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GTA 6 Developers Unionize

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Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#281

Post by dcrazy »

amazingamazing wrote: post #71
afavour wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correlation != causation. There are a ton of differences between the US car industry and those in other countries, unionization is just one factor. As a counter anecdote I’d point to Boeing’s non-union facilities, which have produced notably less reliable airplanes than their union locations ever did.

Aren’t most boeing made by unionized workers? If by both that seems like a good comparison to make

Boeing actually offers a fascinating direct comparison. 787 Max has historically been assembled in two locations: unionized Renton, WA and non-union Charleston, SC. The Charleston planes were notorious for needing rework at Renton before they were airworthy.

But the conclusion is muddied by the fact that Boeing has been making planes in the Seattle area for a century, so the talent pool is larger and more qualified than those they could find in or persuade to move to Charleston. Also, the whole Charleston move was one of many drastic cost-cutting efforts, including the spinoff of Spirit Aerospace that ultimately led to the door blowout on the Alaska Air MAX 9.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#282

Post by dylan604 »

sonzohan wrote: post #258
RobRivera wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was your route to teaching like? I kinda am considering putting my hat in a similar ring on a part time, evening class type basis if I can get away with it.

I graduated in 2011, went straight to work at Blizzard entertainment. At the same time I had gotten accepted into graduate school so I opted for an internship at Blizzard to try both. I went back to Blizzard in 2012, but quickly realized I wanted to do my PhD. So I left Blizzard and went full-time as a student. I didn't have funding so I TAd classes. Eventually my advisor and I scored a big NSF grant, so she used the…

> They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.

This is such a bullshit thing to experience. I had a version of this where I took on extra work that I was interested in which became a new revenue stream but was told "let's see how you do and then we'll see about salary bumps". Never saw an extra dime from it. I used the experience learned to land a new job six months later with a salary bump while dumping the other job responsibilities. It's truly the only way to get that bump you deserve.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#283

Post by throwatdem12311 »

diath wrote: post #16
WarmWash wrote: post #4

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?

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…

Or, just buy Unreal Engine so you can focus on being able to just plug in interchangeable cogs for gameplay programmers. You don’t have to pay them much because you can teach a child how to use Blueprints. Then yes, just crank out slop content for the lowest common denominator and charge $80 for the AAA experience and call it day while laughing all the way to the bank. Churn out battle passes and $30 cosmetic skins for pennies on the dollar and gamers will justify it with “it’s just cosmetic you don’t have to buy it” - while these corporations have behavioural psychologists on staff figuring out the most effective way to exploit FOMO to get you addicted and needing to spend more money on useless shit you don’t need.

Suckers.

Is it any wonder the quality bar for modern AAA games is under the floor? How many $400 million dollar flops do we need before these people take a hint?

I would bet money that the story for GTA6 is gonna be horrendous, based on what we’ve seen so far, but this game will make a trillion dollars or whatever because “it’s GTA6”. Bbuut they modelled individual bubbles in the pint of beer with real physics! Does the game even need to be fun anymore? Does it need to innovate or push the medium forward in any way? Or is it just a way to juice up another GTA online putting out mid content with horrible writing just to keep buying up shark cards for another decade, because people will buy it no matter what. Game journalists would never dare give the game a bad review, because they can’t risk losing access to Take Two published games. So what are we left with? A game with completely unjustified amounts of hype and “brand loyalty” that can absolutely get away with phoneing it in and make record breaking amounts of profit. But if you criticize it in any way, you’re just a hater or you’re not “media literate” or something.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#284

Post by hnlmorg »

varispeed wrote: post #235
sonzohan wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie. First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming. From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly eve…

I'd say it has nothing to do with supply and demand, but more to do with captive labour market (e.g. in the UK ability to quit and run own business are limited) and C-suite greed levels and classism. Working class person being exceptional at low latency game development, will unlikely get a chance in finance and earning 10x for very much the same level of competence, because their accent might not be good enough and…

I’ve worked in pretty much every domain of IT in the UK (FinTech, gaming, broadcasting, Hollywood, public sector, etc) and I’ve not experienced any class bias in FinTech.

I will say that different industries have different formalities (generally speaking). But that just means you have to interview with smarter attire in FinTech vs interviewing for a job in gambling.

As a hiring manager, I can say that companies will recruit for as little as they think candidates will accept. Fintech gets a bit of a pass on this one but only because they rake in so much money that they can generally afford to attract higher salaries. But it does also mean that gaming can get away with paying people peanuts in comparison and that is literally due to supply and demand.

In places where the C-suite have set unrealistic thresholds on tech salaries, I’ve had to get creative to attract candidates. And that often meant contributing back to open source and basically using that as advertising.

Anyway, this is already a verbose reply but the crux of it is:

1. you shouldn’t underestimate the power of supply and demand in the work space

2. The profitability of a sector also plays heavily into the equation

3. You don’t need to be posh to get a job in FinTech.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#285

Post by hnaccount141 »

nightski wrote: post #279
cyberax wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you end crunch? Two words: overtime pay. This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.

I'm confused, wouldn't this incentivize crunch? You could make a lot more money that way.

Typically overtime pay requires approval from management

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#286

Post by cyberax »

nightski wrote: post #279
cyberax wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you end crunch? Two words: overtime pay. This makes crunches disappear as if by magic.

I'm confused, wouldn't this incentivize crunch? You could make a lot more money that way.

It will incentivize the management to prohibit working overtime and/or hire more people.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#287

Post by deaddodo »

Scaled wrote: post #243
al_borland wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My first AAA game industry boss said to me only 10% of people make it 10 years in games. This has been, if anything, optimistic, with there being a sharp drop-off at 2~5 years. (And in indie it's way worse, it's more like 1% making it one year)

I mean, when you're getting paid 40-60% for doing more complex work than app/web development...yeah, the drop-off is almost inevitable. Eventually people (unless they just really love making games) just go "f this, my career is more important".

If you wanna do low-level code, you can go into embedded, sponsored OSI-companies, Microsoft, etc and get paid the same to more than gamedev with 10% of the stress and no crunch. If you wanna get paid much more and do more "vibe"/fun coding, you can go into app/web dev. If you want stability, you go into fintech/medtech/onsite/etc.

Gamedev offers the worst of all worlds and then constantly posits "why is there so much turn over?"...because you made the industry suck to work in.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#288

Post by garaetjjte »

flohofwoe wrote: post #33
LPisGood wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s only true in some instances. Do most AAA titles like Call of Duty, GTA, etc use Unity or Unreal?

In the last few years the pendulum has been swinging back from inhouse engine to Unreal Engine. There are a couple of holdouts, but my guess is that the majority of AAA games currently released are back on UE - at least it feels that way ;) And Unity always ruled supreme for AA and mobile games.

Swinging back? Was UE used more widely in the past than it is now?
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