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Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

kotaku.com

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Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#21

Post by shzhdbi09gv8ioi »

kyriefh wrote: post #3

gaming studios are full of people who are squarely in the target market for the product they're developing. this has downsides but in many ways is a huge edge, so in a sense ageism seems more justifiable in games than elsewhere as a close proxy for audience understanding

I believe the reason gaming studios prefer younger employees has more to do with salaries than anything else.

Game dev salaries seem to be really bad compared to the rest of the industry, but so hyped and "cool" that younger people keep fighting over those jobs.

I turned down a job at machine games because of really mediocre compensation compared to what I had before, working at a rather unknown startup.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#22

Post by SteveGerencser »

johnday wrote: post #10
meheleventyone wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average age of a 'gamer' is actually a lot higher than you might think. 35-44 according to this: https://venturebeat.com/business/esa-ceo-64-of-u-s-adults-ar...

That's older than the median age of a human being. Granted, people don't tend to play games before the age of about 7, but that still seems suspect.

At 58, and playing 'video' games since the late 70s, I'm happily pulling the average age of gamers higher every year. Better than that, at 58 we just started work on our first video game that we have talked about making for over 20 years.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#23

Post by LanceH »

Only 9% of game developers are 50 years or older.

The answer to this is dead simple.

Let's take a developer who has made it a lifelong career. They started post college at age 22. This means they began working in games in 1996 or before and are still at it. The number of game developer from this time is miniscule compared to today, which itself might result in 9% or less. Additionally, games being the difficult industry it is, there are any number of reasons for someone to leave the industry well before age discrimination becomes a factor.

Or the case of a developer moving over later in their careers. Surely this is an extremely rare occurrence as the pay and ability to do things like raise a family will keep them in more traditional (stable) jobs.

There aren't many 50+ developers (and that number is turning into 55+ way too fast for me) today because there just weren't that many 20 year old developers in the 90's.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#24

Post by the_only_law »

Kapura wrote: post #4

Cliff Bleszinksi's thoughts on the games industry should be taken with a gigantic grain of salt. The sorts of development he, in particular, describes has been recognised as destructive, and is increasingly uncommon at AAA studios that operate at the highest levels. IIRC his time in the industry ended after he ran his studio into the ground by making an overwatch clone with boring characters, then trying to pivot to…

> IIRC his time in the industry ended after he ran his studio into the ground by making an overwatch clone with boring characters, then trying to pivot to a Fortnite clone

Tbh this kinda just feels like the industry playbook.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#25

Post by costanzaDynasty »

The people who pull a muscle patting themselves on their back for being champions for DEI aren't about that life when it comes to age. But they soon will need to be. The younger generations are getting smaller and smaller and from that pool you need skilled labor. One of the silent reasons that so many senior developers are out of work is because there is about to be a decade of wage inflation. If you can dump a bunch of senior developers and their salaries you can depress their rate, then you can take a bite out of the wage inflation while also restarting their annual raises.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#26

Post by [deleted] »

LanceH wrote: post #23

Only 9% of game developers are 50 years or older. The answer to this is dead simple. Let's take a developer who has made it a lifelong career. They started post college at age 22. This means they began working in games in 1996 or before and are still at it. The number of game developer from this time is miniscule compared to today, which itself might result in 9% or less. Additionally, games being the difficult indus…

[deleted]

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#28

Post by [deleted] »

photochemsyn wrote: post #19

Employers want cheap labor, and firing older workers who've climbed a ways up the salary/wage ladder and replacing them with new hires is one of the most consistent methods for doing this. The only way to avoid this in the merciless capitalist culture we live in is to get a contract, and of course employers don't want to hand out contracts (unless you're in the executive suite, where everyone gets a contract). Indeed…

[deleted]

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#29

Post by beaeglebeached »

photochemsyn wrote: post #19

Employers want cheap labor, and firing older workers who've climbed a ways up the salary/wage ladder and replacing them with new hires is one of the most consistent methods for doing this. The only way to avoid this in the merciless capitalist culture we live in is to get a contract, and of course employers don't want to hand out contracts (unless you're in the executive suite, where everyone gets a contract). Indeed…

I want at will employment for myself and to offer my labor with less termination friction. What you mean by "all employees" is to say, take away the bodily autonomy of the employee to enter mutually consensual arrangement and instead smash them with third party imposition of the union.

A great deal for certain union barons, no doubt, who can act as a middleman cartel .

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#30

Post by ejb999 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #20

If we're going to talk about ageism let's talk about the fact that it is still perfectly legal for older people to discriminate against younger people, and until that changes, any complaints about this topic (from people who generally hold the majority of power/wealth in this country) frankly sounds really disingenuous to me. I'm aware ageism is a problem, but I'm not sure we should be feeling overly sorry for execut…

you are somehow making the incorrect assumption that everyone older than you is an 'executive' that nobody should feel sorry for?

Thats some stretch.

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