10 ms·

The secret life of a games programmer

84 points by kostyk 11y ago

lmm 11y ago
Do those extra hours even result in anything productive? I suspect you'd get more done in a regular 40-hour week - but of course it's much easier to measure how many hours you were at your desk than how much you did. People need to stop enabling this kind of nonsense - a big part of the problem is so many people want to make games that they'll put up with terrible working conditions to do so. Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization - but in a parallel to the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" line, everyone believes they're the best programmer, so no-one wants to do that.
- dagw 11y ago
  Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization I don't know. I've worked with ex game developers in Norway and Sweden, two countries with fairly strong unions, and the story is basically the same. The companies are very good at convincing you that you really want to work under those conditions and that doing so makes you awesome. They also know that if they insist on 'realistic', union approved, working conditions, the publisher/studio will just hand the next game off to another, less difficult, team. Hell, I've known people to straight up lie to their union rep about their working conditions because they don't want the unions stepping in and 'ruining' things.
  - JoeAltmaier 11y ago
    That sounds like exactly the conditions that an industry-wide unionization would fix. But that would be hard, because its so easy for a software shop to up and move. Unlike heavy industry in the 'age of unions', which had large fixed plants with heavy capital investment. So unionizing geographically, one business or industry at a time, was workable.
    - borvo 11y ago
      Unions just create another power structure that has to be appeased. I'd love to see the union rep telling the kind of engineers I work with why they're not allowed to fix something right now. Cue lynch mob!
      - CyberDildonics 11y ago
        There have been multiple animation companies that have unionized and still done well.
    - stevetrewick 11y ago
      By which you actually mean it would be more difficult for the union to form a closed shop and lock out competition from non union labour. this is a feature, not a bug.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - seivan 11y ago
    My experience as well.
- yoklov 11y ago
  > Do those extra hours even result in anything productive? I suspect you'd get more done in a regular 40-hour week - but of course it's much easier to measure how many hours you were at your desk than how much you did. More or less. There are times when it's more productive than this, usually towards the end of a project when all that's left is bugfixes, polish, adding in special cases here and there to make certain parts of the game more playable/obvious/fun/etc. But most of the time it's as you said, or even worse. The first couple weeks of crunch you might get 1/1 hours work to hours productive, but after a month or so of 80 hour weeks you're just working 80 hours to get 40 productive hours out of it. If that. > Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization - but in a parallel to the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" line, everyone believes they're the best programmer, so no-one wants to do that. I'm not an expert on unions (by any stretch, really, so correct me if I'm wrong), but I worry this would have a lot of unrelated negative consequences for the game industry, like making it very difficult for indie studios to get off the ground, which IMO would be more negative for the industry than crunch is (if I'm not mistaken about this being a likely possibility). (Also, it seems very strange to me to separate game and non-game programming in this way. Where is the line drawn?)
- brightball 11y ago
  > Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization... Except that comes with it's own significant detrimental side effects, not the least of which are incentivizing labor from countries without unions.
  - horsecaptin 11y ago
    You think people aren't already flocking to countries with cheap programmers?
    - brightball 11y ago
      Exactly.
estefan 11y ago
> You can identify programmers as the people with their headphones on, frowning at the screen. Yes!
- martiuk 11y ago
  Yep, even when walking between two places in the office (the toilets) for example, I'll have my headphone in and connected to my phone, just so I can't be distracted by the inevitable drive-by interruptions.
- Jemmeh 11y ago
  As I've read a lot lately: Headphones are the new walls.
smrtinsert 11y ago
Why do people thing they would enjoy being a game developer? Do they assume they would have critical design or decision making input, or do they just love coding physics/graphic rendering software. I never got the appeal. I like games too, but I would never think making them in a large studio would be fun. A simple game by myself as the complete owner on my own time seems way more fun by comparison.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  If you work on small teams and/or for a small studio, then you will have quite a few opportunities to influence the design or decision making. I worked for three small studios and influenced the design of every game I worked on. Getting paid 60% of what I could get outside the industry and the crunch time lowering that wage further, and screwing up my health, and leaving me with zero time for a social life eventually got to me, though, so I got out of the industry, despite my passion. I now design board games in my spare time while working on enterprise software at a Microsoft shop, and get paid a lot more, and if I ever have to stay late (which happens every once in awhile) they credit me the time to take off in the future so I'm only working 40 hour weeks.
  - littletinman 11y ago
    This has been my strategy for the last few years. I've been making games on my own dime for just a few years but I now have two self published games on Steam, and a few Micro-Consoles, and a Job in entirely different industry with great benefits and hard stop 40 hour weeks. I absolutely love programming games! It's the most fun programming I've ever had in the 10+ years of writing code. Nothing beats showing off your creations with family and friends and them "getting it." I've gone back and forth of whether I should join the industry but with a kid and high priority of family time, I just can't do away with what's actually important to me. I've never regretted working a solid job to support an awesome hobby.
    - cableshaft 11y ago
      Yeah, definitely. I have become a little disillusioned with the video game industry on the consumer side as well, though. There seems to be a lot of "download the newest game, play it for 30 minutes (for an app, 2-3 hours for a big game), then delete it and on to the next game" going on, and it seems very difficult to make a name for yourself unless you're working on large, artsy indie games that take many years to make. I've started getting into the board game hobby recently and it seems like, while you're never going to get rich off of it, there's much greater opportunities to gain a reputation and while there's a lot of "play the game a few times and move on to the next" in the hobby as well, because games are physical they tend to stay out there and get reprinted for decades, instead of stay out there for a few months, on average. I tended to design board-game-friendly designs in the first place, so I decided to pretty much switch to board games. As a bonus, there's a healthy demand for mobile app versions of board games anyway, so you can get a physical AND a digital version for the same game design. Plus it's a hell of a lot faster to prototype new mechanics and build prototypes with physical board games. But that's me. Programming games is still a lot of fun, just sucks when gamers spend so little time on your game before moving on to the next shiny thing.
iagooar 11y ago
> Management will always talk about having a healthy work-life balance but the implication is there that you could be doing more, fixing more bugs, taking on more work. > [...] feeling like your effort is constantly being judged means you end up doing it again and again. This resonates with me! I have experienced this kind of management schizophrenia many times, telling you that you have flexible working hours, that you can manage your time yourself, that you should take your time, do things right... And then, on the other side, appears the pressure to deliver, the "questions" that suggest you might need to "hurry" a bit more, to deliver more stuff, to cut some corners if necessary...
- crpatino 11y ago
  There is a technical name for that in psicology: Double-bind. There are 2 acceptable responses to that, plus a taboo one. The 2 standard responses is either to try to uphold an unrealistically high standard (the neurotic overachiever type), or you can take the blame for not doing it and sacrifice your sense of self worth (the dilbertesque, paper pusher type). Both private and public sector have plenty of uses for workers of either type. What is not permitted is to react like a grown up and point out to the inconsistency of the "mixed messages". I have read that this typically gets responded with hostility from higher-ups (who typically are not fully conscious of the dynamics of the game, or see themselves as just transmitting the requirements from upper management). Of course I barely have a handful of first and second hand data points, but those seem consistent with the model as explained above.
  - noxToken 11y ago
    The double-bind was a hallmark of a past job. Anytime a meeting, an event that the upper brass was hosting, or training was labeled as optional, there was always a heavy emphasis to attend on the day of. Monday morning: ${Executive} is coming down to talk about ${something unrelated} on Thursday. Attendance is strictly optional. This is doubly so if you're working on something critical. Tuesday and Wednesday morning: Don't forget about the talk on Thursday. You don't need to go, but it would be nice if you attended. Thursday morning: Don't forget about the talk this afternoon. Plan head down there about 12:45.
jorgecurio 11y ago
good god, this article is basically me working at a local startup 5 years ago. When you have someone who only makes decision based on outcomes from a black box process with the counter productive passive aggressive nagging of when will it be done vs. someone who understands the stress,emotions (yeah programmers have them too),art and approximate effort management to avoid burning people out will be a godsend. You can absolutely become the latter without technical expertise, I would say empathy is the biggest tool of someone who manages programmers. The cigar smoking hunch back Soviet union styled factory owner who keeps saying he survived the dot com bubble like it was some world war and getting angry when programmers are trying to 'subvert' him by intentionally missing deadlines. I think it's good that these type of industrial revolution era work management culture is slowly eroding. But yeah the disconnect between those on the front lines everyday with headphones on vs. the schmoozing politicizing manager with 30 years of restaurant experience is not going to be a good cultural fit. Eventually, everyone abandons you, people check glassdoor reviews and then you are finished, you can't hire anyone anymore without some insane turnover.
kozukumi 11y ago
As I have mentioned before my wife works in the games industry (producer not programmer) and her opinion is that the games industry treats programmers like shit. Maybe a true mad genius programmer isn't treated so badly but the 99% are seen as code monkeys that can be fired without a moments notice. It is a pretty horrible environment from the sounds of it.
searine 11y ago
Articles like this make me glad I went into science. If I'm going to work 16 hour days, 6 days a week, I may as well be getting something useful out of it.
- zodPod 11y ago
  Living the life described in this article makes me WISH I had gone into science. lol I don't want to work 16 hrs/day 6 days/week but, I'd rather be in science. I'm almost 30 though and own a house and 2 cars and have a wife and stuff so it's probably a little late for a full out career change... :-/
  - abrookewood 11y ago
    Mate, your 30! That is soo not too late for a career change. I've known people who jumped ship at 50 and never looked back. If you're honestly not happy doing what you're doing, start planning to do something different.
    - zodPod 11y ago
      Thanks man. I'll look into it! I feel so trapped with my current lifestyle. I guess the idea would just be to slowly get rid of it...
phaser 11y ago
Games developer here. Yes, I do work insane amount of hours and I would get paid a lot higher for my skills almost anywhere. Why? We use technology not to 'disrupt' some industry, get bigger returns for a financial firm or big data problems with users information. Instead, we create software with the sole purpose of making people happy, And we also get the chance to tell stories that will influence thousands maybe millions of minds. So we are in a never ending search for big insights about the world and ways to encode them into fun games. I'll never grow tired of that.
- TraderDuck 11y ago
  Not to shit on you in particular, but you seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about other forms of software development being done. Everyone rationalizes what they do. People working in those other industries will usually tell their version of your story: "I'm not working on some shitty game that will be forgotten in a year... I'm working on building a social revolution!!!!" Sorry. For the most part it's all about someone's bottom line. Indie game development isn't any purer than working for startup X on Bush st. that has similar lofty goals about "making people happy." > get bigger returns for a financial firm This is especially funny to me. If you're working for even a Mojang-sized studio, I hate to tell you but: You're definitely using technology to get bigger returns for a firm. Sure, it's not a financial firm. Let's not pretend that the differences are all that meaningful. Instead of stock market returns, game studios just seek to maximize the return they get on game development time. EDIT: s/Riot/Mojang. I didn't realize how large Riot has gotten. > I'll never grow tired of that. Great. And EA will never get tired of people working themselves to death for what inevitably amounts to minimum wage given the hours worked. Guess it's win-win.
  - zodPod 11y ago
    All points well said. You spoke my mind really. I felt the same way. All of the stuff that I've worked on, it's not just so some company can get richer. The story is that we're helping people. They also will likely use our products for a lot longer and get a lot more productive use out of it than any game. Side note: Didn't Mojang get bought by Microsoft? Are they still considered small? (NOTE: I've not researched this is a serious, not-loaded question..)
Paul_S 11y ago
"If you like games and you’re a programmer, go work for a firm that will pay. You will earn enough to buy all the games you want." This and similar advice have been repeated through the decades and have stopped no one. I heard that line. Didn't stop me. I dispensed this line and have stopped no one. Life is a different thing when you're young. Let me have another chance at giving out unwanted advice: If you enjoy programming games get a regular job that you work at 9-5 and use the time you would've spent working unpaid overtime at a games studio to work on a game at home. You will have creative control and freedom to choose any tech and tools you want - neither of which you'd have at a games studio. Do I even need to mention a normal salary and other benefits at this point?
- whitegrape 11y ago
  Sometimes I think that most of the people dispensing the line are doing it out of some sort of strange culture-preservation instinct guarding against the naive newcomers who'll burn out immediately since nothing is as was dreamed... Everyone in the industry I know is aware they could get better compensation elsewhere, and I suspect all or almost all of them knew that before getting in to the industry. It's a job very similar to that of a porn star. But you know all your coworkers know, so you each must have some underlying passion for the gig that's significant enough that you'll suffer through the crunch. Some even really like the crunch. Your last advice seems even less effective than the standard to me, in that it's totally ineffective against someone who says "yeah but I want to work on Halo" whereas there's at least a snowball's chance in hell that if you say "MS will pay and treat you like shit if you work on Halo" they might reconsider...
  - noxToken 11y ago
    >Your last advice seems even less effective than the standard to me, in that it's totally ineffective against someone who says "yeah but I want to work on Halo" whereas there's at least a snowball's chance in hell that if you say "MS will pay and treat you like shit if you work on Halo" they might reconsider... It feels like this is always the crux of the problem. Young people full of life just don't understand how soul-crushing certain jobs can be. I was one of those people. In a past position, I was told that the hours would be long, and the competitive nature drives people to insanity. On the bright side, you'll make some great friends (the ones that you don't hate) and the benefits are outrageously good. All of that was true to the letter. I didn't understand the subtext of work coming before literally everything else (including health), the pay is trash, and life will always be massively in favor of your superiors. What my teenage self didn't understand was how much of an impact the subtext would have on my life in the future. And if I did (though I'm sure I didn't), it didn't matter. It was what I wanted. It was my calling. On the other hand, you run the risk of sounding like an someone who, "just doesn't understand the passion" that someone can have for the job - even if you're recounting stories from your past. Too much negativity just keeps the young crowd from believing you.
kbenson 11y ago
This has been my impression of the industry for close to two decades now, just from the stories. From what I understand, it's not all that secret for programmers (remember EA spouse?). I remember counseling my step-cousin to be wary when while in college he mentioned he wanted to get into games development after he got his CS degree. It made me feel like an asshole, as it feels like I'm squashing his dreams, but I also didn't feel I could in good conscience not at least say something so he could look into it more if he wanted. I hold out hope that independent games companies are different, and from what I've heard, they mostly are.
andywood 11y ago
Games and graphics are the whole reason I started programming, but after 20 years of on and off game programming, I mostly agree with the article. The technical details of how games and graphics work are very interesting, but the actual process of finishing a viable game is some degree of hellish nightmare. I can relate to the statement about being primarily a problem solver. There are tons of interesting problems in games, but they only make up a fraction of the necessary work. I've shipped a small number of both indie and studio titles, but it took me decades to admit that I'm primarily a problem solver, and probably not primarily a game-maker.
zodPod 11y ago
His mention of the open floor plan thing resonated with me a LOT. I have 2 coworkers who have a tendency to get into discussions who work in the same circle as me in our open floor plan. It makes it really hard to concentrate when they're constantly yelling back and forth behind me. I usually just put on some headphones and zone out but the obsession with open floor plans as somehow innovative is crazy. It's backward. "I want these people to think effectively and clearly and not have distractions. I know! Let's try an open floor plan!" I'm sure that's not the thought process but I can't imagine, other than control or cost, what the other one would be that would cause an open floor plan to be chosen. All of the above said, it's not just them that are distracting. It's literally just the effect of the open floor plan. Someone is talking 4-5 desks down and your brain has to make the constant decision not to listen to them.
- h0w412d 11y ago
  I have the same feeling toward them. They're chosen for the same reason new technologies are often chosen: because they're new. The people doing the choosing aren't concerned with effectiveness or improvement, only that they're keeping up with the cool new thing.
lowbloodsugar 11y ago
>In the end I was incredibly lucky, landing a junior role at a major UK studio owned by a console manufacturer just after they had made some more experienced engineers redundant. Company that fires experienced engineers to hire junior ones? Doesn't sound that lucky.
kosei 11y ago
Let me just say that there are game studios that are not run in this way. They may be hard to find, but they do exist - mostly outside of the console space - and I've worked at two of them and know of others. If the OP lives in the Seattle area, I'm happy to recommend a couple of studios that don't treat their employees like slaves.

84 points by kostyk 11y ago

lmm 11y ago

Do those extra hours even result in anything productive? I suspect you'd get more done in a regular 40-hour week - but of course it's much easier to measure how many hours you were at your desk than how much you did. People need to stop enabling this kind of nonsense - a big part of the problem is so many people want to make games that they'll put up with terrible working conditions to do so. Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization - but in a parallel to the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" line, everyone believes they're the best programmer, so no-one wants to do that.

dagw 11y ago
Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization I don't know. I've worked with ex game developers in Norway and Sweden, two countries with fairly strong unions, and the story is basically the same. The companies are very good at convincing you that you really want to work under those conditions and that doing so makes you awesome. They also know that if they insist on 'realistic', union approved, working conditions, the publisher/studio will just hand the next game off to another, less difficult, team. Hell, I've known people to straight up lie to their union rep about their working conditions because they don't want the unions stepping in and 'ruining' things.
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
  That sounds like exactly the conditions that an industry-wide unionization would fix. But that would be hard, because its so easy for a software shop to up and move. Unlike heavy industry in the 'age of unions', which had large fixed plants with heavy capital investment. So unionizing geographically, one business or industry at a time, was workable.
  - borvo 11y ago
    Unions just create another power structure that has to be appeased. I'd love to see the union rep telling the kind of engineers I work with why they're not allowed to fix something right now. Cue lynch mob!
    - CyberDildonics 11y ago
      There have been multiple animation companies that have unionized and still done well.
  - stevetrewick 11y ago
    By which you actually mean it would be more difficult for the union to form a closed shop and lock out competition from non union labour. this is a feature, not a bug.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- seivan 11y ago
  My experience as well.
yoklov 11y ago
> Do those extra hours even result in anything productive? I suspect you'd get more done in a regular 40-hour week - but of course it's much easier to measure how many hours you were at your desk than how much you did. More or less. There are times when it's more productive than this, usually towards the end of a project when all that's left is bugfixes, polish, adding in special cases here and there to make certain parts of the game more playable/obvious/fun/etc. But most of the time it's as you said, or even worse. The first couple weeks of crunch you might get 1/1 hours work to hours productive, but after a month or so of 80 hour weeks you're just working 80 hours to get 40 productive hours out of it. If that. > Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization - but in a parallel to the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" line, everyone believes they're the best programmer, so no-one wants to do that. I'm not an expert on unions (by any stretch, really, so correct me if I'm wrong), but I worry this would have a lot of unrelated negative consequences for the game industry, like making it very difficult for indie studios to get off the ground, which IMO would be more negative for the industry than crunch is (if I'm not mistaken about this being a likely possibility). (Also, it seems very strange to me to separate game and non-game programming in this way. Where is the line drawn?)
brightball 11y ago
> Ultimately the only thing that will fix it is the same thing that fixed working conditions elsewhere - unionization... Except that comes with it's own significant detrimental side effects, not the least of which are incentivizing labor from countries without unions.
- horsecaptin 11y ago
  You think people aren't already flocking to countries with cheap programmers?
  - brightball 11y ago
    Exactly.

estefan 11y ago

> You can identify programmers as the people with their headphones on, frowning at the screen. Yes!

martiuk 11y ago
Yep, even when walking between two places in the office (the toilets) for example, I'll have my headphone in and connected to my phone, just so I can't be distracted by the inevitable drive-by interruptions.
Jemmeh 11y ago
As I've read a lot lately: Headphones are the new walls.

smrtinsert 11y ago

Why do people thing they would enjoy being a game developer? Do they assume they would have critical design or decision making input, or do they just love coding physics/graphic rendering software. I never got the appeal. I like games too, but I would never think making them in a large studio would be fun. A simple game by myself as the complete owner on my own time seems way more fun by comparison.

cableshaft 11y ago
If you work on small teams and/or for a small studio, then you will have quite a few opportunities to influence the design or decision making. I worked for three small studios and influenced the design of every game I worked on. Getting paid 60% of what I could get outside the industry and the crunch time lowering that wage further, and screwing up my health, and leaving me with zero time for a social life eventually got to me, though, so I got out of the industry, despite my passion. I now design board games in my spare time while working on enterprise software at a Microsoft shop, and get paid a lot more, and if I ever have to stay late (which happens every once in awhile) they credit me the time to take off in the future so I'm only working 40 hour weeks.
- littletinman 11y ago
  This has been my strategy for the last few years. I've been making games on my own dime for just a few years but I now have two self published games on Steam, and a few Micro-Consoles, and a Job in entirely different industry with great benefits and hard stop 40 hour weeks. I absolutely love programming games! It's the most fun programming I've ever had in the 10+ years of writing code. Nothing beats showing off your creations with family and friends and them "getting it." I've gone back and forth of whether I should join the industry but with a kid and high priority of family time, I just can't do away with what's actually important to me. I've never regretted working a solid job to support an awesome hobby.
  - cableshaft 11y ago
    Yeah, definitely. I have become a little disillusioned with the video game industry on the consumer side as well, though. There seems to be a lot of "download the newest game, play it for 30 minutes (for an app, 2-3 hours for a big game), then delete it and on to the next game" going on, and it seems very difficult to make a name for yourself unless you're working on large, artsy indie games that take many years to make. I've started getting into the board game hobby recently and it seems like, while you're never going to get rich off of it, there's much greater opportunities to gain a reputation and while there's a lot of "play the game a few times and move on to the next" in the hobby as well, because games are physical they tend to stay out there and get reprinted for decades, instead of stay out there for a few months, on average. I tended to design board-game-friendly designs in the first place, so I decided to pretty much switch to board games. As a bonus, there's a healthy demand for mobile app versions of board games anyway, so you can get a physical AND a digital version for the same game design. Plus it's a hell of a lot faster to prototype new mechanics and build prototypes with physical board games. But that's me. Programming games is still a lot of fun, just sucks when gamers spend so little time on your game before moving on to the next shiny thing.

iagooar 11y ago

> Management will always talk about having a healthy work-life balance but the implication is there that you could be doing more, fixing more bugs, taking on more work. > [...] feeling like your effort is constantly being judged means you end up doing it again and again. This resonates with me! I have experienced this kind of management schizophrenia many times, telling you that you have flexible working hours, that you can manage your time yourself, that you should take your time, do things right... And then, on the other side, appears the pressure to deliver, the "questions" that suggest you might need to "hurry" a bit more, to deliver more stuff, to cut some corners if necessary...

crpatino 11y ago
There is a technical name for that in psicology: Double-bind. There are 2 acceptable responses to that, plus a taboo one. The 2 standard responses is either to try to uphold an unrealistically high standard (the neurotic overachiever type), or you can take the blame for not doing it and sacrifice your sense of self worth (the dilbertesque, paper pusher type). Both private and public sector have plenty of uses for workers of either type. What is not permitted is to react like a grown up and point out to the inconsistency of the "mixed messages". I have read that this typically gets responded with hostility from higher-ups (who typically are not fully conscious of the dynamics of the game, or see themselves as just transmitting the requirements from upper management). Of course I barely have a handful of first and second hand data points, but those seem consistent with the model as explained above.
- noxToken 11y ago
  The double-bind was a hallmark of a past job. Anytime a meeting, an event that the upper brass was hosting, or training was labeled as optional, there was always a heavy emphasis to attend on the day of. Monday morning: ${Executive} is coming down to talk about ${something unrelated} on Thursday. Attendance is strictly optional. This is doubly so if you're working on something critical. Tuesday and Wednesday morning: Don't forget about the talk on Thursday. You don't need to go, but it would be nice if you attended. Thursday morning: Don't forget about the talk this afternoon. Plan head down there about 12:45.

jorgecurio 11y ago

good god, this article is basically me working at a local startup 5 years ago. When you have someone who only makes decision based on outcomes from a black box process with the counter productive passive aggressive nagging of when will it be done vs. someone who understands the stress,emotions (yeah programmers have them too),art and approximate effort management to avoid burning people out will be a godsend. You can absolutely become the latter without technical expertise, I would say empathy is the biggest tool of someone who manages programmers. The cigar smoking hunch back Soviet union styled factory owner who keeps saying he survived the dot com bubble like it was some world war and getting angry when programmers are trying to 'subvert' him by intentionally missing deadlines. I think it's good that these type of industrial revolution era work management culture is slowly eroding. But yeah the disconnect between those on the front lines everyday with headphones on vs. the schmoozing politicizing manager with 30 years of restaurant experience is not going to be a good cultural fit. Eventually, everyone abandons you, people check glassdoor reviews and then you are finished, you can't hire anyone anymore without some insane turnover.

kozukumi 11y ago

As I have mentioned before my wife works in the games industry (producer not programmer) and her opinion is that the games industry treats programmers like shit. Maybe a true mad genius programmer isn't treated so badly but the 99% are seen as code monkeys that can be fired without a moments notice. It is a pretty horrible environment from the sounds of it.

searine 11y ago

Articles like this make me glad I went into science. If I'm going to work 16 hour days, 6 days a week, I may as well be getting something useful out of it.

zodPod 11y ago
Living the life described in this article makes me WISH I had gone into science. lol I don't want to work 16 hrs/day 6 days/week but, I'd rather be in science. I'm almost 30 though and own a house and 2 cars and have a wife and stuff so it's probably a little late for a full out career change... :-/
- abrookewood 11y ago
  Mate, your 30! That is soo not too late for a career change. I've known people who jumped ship at 50 and never looked back. If you're honestly not happy doing what you're doing, start planning to do something different.
  - zodPod 11y ago
    Thanks man. I'll look into it! I feel so trapped with my current lifestyle. I guess the idea would just be to slowly get rid of it...

phaser 11y ago

Games developer here. Yes, I do work insane amount of hours and I would get paid a lot higher for my skills almost anywhere. Why? We use technology not to 'disrupt' some industry, get bigger returns for a financial firm or big data problems with users information. Instead, we create software with the sole purpose of making people happy, And we also get the chance to tell stories that will influence thousands maybe millions of minds. So we are in a never ending search for big insights about the world and ways to encode them into fun games. I'll never grow tired of that.

TraderDuck 11y ago
Not to shit on you in particular, but you seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about other forms of software development being done. Everyone rationalizes what they do. People working in those other industries will usually tell their version of your story: "I'm not working on some shitty game that will be forgotten in a year... I'm working on building a social revolution!!!!" Sorry. For the most part it's all about someone's bottom line. Indie game development isn't any purer than working for startup X on Bush st. that has similar lofty goals about "making people happy." > get bigger returns for a financial firm This is especially funny to me. If you're working for even a Mojang-sized studio, I hate to tell you but: You're definitely using technology to get bigger returns for a firm. Sure, it's not a financial firm. Let's not pretend that the differences are all that meaningful. Instead of stock market returns, game studios just seek to maximize the return they get on game development time. EDIT: s/Riot/Mojang. I didn't realize how large Riot has gotten. > I'll never grow tired of that. Great. And EA will never get tired of people working themselves to death for what inevitably amounts to minimum wage given the hours worked. Guess it's win-win.
- zodPod 11y ago
  All points well said. You spoke my mind really. I felt the same way. All of the stuff that I've worked on, it's not just so some company can get richer. The story is that we're helping people. They also will likely use our products for a lot longer and get a lot more productive use out of it than any game. Side note: Didn't Mojang get bought by Microsoft? Are they still considered small? (NOTE: I've not researched this is a serious, not-loaded question..)

Paul_S 11y ago

"If you like games and you’re a programmer, go work for a firm that will pay. You will earn enough to buy all the games you want." This and similar advice have been repeated through the decades and have stopped no one. I heard that line. Didn't stop me. I dispensed this line and have stopped no one. Life is a different thing when you're young. Let me have another chance at giving out unwanted advice: If you enjoy programming games get a regular job that you work at 9-5 and use the time you would've spent working unpaid overtime at a games studio to work on a game at home. You will have creative control and freedom to choose any tech and tools you want - neither of which you'd have at a games studio. Do I even need to mention a normal salary and other benefits at this point?

whitegrape 11y ago
Sometimes I think that most of the people dispensing the line are doing it out of some sort of strange culture-preservation instinct guarding against the naive newcomers who'll burn out immediately since nothing is as was dreamed... Everyone in the industry I know is aware they could get better compensation elsewhere, and I suspect all or almost all of them knew that before getting in to the industry. It's a job very similar to that of a porn star. But you know all your coworkers know, so you each must have some underlying passion for the gig that's significant enough that you'll suffer through the crunch. Some even really like the crunch. Your last advice seems even less effective than the standard to me, in that it's totally ineffective against someone who says "yeah but I want to work on Halo" whereas there's at least a snowball's chance in hell that if you say "MS will pay and treat you like shit if you work on Halo" they might reconsider...
- noxToken 11y ago
  >Your last advice seems even less effective than the standard to me, in that it's totally ineffective against someone who says "yeah but I want to work on Halo" whereas there's at least a snowball's chance in hell that if you say "MS will pay and treat you like shit if you work on Halo" they might reconsider... It feels like this is always the crux of the problem. Young people full of life just don't understand how soul-crushing certain jobs can be. I was one of those people. In a past position, I was told that the hours would be long, and the competitive nature drives people to insanity. On the bright side, you'll make some great friends (the ones that you don't hate) and the benefits are outrageously good. All of that was true to the letter. I didn't understand the subtext of work coming before literally everything else (including health), the pay is trash, and life will always be massively in favor of your superiors. What my teenage self didn't understand was how much of an impact the subtext would have on my life in the future. And if I did (though I'm sure I didn't), it didn't matter. It was what I wanted. It was my calling. On the other hand, you run the risk of sounding like an someone who, "just doesn't understand the passion" that someone can have for the job - even if you're recounting stories from your past. Too much negativity just keeps the young crowd from believing you.

kbenson 11y ago

This has been my impression of the industry for close to two decades now, just from the stories. From what I understand, it's not all that secret for programmers (remember EA spouse?). I remember counseling my step-cousin to be wary when while in college he mentioned he wanted to get into games development after he got his CS degree. It made me feel like an asshole, as it feels like I'm squashing his dreams, but I also didn't feel I could in good conscience not at least say something so he could look into it more if he wanted. I hold out hope that independent games companies are different, and from what I've heard, they mostly are.

andywood 11y ago

Games and graphics are the whole reason I started programming, but after 20 years of on and off game programming, I mostly agree with the article. The technical details of how games and graphics work are very interesting, but the actual process of finishing a viable game is some degree of hellish nightmare. I can relate to the statement about being primarily a problem solver. There are tons of interesting problems in games, but they only make up a fraction of the necessary work. I've shipped a small number of both indie and studio titles, but it took me decades to admit that I'm primarily a problem solver, and probably not primarily a game-maker.

zodPod 11y ago

His mention of the open floor plan thing resonated with me a LOT. I have 2 coworkers who have a tendency to get into discussions who work in the same circle as me in our open floor plan. It makes it really hard to concentrate when they're constantly yelling back and forth behind me. I usually just put on some headphones and zone out but the obsession with open floor plans as somehow innovative is crazy. It's backward. "I want these people to think effectively and clearly and not have distractions. I know! Let's try an open floor plan!" I'm sure that's not the thought process but I can't imagine, other than control or cost, what the other one would be that would cause an open floor plan to be chosen. All of the above said, it's not just them that are distracting. It's literally just the effect of the open floor plan. Someone is talking 4-5 desks down and your brain has to make the constant decision not to listen to them.

h0w412d 11y ago
I have the same feeling toward them. They're chosen for the same reason new technologies are often chosen: because they're new. The people doing the choosing aren't concerned with effectiveness or improvement, only that they're keeping up with the cool new thing.

lowbloodsugar 11y ago

>In the end I was incredibly lucky, landing a junior role at a major UK studio owned by a console manufacturer just after they had made some more experienced engineers redundant. Company that fires experienced engineers to hire junior ones? Doesn't sound that lucky.

kosei 11y ago

Let me just say that there are game studios that are not run in this way. They may be hard to find, but they do exist - mostly outside of the console space - and I've worked at two of them and know of others. If the OP lives in the Seattle area, I'm happy to recommend a couple of studios that don't treat their employees like slaves.