Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

kotaku.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 86 posts

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#61

Post by CharlesW »

everdrive wrote: post #59
CharlesW wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

This would assume that racism is totally equivalent to ageism, and I just can't imagine a world where this is true. Generally speaking, cultures have revered the older generations. It's only the recent rapid innovations in technology which have reversed this ancient trend. And crucially, it's reversed it because accumulated wisdom is negatively impacted by an ever-changing landscape. (it's not rendered useless, of co…

> This would assume that racism is totally equivalent to ageism…

No, it just assumes that ageism, racism, and sexism are all forms of bigotry.

> Ageism by contrast is a very different, and modern problem.

Even though attitudes toward different age groups have varied across cultures and time periods, it's not "a modern problem". For example, the U.S.'s Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) became law in 1967, but ageism goes back centuries.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#62

Post by everdrive »

iamthepieman wrote: post #47
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 a…

This is a great point, I hadn't considered ableism. All of us could fall prey to an accident, but of course still need to work.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#63

Post by beaeglebeached »

lovich wrote: post #52
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 .

We don't let people sell themselves into slavery even though that would "take away the bodily autonomy of the employee to enter mutually consensual arrangement and instead smash them with third party imposition...", no "union baron" needed. Your race to the bottom can affect others, regardless of wether or not you recognize negative externalities exist.

I don't see a compelling reason why I shouldn't be able to act as a slave for as long as both parties consent to it. If you want to create lovich 1840s era cotton picking slave service with the full historical recreation it's not clear why that's anyone else's business but you and the masta'.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#64

Post by meheleventyone »

rightbyte wrote: post #44
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...

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

Why? To satisfy people’s preconceived notion of what a gamer is?

You can definitely break the industry down deeper by looking at different cohorts which is interesting but doesn’t alter the top line numbers.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#65

Post by LanceH »

meheleventyone wrote: post #38
bluedino wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I think they mean there are way more 20-somethings now than there were in the 90s so proportionally over the growth of the industry older developers are naturally going to be underrepresented.

There are way more 20 somethings entering directly into tech now than in the 90's. In the 90's something like computer science was much smaller. Other nearby disciplines were nowhere near as computer oriented as they are now. And people outside of that didn't have the internet-can-teach-you-anything as a resource.

That all changed in the late 90's as the whole population came online.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#66

Post by meheleventyone »

LanceH wrote: post #65
meheleventyone wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean there are way more 20-somethings now than there were in the 90s so proportionally over the growth of the industry older developers are naturally going to be underrepresented.

There are way more 20 somethings entering directly into tech now than in the 90's. In the 90's something like computer science was much smaller. Other nearby disciplines were nowhere near as computer oriented as they are now. And people outside of that didn't have the internet-can-teach-you-anything as a resource. That all changed in the late 90's as the whole population came online.

Yes that’s what I’m saying.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#67

Post by meheleventyone »

bluedino wrote: post #60
meheleventyone wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean there are way more 20-somethings now than there were in the 90s so proportionally over the growth of the industry older developers are naturally going to be underrepresented.

I'm not so sure. Go back to the 70's and 80's. The creator of Pacman was 25. David Crane was still in his 20's when he started Activision. Trip Hawkins was 29 when he started Activision. Will Wright started at 24. Mark Turmell (NBA Jam, Smash TV) was hired at Midway when he was 26 and was selling games as a teenager. Miyamoto joined Nintendo at 25. A huge amount of these guys were having games published when they wer…

I think you’ve misunderstood what people are talking about.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#68

Post by autoexec »

x0x0 wrote: post #55
autoexec wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Come on. You can be pro union and also recognize that many unions have had extremely poor, corrupt, self-serving leadership and that changing them isn't trivial. Eg look at what happened to the hilariously corrupt UAW when Fain got in and actually did his job. While in theory union employees can change their leadership, in practice, that appears to be extremely difficult, and I don't think you can make a case that th…

> in practice, that appears to be extremely difficult, and I don't think you can make a case that the UAW was serving the needs of its members for at least the 20 years preceding Fain.

I can't say that I'm intimately familiar with the UAW although on the whole it seems to have been an extremely successful union. Was there a large effort to oust Rory Gamble before the corruption scandal came to light?

There's no denying that union leadership was corrupt and that members were hurt by that. The last 20 years saw some major concessions to the auto industry, some of it due to self-serving leadership that was caught colluding with industry executives and some of it due to the failing industry itself which needed a massive government bailout in that same time period.

I will say that all of that didn't stop many people from claiming that the union was being far too good for the employees, so good that the workers were supposedly "highly overpaid" and responsible for driving the industry into the ground. Even trump complained at the time of the bailout about autoworkers getting raises ("They get their little five percent. They get another two percent. They get another three percent, four percent ... and all of a sudden they're making more money than the people that own the company.") Even a union at its worst and weakest is still too good for some people I guess.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#69

Post by thomastjeffery »

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…

Prejudice harms everyone involved, including those who perpetrate it, and those whom a prejudice claims are naturally "better" than their peers.

We grow as people by thinking critically about our prejudices. We become more accurate in our expectations, more empathetic in our interactions with others, and better equipped to think critically about other subjects.

The benefits of accessibility are not limited to people with disabilities. A wheelchair ramp doesn't cease to be a ramp when someone walks on it. Disabilities aren't limited to where you expect them, either: most people get worse vision with age, but a significant number of younger adults have a vision disability.

Re: Industry veterans get candid on ageism in gaming

#70

Post by [deleted] »

iamthepieman wrote: post #47
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 a…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN