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

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

#121

Post by TheLegace »

munificent wrote: post #117
nilkn wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 underpa…

Yes, I think the startup market may be similar. Two differences are that right now there are so many startups, there is still strong demand for programmers. The game industry is actually not that big, so the demand for game programmers hasn't been as high. Also, I think the startup scene is newer. While there are some younger developers now whose childhood dream is to build a website, there aren't as many of those as…

It better change, I really hate programming the web, I'm more interested in robots, electronics and computer hardware. But startups for those are difficult, risky and expensive.

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

#122

Post by kbenson »

munificent wrote: post #82
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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. I've studiously avoided working for EA (they almost had me once, but I said no when they pulled a bait-and-switch on the project that convinced me to interview to begin with), but I've been in the industry for 20+ years, mostly working for smaller companies or…

> I've studiously avoided working for EA For what it's worth, I found work-life balance increased steadily during my tenure at EA. The whole ea_spouse thing brought a lot of attention to problems. It still wasn't great, but it was better than when I started. When I left EA, I was working 40 hours a week reliably. This was in large part, though, because that was a high priority for me and I moved off game teams and on…

> I moved off game teams and onto shared tech stuff because it was less high-pressure, even though that wasn't ideal for my career.

By shared tech I assume you mean tools and engines? And that's worse for your career? That sad.

It's a common trend I notice that companies don't often spot and reward tool makers (policy drivers, etc), which often boost productivity for large portions of employees, instead of just themselves.

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

#123

Post by numo16 »

st8ic wrote: post #85

The fact that they are childless indicates that they don't have time to have children, but how the hell is the fact that they're white relevant to the point they're trying to make in the article?

> The fact that they are childless indicates that they don't have time to have children

Or they don't want them...It may be anecdotal, but I know a good many of people around age (26) who don't really want to have kids

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

#124

Post by endtime »

jmduke wrote: post #37
endtime wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"C/C++/AI/Shaders/Animation" is "a lot" to learn in a career?

Compared to the fundamentally CRUD-like nature of most startups?

No, compared to most people [OP knows] not in the games industry, as the OP said. I've worked at a lot of different, varied places (including someone else's startup, and my own, and a government agency, and an investment bank, and a chip manufacturer, and a couple large software companies) and I'd say there's more to learn there than C/C++, GLSL, "AI" (game AI implementations might be large/complex planners or whatever, but AFAIK they aren't doing serious ML) and animation.

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

#125

Post by alxp »

hacker789 wrote: post #79
calibraxis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it self-hatred, just as it's reasonable for many males to "hate" the male gender. I have serious issues with the social construct of gender, with its inculcation of aggression/subordination and bizarre attitudes, dress codes, etc. As a male, it's acceptable for me to "hate" maleness, and I think that's better than leaving only females to dismantle patriarchy. (Then again, in the sens…

> It's fine to be a "race traitor" or gender traitor if yours dominates. Your use of the word "dominates" is disingenuous. Let's imagine: - - - There exists a country in which 95% of all leadership in government and industry is male. There are a few women here and there, but for the most part, it's all men at the top. And at the top, people are pretty protected. They can generally get away with whatever they want, as…

You might not realize it but the thing you're complaining about? That's the Patriarchy to a t. No one thinks 'patriarchy' means 'all men oppressing all women.' except people constructing straw men. Patriarchy is the force that both tells women they belong at home and tells men that it's honourable to die in war. It's all around us.

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

#126

Post by azatris »

Perhaps it's a bit offtopic, but as I have not found myself a good pet language that I'd truly make my favourite yet, being a 21-year old university student, is there any other reasons of studying, learning C++ as an all-around language, than being in the game industry? The dream of working for a company like Valve has pushed me into learning C++, but I am not so sure anymore whether that is a good choice due to both the horror stories and simple statistics. I want to make the best possible investment in my future and so these kind of articles are strong manipulators.

I do love programming, even more than games, so it wouldn't be a problem for me to work at something less gamey. But should I nonetheless continue with cherishing C++ and making it the best language for me? Your replies are highly valued. Also, I do understand, that in reality, it's unlikely ever about just one language.

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

#127

Post by munificent »

kbenson wrote: post #122
munificent wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've studiously avoided working for EA For what it's worth, I found work-life balance increased steadily during my tenure at EA. The whole ea_spouse thing brought a lot of attention to problems. It still wasn't great, but it was better than when I started. When I left EA, I was working 40 hours a week reliably. This was in large part, though, because that was a high priority for me and I moved off game teams and on…

> I moved off game teams and onto shared tech stuff because it was less high-pressure, even though that wasn't ideal for my career. By shared tech I assume you mean tools and engines? And that's worse for your career? That sad. It's a common trend I notice that companies don't often spot and reward tool makers (policy drivers, etc), which often boost productivity for large portions of employees, instead of just thems…

> By shared tech I assume you mean tools and engines?

I was doing tools, but not engines. UI toolkit stuff, asset pipelines, a bunch of metrics gathering. At the EA studio I was at, being on a game team was a better career path if you want to get more clout.

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

#128

Post by munificent »

nthj wrote: post #119
munificent wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why the smart thing to do is to go for the most unfashionable job That assumes that you don't get any value out of having a glamorous job. Sure, there are tons of people that want to be game developers. Why? Because a lot of things about being a game developer are awesome! You get a laid-back working environment, you get to work with artists and other exciting, creative people, the work is technically chal…

> You get a laid-back working environment Laid back, to me, means "Oh, we had to work 60 hours last week, so this week I'm gonna leave around 4 pm on Thursday. I'll send an email to the team lead to not expect me tomorrow" From the stories I've heard, "laid back" in the game industry means "great news! it's 7 pm on Sunday evening, everybody go home and be with your kids"

By laid back, I meant:

You can dress and look however you want. And, in return, you draw in the kind of creative, interesting people that care about that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, this is not a given at all software jobs.

There's not a lot of process and formality. Less time writing TPS reports, more time making software. This doesn't mean it's all unstructured cowboy coding, just that there's less pointless overhead than at other companies I've seen.

Lots of kidding around and laughing. Less people taking themselves too seriously.

> Laid back, to me, means "Oh, we had to work 60 hours last week, so this week I'm gonna leave around 4 pm on Thursday. I'll send an email to the team lead to not expect me tomorrow"

I think that depends a lot on the project and schedule. Certainly, the worst crunch was right before a deadline, and things were more lax after it. Taking several days off after a big push wasn't unusual. The months following shipping a title which were mostly focused on writing design docs were often "nominally 40 hours but really closer to 35 and we aren't exactly killing ourselves during those hours either".

> From the stories I've heard, "laid back" in the game industry means "great news! it's 7 pm on Sunday evening, everybody go home and be with your kids"

Well, of course the stories you hear are always extreme. Otherwise, they wouldn't be a story. No one ever says, "Breaking news today, area man works 40 hours in one week."

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

#129

Post by munificent »

w1ntermute wrote: post #118
munificent wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why the smart thing to do is to go for the most unfashionable job That assumes that you don't get any value out of having a glamorous job. Sure, there are tons of people that want to be game developers. Why? Because a lot of things about being a game developer are awesome! You get a laid-back working environment, you get to work with artists and other exciting, creative people, the work is technically chal…

> That assumes that you don't get any value out of having a glamorous job. The only value you get out of having a "glamorous job" is that other people think you have a glamorous job. Glamour has to do with perception , not reality. > Sure, there are tons of people that want to be game developers. Why? Because a lot of things about being a game developer are awesome! Wrong. They want to be game developers because they…

Wow, aren't you a ray of sunshine?

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

#130

Post by GuiA »

tomku wrote: post #7

This is a major reason why I gave up on my childhood dream of being a game developer. The industry is screwed, and it'll continue to be as long as it's profitable to create games like that. In fact, it's only going to get worse as people keep expecting more and more out of next-gen games. AAA game budgets can't keep skyrocketing like they did over the past decade, and that means squeezing the workforce to produce mor…

If you ever want to fulfill your childhood dream, you can always go indie.

If you're a programmer, contracting out the art/music is very common, and the indie dev community is quite small and self-organizing for that kind of stuff.

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