already depressing...)

- A side note, for a partially different situation: (warning: stream of consciousness coming; sorry, don't have this analyzed well yet): when you're in an unofficial "interproject nothing to do", there are also two additional problems: one is, that it's unofficial; officially the company and manager expect you To Do Something, but they don't have time to give you something concrete, or give you crap looking totally like "nobody really needs it, but you'll have something to do". The second one is, that your schedule is even more unpredictable, because however long it spans eventually (even more than half a year), every minute you know they might just come and give you some serious work (fresh bug, or some longer project) and dump whatever "prototype" you were doing immediately. Finally, now I realized your prioritization also gets partially botched, because whatever crappy work you were given as "important" before, something slightly more important may come and show that the previous thing was in fact just pseudo-important. That said, you can try to fight to retain consciousness and self-confidence, but it is really not trivial, and there are ways in which this situation can be depressing. Not to say it's 100% so (for some time this can feel like vacation, opportunities for learning, etc, etc), but the advantages were already listed in other comments, so I wanted to just show the disadvantages here.

And just to make it clear, regarding suggestion of "people who don't deal well under self-direction", I totally can, have loads of free-time hobby projects and entertainments (i.e. out of work), managed to have some of them published and open sourced, also did some freelancing gigs. So, for me this argument seems totally irrelevant.

edit: also, what started to interest me now, after reading the article and putting down my thoughts, that I don't really know, and am very curious, how this situation could be improved? because I believe its existence is rather unavoidable; I suppose in every one programming job there are more or less explicit interproject periods. (Or aren't they?) edit2: I mean, improved by the management guys / boss / company owner.

The description of "interproject" sounds like my dream job (well, apart from the lighting). Anyone that finds themselves in that position, and then wastng it by doing nothing, well, those people would by high on my list for firing if I was management of Ubisoft. Maybe that's the point, maybe this is a test to see if they actually want to retain the employee or not. You would have to suspect that the people that find themselves in interproject are already not the best performers, who would have already been poached to participate on other projects, so this is a way of winnowing the herd a bit maybe?

>> Programmers and project managers, for example, are often high in demand within the studio, and if they're sent to interproject, they could wind up leaving after just a few weeks. ... But other employees said they spent months and months in interproject, unsuccessfully looking for new gigs within the company, before they were finally let go.

I suspect there's a lot of overlap between the types of people who see free time as a productive opportunity and the people who are valuable enough to get snapped back up quickly and vice versa.

That 'career vector limbo' is more of an anomaly corporate credit conditions that are very favorable in that region. It distorts market salary conditions so much so that they are willing to poach other bodies to ship them to Quebec.

I am not surprised at all to see this story posted.

Too much time in limbo would be bad thing, just like unemployment. However, paid limbo while you can look for job still beats being really unemployed, so again, perk.

Then suddenly you essentially tell them: go make some cool stuff, or you'll probably be fired. Nobody's going to tell you what that cool stuff is, though; figure it out yourself.

Some people will thrive in that environment. But for most, it's just going to ratchet up the stress, especially since they're coming in burnt-out. Most working for a big company do it because they work better in an environment where they're told what to do. The path to success is crystal clear.

IMO, interproject should be all about burn-out prevention. The job path for video game developers is fairly standard. You spend your 20s developing video games, and then you get married and get a real job: twice the pay, half the hours. Interproject could keep those employees in Ubisoft rather than forcing them out.

P.S. By married, I mean "mortgage and a baby". Very few people in Quebec actually get married.

They're a reason they're called "meat sellers".

I don't get the motivation at working at Ubisoft. They're about blockbusters, about series, etc

Sure, Assassin's Creed is very interesting, but it's more of a movie production than a game.

Looks like you would get a lot of crunch time and work on very hard things for a (slight) financial gain and your name on the credits.

That behavior sounds like it would lead you into getting laid off as often as not. Ubisoft clearly expects you to be proactive in finding projects.

That behavior sounds like it would lead you into getting laid off as often as not.

One morning late last year, not long after Guillaume, a developer at Ubisoft Montreal, had finished working on his newest game, he was told he'd be moving offices.

Guillaumewho asked that I not use his real name for this storysoon found himself on the third floor of one of Ubisoft's buildings in downtown Montreal.

For the days, weeks, or maybe even months to come, they were in "limbo," as Guillaume put it.

Call it Video Game Developer Purgatory.

But as each person finishes his or her role on a game, there won't always be new positions or projects open just yet.

So instead of just laying off the ones who can't be placed on new teams, Ubisoft sends them to limbo.

Though I wasn't able to talk to anyone who had a positive experience in Ubisoft's game developer limbo, it certainly seems better for employees than mass layoffs.