271–280 of 561 posts
Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?
I believe its game developers are more easily exploited is because typically they really want to work in the game industry.
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It has not lagged behind depending on how you look at it, video game development can be split into engine programming and gameplay programming. For engine programming, you only need a handful of senior engineers specializing in low level details of a video game engine, and these will get paid high appropriate wages that match industry standard salaries. For the gameplay programmers, they just seek the cheapest labor…
Nope. Rendering, tooling, audio, core engine... None of these pay particularly well. More than just gameplay programmer, sure, but because many engines have moved to a visual node style of programming, it's also less and less programming in the gameplay department. >there's a large pool of juniors/interns that will accept these low wages just because they want to be a part of something popular. That's an unbelievably…
He's talking about the people who make those tools, and he's right. Engine developers are paid pretty well, especially at Epic and Unity. You don't think Tim Sweeney snagged SPJ because he's really into Fortnite, do you?
> Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with: Pay transparency Flexible working An end to crunch That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm I hope more people will start fighting together for better work conditions. Company owners have money and lawyers so workers must unite to fight them back. I’m saying this as employer.
How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates. We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.
Two words: overtime pay.
This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.
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> In order for that to change, the market has to increase in size by appealing to a more casual audience, or existing gamers have to pay more. Not something I think most gamers would like. To really drive this point home, the gaming community recently lost their minds when it became clear that this generation of video games were going to retail for ~$90 per game. Never mind that even in the early 90’s an average game…
It's also amortized over a much longer period of time too. Those 23 people would scratch build that $40 game in 2 years. These days it's more like 8 years, and you're rarely building from scratch.
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Do you tend to see a high drop out rate or general dissatisfaction from graduates when they come to the realization that making a game is a very different experience than playing the games?
Dissatisfaction yes, although it doesn't manifest how you'd expect. It comes in the form not so much in dropouts, but in bad course feedback and bad professor reviews. "The professor made the class unfun." "The professor said she's made games but clearly has never done that before with how she taught the class" I'm a woman so, unsurprisingly, I experience a fair amount of misogyny from students in the class who have…
And to be honest, I think games are a good stepping stone towards a career in software engineering / computer science. Especially back in the day when getting a game to run required you to mess around with the computer haha
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Really? American cars suck compared to japanese and chinese which are not unionized. What’s an example of a unionized vs non unionized group producing the same thing where unionized is better?
But Japanese autoworkers are unionized and have been for a very long time? So there is an example of a unionized group producing a great product!
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What does revenue have to do with margins. You didn't mention costs anywhere in your statement.
See my further reply, margin of 20% give or take 10% depending on scale (on average, some products obviously have incredibly high or low margins as is typical in the creative industry). My point about revenue was that games are pulling in more money than film and TV and we all know they cost less to make, and film and TV has good pay so therefore the games industry can afford similar rates, if not more.
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See my further reply, margin of 20% give or take 10% depending on scale (on average, some products obviously have incredibly high or low margins as is typical in the creative industry). My point about revenue was that games are pulling in more money than film and TV and we all know they cost less to make, and film and TV has good pay so therefore the games industry can afford similar rates, if not more.
now compare that margin / growth to big tech or hft...
There isn't any business on earth that compares to the margins of HFT firms. Regardless they aren't asking for big tech or HFT level salaries.
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How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates. We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.
> How do you end crunch? Two words: overtime pay. This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.
Can anyone comment on why "big video game" dev pay has lagged "big tech" pay so badly? Ostensibly they are doing remarkably similar engineering problem solving, so why is there such a disparity?
But the labour demand half is important too. Bigtech makes so much money (or is so well financed) that competing on top talent is more feasible when compared to the boom/bust nature of the games industry.