At the last BAFTA social,¹ during that part of any gamedev meet where everyone’s wandering around saying hello and trying to remember if you have or haven’t spoken to this person before, someone came up to me to chat. I did the usual: shit, do I actually know you, or do I just think I know you, to then get this question answered for me.

“I remember you,” he said, “because you had the funniest story about getting made redundant.”

I blanked for a second, and then laughed. And this was doubly hilarious to me, because I’d entirely forgot what happened. This was a whole year ago, when Supermassive were going through layoffs. Given that someone found it funny enough they remembered for that long after I’d told them, someone else would probably find it funny too. Here’s how it went.

yay

I’d taken two days off at the start of the week, and was spending those days at home. I’ve forgotten the specifics of why, if I was recovering from a long trip, just felt like it, but it doesn’t matter.

My routine, normally, would have me do my groceries on Sunday. For whatever reason (a reason that was probably why I’d taken the days off), this was being done on Monday instead. I’d woken up at a leisurely 10am, and spent my valuable morning time on my phone without leaving my sheets. My day was going to be busy, but unstressed. Chores in the afternoon, and meeting a friend in the evening.

I did commit a cardinal sin, in having Teams installed on my phone. But, I only kept it on there so I could keep up with the memes in the shitposting chat our team had. I didn’t give a shit if the project unravelled itself while I was gone, but if I couldn’t keep up with exactly what jokes we were running with when I next came to the standup I’d be in shambles.

That’s when, I start seeing messages in a very different tone than usual. As always happens, the side channel only the workers are in for shitposting quickly devolves into the “bitching about corporate” channel, occasionally peppered with memes people find funny. I ask what’s going on: a CEO-booked, compulsory, studio-wide meeting has been called over email. No information on what it could be, but expectations were already going for the worst outcome and there’s really no point teasing this out any longer. Supermassive were going through redundancies, and this was the announcement telling us so. I barely remember what was said in this meeting, joining on my phone, beyond the oddly oppressive pop up telling us our microphones and webcams were being suppressed. The only thing I remember is that HR would be in touch if our job was at risk, and then the meeting was over.

I hang up. I am still in my pyjamas and lying on my bed.

After venting about my ruined holiday in the shitpost channel, I continue lying there and consider what’s just happened. I might not have a job in a few weeks. This was my first industry role. No-one is hiring right now. The industry is fucked. This was always going to happen. I might not have a job in a few weeks.

So I think, well, I need to get groceries.

I was still on holiday, I kept telling myself. I was on holiday. I was on fucking holiday. I didn’t need to worry about this. Losing my job would be neatly sorted out when I got back. If Teams wasn’t on my phone I wouldn’t even know this was happening.

I, more in defiance than anything else, grabbed two bag for lifes,² yanked my trainers on, and went to Sainsburys. The walk from my house was one just long enough to run over every mistake you’ve made in your life up to this point, but not so long where you reach a nirvana of everything being okay.

And I kept running through what was facing me, internally processing the 5 stages of grief with a British stone-face, because God knows the Southerners would get scared if I opened my mouth. The thing is, we knew this was coming. With an NDA pressed into the back of my skull, I can’t divulge specifics, but we knew this was coming. I ran through those stages quite neatly, I thought, while I was tossing up if saving 50p on something going out of date was worth potential food poisoning.

My phone starts to ring. Annoyed, I put down both bags, and see it’s a number I don’t know. I answer, thinking it’s a spam caller, to then be met with my own name. Then I put two and two together. Then my job’s at risk. Then:

“There’s going to be a meeting giving you more information. We need you to come in.”

“Oh,” I say. “Okay.”

Whatever she says after this I don’t hear. I don’t even remember what time the meeting was. Some number-crunching part of my brain still riding the high of navigating the New York subway when I was eleven years old tells me that I have ten minutes to get to the office. Some more “okays”, some “sures”, and I say goodbye and hang up.

I remember I am stood in the middle of Sainsburys.

I was fortunate that I’d already got through my whole shopping list by that point, because if I had to reconcile getting halfway across Guildford on a time limit against finding a pack of cheese slices I think I would have just killed myself. And over cheese slices? Embarrassing.

I buy the groceries, and I say somehow, because I was using the bags as baskets to ferry my stuff over to the checkout instead of using actual baskets or a trolly because I never found out where those were stored and didn’t want to ask an employee earning minimum wage where they were because that just feels wrong and I’d look stupid, which then involves decanting a whole bag then recanting it as I scan through the pile and the fact I unironically say decanting and REcanting as a vestigial leftover from my middle class upbringing is probably why I feel like the devil whenever I speak to service workers, hence, somehow, and start making my way to the office. With two full bags of groceries. The only thing I remember from this walk was how raw my hands felt by the end of it.

Holding my access card with my teeth I stumble through 3 doors to the cinema room, fortunately on the first floor, and burst my way in as the meeting has already begun, a knife through the somber blanket set on the whole crowd, awkwardly getting caught on fibres as I shuffle my way to a seat right at the back.

There’s another dimension to me showing up as I am. Anyone who’s seen me at a dev meet knows I wear a specific style of clothes, which is known as Ouji fashion. I also wore this alt fashion to the office everyday. It was a completely normal affair to see me walk in, at a crisp 9:30, decked out head to toe in ATELIER BOZ to then sit down at a desk for 7 hours. My fashion was a natural extension of my presence.

Now, when I’m out to do a chore and not serve cunt, I forgo wearing it. I have an old pile of jeans and pre-transition t-shirts I rotate through. The logic of this is pretty simple; I’d like to not sweat through expensive garments when I can help it, and if I look like shit I’m more inclined to just get the thing done and go home.

So please understand how my coworkers must have felt, knowing me as the weird guy who looks like he stumbled out of the 1800s, seeing me show up, late, red in the face, fringe glistened with sweat, in clothes that many debated if I even owned, a top that managed to fit and not fit at the same time, with two full bags of groceries that are slowly collapsing under their own weight with the occasional pop and crush of plastic.

I knew how ridiculous this was. Everyone else knew how ridiculous this was. And this could not be acknowledged because we were watching three white men who made more than the rest of the room combined tell us that we might not be here in a month’s time. A whole sub-studio just… doesn’t exist. I have two full bags of groceries.

And I keep bringing up the groceries because my brain wouldn’t stop either. I was being told how 90 of us would be losing our jobs, with the undertone of needing to sort out my stupid fucking groceries. The plan was to work here for 5 years. It’s hot in the cinema. I can’t go back to the marketing industry after working in games. Those yoghurts need to go in the fridge. I won’t be able to pay rent next month. The butter’s going to melt.

We leave in about as high spirits as you imagine. We get told we can just go home whenever we want, but instead we run back to our desks to bitch and kvetch for the next half hour. “Why did you bring your groceries?” someone asks, finally breaking the spell.

“I was in Sainsburys,” was all I could really say.

Our usual banter and camaraderie, if anything amplified by distress, picks up. A moment later, the details of the layoff are leaked to journalists. The seniors and directors, veterans to the layoff cycle, are laying down advice and portfolio reviews for the juniors. Someone is already in contact with the IWGB. We’re collecting names and emails for unions. I felt a deep need to be useful.

I take out a packet of biscuits from a grocery bag and ask if anyone wants one. They do not.

At some point I decide to leave. I think it was someone else telling me that I was on holiday and shouldn’t be here that did it. I get home, flush with even more sweat, palms with deep impressions from the straps I kept twisting for more grip, dump the bags, and put the goddamn groceries in the goddamn fridge. After that I sit on the couch and stare at the TV that’s been broken since I moved in. After that I stare at my phone instead because colours were more appealing to me than a black void with a ghostly visage of my own face staring back at me.

And I could not tell you what brought me to this, because I do not remember the steps that led me there. All I know is that I was looking at a tab for the Guildford Odeon, and saw that Madame Web was showing in thirty minutes. So I stood up, my shoes still on, and went to watch Madame Web.

It just felt like the thing to do. Because, what else was I supposed to be doing? My whole life’s getting upended and I already had a hard time scraping by living in one of the most expensive places in the whole country. Like, fuck it, you know? I’ll just go watch Madame Web. I’ll just move back in with my parents or some shit. I can do that. I’m an adult and I can do whatever I want. I can go watch Madame Web. Fuck it.

And the movie was bad. I knew that going in and it was so wondrously bad. A solid -8/10.³ And in watching Madame Web, of all fucking things, I started to really dissect what I was feeling. I was at peace, almost euphoric, while being the angriest I’d felt in my entire life. I knew it was coming, and yet when it actually hits you in the face there’s no real amount of preparation that can predict what getting your nose broken feels like. When I saw stories of people being laid off, and all the posts and interviews from those who get shafted, I always wondered, as I do with most things, what’s really going on in their stomach; the stuff that won’t come out of their mouths. And now I was feeling it. All that to the backdrop of the worst thing I have ever seen on a big screen.

After leaving the cinema, I was in some weird delirium. A very “I could kill God and piss on his corpse” delirium, absolutely fueled by the indescribable blend of watching Madame Web and getting made redundant in a few weeks. Not the best state to be left alone to my own devices and absolute adult freedom. Fortunately, I am seeing my friend soon.

So I text them asking if they want to watch Madame Web. They agree.

Two hours later I’m watching Madame Web for the second time in 24 hours. Why did I ask them to do this? I dunno. It seemed funny. It was funny. My friend laughs as much as I do. The reality that I’m watching this stupid fucking movie again hits me at random points and it doesn’t even matter, because I could laugh at anything and probably hit some actual dogshit filmmaking by blind chance. Where is my spider.

The day peters out to little effect. We grab cheap food, I moan and yell about what’s happened, now only running on 50% adrenaline by volume instead of 99, feeling the kind of exhaustion after you spend a few hours swimming. We say goodbye, I head home, and flopped on my bed primed to enjoy my second day off. I don’t even remember the Tuesday so I can only guess what happened there. If I watched Madame Web again I have thoroughly blacked that out from my memory.

Is there a moral to this somewhere my subconscious slipped in? Fuck if I know. If anything, it might be a demonstration on how, even when the industry spits you out, there will never be a truly universal experience to working in games. How do you break in? Well, I recommend stumbling into a games degree because combining art and tech skills sounds like a good idea and you don’t really know what else you want to do, realise what you’re actually passionate about in the last half of the last year, rot, transition, rot a bit more, and then somehow find yourself in the company of a bunch of other weird transexuals making weird transexual games. That’s not really advice applicable to other people. How do you deal with the inevitable every game dev hits, of layoffs and no longer having a permanent future? Well, my way of doing that was spending twice as much as I should have on Madame Web tickets. Obviously this is forever-obsolete advice because Madame Web is never coming back to cinemas.

So, there. More so I never forget than anything else. That’s the story of me getting laid off in the middle of a Sainsburys. Also the story of how I watched Madame Web in cinemas twice in one day because what else was I going to do?