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GTA 6 Developers Unionize

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Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#501

Post by DonHopkins »

ziofill wrote: post #408
Animats wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes. Having done everything from mainframe OS internals to proof of correctness to autonomous vehicles, video games are the most difficult. At the beginning, game dev looks easy, because the tools are good and modern hardware is very capable. But as you approach…

This is very interesting, what makes video game engineering so difficult?

The irresistible temptation to add more.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#502

Post by tester756 »

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”.

>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”.

A lot of fancy keywords, but

1) It's the stack that you decided to put your services on, your HTTP 200 could be also served by nginx + 1 html file

2) You can make empty video multiplayer game which will sound as fancy as that HTTP 200 hello world

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#503

Post by bigmadshoe »

merlindru wrote: post #479
apeescape wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

yes but the compensation part is the problem An 80h week should not be compensated the same as two 40h weeks

In the case of crunch in the video game industry, an 80 hour week is compensated the same as one 40 hour week

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#504

Post by nsagent »

mickeyp wrote: post #498
nsagent wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly depends on what you're working on in games. Not every game pushes the envelope, but the ones that do are seriously complex. They are essentially realtime embedded systems, which push the hardware to the max. Sometimes you get similar demands at the big companies like Google and Meta, but often you have the opportunity to throw more compute at the problem. That is rarely possible in games. Having been a g…

No the insight here is that you went _back_ and got your PhD with years of experience building professional software. Expecting a 20-year old undergrad or a 23-year old postgrad to do as well as someone who left and came back to uni to finish their degree(s) is... uncharitable.

I became lead of that MMORTS within 4yrs of starting my career. I've worked with lots of PhD students who came back after more than 5 years working in big tech; not one had the experience and abilities I did. I've also worked with fresh grads in games who were miles ahead of 99% of the software engineers and PhDs I've encountered in my time.

Again, I've also run into equally talented fresh grads in big tech, but they were much more rare.

Take my anecdotes as you will.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#505

Post by Cyph0n »

matchbok3 wrote: post #399
Cyph0n wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is not a “complex” position at all. On the contrary, it’s a fairly simple position where you take no strong stance but still want to claim the positive aspects from each side. Are unions universally good? No, because humans are in the loop, and humans can do bad things. Does that change the fact that the concept of a union is one of the greatest innovations in all of human history? No. Can unions today help…

The Samsung deal is exactly what I'm talking about. It is not all entirely good. Everyone at Samsung not working in chips got screwed. And those lucky few union members used their power to extract an unfair amount of money from the company. This will cause the company to lean towards other avenues in the future, potentially harming everyone else. Why are those people getting a huge check? Not because they worked hard…

And how exactly is this situation worse than the unfair allocation of salaries and bonuses in companies today? Even within the same company, people can get paid more based on the org/division they work in (e.g. core AI teams), or even based on their (team or individual) perceived value to higher ups.

At least with the Samsung union, the decision is being made bottom up vs. top down.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#506

Post by eqvinox »

saltyoldman wrote: post #317
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.

who is in hn these days, remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours. now it's "extremely predatory".

> remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours

> saltyoldman

I wonder how you've gotten so salty... those working hours wouldn't be a factor, would they?

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#508

Post by mike_hearn »

ziofill wrote: post #408
Animats wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Yes. Having done everything from mainframe OS internals to proof of correctness to autonomous vehicles, video games are the most difficult. At the beginning, game dev looks easy, because the tools are good and modern hardware is very capable. But as you approach…

This is very interesting, what makes video game engineering so difficult?

It's a highly competitive field in which edge is sometimes obtained by better code, so everyone is constantly outdoing each other with new tricks.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#509

Post by groundzeros2015 »

kelnos wrote: post #481
groundzeros2015 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true at all. They protect the weakest employees at expense of the strongest and in game crunch at the end when the vision has materialized is good and makes the product better

> game crunch at the end when the vision has materialized is good and makes the product better At the expense of the mental health of everyone involved. It's a video game, not a life-saving new medicine. Not worth it.

I enjoy a crunch with well defined scope and goals.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#510

Post by oreally »

vouwfietsman wrote: post #489
oreally wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dev team is usually under immense pressure to deliver. This probably slipped under the radar to let all the other features get through. The maintenance team probably maintains other games as well. Then you add in the knowledge loss through the churning of developers and over time the organization forgets how things should be.

Again, you're not wrong, but none of those things are insurmountable. If the team is really so stressed it cannot spend 30 minutes, over the many year of the existence of that bug, that seems like a development environment close to hell. Knowledge loss is precisely my point: there is very little a-priori knowledge needed to solve this, the guy who found the bug proves that.

Yea development environments are close to hell in game development, won't argue that.
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