Andrea Saravia Perez, founder of Small Loan Studio, joined SlavConf to share her mission to support creatives in the video game industry. From her own experience, she was able to present some of the main issues in finding career opportunities and growing professionally for game developers.
After having gained some work experience and having been laid off, she began noticing some patterns which were impeding the career development of employees in the industry due to project cancellations, studio closures or NDAs preventing them from talking about the work they have done.
Andrea addressed what she believes is a cycle in the role application process. In the beginning of one’s professional path, it is essential to gain some experience, working on projects which are not under NDA to build a portfolio and then be able to land interviews for better roles. Unfortunately, many of them get rejected because they are not able to talk about the majority of their experience, which leads to a lot of talent loss in the industry:
“Small Loan Studio is a skills accelerator, created to allow developers to ship games they can talk about. It is a response to developers with industry experience unable to speak with authority on their knowledge, and as a means to offer mentorship through collaboration.”
Through collaboration, they scaled processes from AAA and various companies to an “indie size” and created games with hierarchy, company directories, responsibility and clarity in roles: “With the large size of Small Loan Studio members, we worked together to tell ambitious stories, with a big team”. They also promote a culture of constructive feedback, honesty and acknowledgment to streamline collaborations: “Basically, we don’t put up with toxicity or destructive criticism. We’re here to learn”.