121–130 of 505 posts
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And so you kill the dog and get another. People who want to make games are not in short supply.
Software engineering for video games is pretty darn complicated. Surely it must be hard to get hold of the next John Carmack or at least someone remotely close to that. Is demand for good talent really filled here?
> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few 'passion' driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten…
By restricting the supply of talent, thus artificially driving up wages, but at the same time keeping a lot of people from being able to pursue their dream.
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>They should grow a spine and say no to ridiculous work conditions. YES! You're absolutely right! > They don’t need to unionize. Err... Why on earth not? That would literally be the definition of growing a spine and saying no to ridiculous work conditions but also having it be effective.
I probably jumped the gun on the unionization part. I don’t know a lot about it but my impression of unions is not so bright. Maybe my ignorance is showing with that regard
Back on topic, I think unions are like anything else; if they are not well managed/maintained, they can become top heavy and easily corrupted. The key (much like any other organization) is consistent involvement from membership to keep the top honest... and move leaders along that don't have the organization's best interest at the forefront.
While unionization is the formalized structure of collective bargaining, there is nothing keeping these individuals away from collective bargaining without forming an official union to do so.
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In a civilised society, it would be illegal for an employer to behave like that. (Yes, I know, I'm imposing my view of what it would mean to be "civilised", and not everyone will agree.)
There are plenty of countries where all employers are required to give certain notice, and you can't suddenly fire someone. It is outrageous that your ability to eat and pay rent can be taken away with zero notice in America.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so you kill the dog and get another. People who want to make games are not in short supply.
Software engineering for video games is pretty darn complicated. Surely it must be hard to get hold of the next John Carmack or at least someone remotely close to that. Is demand for good talent really filled here?
Game developers let themselves be exploited with low pay and unpaid overtime. They should grow a spine and say no to ridiculous work conditions. I am tired of hearing about it. They don’t need to unionize, they need to realize that they have a unique and valuable skill set. If we are talking specifically about programmers, we have the fortunate leverage to tell our employers to go piss up a rope with the weekly job o…
I was fired from a shop that made a game backend and asked workers to continually crunch, work long hours on salary with no overtime. There were some big bonuses, but it didn't make up for the bad planning and management. I refused to work over 45 hours a week. I worked one 13 hour Sunday and said no to the 2nd one and was fired. Another dev/ops person left two weeks later. The others: almost all of the team is still…
That's what I wanted to do. A short look at what the reality looks like was enough to make me run away really fast.
I suppose the industry manages to lure in new talent who don't know any better, that's how they still manage to get people to work for them despite the terrible conditions. They project an image of an industry that is young (no shit, "old guys" jumped ship long ago) and fun to people who grew up playing video games and want to see the other side.
That's not just the big studios. On the indie side, the good thing is that you are not exploited, the bad thing is that it is even harder, with low chances of success. The only team that I've seen personally and was somewhat successful are the guys who made Crosscode (I highly recommend the game BTW), and the process looked like hard and stressful work. The others ended up doing gigs completely unrelated to game dev in order to eat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of countries where all employers are required to give certain notice, and you can't suddenly fire someone. It is outrageous that your ability to eat and pay rent can be taken away with zero notice in America.
In banking industry its fairly common to have an HR talk about you being let go/fired, and just collecting your stuff at desk and walking home. Not logging into computer anymore. This obviously comes with additional mandatory salary being paid (where I am currently its 3 monthly salaries), but employer won't risk having disgruntled employee doing some last minute hacks/deletions of important data/repos etc.
Word has it, this is the norm in video games as well.
They are not being exploited. They are free to take on another job. Especially coders could certainly find jobs in other industries. And "Fortnite" is not the games industry. There are a variety of ways to make a living making games.