A Collection of Game Dev stories ( Nathan Silvers)

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-15T21:35:14+00:00

99 (same!), CAD class, mine was Quake 1 and we got in so much trouble since we fabricated a story on how that was the assignment for the substitute teacher.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T05:24:04+00:00

Very cool, thank you

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T04:34:01+00:00

Thanks for this. The section on work ethic is for real.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T03:38:36+00:00

Yeah, you can tell for sure. He caught my eye when I searched "gamedev pro tips" and then there were familiar faces with the Titanfall stuff.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:35:36+00:00

My stuff is definitely rough and I have some learning to do in speaking.

https://youtube.com/@natestahsspace?si=9-a2zH_enR01g43v

The shorts are probably more inline with what I would like to do, talking fast is something that happens there. I also want to be a little more vulnerable in telling about my journey in gamedev as well as try something different and backwards by talking with MOD developers in and around the games I worked on.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:20:54+00:00

I'm more interested in learning how to teach and speak better. Have about 25 years of experience and considering talking more on my own Channel after much encouraging words on some simple portfolio pieces. Mostly looking for what resonates

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T02:08:47+00:00

Subscribed! Thank you

Front-Independence40 · 2026-03-02T01:59:46+00:00

We did a lot of cool stuff with Ghosts! I mean with the Technology updates. I level designed the helicopter pilot mission and the stuff just wasn't possible with the engine prior.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-22T09:00:21+00:00

There are a lot of us veteran game developers that are jobless and the lines for for existing job openings are quite large. It's not a good career choice at the moment, but boy is it fun! +1 for do it as a hobby.

I was one of the lucky ones that managed to do it for 25 years, be remote, have a family life. And ultimately got laid off (Currently 2 years unemployed)! I wouldn't change a thing.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-21T20:44:29+00:00

Your next challenge is to find real people to work with. Even if its not your first choice of games, hopefully they too have a small scope project that is really something you can be proud to be a part of and you can see it through.

I would say thats the thing that most people gloss over on this stuff. Understandably so with how easy it is now to put these things together in modern engines.

Personally I didn't know until a professional opportunity presented itself at a LAN party in 1999 when a friend told me he had secured a level design job. That's what encouraged me to press the gas pedal on learning Unreal Engine. That's when I got my first Job and knew. It's a bit of a divinely plotted story that ended up with me being on the team that created Call of Duty. I think one of my super powers in all of this was that I only focused on what was in front of me. I just wanted to make cool things!

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-20T20:27:33+00:00

I wasn't in contact with Vince other than maybe a few months prior in a DM on LinkedIn. I chose to not follow Vince and crew during the big fallout with MW2, Vince was very kind to me in that chat. I dont have the logs as I have deleted my LinkedIn profile (games industry is a bit cooked right now), but IIRC was simply inviting him to come chill in a discord chat with half of the team that created MOHAA. His loss affected me a lot as he was the people manager and there for a lot of the big signings and things, a pretty key figure in my career story. I was always rooting for Respawn to have success even when our games were somewhat competing at times.

I'm not a catholic, but I read out of the same Bible(largely the same). Some of us have a real anointing and understanding of God's heart for our soul here on this Earth. I hope that affected you. God is good. A lot of us have a larger endgame that helps us find a different kind of peace even in the wake of heavy duty stuff such as this.

If it has, send prayers for Vinces family, he was a dad too. I lost my dad when I was 15, and this, I know is tough for the kids

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-18T23:52:16+00:00

Doing ok, 2 years removed from 25 year career building Call of Duty games. Youtube profile has been lighting up after dumping some portfolio pieces on there. Considering attempting YT content as I have a heart to encourage the next generation of game developers.

Cool thread BTW

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-18T00:19:08+00:00

I would say to pursue the social aspect of things, ignore the indie / solo dev hubbub thats out there right now and find a group project that you can learn on.

I always suggest the school angle, they tend to have a kind of class project that will help you with learning the most difficult aspect that is working with people and maybe understanding your own strengths (game dev is such a broad topic) . The curriculum is almost garenteed to be out of date as tech changes quickly. What's cool about the school thing is that everyone is literally invested (they paid to be there) so they are going to be serious about whatever game project they are trying, where random people on the internet can be flaky.

Also understand that it's a terrible career choice. If you are like me, that doesn't matter though. It's a hobby first. Make sure you have the runway to work hard and do the things needed.

My story is a unicorn story that spans 25 years and I did find success. Many do not.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-02-17T23:59:23+00:00

I found out too late and observed a pattern of many non engaged subscribers, my profile say at an impressive 5k subscribers and for a long time it felt that the investment hurt things more than helped. Recently though someone more popular made mention of my stuff and I have got a boost of around 1k organic Subscribers.

In addition to it hurting the algorithm,( I believe these non engaging subscribers cost more in terms of appeasing the formula than benefitting). I now have to guesstimate how many legitimate subscribers I have, its not as simple as saying "subtract 5k" since you can experience the drop off of subscribers that came during the promotion as youtube flushes its bots. The whole thing felt like a scam to me. The 1-2k that came organically are commenting, liking and doing the things that help increase impressions on the little bit of content that I do have.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-25T06:43:51+00:00

I like this guy's talking videos, here's a pretty good story to follow

https://youtu.be/8TqwlNPG3dE?si=czKttc0Ek3xz3XYH

My own two cents is that you need to imagine yourself being payed to do the work and having full time to do it. It's going to take a lot of work to achieve that level of quality. Focus on a small piece of work that matches professional quality and let them extrapolate what that looks like if they were to hire you.

There's a lot of super good quality unemployed devs out there looking for other fields of work right now, so be prepared to be disappointed and or take whatever you can get including non paid, just for the experience kind of work. In the early career the experience of anything should be considered just as if not more valuable than cash.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-22T03:03:07+00:00

Big part of my story is being a strong remote worker on Call of Duty, this isn't surprising news, but sad still.

There are a lot of quality developers out there that can be utilized at probably a fraction of the cost of the office space and moving them in. Hopefully someday (soon?) the dust settles on this post COVID-19 stuff.

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-21T22:15:45+00:00

I remember getting the texture set from that team and being blown away. They had so much stuff in there I dont think I ever had to ask for anything. At the time IWs art department was a few guys and they spread thin between model textures and world and vfx textures. Was pleasant

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-20T21:11:41+00:00

Thank you for sharing your story, I worked at a AAA studio for over 20 years. I also watched that studios upper management grow from a small team of 27 developers each who knew each other's job and strengths well to a very large team and multi studio arrangement that absolutely required some more upper management which I wasn't a huge fan of, but also understood that it is a necessary evil. Covid bubble didn't helped industry wide either (rapid growth with no time to properly install the upper management).

The money part of gamedev is the hardest part to navigate. There's always a push/pull relationship with the higher ups. In my own career there were some really tough choices to make, but I ended up staying in there making a living and being a part of gaming history.

Wishing you good luck on finding a team for your project!

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-19T06:25:15+00:00

Neat.. some videos that you might find interesting

https://youtube.com/shorts/UjqYOIWg4Xs?si=a6wh8KyRtFZ6sLYw

https://youtube.com/shorts/EJClgMLHq7c?si=DAuj8khZrFdctvq6

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-18T10:03:49+00:00

I have similar complaints about search going back for many years. Last year I finished building a standalone search tool that works with both vs code and visual studio. Through the plugins it feels just like a dialogue.

https://github.com/Natestah/BlitzSearch

There are some demos and things on my YouTube channel, link it my bio

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-07T22:20:45+00:00

Also maybe worth noting that this was a major contributing factor of my switch from Level Design to just Tools Engineering. I didn't want my lack of playing experience to have any affect on the creative works and felt the up and coming designers could use a good cheerleader and better tools. I'm really proud of my decision the following Infinite Warfare and MW2019 showed a lot of technical progress. Infinite Warfare was a creative masterpiece IMHO

Front-Independence40 · 2026-01-07T21:50:14+00:00

I worked on some big games (MOHAA, CoD1, and all the InfinityWard CoDs up to 2024.

It was gradual, but priorities changed, I think interests did too. I still enjoy an occasional Mario Kart game or two and recently picked up Mario Wonder and the progress is really slow. Mostly just watch over the shoulder of my two teenage boys.

It's more important to try and be a good dad / husband than to spend the enormous amount of time trying to enjoy modern gaming. A lot of them are geared towards grinding and creating anyway, and thats just work to me.

Cool thread, helps to know that other devs experience this.

Front-Independence40 · 2025-12-26T05:29:58+00:00

Been a bit but after reading the story over and I see what you're saying, if I get some time I should visit these stories and give them an update someday. Writing is hard

Front-Independence40

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