Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming • Hacker News Board

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#41

Post by BadCookie » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #31

"Ageism" itself is something of a strange concept. Often, what is described as discrimination just seems to be a sane collection of valid trends: - Older people are less willing to work longer hours. - Older people are more aware of their rights as an employee. - Older people may struggle to pick up new skillsets. While it would be bad to find myself unemployable due to these factors, I find it hard to argue that the…

I suspect that the ageism effect in tech looks more like this:

Programmer A has 10 years of experience with $various_old_tech and only 1 year of experience with $hot_new_tech. (S)he has a target salary of $150k.

Programmer B has 2.5 years of experience with $hot_new_tech and has a target salary of $120k.

Which will the hiring manager choose? Keyword-driven recruitment suggests that they will pick programmer B *possibly even regardless of salary expectations*. At least, it's easy to conclude this if you take the "requirements" section of most job postings literally.

But the most likely person to get the job is actually whichever programmer has acquaintances at the company that is hiring … which I am starting to view as a weak form of nepotism, with all of the criticism that word implies.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#42

Post by CharlesW » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:39 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #31

"Ageism" itself is something of a strange concept. Often, what is described as discrimination just seems to be a sane collection of valid trends: - Older people are less willing to work longer hours. - Older people are more aware of their rights as an employee. - Older people may struggle to pick up new skillsets. While it would be bad to find myself unemployable due to these factors, I find it hard to argue that the…

A good way to test if you're ageist is to replace "older" with "black" or "female" and re-read what you wrote (assuming you're not racist or sexist).

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#43

Post by Infinity315 » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:41 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #32

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…

> there just weren't that many 20 year old developers in the 90's. John Carmack was 21 in 1992 when Wolf3D came out, Romero was 25 Tim Sweeney was 21 in 1991 when he released ZZT Ken Silverman was 21 in 1996 when Duke Nukem 3D was released, Todd Replogle was 27 Cliff Bleszinski (19) and Arjan Brusse (22) released Jazz Jackrabbit in 1994 Shawn Hargreaves (sp?) was in his 20's in the 1990's when he created Allegro and…

Single data points are not statistics. Fact is, the number of 20 something developers today far exceeds the number of developers of the 1990s.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#44

Post by rightbyte » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:42 PM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #8

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

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...

The measure should be weighted by hours played or dollars spent or something.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#45

Post by nitwit005 » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:47 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #31

"Ageism" itself is something of a strange concept. Often, what is described as discrimination just seems to be a sane collection of valid trends: - Older people are less willing to work longer hours. - Older people are more aware of their rights as an employee. - Older people may struggle to pick up new skillsets. While it would be bad to find myself unemployable due to these factors, I find it hard to argue that the…

> Older people are more aware of their rights as an employee.

Love that you highlight that as a mark against them.

> I'd want to make things _better_ for the older generation, even if that requires unfairness

Making things better for the elderly requires being unfair to them. Sure.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#46

Post by JohnMakin » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:48 PM UTC

ejb999 wrote: post #30

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.

The example in the article is literally about an executive.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#47

Post by iamthepieman » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:51 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #31

"Ageism" itself is something of a strange concept. Often, what is described as discrimination just seems to be a sane collection of valid trends: - Older people are less willing to work longer hours. - Older people are more aware of their rights as an employee. - Older people may struggle to pick up new skillsets. While it would be bad to find myself unemployable due to these factors, I find it hard to argue that the…

Ableism is another one that can turn back on you. You can get in an accident, go blind, get a debilitating illness etc. its also one where it's even more obvious that the person with the disability can't perform in the exact ways an abled person can. Blind developer requires special work environment, takes longer to have a screen reader read things to them etc. but we generally agree that we should not discriminate against disabled people as much as possible. Probably can't have a blind referee at a sports event or a wheelchair bound construction worker. But they can fill many other roles very well even if their bathroom breaks take 10 minutes longer or they can't do an over the shoulder debugging session at your desk.

The real benefits of non-discriminatory practices is in diversity. Not HR sanctioned diversity but diversity of life as in nature. Monocultures of all types are fragile.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#48

Post by meheleventyone » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:52 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #40

psunavy03 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Elder Millennials and younger GenXers (born late 70s and early 80s) were arguably the first generation to grow up where video games were mainstream, and that's just a little older than that age bracket. I'm in my early forties, and I've enjoyed everything from the original Final Fantasy to Baldur's Gate 3 over the years. And I'm sure there are folks older than me who picked them up in their 20s and 30s.

It seems suspect in the sense that we’d expect gaming to be at least as mainstream in the subsequent generation, right? The median age of a gamers should be approaching the median age of the population from below, I’m fine with believing it is pretty close, but how’d it get higher?

When I actually googled to see what the median age of Americans was it's 38.9 which is pretty much in the middle of the quoted age range.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#49

Post by lowbloodsugar » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:53 PM UTC

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

Younger gamers have time. Older gamers have money.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#50

Post by beaeglebeached » Tue, Feb 13, 2024, 5:58 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #36

beaeglebeached wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

> is to say, take away the bodily autonomy of the employee to enter mutually consensual arrangement No union ever forced someone to accept a job they didn't want. If you had a contract you'd know exactly what the terms are and you'd be entirely free to accept them or not. Also, while I'm sure your default position is "union bad!" and that you're unlikely to change that view, I'd remind you that union employees are no…

What if I consent to performing labor but don't consent to membership in or contract with the democratic system of the union? I don't see how the vote of third party is relevant here. I'm fine if all the other employees want to be in the union and I can undercut them to get a job.