Several people in these comments are comparing the video game industry to the movie industry. I think the key difference is that the movie industry tends to value experience with everyone but the actors, with the exception of big name stars. I know lots of people in the movie industry, from set builders to producers, and they’ve all been working in the industry for years except for the actors and actresses. The video game industry doesn’t seem to value experience with the exception of a few big names and some developers with rare talents. Not a single one of the game devs I worked with 15 years ago are still in the game industry.
The great video game exodus
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Re: The great video game exodus
#52Building games and being over worked can’t possibly be worse than a soul sucking 40 hours as an equally underpaid enterprise dev. I’d rather be over worked but making something interesting rather than sitting in meetings all day barely writing any code and going home with no mental energy left and nothing to show for it.
In my experience, enterprise devs are not really underpaid (this could vary a lot depending on your geographical area, of course). I also don't find corporate jobs to be exhausting at all, but YMMV and it probably varies from person to person. I don't care sitting in meeting if I know that they will end in time; I'd rather be coding but I'm getting paid anyway.
Some years ago I had a hip, theoretically non-soul sucking, job (not video games, but still, a hip software company from my country). The hours were horrible and the pay wasn't that awesome. I now have a 8-to-4 corporate job and I love it. There is little stress; the technical side is a little outdated but still acceptable, and comfortable to work with; the pay is nice; the hours are sane; the managers are reasonable and planning works; and so on. Sleeping as much as I want every day, and not being overworked or stressed over my job, are awesome, underrated things.
The projects might not be super-awesome, but I learned a lot of time ago that if you want something fun to work on, your best bet is to look for it outside your job. That way, you stay in control: you work at your pace, you decide when to start or stop a new project, and in the case of software, you can spend time gold-plating projects to your liking.
Re: The great video game exodus
#53I 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 realize that some hate unions but some things on this world literally could not happen unless we respect people, their time, and their families. The cornerstone of the case against unions isn't that we should stop respecting people, it's that unions are often no longer the best way to accomplish that goal. Not to detract from early labor movements, the fights for basic workplace safety and overtime in the twentie…
Unions can be an important part of the commercial ecosystem but just like any other part, they get toxic if they're too powerful. They need to be well balanced against corporate interests to create a healthy and productive work environment.
Re: The great video game exodus
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing I observed (and in some real life non-gaming projects) is that crunch in the end is treated as inevitable and something that just happen. Not like a failure of planning, organization, estimation that should/could be fixed or at least improved. It seems to me that the slow start is predictable. That technical dept is predictable too. That one issue is with planning that ignores these repeated problems and do…
The problem here is that there is no incentive for the companies to do things reasonably, because as many people is saying in these comments, there is a virtually unlimited supply of young, exploitable workers. For any midsized or large company, the system is working as intended (small companies often have legitimate problems, though). For the workers, not so much; but again, the companies don't give a shit. There ar…
Is it working well? Even OP used the "but the majority of the less successful studios are stuck in this seemingly unbreakable cycle" expression. While I guess that similar dynamic can be found in successful studios, the focus here were less successful studios.
While the supply of exploitable young people is large, they leave industry after 5 years on average. I am willing to bet that they get more productive after few initial years of experience - but they leave pretty much as the benefits of it should kick in.
Then there is self-selection. Passionate dreamers are heavily over-represented in your pool. People who investigate before they do major decisions and people who based their decisions on more practical considerations underrepresented. To large extend, games are art and as such require that emotional side in their creators. However, work might be more effective when there is presence of the other type of personality - the people who will tell you openly that "feature is cool, but we should postpone it to dlc anyway".
Re: The great video game exodus
#55I 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 realize that some hate unions but some things on this world literally could not happen unless we respect people, their time, and their families. The cornerstone of the case against unions isn't that we should stop respecting people, it's that unions are often no longer the best way to accomplish that goal. Not to detract from early labor movements, the fights for basic workplace safety and overtime in the twentie…
"...we need to move those solutions into less partial laws and courts"
The laws are controlled by politicians whose campaign money comes from people whose interest is to exploit workers.
Re: The great video game exodus
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> someone standing up for your rights and asking for compensation to do it They sure would be awfully fine institutions if that's how they actually worked.
So how _does_ it actually work then?
Tried to address that a few comments up.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17218381
Sorry it's a wall of text. I suck at brevity.
In my defense it's a complex topic and I'm trying to credit some good points on both sides.
And ok, I was too flip in my last comment, frustrated that its parent seemed to completely ignore my main point. At their best, maybe some unions do still work that way.
Many don't though. Most blue collar guys I know found the teamsters especially abusive.
Separately, investigations into construction in New York invariably find its unions rife with mafia-ties and racketeering.
But there are some good cases out there too, I'm sure. I just think the best of both worlds is to incorporate fair practices into our legal structures, rather than create new centers of power.
Re: The great video game exodus
#57I 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…
You wouldn't say it's machine learning? Despite the daily "sky is falling, AI is dead" posts on HN, we've very suddenly (over a few years, faster than the home computer revolution by far!) gained the ability to spoon some of this deep learning 'secret sauce' on top of just about any problem of the form "map X to Y" with a fair chance of it 'just working', and it's accessible enough that individuals can get results that would have been impossible for a high end research lab ten years ago.
Just because strong AI hasn't sprung fully formed from a CNN yet, it doesn't mean there isn't a huge range of newly-tractable problems just waiting for someone to solve them.
Re: The great video game exodus
#58I 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 work in the game development all my life, and I will fight against unionizing with all that I have.
Unions, above all, help those on the lower part of the bell curve. They commoditize labor, introduce standard metrics, push towards mediocrity and destroy competition between individual contributors. I am now on a third week of crunch, without weekends, all to make it to the Steam sale; something that a union would fight against. But it's a crunch I'm highly motivated for, and one I will personally benefit from; a union would limit my ability to push forward and advance my career.
I can also negotiate quite well on my own behalf with employees. If I was in a union, I would, through involvement in collective negotiation, effectively share my strong negotiation position with other developers in the industry, bringing them forward and print me back. Why the hell would I do that?
Re: The great video game exodus
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it run like the movie industry? AFAIK in the movie industry few publishers and or studios actually have any production staff on hand. Instead what happens is a core team write and pitch a movie idea. Only after they've gotten funding and done preproduction then they hire contractors short term (1-3 months) to make the movie. In games most studios hire all the staff. They then have the issue that between projects 9…
It’s not run like the movie industry yet. But, gamedev managers have been trying to push it that way for well over a decade for exactly the reason you mentioned: It’s really hard to keep a large team busy enough to pay their own salaries all the time. Many people’s jobs are focused on early or late in the process (ex: concept art vs testers). Pipelining multiple games is the obvious solution, but keeping everything l…
Also companies have seen what has happened to contract VFX houses who have experienced an enormous race to the bottom and where the situation is even more exploitative than games. Which is not to say this won’t happen in games but that if it does it will more closely resemble that situation than more traditional movie roles protected by strong unions.
Re: The great video game exodus
#60I 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.…
Is it run like the movie industry? AFAIK in the movie industry few publishers and or studios actually have any production staff on hand. Instead what happens is a core team write and pitch a movie idea. Only after they've gotten funding and done preproduction then they hire contractors short term (1-3 months) to make the movie. In games most studios hire all the staff. They then have the issue that between projects 9…
The situation now is more like the old studio system - they broke down in the 60s or so, partly because of government anti-trust action (studios also owning theaters, etc.) and partly because of increasing unionization (that model makes it quite hard to switch jobs for better pay, especially when there are very few players).
I don't think the video game studio system is under that kind of pressure, but it also allows independent studios to function.
(I find the modern movie and TV industry similar to the tech world, where each movie is a startup. That's even how a lot of the business are structured - directors and writers put together a pitch, sell investors or production companies on it, and then form a company to produce the film.)