Folks struggling to make it as indies should probably read this: https://klangmag.co/lifers-dayjobbers-and-the-independently-wealthy-a-letter-to-a-former-student/
Also he only mentions rich kids and day jobbers, but there's also "has a spouse with a good job", "their parent died and left them just enough to get ahead" and "managed to pay off house so don't have rent"
I'm a Dead Mom Money type. I've met at least one other in indie. They went off to be an trad art person I think?
Mom wasn't rich, squarely middle class, but still. Leg up early on.
I'm also in a poly relationship, so some spouse-with-job advantages, and SkateBIRD (barely) let me pay off the house.
But I prob don't get to SkateBIRD without those other advantages so, etc etc. That's the point though. A small advantage early on can drastically alter the rest of a career. So if you're judging yourself against others in the field, it's worth figuring out what advantages (or "advantages") they had.
Jul 9, 2026, 6:44 PM@glassbottommeg combination dayjobber and supportive spouse haver here. Which led to a lucky break, a non-gamedev, unexpected side project blow up. It still took decades which is why I’m only now doing this as an old git but still, advantages were definitely had
@sinbad If it makes you feel any better, I was in my 30's before I even tried the indie thing. Kinda lost my 20's to, you know, being a dirtbag trashfire trans kid woo hoo.
@glassbottommeg Thanks, I needed to hear this. ✌️
I've been in the dayjobber category for a long time now and recently began struggling with that notion a lot, wondering if my potential career as an artist/musician has suffered too much due to it.
But there are no guarantees in life…I gotta keep finding a way to make both worlds work.
@jaredwhite Yep! I mean anyone you can think of who's made it as an artist was either rich to begin with (fuck those guys) (kinda) (but seriously) or, was right where you were and got a lucky break somehow that snowballed.
You're valid as an artist both before and after that happens, or even if it never happens.
@glassbottommeg It always puzzles me to read these stories saying things like "watching your hometown turn into the hip stomping ground for wealthy transplants" Isn't this New York City? One of the most expensive, elite cities in the nation, if not the world? Where the Stock Market is?? How old do you have to be to have lived before that happened?
@kertinker @glassbottommeg They say Brooklyn specifically not Manhattan? Not TOO long ago that was more of an outer borough that was "more" working class, but not surprising if even the surrounding regions are getting too crowded for regular people to thrive at this point.
@kevingranade @kertinker Yep. New York and other cities still had arts enclaves in the 90's. Certainly in the 80's. And a bunch of us were at least kids back then, so we were brought up on the idea that those enclaves existed and would welcome and support us and etc etc (now, not so much).
Now your artist enclaves are in like, uh, Kennewick, WA and shit. Places you've never heard of, that are small towns with lower costs of living, but big enough to support an arts scene.
@glassbottommeg @kevingranade @kertinker even in germany this is true (i say as the only artist i know who moved to what i will call the east german pampas)
but i think @neauoire has us all beat in terms of most stylish place to live
@lritter @kevingranade @kertinker @neauoire I mean @eniko ended up on a cool Mediterranean island, so I feel she deserves a mention too heh
Meanwhile I'm just hillfolk now. But it's nice up here. Very green. Big trees.
Jul 9, 2026, 11:20 PM@glassbottommeg @lritter @kevingranade @kertinker @neauoire oh no no no, Cyprus isn't one of the cool Mediterranean places, it's the *budget* Mediterranean place
Jul 9, 2026, 11:30 PM@eniko @glassbottommeg @lritter @kevingranade @kertinker @neauoire That is also permanently on the verge of being war zone. Very exciting.
@TomF @eniko @lritter @kevingranade @kertinker @neauoire eh. so was Thailand. Cool place. Lovely people. Great food!
@eniko @glassbottommeg @lritter
That just makes it cooler!
(Before posting this I checked in with the spirit of grunge and yep it's still alive, so my post checks out)
@eniko @glassbottommeg @lritter @kevingranade @kertinker @neauoire I considered moving to Cyprus from Malta! It definitely has more space, lower property prices and CoL, and more good universities. It probably has better alt culture too.
@glassbottommeg @kevingranade @kertinker
If I understand it, several parts of New York in the 80s were bordering on slums and could be genuinely unsafe. To most people they were just as unattractive as your small town example is to you today.
We romanticize struggling artists, but that was always happening in places so bad that nobody but day laborers, drunks and penniless art students would consider living or working there.
Jul 10, 2026, 6:09 AM@glassbottommeg @kevingranade @kertinker wait seriously fucken Kennewick?
(I've played Kennewick. Also Richland. Not Pasco, tho'. Fuck Pasco. xD )
@moira @glassbottommeg @kevingranade @kertinker Richland FTW!
@arclight @moira @kevingranade @kertinker to be fair, I pulled Kennewick sort of out of a hat. I was down at Tri-cities with my partner and I found this hipster as fuck coffee shop that I just KNOW was core to a local arts scene because, it had the vibe, but I can't remember which fucking one of the specific towns it was actually in. 😭
But it was very much "oh damn if I lived in this neighborhood I'd be here all the fuckin time"
@glassbottommeg @arclight @moira @kertinker the Milwaukee area had some really hot stuff going on when I was there about 15 years ago.
Jul 10, 2026, 11:02 PM@glassbottommeg @arclight @kevingranade @kertinker ...I think I know that coffee shop and I think it actually is in Kennewick
but don't hold me to it
but I think it is xD
(or I'm thinking of a completely different one from like seven or eight years ago, right before the Plague)
@moira @arclight @kevingranade @kertinker same
It was like uh, a converted train station? Bus station maybe? Some cool old building they'd repurposed. I think it had a lot of brick.
Jul 11, 2026, 12:02 AM@glassbottommeg @arclight @kevingranade @kertinker yeah i think that's it :D
amazing it must have artist/musician magnetic powers
Jul 9, 2026, 5:05 PM@glassbottommeg I'm hoping to reach the "don't have rent" spot because having a spouse with good job is not doing much in this economy anymore and my day job does not like if I make games on my free time
Jul 9, 2026, 11:34 PM@glassbottommeg "...wealthy transplants from the Midwest" [record scratch sound] what?!! since when did midwesterners have money?!?!
Jul 9, 2026, 11:53 PM@glassbottommeg he says he can only keep it so real in the classroom, but reading through this i'm remembering that my advisor for my Studio Art was pretty clear that our degrees weren't going to lead to lucrative careers, that we'd have to have gone to a much more prestigious school for that, and that building a successful career as an artist would take some very creative business thinking and/or extreme lifestyle adjustments neither of which were skills we'd learn in the art department
Jul 9, 2026, 11:55 PM@glassbottommeg i mean, i think we all knew nobody was going to be waiting to pay us to paint oil paintings, but i appreciate that he was honest about this in the moment rather than after we graduated
@aeva @glassbottommeg The GameDev course I took ~25 years ago was not like this, but it was owned by a dude who had a mid tier studio in the same building and wanted a pipeline for cheap labour.
Maybe as a product of that pipeline I shouldn't complain, but yeah, I think five of us from that class found employment and at least two of those five only lasted a couple of years.
Jul 10, 2026, 8:15 AM@glassbottommeg
Also, this, but with politicians...
@glassbottommeg this is a great thread. I came into uni lecturing after a period in the music scene/biz. I'd enjoyed at least some support and £$ but I'd already seen how "posh" the UK biz was. I wasn't built for the selfish careerism so when I began to teach creative digital media I always tried to be truthful about creative industry money. Some of the students did get jobs in film and gaming but most did not. I referred to these and similar courses as vanity degrees.