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

GTA 6 Developers Unionize

rockstarintel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 561 posts

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#461

Post by Agentlien »

ernesto905 wrote: post #308

> An end to crunch I was unaware of the crunch concept: "In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

When I worked for EA (2015-2019) it was better than some horror stories I've heard, but still way too much overtime and many weekends spent at the office. The worst part that it was unpaid in exchange for an extra vacation week and then they had the gall to ask us to please not take our vacation because "don't you care about the game?".

Since then I've worked at Thunderful and now 505 Games. I haven't done overtime since I quit EA and I've been very efficient because I'm not too tired and I get peace of mind working from home.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#462

Post by chrystalkey »

miiiiiike wrote: post #460
8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in big tech but dabbled in games. Games are much harder. Lots of math and you have to process 8 million pixels in 16 milliseconds, in addition to running your physics and NPC AIs. Big tech is 90% CRUD and 90% squabbling over variable names and we somehow think pushing a bit of HTML in 500ms is both hard and acceptable performance.

Is it harder because you’re less experienced with games. Your big tech job really requires no creativity? Modern sites are extremely complex. BASH, Docker, Kubernetes, Python, Varnish, NGINX, Postgres, Cassandra, Elastic, Redis, Celery, CSS/Sass, Typescript. Observability, logging, build systems, testing, backups, CI, and a consistent design system. That’s all just to get to HTTP 200 “hello world”.

Well yes sure, but those infrastructure questions come with games as well on top of the whole inherent complexity described in this comment family

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#463

Post by hnlmorg »

varispeed wrote: post #363
hnlmorg wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It didn't affect me, therefore it doesn't exist. Come on.

I obviously cannot speak for every company that has ever existed in the FinTech industry. And you haven’t given any more details beyond vague comments which makes it hard to comment on your specific claims. So I can only talk about my experiences hiring and beyond hired in the industry.

But who’s to say your experiences aren’t the anomaly? Or that other factors weren’t to play that lead those hiring managers offering to other candidates?

I also tried researching your point online (just in case I was an anomaly) and the results I got suggested that FinTech scored lower in benchmarks for bias during hiring.

So at this point in time, given what I’ve experienced, read online and the information you’ve shared, there simply isn’t enough data to support your claim. Anecdotal nor otherwise.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#464

Post by Agentlien »

ryandrake wrote: post #10
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?

Is it as simple as supply/demand? People love games and game-loving developers are willing to take lower compensation to be in the industry? As a former obsessed gamer, I remember in my 20s I almost would have been willing to work at iD Software without pay if they let me.

This is why, after spending my whole youth learning programming to become a game developer I had a crisis of faith and spent a few years working on something else (surgical training simulations) after graduating. I had done summer jobs at a game studio and all I saw was the leadership treating people like shit, paying almost nothing, and then laughing about how easy it was to got away with - they even did so towards me in one breath then offered me a full time contract in the next.

However, I joined EA in 2015 and have been in game development since. They offered really good pay and now at my current job I even get great pay and no overtime.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#465

Post by strobe »

JadoJodo wrote: post #149
javier123454321 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is actually quite a common occurrence in the arts and other creative fields, where there is a level of idealization for the work in itself outside of the remuneration. Musicians, architects, illustrators, cinematographers are all dealing with the same thing the more the work resembles their ideal type of artistic work, the less to pay usually.

I would guess a big part of this is because the art _itself_ is a form of compensation: Artists have a passion for the end result in a way that organizations (e.g., corporations, collectives, movements, etc.) harness and take advantage of in lieu of financial compensation.

right and it's also additional hidden kind of exploitation happen with that. That artistic passion coming from desire to do better "art" and grow as "artist" (what ever creative field person is chasing) and also to connect with peoples of similar goals.

But in reality that environment helping only to grow in technical aspects of the job ( maybe also learning some market forces) but it leads to severe degradation in artistic practice of which person original desire cultivate even not realizing that just because is no business need for anything like that. Bus sines can be fine by just coping that everyone else doing or implementing some one else vision.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#466

Post by strobe »

mikepurvis wrote: post #178
JadoJodo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess a big part of this is because the art _itself_ is a form of compensation: Artists have a passion for the end result in a way that organizations (e.g., corporations, collectives, movements, etc.) harness and take advantage of in lieu of financial compensation.

This is usually framed in terms of greedy corporations cynically exploiting young workers, but having interviewed for a Sony studio myself a few years ago (and ultimately going back to my native robotics field for almost exactly double the pay), I think there is something tangible about the compensation that is working on something normal people encounter, especially in the leisure spaces of their lives. It may not p…

> friends watched or a game they played is a perk that has real value

in most cases it don't unless this game become really legendary which often not the case. So young person easily can spent 10y in attempt to do that but as result non of those games will be remembered in 2y after release.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#467

Post by coffeebeqn »

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…

That’s not really true at studios - maybe at Unreal and Unity they get paid normal wages. I know some people working on the in house engine and rendering of AAA studios and they make like 60% of what I make in general big-ish tech backend

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#468

Post by jimnotgym »

ernesto905 wrote: post #308

> An end to crunch I was unaware of the crunch concept: "In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

I'm interested in this when people talk about low pay.

In the UK if you are low waged, paid for 40 hours, asked to work another 40 hours for free... your pay test for minimum wage compliance is total pay divided by total hours worked. If this puts you under minimum wage, then the company is paying you illegally

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#469

Post by selfhoster1312 »

miiiiiike wrote: post #384
michaelsalim wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a game dev but I used to dabble in it. Quite surprised by this take honestly. Sure, each domain has its own complex things to solve. But on average, I think it's quite safe to say that game development consistently demands more creative solutions to problems compared to many other fields.

All development requires creativity. Different types of creativity for different types of problems. Creativity isn’t narrowly defined to exclude everything but art, game mechanisms, and narrative. You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity? I’m suspicious of anyone who tries to lay a special claim to creativity for their class or type of work. Creates a false creative vs cog narrative that always seems to…

> You think the creation of GMail didn’t take creativity?

Disclaimer: i've barely ever programmed video games

Not the same kind of creativity, for sure. Gmail has no performance constraints (and its performance is horrible), has no UX constraint (and its UX is horrible). It pushed the free tier some time ago and was arguably a decent webmail at the time, but nothing about it was revolutionary.

The hacks required to get a game to react and push pixels in real time on specific hardware are very interesting. That's closer to proper software engineering than many things we find in startups. That said, more and more games use Unity and other all-in-one engines and are not engineering anymore… and as a player, i can certainly feel the difference in the constant stuttering which mostly was not there when playing console games >10 years ago.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#470

Post by apeescape »

ernesto905 wrote: post #308

> An end to crunch I was unaware of the crunch concept: "In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

I'm just a regular web dev outside the gaming industry, but crunch is a concept that's occasionally present in any project work; I'm sure many HN readers are familiar with it from their own work too.

When you have a deadline to meet, sometimes you need to go into crunch mode to get things done. Of course the crunch mode should last no more than a week or maybe two, otherwise you risk burning out. After crunch mode there should be a slow period where you take some time off or work on something not urgent at all.

Post reply on HN