Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The great video game exodus

gamasutra.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 149 posts

Re: The great video game exodus

#21

Post by backpropaganda »

jayd16 wrote: post #17
bdefore wrote: post #8

The article dabbles, but ultimately misses an opportunity to present the piece I want to read: that the ideal shape of a game development team is not unlike an early stage software startup. Remain small, take your time, stay healthy, and put some love into it. Recent years have birthed some real gems from teams of one, three, or single digits. In this category I'd vouch for Hollow Knight, Celeste, Ghost of a Tale, an…

>Put another way, there's an exodus from unwieldy large teams that lack responsibility and a sense of craft and ownership. Is there data for this? EA, Activision, Blizzard, Ubisoft etc seem to be doing fine with massive teams. The game industry seems to be moving with the rest of the entertainment industry. As technology progresses, the barrier to entry lowers and its easier for small teams to make things. Sure there…

Not all projects at EA, Activision, and so on, succeed. The success of these companies are dominated by a few successes, which also tend to be milking existing IPs without much innovation. Even so, the average developer at these companies is still stressed out, because of the Zipf's law nature of project success. That is, it's very likely the project they're working on is not doing so well and will not succeed, and thus, they're overworked, etc.

I'd say there's an exodus much like the web tech industry, a shift from behemoths like Microsoft and IBM to smaller startups like Uber, etc.

Re: The great video game exodus

#22

Post by kraig911 »

I think the video game industry is literally run like the movie industry except there is no union to help the people who make the actual magic happen unlike say the entertainment industry. I realize that some hate unions but some things on this world literally could not happen unless we respect people, their time, and their families. Some things are worth more than money and I"m grateful for the games I get to play. I wish there was a way to say give people in the gaming industry money, say grants, and artistic investment - I bet there are some great ideas out there that some burned out artist or developer will never get to realize because he got burned by a company who wants super solder 17...

I see these games coming out of other countries that are amazing and these studios seemed to have got grants and investment from the government i.e. HellBlade, , . Do we not do that here stateside? It's also unfortunate some of the most talented dev's I've met even quit CS field entirely after doing game development. Do video game creators get the same mental health services those in the entertainment unions get?

Re: The great video game exodus

#23

Post by jadei »

kraig911 wrote: post #22

I think the video game industry is literally run like the movie industry except there is no union to help the people who make the actual magic happen unlike say the entertainment industry. I realize that some hate unions but some things on this world literally could not happen unless we respect people, their time, and their families. Some things are worth more than money and I"m grateful for the games I get to play.…

Re: grants and investment from the government, after the debacle with 38 studios funded from Rhode Island I am sure many are very wary now.

Re: The great video game exodus

#24

Post by apatters »

georgeecollins wrote: post #14

I grew up in a time when no one thought there was a chance to have a job making video games. I remember before I finished college, someone from EA called me about a shareware game I made (distributed on a floppy! imagine). In those days EA was a small company. The guy was trying to see if I wanted a job and I didn't even think to ask. Later, in grad school, another small company, Activision put a poster advertising j…

Great comment, as a slight tangent this line stood out to me:

> There is probably something else I have never heard of happening right now which is what a young person ought to be doing.

The way you point out these special opportunities that existed every decade is very interesting. The common theme is an exciting new industry with a talent shortage. I guess mine was getting into programming at the dawn of the Internet.

But I have a lot of friends in their 20s, and no one seems to have found that thing--it might not exist for this generation which would be very concerning.

(The obvious answer would be that it's blockchain but I don't agree with that answer...)

Re: The great video game exodus

#25

Post by [deleted] »

Fej wrote: post #19

I believe that part of the problem is the attitude of major publishers towards game development. There is absolutely no consideration for the artistic value of their works - they will manipulate the end product, and the developers, in any way to maximize short-term profit at the cost of everything else. Take as an example - the current loot box (gambling) controversy. Publishers have pushed this mechanic to an extrem…

[deleted]

Re: The great video game exodus

#26

Post by vvanders »

justinhj wrote: post #13

My first job was bagging groceries in Safeway, and I remember vividly watching the minute hand on a big clock slowly tick around to the end of my shift. I was thinking, when I graduate university I don't want a job where I am always so bored I'm just wishing my life away so I can go home. I can honestly say after 25 years working on video games I have never once been bored. There is a vibrant industry out there which…

Easy to say, hard/impossible to do.

When you're paycheck to paycheck(which I was in gamedev, yay high col) "not crunching" isn't really a choice when you risk getting labeled "not a team player" and slow-rolled towards the door.

Re: The great video game exodus

#27

Post by phendrenad2 »

backpropaganda wrote: post #20
crazybit wrote: post #18

Supply and demand. Game developers: very sexy, easy to show off, has a (very) large supply of talent. Pay not bad, not good, work schedule very demanding. COBOL developer: extremely unsexy, almost don't want to admit it publicly. Tiny supply, relatively much larger demand. Pay very good. Work schedule very predictable, not demanding. Almost a vacation. Supply and demand. Ignore at your own peril.

Which areas do you think have large demand and low supply at the moment?

Ruby on Rails development.

Re: The great video game exodus

#28

Post by toasterlovin »

apatters wrote: post #24
georgeecollins wrote: post #14

I grew up in a time when no one thought there was a chance to have a job making video games. I remember before I finished college, someone from EA called me about a shareware game I made (distributed on a floppy! imagine). In those days EA was a small company. The guy was trying to see if I wanted a job and I didn't even think to ask. Later, in grad school, another small company, Activision put a poster advertising j…

Great comment, as a slight tangent this line stood out to me: > There is probably something else I have never heard of happening right now which is what a young person ought to be doing. The way you point out these special opportunities that existed every decade is very interesting. The common theme is an exciting new industry with a talent shortage. I guess mine was getting into programming at the dawn of the Intern…

Augmented reality and machine learning for autonomous machines (cars, drones, robots, etc).

Re: The great video game exodus

#29

Post by stevenwoo »

Fej wrote: post #19

I believe that part of the problem is the attitude of major publishers towards game development. There is absolutely no consideration for the artistic value of their works - they will manipulate the end product, and the developers, in any way to maximize short-term profit at the cost of everything else. Take as an example - the current loot box (gambling) controversy. Publishers have pushed this mechanic to an extrem…

Almost every worker/contributor in the movie/TV industry in North America is represented by a union/guild or is trying to get into one, there are non union projects/studios but those are in the minority.

Re: The great video game exodus

#30

Post by oppositelock »

justinhj wrote: post #13

My first job was bagging groceries in Safeway, and I remember vividly watching the minute hand on a big clock slowly tick around to the end of my shift. I was thinking, when I graduate university I don't want a job where I am always so bored I'm just wishing my life away so I can go home. I can honestly say after 25 years working on video games I have never once been bored. There is a vibrant industry out there which…

A long career is certainly possible, however, you will earn far less over that career, and see more stress than doing something less exciting. I still miss working on games, playing my own creation with music, graphics, game logic all coming together is the most rewarding thing I've done. Meanwhile, writing code which is judged by output in a console is much more boring, but much more rewarding in other ways. It certainly doesn't make you look at the clock, though, as there are interesting problems to solve everywhere.
Post reply on HN