Thanks to everyone for the supportive messages. I have a LOT of thoughts I'll probably be composing erratically over the coming weeks. Most important info first: I'll be receiving one more paycheck from Otherside, and I've been given some severance, so I have some time.
Second, it wasn't just me affected. Three other people were let go yesterday, and two people were reduced to part-time. I've been told that I could be rehired once the company gets some more funding, but the timing on that is really hard to predict.
I'll be spending some time updating my resume, as well as finishing a portfolio piece for a bunch of design I actually did for Update 4 on UA. Hopefully I can get that done in several days. A couple of designers still at OSE generously said they'd work on my materials with me.
Others have already been digging up openings for me to apply to; apparently there's Facebook groups of developers that are "alumni" of particular studios, such as Irrational and Harmonix, and people have already passed our resumes around there, which I'm astoundingly grateful for
A surprising number of people came out of the woodwork once I mentioned I was laid off, and I'm very humbled by their help. The amount of solidarity I've been shown is very touching. It's a great example that I hope I'll be able to live up to someday.
As I'm sure you can understand, the amount of work I'm going to be putting towards the channel is probably going to drop off during the job hunt. As if it didn't take me long enough to put out videos.
I'm unsure about the approach I'll be taking for Level Streaming going forward, but the approach of ONLY working on the map during the stream was started with the assumption that I wouldn't need to look for work again. So, obviously, I need to finish it more quickly now.
I'm thinking of working on it as much as I can outside of job application time, and then using the Sunday streams as a way to showcase progress instead. I've also been thinking about stopping the streams, though I really don't want to.
We've also got a complication, in that I was using the laptop provided by work for a lot of my projects. I've been told I can pay for it, but OSE needs to wipe it first, since it had UA source files and Shock 3 stuff.
So for the time being I'm back on... my high school graduation laptop. What a beauty.
I also don't know what's deemed "acceptable" in terms of talking about the process of being laid off, but I want to talk a lot about it on here. The Playing Field kinda broadened into discussing game development as a whole, and layoffs are (regrettably) a part of the experience.
So, yeah, I'm probably going to be ruminating on this a lot for the next couple months. It's interesting, because I wanted to make a more personal video about the experience of having your job leech into your personal life, but decided not to do it a little while ago.
And now I want to do it again all of a sudden
Anyways I'm probably going to go see if I can find some poutine in Boston.
