My Kids Were Looking Forward to Playing My New Video Game. Then, I Got Laid Off.

It's normal for children to ask about what their parents do for work. But few people watch as their children actually become invested in it.

I’m open to running—and paying for!—more pitches at Crossplay, even from those without a byline. I’m more interested in life experience than work experience. Drop me an email. -pk

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One morning, I got the meeting invite: “Business Update, 10AM.”

It’s somewhere between an in-joke and a cliche in the tech industry. You get called to an all-hands meeting with an innocuous name, and the next thing you know you’re sharing gallows humor with your ex-colleagues in a bar. Just like that, our project full of passion and heart, a game called Everhaven and codenamed Dragon, was shuttered, months away from people being able to play it.

This was the third time I’d faced a mass layoff. I felt I could roll with it. However, this project, a fantasy RPG with elements of both Minecraft and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was different from previous cancelled games. Not only was I deeply invested in it, but so were my kids. 

I have an eight year-old daughter and a five year-old son, and both got into games in the last year. It’s been wonderful for me to share my hobby with them, even more so because, for once, the game I was working on was actually engaging for kids. Previous games I’d been a part of, like the grand strategy game about legacy and murder, Crusader Kings 3, were not thrilling to watch. 

Everhaven was an absolutely beautiful voxel-builder. It was aimed squarely at Minecraft players, both young and old. Because of that, parents on the team regularly played alongside our kids. 

Officially, this let us get feedback on the game we were making. But really, it was a chance to share what we do with our children. My kids got to see the game grow over the two years I worked on it. They went from having me read out character dialogue in my best bedtime stories voice, to hearing it performed by proper actors. Because I worked from home, they could always look over and see my character chipping away at the voxel world and riding around on an adorable wyvern mount.

Even though it was far from done, they loved to mess around with it, too, gleefully whacking baddies, grabbing treasure, and petting critters. It was the first time they had looked forward to a game being released, and they knew it was close to being done. They asked when they could see it “in a box” and what the game’s “real name” would be (Everhaven was met with mostly shrugs, sadly.) On the day of the layoffs, I first spoke to my wife. Soon after, I was talking to industry friends and updating my LinkedIn. What I couldn’t do was tell my kids. Having to explain that I was out of work and the game they’d seen so much of would disappear was more than I could bear.

I try not to lie outright to my kids, but I do dodge or avoid certain topics. 

Usually, I say it’s to make things easier for them. Often that overlaps with making things easier for me! Each day, they went to school and, as far as they knew, I was “working” at home. But once, we  were visiting a friend’s house, and my daughter overheard me discussing the situation with the other parent. She’s quick to jump into any topic that seems “adult” and I realized there was no getting away from telling her. I said that my job didn’t exist anymore. Her first question, heartbreakingly, was “are we going to run out of money?”

“No,” I said. This was more of a lie than I wanted it to be, but I figured we could do one tough conversation at a time.

With that anxiety settled, she jumped to the next obvious question. “What happens to Dragon?”

I told her it was gone. In her, I saw that mix of confusion and frustration I had been feeling. Later that day, I gave my son a version of the same conversation, simplified as best I could. He, too, was confused why I couldn’t keep working on the game, but he did implore me to make the next Pokémon game instead.

Don’t hold your breath, kiddo.

There was a fresh wave of sadness in telling my kids. I didn’t understand the whims of our corporate owners anymore than they did, so explaining the “actual” reasoning was beyond me. To them, something they liked had been snuffed out. Weeks later, my son asked, “Can we play Dragon?” I had to—again—tell him that it was gone. He’s that kind of kid; if he gets an answer he doesn’t like, he will just ask again. My daughter understands, and that’s worse in a way. She’s picky about games, so to see one that spoke to her get thrown out always makes me frustrated all over again.

In the end, it’s definitely me who had the most feelings. The kids have lots of distractions to fill the space that Everhaven might have. While they might miss the game, it’s me who wanted to watch them play through the stories I wrote. I’ll never get to see their reactions when they meet the character named after one of our bedtime story characters, or when they see my name in the credits. 

It’s those moments I’m mourning as much as the project and the job.

In the wake of the layoffs, some snippets of the game are now showing up on social media and art portfolios. It has generated a lot of cries of internet anguish and, most surprisingly, fan art.

It was wonderful to see an audience connecting with the world and being inspired by it, even though they’d never get the full experience. In the end, that feeling is what I’m trying to carry forward with my kids. 

For a while, we all got to enjoy “dad’s game”, even though we never got to have it in a box.

Alexander Newcombe is a narrative designer for games who is still currently looking for work. He most recently worked on Crusader Kings III and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. You can view Alexander’s portfolio at his website, alexnewcombe.com.