Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job • Hacker News Board

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#371

Post by jimcsharp » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

jtms wrote: post #303

jimcsharp wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are just reverse corporations. They cannot be any more good or evil than a corporation.

A reverse corporation of sorts, but with only a single source of revenue. A corporation is a collective that works together to produce something. A union, on the other hand, seeks to extract as much value as is possible/reasonable from the host organization, but not so much that they destroy it.

I'm not sure if I'm being poe's law'd or this is going to turn into a recursive thread but... this is also describing a corporation:

> seeks to extract as much value as is possible/reasonable from the host organization, but not so much that they destroy it

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#372

Post by meheleventyone » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

lovetocode wrote: post #152

Deinos wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I originally downvoted that comment, but removed it based on this comment. It takes a lot of character to admit making rash generalizations. Kudos! 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 a…

> there is nothing keeping these individuals away from collective bargaining without forming an official union to do so. I think this is the main reason why I just "don't get" unions. Why do we have to put a name to it? Trying to understand unions, I guess it provides some sort of legitimacy to the organization. Or perhaps unions are more efficient at bargaining multiple issues simultaneously. I guess I am just reall…

Probably because you end up reinventing unions from first principles. You start off with a group of employees organising together. Then they realise some of the things they need to do require money. Then they realise you need some contingency to pay for big expenses. Then you realise you can use your bargaining power to help members in other ways for example here unions offer lots of services, discounts and funds for things like education. We’ve also just been through a period of labour renegotiation with some strikes which has ultimately ended up with the government getting involved with promises of reform to resolve them.

Plus many countries have laws surrounding how unions can operate and protections for employees organising them. In a less enlightened society employers will just lay off anyone attempting to organise.

So in general Unions are typically formed explicitly because people have lots of existing evidence of the benefits.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#373

Post by sigstoat » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:12 PM UTC

NaNtales wrote: post #130

bubblewrap wrote: post #46

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.

Of course you can stop being exploited as a game developer by leaving the games industry---but why should people be forced to change their career in order to avoid exploitation?

> but why should people be forced to change their career in order to avoid exploitation?

"change their career"? come on, it isn't as though they're being asked to become coal miners or journalists. just go compete for some of the jobs doing scientific visualization software, or take some other high paying software job.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#374

Post by mntmoss » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #343

bena wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got out before you found your limit. You think you could have sustained it, but you really don't know because you left. But leaving also means something. And succeeding in the face of adversity is something to be proud of. There are many things I wouldn't change in my life even though they were difficult or caused me to struggle. That's not the point. If I could have learned all I learned, got to where I am, etc…

> Would you rather have hit all of your targets on time without working ridiculous hours? I don't know. Would I have rather run a 15 minute 2-mile instead of a 13:30 2-mile on my APFT in college and been less sweaty? Would I have rather gotten a B instead of an A on that digital design project while getting more sleep? (Obviously, no one but me could possibly really "care" about either of those scores at this point.)…

That argument is suggesting a linear correllation of effort to results, which isn't really so with creative work: in a hypothetical "better industry", because talent is more expensive and less exploitable, management has to step up, grow beyond cheerleader/slavedriver metaphors, and find ways to create more force multipliers throughout the project. Quality to effort ratio goes up -- and given a sufficiently high multiplier, the workforce produces more while working less.

I think this is eminently possible within games, and the growing interest in unions is reflective of agreement of that fact, of a desire to professionalize and negotiate towards work arrangements that follow what our current science tells us is best practice. If most game workers believed in linear effort to reward they would see the status quo as OK: not staying late would simply mean you lack "passion". And indeed, that was very much the case throughout the early history of the industry - passionate people who became bosses and focused in Panglossian fashion only on the particular metrics they prized, resulting in exploitative, fanboy-heavy, butt-in-chair workplaces.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#375

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

usefulcat wrote: post #101

maxehmookau wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

A big part of the root cause of sucky gamedev working conditions (and I'm speaking mainly about developers here, as that is what I have first hand experience with) is the fact that a lot of people just really want to work on games and choose to put up with it. This is especially true for developers; there are plenty of developer jobs out there that are nothing like your typical game studio, and the skills that game d…

[deleted]

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#376

Post by ben509 » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:14 PM UTC

odessacubbage wrote: post #339

ben509 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the “practical” solution is to change human nature? We could at least stop giving young people terrible advice like, "you can do anything, live your dream!" "Get a practical job to pay the bills, and do your dream as a side gig," is a pretty reasonable compromise. Most people are have a low tolerance for risk and it's a problem when they get into a field that requires being a risk taker. That tolerance for risk…

i think maybe better advice is "work really really hard and find the closest commercially viable approximation to your dream" there are plenty of stable, well paying jobs for all sorts of different skill sets in the entertainment industry. becoming a key grip or an audio engineer isn't a high risk career trajectory. the bigger problem with creative fields is that most of the advice kids are getting is misinformation…

> i never had a single art teacher who taught any representative drawing fundamentals or even hinted at what was required to become an employable commercial artist.

Wow, never realized the schooling situation was that bad in the arts.

> because no one ever taught them how to value their work.

That's a great point, though valuing one's work is bloody hard at any stage of life.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#377

Post by Waterluvian » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

pslam wrote: post #353

It is appalling that the top 3 comments (at time of writing this one) are victim-blaming. "They should get better jobs". "There's a high demand so they should go elsewhere". "They should have known before they went there". Where have you been in the last few years, and how have you not learned anything about abusive practices which entrap people? These companies are basically abusive — they abuse their staff with lon…

Enh... They're not victims. They're just people who picked a profession that doesn't have great terms. By changing professions they may get better terms. That might also change the supply in the industry and help others too.

One lucky thing about game dev is that your skills do transfer. Whether to graphic design or programming or marketing or whatnot. It's not like they got a gamedev license and are locked in.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#378

Post by luiscleto » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #287

luiscleto wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of 'passion', and to go where their skills are appreciated/where they're treated better/fairly compensated This. Unionisation is basically an attempt to reject the reality that there isn't enough demand for all that labor to be valuable at/above market-average. Ultimately I don't think there is…

> there isn't enough demand for all that labor to be valuable at/above market-average. This argument would be stronger if the game industry didn't also feature a large number of insanely well paid executives. Unionization in the game industry is not about magically thinking that higher salaries will appear out of thin air. It's about low-ranking employees coordinating with each other to correct some of the power imba…

> This argument would be stronger if the game industry didn't also feature a large number of insanely well paid executives.

But why would a surplus of developers need to correlate with a surplus of executives?

If anything it makes more sense to see a larger rift between workers and executives/investors because the costs for developers have been driven down by competition among them.

I may concede that overall it could be better with a union, but lets not pretend this will mean all current game devs will make more money. You will have less game devs who will be making more money (narrowing the gap to execs in the industry) while others get driven away from the profession.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#379

Post by vkou » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

r_smart wrote: post #208

pmyteh wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if union membership is both required and restricted. In each of my workplaces, union membership has been optional and open to anyone who works there. It's weaker bargaining-wise than a closed shop with entry requirements, but we've still been able to collectively negotiate to better outcomes (the current round is UCU's dispute with the universities and their pension fund over proposed changes to the pension sche…

Fair enough. I'm used to union arrangements where membership is required for the given profession, which is pretty common in the US. There's been a movement to right to work, but even then, the non-union employees are forced to abide by the union negotiated contract, which is bullshit.

> There's been a movement to right to work

By which you mean, there's been a movement by employers towards the right to work for less.

> but even then, the non-union employees are forced to abide by the union negotiated contract, which is bullshit.

What's bullshit is that non-union employees get the same benefits that a union fought for, without having to do any work to get them.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#380

Post by jarsin » Fri, Apr 05, 2019, 6:21 PM UTC

Tiktaalik wrote: post #315

My video game developers need unions story: I was a core developer on a major feature of Sleeping Dogs/'True Crime: Hong Kong' for 2+ years. At one point, when the game was still being published by ATVI under the title 'True Crime: Hong Kong', ATVI cancelled the game and 100+ developers were laid off including me. Fast forward a few months and miraculously Square Enix decided to pick up the publishing rights for the…

Did you use skookumscript? Just curious because they say it was heavily used in Sleeping Dogs.

I like skookumscript and miss it now that I switched from unreal to unity.