Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies • Hacker News Board

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#321

Post by mlrtime » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 1:25 PM UTC

nvm0n2 wrote: post #296

hdnfofbrbt wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No no and no. Companies will find a way to make things work even if labour costs more. Every company and neo liberal says that same thing about regulation, employee wages, tax increases .... Funnily enough when those same regulations/wage increases/taxes come in they do not leave the market ... Strange. Edit: clarity Companies can and will adapt.

They do leave the market. Where did you get that idea from? My parents have extreme difficulty travelling now because they have a dog, but their local dog kennels have been closing down. When the last one went my mother talked to the owner. He said the rise in minimum wage was killing the business. People were willing to work there for lower than the new minimum because they love dogs basically, but customers weren't…

Agree with your post but sort of offtopic:

We have the same problem, "dog hotels" are too expensive. We just pay someone to come to our house a few times a day. A kid we know in the neighborhood, don't tell the government but they charge less than minimum wage! shock

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#322

Post by jubulence » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 1:37 PM UTC

bananamerica wrote: post #219

astrange wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two of those three are over 30 years old and the other is a movie with a $90M budget. I was talking about TV shows. Though I've heard things like Castlevania are good, haven't seen it though.

The animation in Castlevania is in fact very good.

The style definitely isn't for everyone, I personally very much disliked it when I started watching. But once you get into the parts where the animation shines, it really shines. Highly recommend an analytical watch by anyone into animation.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#323

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 1:44 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #319

pjmlp wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet they aren't living great either, when compared with western consumers with bookshelfs full of anime.

You just moved the goalposts.

Not at all, they deserve the same quality life of their bosses, getting rich from western money while exploring passionate slaves, in modern feudalism.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#324

Post by idopmstuff » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

Ferret7446 wrote: post #311

johnnyanmac wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tough to imagine that GenAI doesn't have an enormous impact on anime over the next few years. It depends a lot on the culture there. 1) there are actual labor laws in Japan, so they can't just cut off 90% of their workforce at the snap of the finger 2) there is a much stronger culture of conformity in Japan. So it is much easier to shame a company when getting negative PR in Japan and those complaints can overcome r…

> Also, tech wise AI is at least 5 years out from anything animated. What I've seen in motion so far is extremely crude. I... think you are overestimating that by a lot. We went from nothing to AlphaGo to ChatGPT to Midjourney et al within a few years, with the timespan between each shortening.

Yeah, the stuff Runway has been coming out with absolutely blows my mind. Can't wait to see what it looks like by the end of this year, let alone five.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#325

Post by resonious » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

awesomeMilou wrote: post #232

resonious wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Why? If I was really passionate about something, I would not mind low pay. For me, the blocker is that I'm not quite so passionate about anything. I suspect a lot of people think they're passionate about games but really are just addicted.

Congratulations, you just lowered wages for everyone involved across the board.

I'm happy because I got the job!

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#326

Post by soulofmischief » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 2:06 PM UTC

mlrtime wrote: post #320

soulofmischief wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wage rules? You think fairly compensated labor is just some idea I came up with? Most of the people whom I contribute to are able to work full-time on their passions through donations and make more than they would if they were traditionally employed.

There is no such thing as a fair wage, fair is subjective and this can be debated for hours by academics. What we have (in some countries) is: 1) Minimum wage: defined as the least amount legal to pay someone. 2) Living wage: loosely defined as the wage needed for minimum living standards for a given region 3) Market wage: What the market determines your value is worth based on supply/demand. None of these are "fair"…

> There is no such thing as a fair wage

Bollocks. A fair wage is a wage which is agreed upon by employee and employer, and is livable according to local cost of living. Let's not get into a semantic argument.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#327

Post by asylteltine » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:26 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #150

asylteltine wrote: post #94

I just learned recently there’s a lot of drama of “localizers” blatantly mistranslating or inserting their own words to push their ideologies.

You learned nonsense right-wing propaganda.

Which part is propaganda? Are you saying it’s not true? Because it is, there’s literal evidence of it. Just because their actions align with you politically doesn’t mean it’s fake news

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#328

Post by steveBK123 » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:31 PM UTC

fbdab103 wrote: post #223

steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like a collective action problem. Any industry with enthusiasts or which is itself a hobby is subject to this behavior. People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Game Devs are the first example I thought of here. If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/…

Really hard to dissuade people from passion. From a different perspective: teachers. From most absolute criteria, teaching is a horrible profession. Significant credential requirements, lousy pay, hard hours, dealing with occasional rotten child/parent. Yet millions agree to do it because they want to impact the next generation.

So I'm 40, and I have to tell you a dark secret.. Most friends & family who ended up going into teaching.. don't particularly like kids by the time they are actually this far into their career.

I think a lot of people go into it because they have a comfortable middle/upper-middle class suburban upbringing, reasonably bright (but not like super high achievement focused), without any specific areas of interest (STEM), and teachers play an outsize role in their life as far as non-family adults. Teachers being an uncreative lot, suggest to them - hey, why not pursue teaching.

In theory teaching should be a good, portable middle class job in that you aren't restricted to 2-3 mega cities like tech or finance or whatever. In practice it doesn't really work out that way. For one thing the certification process varies by state so your degrees are not immediately portable.

Further, in teaching you literally have to wait for someone to retire or die to get a shot. Most of my cohort who went into teaching had to slog it out in bad districts, bad schools, hard/bad roles (ie - special ed) in precarious employment (substitute teaching for years, or non-union/tenure schools like charters).

There is maybe 2 people I know who actually made it teaching back home in their hometown like they intended. The rest eventually found a full time role within 30 miles of where they were willing to live, after 5 years or more bouncing around in precarious employment.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#329

Post by steveBK123 » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:36 PM UTC

awesomeMilou wrote: post #232

resonious wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Why? If I was really passionate about something, I would not mind low pay. For me, the blocker is that I'm not quite so passionate about anything. I suspect a lot of people think they're passionate about games but really are just addicted.

Congratulations, you just lowered wages for everyone involved across the board.

This is the classic problem for photography for example, which is a hobby of mine.

You see a lot of hobbyists elbow into paid work, to the detriment of people actually making a living of it. It puts a ceiling on what people are willing to pay for the typical work - engagement, wedding, headshot photography for example.

Photojournalism is a bit of a weird case because, in my opinion at least, its always been populated by nepobabies and other sorts who weren't commanding proper living wages because they didn't really have to.

Re: Anime is a $25B industry that pays its animators pennies

#330

Post by steveBK123 » Sun, Jan 21, 2024, 3:43 PM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #278

steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is like a collective action problem. Any industry with enthusiasts or which is itself a hobby is subject to this behavior. People need to stop being so naive as to accept poorly paid jobs because they think the subject matter is 'funner'. Game Devs are the first example I thought of here. If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/…

>If you love games, that's great.. but why not go work in literally any other software dev work for maybe 2x the pay and/or 1/2 the hours. 1. Work is still half your waking life for decades. Why not attempt to make it quality work instead of a slog if you can help it? 2. Less money =/= barely afford rent. I was still making $160k at my last role with 7YOE, so we're not talking "can barely pay rent". I'm a single 20's…

Re: the money/time

The thing is that gamedev is one of the few industries you reliably hear people bully 60/80/100 hour weeks outside of say - medicine, law, finance. Or startups where you grind for a couple years hoping the lottery ticket of your equity pays off.

However, it does not pay anything near medicine, law, or finance wages. Nor do you get equity like a startup. And the labor practices of game studios in terms of benefits, layoffs, etc have always sounded far worse.

If the ROI is worth it for you, great (and $160k ain't bad to be fair, I've heard lower than that in gamedev). People just need to go into it with eyes wide open though and not foreclose their options early (by overly focussing on gamedev niche coursework in college for example).