Providing Clarity Amongst Uncertainty - Why Your Career Architecture is more important than ever!

Over the past two years, the games industry has experienced significant turbulence—studio closures, project cancellations, and tens of thousands of layoffs have disrupted the landscape. While the dust is beginning to settle, this volatility has left game studios facing a new and pressing challenge: retaining top talent in a highly competitive and ever-evolving market.

Whether a studio has successfully managed to avoid reducing their headcount or not, employee retention will be a hot topic of conversation. For a lot of people, that innate trust in their employer to provide job security may have whittled away regardless of whether they have been affected or if they are are classed as a "redundancy survivor". For studio leaders, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Employees are re-evaluating their trust in the companies they work for, and in a market where many have ‘stayed put’ due to uncertainty, the stabilising industry could bring a surge in turnover. Without clear pathways for growth, employees - especially those who survived the wave of layoffs - may start looking for opportunities elsewhere.

Every HR leader will know that actions, not just words, are essential to employee retention and one of the most effective ways to show your team that you are focusing on their career development is to have a strong career architecture.

The benefits of a strong career architecture

A Career Architecture, in it's essence, is the blueprint for career enhancement within your organisation. It’s more than just a hierarchy; it’s a roadmap that defines every role clearly, whether you're a level designer moving toward a lead position or a programmer seeking leadership roles. A comprehensive career architecture provides clarity to your accountabilities, lays out progression pathways, identifies key competencies for promotion, outlines leadership development opportunities, and demystifies salary bandings."

When implemented correctly, it becomes central to how you hire and how you review performance. It empowers managers with the confidence to have constructive review meetings with their team where they can provide clear objective feedback and and identify L&D needs for each individual. It allows for more objectivity in the decision-making process when it comes to promotions and pay-rises. By doing this you are able to foster a culture of internal mobility and promotion from within, furthering the examples that you are focused on your people and their development.

It also means you are able to hire more effectively by providing clarity to the competencies needed for each role. This helps eliminate bias and increases transparency for the candidates and their new potential team mates as well as promoting more evidence-based hiring. All of which will reduce the costs associated with recruitment in the long term.

Within game development, where projects can run for years, the benefits of investing in a strong career architecture aren’t just internal. A motivated, developing workforce leads to higher productivity, more creative innovation, and lower costs associated with rehiring. When developers feel they have a future with your studio, you gain a competitive advantage in an industry where talent is everything.

So why doesn't everyone do it?

One of the most common reasons studios shy away from implementing a career architecture is the perceived time and complexity. Building a system that covers all roles can feel overwhelming - especially for smaller studios. But consider the alternative: without a clear structure, managers may make inconsistent promotion decisions, leading to frustration and disengagement. The cost of not doing this can be even higher; lost talent, high turnover, and the financial drain of constant recruitment.

For studios that want to thrive in this next phase of industry recovery, building or refining a career architecture is no longer a 'nice to have' - it's essential. Whether you're starting from scratch or need help optimising an existing structure, I specialise in helping game studios create tailored career architectures that foster talent retention, clear career progression, and ultimately, long-term success for your business and team alike. The studios that invest in their people now will shape the future of the industry."

Andy Driver is a freelance talent consultant in the games industry. To discuss your studio's career architecture and how I can help, reach out to [email protected]