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

Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 505 posts

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#91

Post by midnightclubbed »

sageabilly wrote: post #9
lovetocode wrote: post #6

Game developers let themselves be exploited with low pay and unpaid overtime. They should grow a spine and say no to ridiculous work conditions. I am tired of hearing about it. They don’t need to unionize, they need to realize that they have a unique and valuable skill set. If we are talking specifically about programmers, we have the fortunate leverage to tell our employers to go piss up a rope with the weekly job o…

If every single employer has the same work conditions, then what? If the state of the industry as a whole is low pay and unpaid overtime, then it's not like a developer can just go to a better job.

Not every employer has the same conditions, and even within a single employer there can be a wide variance of the work conditions (generally based on project and the mid-level management's competency).

The success of a studio does not seem to correlate with how poorly or well they treat their staff.

In CA overtime is always paid for more junior staff (QA, junior artists/designers) as there were a number of high profile lawsuits against games companies back in the early 2000s. For senior staff and most programmers the salaries are (in my experience) competitive with general development work outside of the Bay Area and FAANG space.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#92

Post by gowld »

ido wrote: post #56
Pfhreak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience it was the ic level. Leadership would say, what's a reasonable timeline for feature x. The engineers would spend two hours arguing that estimates are bullshit, then give a trivially small (and obviously wrong) estimate. Leadership would say, are you sure? Engineers would basically flip them the bird and say yes. Then inevitably be late. I get it, estimating is inexact. But there's a clear difference…

A good project manager will wrestle a more realistic estimate from their developers before forwarding it to leadership.

A good PjM won't wrestle anything; they will measure.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/10/26/evidence-based-sch...

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#93

Post by Insanity »

thecatspaw wrote: post #83
hannasanarion wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of countries where all employers are required to give certain notice, and you can't suddenly fire someone. It is outrageous that your ability to eat and pay rent can be taken away with zero notice in America.

That just means they have to pay you for some time after they fired you. You can still be fired in an instant and be escorted out the door, especially if you have/had access to critical systems

They could, and after that time you fall back on 'unemployment wage' by the government. Which is less than what you'd normally earn, but by the time that happens you probably have another job already.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#94

Post by hnarn »

maxehmookau wrote: post #67
lovetocode wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I probably jumped the gun on the unionization part. I don’t know a lot about it but my impression of unions is not so bright. Maybe my ignorance is showing with that regard

My knowledge of unions is based entirely on the UK. They allow groups of employees who are subject to poor conditions to group together and participate in collective bargaining. Most programmers in the UK are not a member of a union as pay is fairly high and conditions relatively good, but the majority of public-sector and a lot of private-sector workers are. Unionising would be an excellent first step for employees…

> I see a lot of anti-union talk on HN

That's because most people on HN are from the U.S. where a century of propaganda has convinced most people not only that poor people are lazy, but by extension that unions are evil, corrupt and lazy organizations infiltrated by organized crime. While this propaganda has a minority basis in reality in some cases, as all propaganda will have because propaganda can't be 100% fantasy and make-believe, it's an ignorant basis to take when discussing broad and general questions like unions as a concept.

If you ask someone from Spain or Germany about unions and attempt to explain why they're "evil" from the US perspective, I can guarantee you will be met with complete disbelief. Most people in Europe may not actively be a part of a union, but they normally recognize them as beneficial entities in the labor market, and as something that will help balance the scales against employers of normally vastly larger influence, both politically and economically.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#95

Post by azhenley »

beatgammit wrote: post #84
azhenley wrote: post #8

It is a dream job if I’m my own boss.

Exactly. My dream scenario is to be in a situation like Tarn Adams, who works on a game he loves and lives off donations. Ideally, by that point I'd have enough to sustain myself without donations so that source of stress is gone. I don't want to work in the AAA game industry, I want to work for myself in the indie game industry on a project that both I and my supporters love.

I made Flash games part time in college that made enough money for me to [barely] live off. I took it for granted and now wish I had committed to it full time. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#96

Post by gowld »

Pfhreak wrote: post #61
whatshisface wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't they give a trivially large (and very safe) estimate? Telling someone you will be finished tomorrow puts the onus on you to explain why your estimate was wrong.

Great question. They have pet features. Features with long estimates are targets for being cut. Give a long estimate, you risk not being able to build your feature. I once asked, how long to add analytics to your code? (I wrote a one line utility that could bundle up objects and fire them off for you.) The response was "three weeks per event". Guess which part of the code didn't have analytics. Now, at some level thi…

If the people you hire refuse to build what you hired them to build, and you insist on paying them anyway, you've got a lost cause.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#97

Post by CM30 »

> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand

This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few 'passion' driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten more are lining up for the 'opportunity'.

You can see this in all manner of arts or entertainment based fields, since there are far more people wanting to become artists/musicians/writers/whatever than there is demand for their services. You can see it in journalism, where in many cases organisations will try and get work done for free, and will pay so little that living off said wages is virtually impossible in a major city if you don't have a trust fund (though admittedly the huge increase in competition from the internet puts pressure there). And I even recall people saying it's one reason teaching wages aren't too high either.

Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of 'passion', and to go where their skills are appreciated/where they're treated better/fairly compensated.

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#98

Post by winterismute »

For the interested Italian speakers out there, we have a recurrent podcast happening at www.gameloop.it and we had an episode right after the Blizzard layoffs to which both a Technical Director at Activision (Canada) and a researcher in the field of Industrial Relations (who worked on an EU report of unionization in the creative industry) participated, the discussion that sparked was very interesting in my opinion, here is the episoda page: https://gameloop.it/2019/02/26/gameloop-podcast-gl22a-activi... (Italian only :( )

Re: Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

#99

Post by djsumdog »

lovetocode wrote: post #6

Game developers let themselves be exploited with low pay and unpaid overtime. They should grow a spine and say no to ridiculous work conditions. I am tired of hearing about it. They don’t need to unionize, they need to realize that they have a unique and valuable skill set. If we are talking specifically about programmers, we have the fortunate leverage to tell our employers to go piss up a rope with the weekly job o…

I was fired from a shop that made a game backend and asked workers to continually crunch, work long hours on salary with no overtime. There were some big bonuses, but it didn't make up for the bad planning and management.

I refused to work over 45 hours a week. I worked one 13 hour Sunday and said no to the 2nd one and was fired. Another dev/ops person left two weeks later.

The others: almost all of the team is still there, working over a year later, with the same crazy hours (80+ for 6~8 weeks at a time) and same constant crunch. I really really really wish I had at least used the word "union" in a meeting or e-mail while there, so I could claim I was fired based on trying to organize. I've even considered taking a day or two off, standing in front of the building and handing out unionization pamphlets, just to see if I could help make a change for the people left there.

Everyone else let themselves and continue to let themselves be exploited. I honestly don't understand why many of them haven't gotten new jobs yet. Do they not realize that type of work isn't normal? I've worked at a lot of places and maybe I can just see bad management when others can't?

Post reply on HN