Other career options

Where should I go?

It’s gonna be May.

It’s gonna be a time I get a job? Well, I want more than just a job… because if I want a job I can just go to Amazon and work a warehouse. That’s not what I want. I want a career.

So far, I just need to upgrade my skills in coding, but not just get pigeonholed into it. I also did some classwork in UX design, so I would have to consider doing a little graphic design work even though I carry no graphic design degree.

Didn’t you consider doing photography as a second job?

The competition is just too cutthroat to do photography even as a side gig. I cannot expect to become a paid paparazzo overnight without going into serious debt. The aim right now is to enjoy photography without expecting any kind of payment. Perhaps a time will come when I want to do some gig work.

Will you be doing other things besides game development, like graphic design?

I do not plan to do graphic design as a career, as I have no training at an established school like Otis or Art Center Pasadena, and I am not willing to pay a hell of a lot of money to go to either of those schools even if I do well. I am going to, however, do a bit of graphic art, but only to make it supplement whatever I want to do - which is coding.

There is one thing I will not do: return to the same job that I did back when I was at my former worksite. There’s no market for Blu-ray Disc releases for movies. The software that is used to create them costs a fortune to license and the market for these “BD authors” as they are called, is getting smaller. BD movies use Java to run their menus - but the Java revision used in BD players is an old legacy revision. It’s not even recent Java SDKs.

Here in L.A., only a few production houses hire authors and I don’t see anyone hiring. Not only that, most of that authoring work is now sent to India (at least in the case for Deluxe and other companies) - and that means no opportunities here in L.A.

4K video is here already, and 8K isn’t far behind. Movies in 4K can be streamed and as broadband infrastructure gets better, no one will want to get a regular, standalone Blu-ray player anymore to watch them. 4K Blu-ray players are a small segment of the market. For most households, the only Blu-ray player that they have is the game console. Sony’s PS5 will have a 4K BD player, and so will Xbox Series X. Now, the Xbox One already had a 4K BD player, but the adoption rate is slow, and a key reason why Sony didn’t put one in the Pro PS4. Xbox One owners sometimes use the console to play 4K BD’s, but if there really was a market for 4K BD’s, BD’s in general should be selling briskly. (Most studios release BD releases with the 4K BD, HD BD, and a DVD in a bundle with a digital download code). But BD sales are trending down.

BD stand alone players do exist, but currently only LG, Panasonic, and Sony make them (Oppo and Samsung have quit this segment already), and these players already work as streaming boxes. I do not see LG in this segment for long, and depending how Sony does, I won’t be surprised if the PS5 will be the only Sony brand Blu-ray player you will be able to buy. Many of the 4K BD players cost around 200-300 (higher priced ones sell for 500), which is the price of a game console. Those people will simply save more money to get that or a better game console. Families these days don’t really watch a movie on only a traditional TV - they watch them on a TV, or a tablet, or smartphone. Movies are now streaming products. Higher priced UHD players offer 10-bit video and Dolby Vision support, but you need a TV that has 10-bit video support to take advantage, and they are out of the price range for many middle class families. Xbox Ones currently do not support any of those standards for disc playback yet (Dolby Vision support is for streaming video only right now for Xbox One), and there is no word if the Series X or the PS5 will support those video standards, if at all.

Some Xbox One owners have found that 4K BD playback tends to be more reliable with a traditional 4K BD player. But as of now, 4K BD traditional players are selling slowly and the install base for 4K BD players are dominated by Xbox Ones.

All of the authors I know left to other jobs that pay more or have a better worklife experience. Only a select few are still in the BD authoring world, and it’s getting smaller.

The fact of the matter: No one wants BD authors. I get more sad when QCers manage to get work even today, while authors don’t get anything. Project managers are still in demand, it is only dependent on what industry it is.

With the pandemic, I don’t see people buying optical media unless it is for video games. It’s dying.