4 ms·

Is there any part of the entertainment industry that isn't like this? It seems that trying to be a writer, actor, game maker or a musician is incredible amount

by sien 9y ago

Is there any part of the entertainment industry that isn't like this? It seems that trying to be a writer, actor, game maker or a musician is incredible amounts of hard work and a small number of people do well and everyone else does badly.

minimaxir 9y ago
The video game industry is especially bad as it combines the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the bad aspects of software development. A good story of the combination of overwork and technical mismanagement is the Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle (written by the same author as the NYT article): https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428 https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-t...
- munificent 9y ago
  > The video game industry is especially bad as it combines > the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the > bad aspects of software development. Another corner of the world where those two collide is the visual effects side of film production. What you see there mirrors the game industry to a tee: tons of overtime, high stress, low pay, studios constantly folding, and a never-ending stream of young hungry creative people waiting for their turn.
  - visarga 9y ago
    Same with Manga artists in Japan.
    - mrschwabe 9y ago
      Same with advertising industry in Japan.
  - zappo2938 9y ago
    Sounds like working in Michelin starred restaurants.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
  The problems extend to beyond the confines of game developers and publishers. It also doesn't help to have to contend with a deeply critical and particularly cheap audience and overly influential terrible game 'journalists'. Many of the customers, if you've ever played online, are downright abusive actually. The customers, many of whom are young and immature want everything for free. If publishers try to charge for anything at all, it's 'a rip off'. Even though game prices have remained the same for a couple of decades while games become vastly more complex (and hence more expensive to make). Basically games are not valued. The only reason they even get made is because there's enough people who love making them without sweating about not having the best salary, and enough young people who keep coming in to replace the people who've finally decided they've had enough.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    The problem of people wanting software for free is such a hard thing to combat. There's something psychological about software that people don't realize what it takes to make it. Most people would never expect to obtain a physical item for free, and then get mad when they are charged for it, yet they do this with software.
  - spaceseaman 9y ago
    > and overly influential terrible game 'journalists' I would argue that you're pointing that finger in the severe wrong direction. The young generation of young males who buy video games do not visit the web pages of the enthusiast game press (IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku). Instead, they consume all of their game "reviews" and "criticism" via YouTube - figures like PewDiePie, TotalBiscuit, etc (not exactly a great crowd). The gaming press is actually having a really fascinating resurgence IMO. Websites like GiantBomb and Vice's Waypoint have both found success through cultivating personalities with distinct critical viewpoints. Recently, games criticism has developed into something very unique and enjoyable if you're passionate enough to go looking for it. In this way I disagree with your final point. Games are still immensely valued by [old / women / minority / enthusiast] gamers, but the majority of the market (especially the big $$$ from micro-transations) is thanks to the demographic you describe and (IMO) the media they consume. As a result, large block-buster games will increasingly market themselves to this incredibly lucrative (but not always large) segment of the market and you'll continually see behavior like in the OP as companies like EA try to cut costs and maximize their revenues.
Pyxl101 9y ago
It unfortunately seems like video game development, and entertainment generally, are very deadline-motivated. You want to release your game at a particular time, so it doesn't coincide with another game's release, or to finish by a particular quarter or holiday / Christmas.
- pfranz 9y ago
  I think it's actually worse than that. I've seen a couple crunches for games. They're not usually tied to holidays. It usually plays out, "Hey, we're only going to crunch for 3 months." "Oh, well, we've extended the deadline 3 months--so only 3 more months of crunch." Most recently, a game studio a friend works as was supposed to wrap in early October. That's now extended until the end of the year with a ship date around March. If they had any flexibility in the release date, who thought this was a good idea? Of course an October deadline is going to push and now you've ruined the holidays for everyone. A lot of the big game studios put out a game every 4 years or so, but if you're hired for the project they hire you just for the crunch. Then you're on to the next project heading into crunch.
rodgerd 9y ago
Compare with the film industry, which is heavily unionised; there are often dreadful hours for people working on films, but there is generally suitable overtime and so on. None of this exists in videogames.
- pfranz 9y ago
  Most of film is unionized. The big exception is VFX (computer graphics).
BadassFractal 9y ago
Maybe similar to the startups world too? Super long hours, not much pay, minimal chance of payoff, infinite supply of people who want to do it. The desired result is financial freedom, whereas perhaps in videogames the desired result is creative freedom. Also yes, anything that seems glamorous has too much supply and not enough demand, so you end up with these skewed power dynamics. Pick a job that maybe pays ok but is super unglamorous, and I doubt you'll see the same practices
- drawkbox 9y ago
  The desired result is financial freedom, whereas perhaps in videogames the desired result is creative freedom. Creative freedom is definitely nice and a goal of people in games. Both developers and designers go into it with the goal of making games and eventually making their games. What you find out is, most game companies can only make a few people's games. It is the same in any creative industry. This results in most developers, designers, artists going to work on their own games or at small to medium studios where they can have some input after 3-5+ years. It is the same with entrepreneurs and any work/team really. You will get more shots at implementing things the way you want towards the market you want if you can control it, especially if it is your own or you control the funds. Game studios and agencies are great to learn all the skills you need at a rapid pace and understand the amount of effort it takes, but eventually you will need to break off on your own or small teams to deliver the experience you want. Working at an agency or studio is a bit of an education or hardcore apprenticeship. Most people that get to control creative and design decisions at large game companies had to do just that or make their own (or they put up the money) i.e. John Carmack, Tim Schafer, Tim Sweeney, nearly all mobile studios initially are small teams and either launch their own or subcontract for a label and on and on.
- ryandrake 9y ago
  Due to the unstoppable force of automation and other productivity multipliers, the situation is creeping into more and more jobs/sectors. The trend is already clear: Increasing numbers of hungry people in line and pushing each other aside for a chance at one of the increasingly fewer jobs. Today it's a few highly desired niches within a few industries. Tomorrow it's the new normal for employment in general.
waqf 9y ago
There are two, somewhat overlapping, problems here which apply to a lot of parts of the entertainment industry. The first is that supply exceeds demand: "everyone wants to be" an artist. This is basically unfixable. The second is the very skewed distribution of revenue: a few big names get hundreds of millions of people's money, everyone else doesn't come close. This doesn't have to be that way at all (remember the 2000s when everyone was talking about the "long tail"?), but it would be a huge cultural shift and it involves a long discussion about commercialism and entrenched interests.
- fulafel 9y ago
  Isn't the winner-takes-all phenomenon counteracted by the fact that nobody can predict which games will make it? So studios/publishers/self-publishers finance many times more games than will make money.
slg 9y ago
It is the failing of the free market. It happens in any industry in which the supply of people who want to work in the industry vastly outpaces the number of jobs available. If you are lucky, the industry might have a union like much of the film, TV, or professional sports industries. If you are unlucky you end up in the video game industry and have this article written about you.
- ekianjo 9y ago
  > It is the failing of the free market. That's the opposite. It's exactly how a free market is supposed to work. When supply exceeds demand, you can fix any condition you want and you'll still get to fill your seats. If an industry loses attractiveness, they'll have to raise salaries, provide better working hours to retain employees.
  - slg 9y ago
    By failing of the free market I mean an undesirable flaw in the outcome of the free market. Free markets lead to all sorts of nasty stuff like sweatshops and child labor. We usually create regulations or unions in order to fight back against these flaws. Without one of those, you can get a situation like this.
    - ekianjo 9y ago
      Wait. This is not on the same level as child labor at all. This is situation where free, consenting adults, sign a contract to work in a well-known and well-reported industry, forsaking compensation for extra working hours (as specified in their contracts) and knowing very well the crunch phenomenon (it's been reported in numerous publications for at least more than 20 years now) - so what extra protection do you need? They are free to decide what is the best for them, as individuals. And they are free to leave for better jobs, if they are not satisfied with the industry they are in.
      - slg 9y ago
        Why can't all the above be true for a child if they consent to it or if their parents consent to it? Why can I hire a adult for $3 per hour if we both consent to it?
ekianjo 9y ago
> It seems that trying to be a writer, actor, game maker or a musician is incredible amounts of hard work and a small number of people do well and everyone else does badly. I'm not sure the picture is so bleak financially for game developers. I mean, there's a ton more revenues in the video games industry and it's a growing industry with more and more gamers (mobile, console and PC alike). Then, there's the fame aspect "I worked on X game with this Mr Y superstar game designer" even if they only worked on a very tiny aspect of the said game. And there's the advantage of being IN the industry, the networks, the fact that you are the forehead of what's happening and there's literally tons of ways one can innovate even in "boring" AAA titles.
sogen 9y ago
sports too
SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
Just for the heck of it, I signed on to be an extra on a pretty well known tv show that filmed in my area. It was a at least a 12 hour day (but IIRC it was more like 18, but its been while now). As an extra, most of that was spent sitting around and waiting. The crew on the other hand were mostly on their feet the ENTIRE time and were still going even after all the extras were dismissed. Many of them were doing laborious tasks, others like the show runner, are running a million miles a minute the whole time. And from what I gathered, this was basically the norm, while shooting the season which can last for months.
majormajor 9y ago
It's a lot like being a "startup founder," really. High risk high reward. Game dev and startup founder at least can pay a lot better than actor/writer/musician even before reaching unicorn status.
jaaron 9y ago
A lot of it is, but it doesn't have to be. I'd argue that over at Riot Games, we see crunch as antithetical to what we do. But then we're lucky enough to run a massive online game that needs to be up 24/7 year after year. So our engineering culture is much more like what you'd see at other traditional internet technologies such as Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc. It's just that in our case, our online service is a video game. My girlfriend is at Disney and last year she worked 6 day weeks for much of the time as they led up to a film release. Change would require producers and executives to take a risk (while their competitors continue to crunch). It's going to be very hard to adjust.
- danbolt 9y ago
  I think your experiences are touching on some really interesting points, as the development environment of a game like League of Legends compared to Halo 5 is very different. I think service-based games aren't just popular because they're profitable, but also that they can be developed more akin to a typical software company.

by sien 9y ago

minimaxir 9y ago

The video game industry is especially bad as it combines the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the bad aspects of software development. A good story of the combination of overwork and technical mismanagement is the Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle (written by the same author as the NYT article): https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-troubled-five-1795886428 https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-t...

munificent 9y ago
> The video game industry is especially bad as it combines > the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the > bad aspects of software development. Another corner of the world where those two collide is the visual effects side of film production. What you see there mirrors the game industry to a tee: tons of overtime, high stress, low pay, studios constantly folding, and a never-ending stream of young hungry creative people waiting for their turn.
- visarga 9y ago
  Same with Manga artists in Japan.
  - mrschwabe 9y ago
    Same with advertising industry in Japan.
- zappo2938 9y ago
  Sounds like working in Michelin starred restaurants.
ajeet_dhaliwal 9y ago
The problems extend to beyond the confines of game developers and publishers. It also doesn't help to have to contend with a deeply critical and particularly cheap audience and overly influential terrible game 'journalists'. Many of the customers, if you've ever played online, are downright abusive actually. The customers, many of whom are young and immature want everything for free. If publishers try to charge for anything at all, it's 'a rip off'. Even though game prices have remained the same for a couple of decades while games become vastly more complex (and hence more expensive to make). Basically games are not valued. The only reason they even get made is because there's enough people who love making them without sweating about not having the best salary, and enough young people who keep coming in to replace the people who've finally decided they've had enough.
- freedomben 9y ago
  The problem of people wanting software for free is such a hard thing to combat. There's something psychological about software that people don't realize what it takes to make it. Most people would never expect to obtain a physical item for free, and then get mad when they are charged for it, yet they do this with software.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  > and overly influential terrible game 'journalists' I would argue that you're pointing that finger in the severe wrong direction. The young generation of young males who buy video games do not visit the web pages of the enthusiast game press (IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku). Instead, they consume all of their game "reviews" and "criticism" via YouTube - figures like PewDiePie, TotalBiscuit, etc (not exactly a great crowd). The gaming press is actually having a really fascinating resurgence IMO. Websites like GiantBomb and Vice's Waypoint have both found success through cultivating personalities with distinct critical viewpoints. Recently, games criticism has developed into something very unique and enjoyable if you're passionate enough to go looking for it. In this way I disagree with your final point. Games are still immensely valued by [old / women / minority / enthusiast] gamers, but the majority of the market (especially the big $$$ from micro-transations) is thanks to the demographic you describe and (IMO) the media they consume. As a result, large block-buster games will increasingly market themselves to this incredibly lucrative (but not always large) segment of the market and you'll continually see behavior like in the OP as companies like EA try to cut costs and maximize their revenues.

Pyxl101 9y ago

It unfortunately seems like video game development, and entertainment generally, are very deadline-motivated. You want to release your game at a particular time, so it doesn't coincide with another game's release, or to finish by a particular quarter or holiday / Christmas.

pfranz 9y ago
I think it's actually worse than that. I've seen a couple crunches for games. They're not usually tied to holidays. It usually plays out, "Hey, we're only going to crunch for 3 months." "Oh, well, we've extended the deadline 3 months--so only 3 more months of crunch." Most recently, a game studio a friend works as was supposed to wrap in early October. That's now extended until the end of the year with a ship date around March. If they had any flexibility in the release date, who thought this was a good idea? Of course an October deadline is going to push and now you've ruined the holidays for everyone. A lot of the big game studios put out a game every 4 years or so, but if you're hired for the project they hire you just for the crunch. Then you're on to the next project heading into crunch.

rodgerd 9y ago

Compare with the film industry, which is heavily unionised; there are often dreadful hours for people working on films, but there is generally suitable overtime and so on. None of this exists in videogames.

pfranz 9y ago
Most of film is unionized. The big exception is VFX (computer graphics).

BadassFractal 9y ago

Maybe similar to the startups world too? Super long hours, not much pay, minimal chance of payoff, infinite supply of people who want to do it. The desired result is financial freedom, whereas perhaps in videogames the desired result is creative freedom. Also yes, anything that seems glamorous has too much supply and not enough demand, so you end up with these skewed power dynamics. Pick a job that maybe pays ok but is super unglamorous, and I doubt you'll see the same practices

drawkbox 9y ago
The desired result is financial freedom, whereas perhaps in videogames the desired result is creative freedom. Creative freedom is definitely nice and a goal of people in games. Both developers and designers go into it with the goal of making games and eventually making their games. What you find out is, most game companies can only make a few people's games. It is the same in any creative industry. This results in most developers, designers, artists going to work on their own games or at small to medium studios where they can have some input after 3-5+ years. It is the same with entrepreneurs and any work/team really. You will get more shots at implementing things the way you want towards the market you want if you can control it, especially if it is your own or you control the funds. Game studios and agencies are great to learn all the skills you need at a rapid pace and understand the amount of effort it takes, but eventually you will need to break off on your own or small teams to deliver the experience you want. Working at an agency or studio is a bit of an education or hardcore apprenticeship. Most people that get to control creative and design decisions at large game companies had to do just that or make their own (or they put up the money) i.e. John Carmack, Tim Schafer, Tim Sweeney, nearly all mobile studios initially are small teams and either launch their own or subcontract for a label and on and on.
ryandrake 9y ago
Due to the unstoppable force of automation and other productivity multipliers, the situation is creeping into more and more jobs/sectors. The trend is already clear: Increasing numbers of hungry people in line and pushing each other aside for a chance at one of the increasingly fewer jobs. Today it's a few highly desired niches within a few industries. Tomorrow it's the new normal for employment in general.

waqf 9y ago

There are two, somewhat overlapping, problems here which apply to a lot of parts of the entertainment industry. The first is that supply exceeds demand: "everyone wants to be" an artist. This is basically unfixable. The second is the very skewed distribution of revenue: a few big names get hundreds of millions of people's money, everyone else doesn't come close. This doesn't have to be that way at all (remember the 2000s when everyone was talking about the "long tail"?), but it would be a huge cultural shift and it involves a long discussion about commercialism and entrenched interests.

fulafel 9y ago
Isn't the winner-takes-all phenomenon counteracted by the fact that nobody can predict which games will make it? So studios/publishers/self-publishers finance many times more games than will make money.

slg 9y ago

It is the failing of the free market. It happens in any industry in which the supply of people who want to work in the industry vastly outpaces the number of jobs available. If you are lucky, the industry might have a union like much of the film, TV, or professional sports industries. If you are unlucky you end up in the video game industry and have this article written about you.

ekianjo 9y ago
> It is the failing of the free market. That's the opposite. It's exactly how a free market is supposed to work. When supply exceeds demand, you can fix any condition you want and you'll still get to fill your seats. If an industry loses attractiveness, they'll have to raise salaries, provide better working hours to retain employees.
- slg 9y ago
  By failing of the free market I mean an undesirable flaw in the outcome of the free market. Free markets lead to all sorts of nasty stuff like sweatshops and child labor. We usually create regulations or unions in order to fight back against these flaws. Without one of those, you can get a situation like this.
  - ekianjo 9y ago
    Wait. This is not on the same level as child labor at all. This is situation where free, consenting adults, sign a contract to work in a well-known and well-reported industry, forsaking compensation for extra working hours (as specified in their contracts) and knowing very well the crunch phenomenon (it's been reported in numerous publications for at least more than 20 years now) - so what extra protection do you need? They are free to decide what is the best for them, as individuals. And they are free to leave for better jobs, if they are not satisfied with the industry they are in.
    - slg 9y ago
      Why can't all the above be true for a child if they consent to it or if their parents consent to it? Why can I hire a adult for $3 per hour if we both consent to it?

ekianjo 9y ago

> It seems that trying to be a writer, actor, game maker or a musician is incredible amounts of hard work and a small number of people do well and everyone else does badly. I'm not sure the picture is so bleak financially for game developers. I mean, there's a ton more revenues in the video games industry and it's a growing industry with more and more gamers (mobile, console and PC alike). Then, there's the fame aspect "I worked on X game with this Mr Y superstar game designer" even if they only worked on a very tiny aspect of the said game. And there's the advantage of being IN the industry, the networks, the fact that you are the forehead of what's happening and there's literally tons of ways one can innovate even in "boring" AAA titles.

sogen 9y ago

sports too

SmirkingRevenge 9y ago

Just for the heck of it, I signed on to be an extra on a pretty well known tv show that filmed in my area. It was a at least a 12 hour day (but IIRC it was more like 18, but its been while now). As an extra, most of that was spent sitting around and waiting. The crew on the other hand were mostly on their feet the ENTIRE time and were still going even after all the extras were dismissed. Many of them were doing laborious tasks, others like the show runner, are running a million miles a minute the whole time. And from what I gathered, this was basically the norm, while shooting the season which can last for months.

majormajor 9y ago

It's a lot like being a "startup founder," really. High risk high reward. Game dev and startup founder at least can pay a lot better than actor/writer/musician even before reaching unicorn status.

jaaron 9y ago

A lot of it is, but it doesn't have to be. I'd argue that over at Riot Games, we see crunch as antithetical to what we do. But then we're lucky enough to run a massive online game that needs to be up 24/7 year after year. So our engineering culture is much more like what you'd see at other traditional internet technologies such as Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc. It's just that in our case, our online service is a video game. My girlfriend is at Disney and last year she worked 6 day weeks for much of the time as they led up to a film release. Change would require producers and executives to take a risk (while their competitors continue to crunch). It's going to be very hard to adjust.

danbolt 9y ago
I think your experiences are touching on some really interesting points, as the development environment of a game like League of Legends compared to Halo 5 is very different. I think service-based games aren't just popular because they're profitable, but also that they can be developed more akin to a typical software company.