Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men • Hacker News Board

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#101

Post by jseliger » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:57 PM UTC

w1ntermute wrote: post #57

kitsune_ wrote: post #9

Most trendy, fashionable and 'glamorous' jobs are like this. A lot of suckers want to get into the field, and the employers know this. I know people who work in haute-couture shops. They typically clock in 14+ hours per day, and regularly work insane hours on the weekend. The weeks leading up to a fashion show / collection are brutal. These people have years of experience and managerial responsibilities, yet their sa…

> Most trendy, fashionable and 'glamorous' jobs are like this. Which is why the smart thing to do is to go for the most unfashionable job (or market, if you're starting a business) you can find that provides a product that your customers simply can't live without. You just don't want to be selling an elastic product, and you don't want to be in an industry where there's supply-side competition from people who are doi…

>Healthcare is especially good in this respect

I agree with your overall point but will temper it some by noting that there are VERY high barriers to entry (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-beco... for one discussion I wrote) and those barriers are enforced by regulators. That being said, once you get the necessary credentials to enter the market the gig is pretty sweet and pretty protected.

The real benefits, however, appear to accrue at the lower end of the profession (nurses, P.A.s) and the very high-end (specialists). The great middle (family docs, internists) appear appear to be hurting.

Oh, and dentistry is awesome from a money / lifestyle point of view, but it's not much respected (http://www.theonion.com/articles/local-prostitutes-eagerly-a...).

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#102

Post by guard-of-terra » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 6:59 PM UTC

mimiflynn wrote: post #61

guard-of-terra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amusing thing here is bunch of unpaid interns living on ramen, renting a two bedroom flat for a collective of four, work 12 hours a day writing elaborate articles on luxury, fashion and festive lifestyle.

I've consulted in NYC design shops where most of the designs and documentation were being done by interns. They were available 24/7 and extremely bright; the business couldn't have gotten anything out without them. The full time people and owners were paid way more than necessary all while the interns were unpaid or lowpaid.

Why don't they network a bit and create their own design shop? Given that they're already all in one place.

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#103

Post by numo16 » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:12 PM UTC

jarek wrote: post #49

crazygringo wrote: post #47

So, here's my honest-to-god question. When I was last interviewing for programming jobs in New York, only one of the places I interviewed at (and I looked at a lot of companies) wanted people working more than 40 hours a week, on a regular basis (they were a startup with a fixed runway). All the other places (a mix of established companies and startups) made it very clear that work-life balance is important to them,…

When these people want to work on games, they want to work on games, not "at a programming job." You see phrases like "childhood dream" going around, and to people who spent their childhoods playing games, making games is much cooler than making any other kind of software.

It was my "dream job" to work in some big name game studio one day. Then, after reading studio horror stories and working in other normal programming jobs, I realized that I had all this extra time outside of work that I could use to make games on my own terms. That made the decision easy for me :)

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#104

Post by jstelly » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:14 PM UTC

It is possible to work in the games industry and have a family and not crunch all of the time. It should be possible to determine which companies have or do not have this problem without actually working for them. Look for a company with a large population of experienced developers with families and you'll be much less likely to encounter a culture like the one described in this article. I've been in the games industry a long time and my working conditions are great. It seems like it would be more useful for people working in the industry to publish information about bad cultural issues at specific companies than to generalize about the entire industry.

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#105

Post by w1ntermute » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:17 PM UTC

jseliger wrote: post #101

w1ntermute wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most trendy, fashionable and 'glamorous' jobs are like this. Which is why the smart thing to do is to go for the most unfashionable job (or market, if you're starting a business) you can find that provides a product that your customers simply can't live without. You just don't want to be selling an elastic product, and you don't want to be in an industry where there's supply-side competition from people who are doi…

>Healthcare is especially good in this respect I agree with your overall point but will temper it some by noting that there are VERY high barriers to entry ( http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-beco... for one discussion I wrote) and those barriers are enforced by regulators. That being said, once you get the necessary credentials to enter the market the gig is pretty sweet and pretty protected. T…

It doesn't even have to be just working as a healthcare professional. If you don't like working with patients (it can be quite depressing for some folks), you could be creating a variety of products for this market, including software (though you sort of lose the supply-side advantage in that case).

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#106

Post by eli_gottlieb » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:18 PM UTC

marze wrote: post #84

InclinedPlane wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two tangential points I want to hit quickly. First, most software developers are taught "computer science" (or an imitation of it) in their formal education, not engineering. Second, software is mostly not engineering. Engineering is very measurable. But software includes a lot of design and craftsmanship. If software dev. were restricted only to the portion that could reasonably be called pure engineering it would b…

So if it isn't science, and isn't engineering, what is it closest to in terms of other endeavors?

Sorcery. It's poetry that has to actually accomplish something.

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#107

Post by kqr2 » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:21 PM UTC

Camillo wrote: post #71

cobrausn wrote: post #3

As a 30-year old childless white man who left the games industry after a short 8 months in order to get married and spend time with my spouse, I can tell you that the assessment is fairly spot on. If you weren't putting in 12 hours daily, something was wrong with you and it was 'bad for team morale'. I was also pretty horribly underpaid, as evidenced by raising my salary over 200% by leaving. Seems to me the 'white'…

The factors explained in the article definitely have to do with most game developers being childless, male 30 year olds. They have nothing to do with race: I see no reason why a black or asian 30 year old childless man with a passion for games should be less likely to put in those insane hours than if he were white. Why call out "white men" in the headline, then? This is actually a story about the importance of letti…

The title is based on a survey which was conducted:

  Your average industry professional is a 31 year old white 
  man (86 percent of the respondents were male, 82 percent 
  were white)

http://gameqol.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Quality%20of%2...

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#108

Post by photorized » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:22 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #47

So, here's my honest-to-god question. When I was last interviewing for programming jobs in New York, only one of the places I interviewed at (and I looked at a lot of companies) wanted people working more than 40 hours a week, on a regular basis (they were a startup with a fixed runway). All the other places (a mix of established companies and startups) made it very clear that work-life balance is important to them,…

No company in their right mind would formally "require" insane hours upfront. But if you wear fewer than 37 pieces of flair, you will find yourself under a lot of indirect, cultural pressure.

Most companies have reasonable employment policies on paper.

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#109

Post by louthy » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:37 PM UTC

The reason I left the games industry after 10 years (aged 31) was because there was a serious lack of professionalism with project delivery, which leads to ridiculous hours, and the pay really isn't worth it after a while.

As the consoles got more and more powerful, the pressure to deliver next-gen experiences just overwhelms the team. Quite often at the expense of delivering good gameplay.

I worked at a number of medium sized development houses, and the failure rate was probably 75%+. Some games wouldn't make it to market after 2 years+ development, some would make it to market but the publisher buried it (no real marketing). The most successful title I worked on was one for Nintendo, where the focus was on the gameplay (our producer was Shigeru Miyamoto). Even that title was massively late.

I was an engine and tools programmer and I believe the level of complexity of the systems being developed (to fit into consoles with very little power, slow memory etc.) was pretty high compared to development in most other fields. So the rewards should be there too.

However, I think the constant struggle that development houses have to keep their heads above water - due to the high failure rate of games - means that the rewards aren't competitive. So naturally you start looking elsewhere, especially if you have new found responsibilities in your life.

It's a shame really, because it's actually one of the most fun and creative fields to develop for (in my experience) - however it's just set up for burnout and disillusionment.

I left 7 years ago to form a healthcare software startup here in the UK and haven't looked back since.

Re: Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

#110

Post by nilkn » Mon, Apr 15, 2013, 7:37 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #48

I was a game programmer at EA for eight years. > The real problem however is not that they are immature when they get in, but that too often they get out once they reach maturity, This is pretty spot-on. One of the main reasons I left the industry was because I got tired of it being perpetual amateur hour. I felt like I didn't know much and yet I often knew more than those around me. I worked on one game where more t…

Aren't your four bullet points essentially true of a large number of web applications in tech hubs like Silicon Valley?

The only point I might contest for that analogy would be (2), but I think we are still seeing a trend towards disrupting traditional payment systems (e.g., people expect Facebook to be free and funded by ads).

And it's worth mentioning that Silicon Valley startups do have their fair share of underpaid, overworked positions. But I think that is slowly changing, and we are seeing startups--especially ones that have been around for a few years--paying market or even above market wages for reasonable 40-50 hour work weeks.

Hell, I was just reading an old thread on reddit--about 3 years old--where people were posting their salaries. I was shocked to see a lot of people working at Google, Facebook, or a Silicon Valley startup, with a few years of experience, posting that they made $80-85k in salary. That's what I'd expect in South or Midwest, but not the Bay Area. Now fresh grads there are getting $100k with signing bonuses (at least from Google/Facebook).