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

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

penny-arcade.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 177 posts

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

#61

Post by mimiflynn »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #25
petercooper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, a rather sad thing about the magazine publishing industry (especially fashion) still is that many workers are unpaid (except, perhaps, expenses) interns for years at a time fighting to get a tiny number of paid jobs. We even see the intern thing in our own tech industry: http://techcitynews.com/2013/04/08/were-hiring-join-our-team... I think this article goes a way to answer why young people dominate the g…

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.

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

#62

Post by mrcharles »

I've been making games for nearly 15 years now. I am an early 30s white man. I am good at what I do, and can work anywhere I want, at this point in my career. I'm happily married, though we don't have (nor want) kids.

I think the article is somewhat accurate, but I think it also pays short shrift to the improvements that are happening in games.

One of the big things I've noticed in recent years is the amount of people who enter games who are aware of the quality of life issues, and practice work to rule more often than not. It puts pressure on managers to learn to schedule properly, and it puts pressure on directors to learn when to cut.

On top of that, there are a lot of studios that lean older in terms of age. Ubisoft Montreal is a good example of this; I couldn't tell you what the average age is, but I know that it's just as likely someone has a kid at home as not, and that also puts a lot of pressure to run things right.

Also a lot of the managers these days have kids at home that they want to see, so if nothing else, they are improving their methods for selfish reasons.

There's still a long way to go in games, but the game industry today isn't anything like what it was in 2000. It has been nearly a decade since I was expected to pull an all-nighter, for one. It's been nearly that since I was expected to work both a saturday AND a sunday.

These days it's not impossible to find developers who believe in quality of life. But what is very very possible is to find a place to work where it won't be held against you that you have a family at home, and I think that's largely what this article is missing.

That recent photo eulogy of Lucas Arts talked about things that I literally have not seen since before 2005; it's not shocking that a studio which would expect people to miss funerals and prioritize work over relationships would fail to put out games of quality.

The game industry still has far to go, there's no doubt about it. But if you want to have a family, there are large swaths of the game industry these days who are perfectly willing to accommodate you without complaint.

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

#63

Post by MartinCron »

NateDad wrote: post #46
ardit33 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that your job might look bad in your resume. Given the bad rep gaming companies have, only people that are inexperienced/not that good, or clueless go to the industry. I know you have to start your career somewhere, but keep that in mind.

Uh, as a developer of 13 years who has never been in the gaming industry... I question your generalization. I have never seen or heard of anyone saying game programmers are inferior or clueless in my professional career. Granted, I work in Boston, so things may be different here, but it's really not a characterization I at all recognize.

Yeah, I wouldn't look at someone with big-game-studio experience as an inferior, just perhaps a little naive and might need a little calibration as to what a sustainable work pace actually looks like.

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

#64

Post by ijk »

Aloisius wrote: post #51

Why do games require so many developers to work 20 hour days? Aren't most of games built on commercial engines that do most of the heavy lifting? I've been following the Doublefine guys and a lot of their development was put into making developer tools. I suppose I understand that, but when I hear of these 400 person teams building a game that takes 4 years to make, I'm honestly a little bewildered.

A huge chunk of that team size is artists, level designers, testing, audio, and studio overhead. Not that there aren't lots of programmers too, especially in a game with lots of scripted levels and separate systems. But it isn't like it's a team of 400 programmers.

Also, while the engines do most of the visual stuff, which was what a lot of the '90s-era tech-talk revolved around, they do nothing to implement your gameplay.

Here's the credits for one of those big-team games, as an example (81 or so engineers/scripters, but only a fraction of the total team size): http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox360/call-of-duty-black-ops...

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

#65

Post by danielweber »

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…

What happens if the workforce walks away?

If you have the idea of "I must work on games, no matter what," you will be rewarded commensurately.

If you have the idea of "I want to work, and games would be cool, but not worth more than an extra 5 hours of work per week and losing $5,000 of salary per year," then the industry would have to pay the talent more.

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

#66

Post by acgourley »

potatolicious wrote: post #22
dicroce wrote: post #6

I really, truly, honestly believe that above 9 hours a day for an extended period of time actually ends up hurting your development efforts. You want developers who come into work and WORK. Not work a little, check a little HN, work a little, eat, check a little Reddit. Living at work forces coping mechanisms like this on you because you really only have a finite amount of creative attention.

You'll find no disagreement anywhere on that point. The nature of the games industry is not based on any rational basis - the overwork is cultural, deeply ingrained, and completely irrational. People who are overworked for extended periods have negative productivity - you can't throw a rock without hitting a dozen studies that have proven this decade after decade. This sort of management and process is pure cargo cul…

I want to believe you're right. But I fear game industry is sufficiently large and long lived that if you were right, someone would have tried it, come out ahead, and created a new cargo cult cuture. I think that a more likely explanation is that working long hours has huge diminishing returns, but for game development tasks the teams come out a bit ahead. This may have to do with the fact that many of the mainstream games in question have fairly established practices and structure, and a lot of the work is building a huge pile of uninspiring content. Literally modeling rocks and dirt, for example.

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

#67

Post by Thrymr »

sageikosa wrote: post #29

Statistically, the odds are that for any random thing being done in the US of A, the majority doing it will be white and male. Age and childlessness are probably relatively well co-related, so we only have to account for one of those. What is comes down to is that the steady supply of labor entering a field causes it to be a buyers market.

Hardly the "majority". White males are less than 40% of the US population. I don't think we're going out on much of a limb to say that they are overrepresented in the game industry.

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

#68

Post by freehunter »

webjprgm wrote: post #56

I stopped reading at: "Ironically, in starting a video game studio to fight these issues and prove that games can be made with sane schedules, Boucher-Vidal has had to put off getting married and starting a family. “Luckily, my girlfriend is incredibly supportive,” he said." Your actions show your real priorities. How can he really mean what he's trying to do if he doesn't live it himself? I imagine this article give…

Being a founder is a lot different than being an employee. Many in leadership don't live the life they hope their employees have. I know my CEO travels a lot, puts off a lot of family time, and works insane hours. He still gives us plentiful vacation time, great benefits, and even paternity leave. He doesn't do it because he likes the lifestyle, he does it because it's what he feels needs to be done to give his company a shot at changing the industry.

Liken it to a family. When I was a child, my mom was awake before us kids to make breakfast, got us to school and then went to work, picked us up from school and made dinner, and was in bed after us while she was cleaning the house. She did this to ensure that us kids led a good life and had the things we needed. Her kids and her home were her priority, like a CEO's employees and company are their priority.

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

#69

Post by mimiflynn »

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,…

I've been living and working in NYC for several years now and my expereince with this has varied. It depends on what industry you're looking at. Making websites or apps for marketing and advertising firms will always demand more of your time per week. Startups expect a developer to act like a founder by living and breathing their work. Doing the same work for a financial firm will not so much (although the full timers at my last job were expected to work 10 hr days). I'm currently at a big bank and my hours are regular and with reasonable deadlines.

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

#70

Post by theorique »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #42
theorique wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, agreed, it was not clear why calling out White was useful in the title. "Youth" and "maleness" were relevant. Younger people tend to be more "desperate" and willing to trade time and health to "make it" in their career of choice. They are also less likely to have young children. Males tend to be more passionate about the gaming industry. But what is it about White people that makes them more likely to go into t…

FWIW my friends who have worked in the games industry worked with a lot of chinese and indian co-workers.

Also not a surprise ... again, reflecting the demographic of the programming / IT worker.
Post reply on HN