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I never understood why people went into the gaming industry unless it was in a position where they did decision making and got credit. Growing up in the 80/90i

I never understood why people went into the gaming industry unless it was in a position where they did decision making and got credit. Growing up in the 80/90is I remember thinking a place like Bioware or Black Isle/Troika would've been cool places to work, but as I reached adulthood and understood what went into working those places, the dream quickly faded. Imagine having to work long hours at shit pay, to design/build some loot crate system. Especially when your skill set is in high-demand and you could've gone into something like healthcare IT, where you could be improving people's lives, at 37-45 hours a week at four times the pay. I really don't mean to be rude, I just can't fathom the motivation you would have to work some anonymous job in the video gaming industry.

georgeecollins 9y ago
I can't speak for others, but for me when I started: - It's much more fun to work on something creative and with creative people than not. Yes, people will say there is a creative aspect to almost anything, but I think games (and probably other things like film) are really different. - It is a big deal to work on something that you can identify and people will have heard of or understand. I used to be able to go into a store and point at the boxes that had my name written on them. - When I was younger I really just tended to work a lot anyway.
smallnamespace 9y ago
Some people just love games so much that they're willing to sell their souls and/or health to work on them. That's kind of how I feel about academia right now -- seems highly irrational from a financial or job security standpoint for most people to get a grad degree and aim for tenure, yet there are still droves of people willing to make that trade.
- xfer 9y ago
  You are assuming that most grad students aim to be a professor, you have any data to back it up? Since that has not been my experience at all.
  - loeg 9y ago
    I don't think you need to make that assumption. Regardless of the number of grad students leaving academia, there is a huge and increasing backlog of postdocs waiting for professorship.
  - mikebenfield 9y ago
    This is a recurring topic here, but this varies a lot by field. In many fields literally the only reason to go to grad school is to (try to) become a professor.
  - smallnamespace 9y ago
    On the flip side, I'm pretty sure grad school is not financially rational if you intend to go to industry. At best, you'll get a scholarship and maybe a teaching salary/stipend of ~30k over 5-6 years. In my experience, people who can do a PhD could've been making 2-3x that much in industry. PhDs do get hired at a higher position, but you can easily get there the normal way over 5 years. IMO a lot of grad school students are just here to immigrate.
    - xfer 9y ago
      A chance to work on hard research problems; that is not possible without mentoring for most people. If everything you do in life is just money to you; then sure PhD is irrelevant and you find absurd reasons like immigration to justify it.
taneq 9y ago
You go into the industry because you want to make games. You leave when you get sick of games companies taking advantage of your "passion for games" to offer you an exploitative deal.
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  This is how it appeared to me after a few years of mods and game prototypes. SAAS jobs pay the bills with a better life balance than what many game studios are offering.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    Don't judge for other people and their priorities. For some of them it IS life. Maybe it shouldn't be but there are plenty of young devs working for Google/Amazon/Startup working too hard on stuff that may be way less rewarding. Games were life for me but I was paid relatively well and I came from and went back to "industry". Still in "Games" though so a few years at a studio helped me learn some valuable engineering skills and made me a "bonafied" (lol) game dev to most people. I don't claim to be a dev.
    - paulryanrogers 9y ago
      Sharing my perspective isn't judging for others. Certainly each person has to find what works for them and their situation. Still, I caution people to consider the possibilities they may be sacrificing.
- a_t48 9y ago
  And then you leave, and then you realize you miss shipping games. :(
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    Yep, pretty much. Been out of the industry for four years now, and I miss shipping games. But then recruiters in the game industry contact me, and I just can't bring myself to go through that mess again and the pay cut I'd have to accept, most likely. And I'm not even that highly paid in my current industry (in fact, I think my wages are a lot more depressed than they could be because I spent several years in the game industry working for much lower wages)
SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
Most of them probably just have unrealistic expectations and ideas about what it will be like to work at a game shop. This probably applies to designers and engineers both. Although can you really do that well in healthcare IT? I've worked in a tangentially related space, and from the glimpses I've seen in healthcare, its all a giant clusterfudge (and pay wasn't that great either).
- cableshaft 9y ago
  I've worked a couple of jobs in healthcare IT, and worked with several other big companies while working those jobs. I'd say you're not wrong. And it's an industry where it seems like no one really has their acts together when it comes to properly managing their data or communicating their requirements in a consistent or timely fashion to the people they need to build their software, while pretending otherwise and thinking forcing everyone to take the same online HIPPA class every year is all they need. And yeah, the pay isn't too great, unless you're an executive or founder.
  - SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
    > And it's an industry where it seems like no one really has their acts together when it comes to properly managing their data or communicating their requirements in a consistent or timely fashion to the people they need to build their software, while pretending otherwise and thinking forcing everyone to take the same online HIPPA class every year is all they need. Wow, that has been my experience exactly. I think the odds are pretty high that there will be an "Equifax moment" in healthcare IT in the not-so-distant future.
    - stuxnet79 9y ago
      Did a short stint at a healthcare IT company and also was surprised at how dysfunctional the whole industry is - can't say I was very impressed. At this point, my CV is peppered with healthcare related roles, positions I feel like I've already pigeon-holed myself :(
santaclaus 9y ago
> you could be improving people's lives I'd say games (and any art, for that matter) can and do improve lives.
- ivm 9y ago
  Art usually is not designed as a Skinner box that keeps you awake until 5am and motivates you to skip school, so you can sit at a gaming café all day. While I found some great friends during the "gaming years", most of the time games were ruining my life.
  - CamperBob2 9y ago
    #notallgames
  - santaclaus 9y ago
    Eh? Yea there are crap games out there. There is also crap music. And crap health IT software.
    - ivm 9y ago
      The best games are also the most addictive. At least many single player titles end sooner or later but online ones are endless.
      - jacinda 9y ago
        Would it also follow that the "best" drugs are the most addictive?
      - wutbrodo 9y ago
        > The best games are also the most addictive Pft says who? Few of my favorite games can be described as addictive. You can't simultaneously make the argument that "addictiveness" in the sense you're using it is bad, and then quickly switch word senses to claim its a requirement for very good games.
mattnewport 9y ago
Disclaimer: wasn't able to read the article behind the paywall. A lot of programmers get into the game industry because there are interesting technical problems to solve. Personally I'd have a hard time working on what look to me like deathly dull problems in fields like healthcare IT. For good, experienced programmers in the game industry I don't think the pay gap is as big as you suggest. I know a lot of game industry veterans who have taken higher paying positions in big tech companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple but I don't think your average corporate programming job pays comparably. I started my own VR company in the healthcare space which gives me the opportunity to continue working on interesting games technology while also hopefully improving people's lives but for my own personal motivation the work has to be interesting to me, not just paying the bills and benefiting end users (although both of those are important).
- sidlls 9y ago
  I don't know about industry wide, but I do know colleagues who went from gaming to other ("corporate programming") jobs, even non-profits, and got a boost in pay. Game shops chew up their employees and spit them out, mainly because there is no end in sight to the number of young, naive people willing to take any kind of abuse for the prospect of having their name in the credits of a game.
  - dagw 9y ago
    The game industry pays pretty badly for the first few years when they can expect people to work out of 'passion'. However if you're one the handful of people that can thrive in that environment and move past the chew up/spit out stage and become one of the senior engineers that actually keeps the ship together then the pay can be very good.
  - mattnewport 9y ago
    Gaming is a big industry. My experience is mostly in 'traditional' games companies shipping what used to be boxed AAA console and PC games. A chunk of that experience was at EA which has a lot of senior employees with many years of experience who are being paid reasonably competitively. Not Google/Facebook money generally but not horrible. Things might be different in younger companies doing mobile game development, I haven't worked in that environment. Big companies like EA recognized some time ago that they couldn't afford to lose their most experienced employees by "chewing them up and spitting them out" any more and have become more competitive for senior devs in both pay and working conditions. I still think there's work to do there but it's not as bad in my experience as some people seem to think.
59nadir 9y ago
I took a job at a game studio because it was one of the few places that was looking for Erlang developers (one of three in the area at the time). It was also my first professional programming gig after having done programming as a hobby for the last 14 or so years, so all in all it was a pretty good deal. I have a much bigger network of people and companies to exploit now and so my next job very likely won't be at a game studio. It is a shit industry full of people who don't value programmers all that highly, except maybe the mythical hard-core engine programmer, while simultaneously overvaluing idea people to an almost absurd degree.
astrobe_ 9y ago
It looks like you're better off contributing to or modding FOSS games for free on your free time. At least you get positive direct feedback from the players when you do something people like.
bsenftner 9y ago
There was a hope, originally, back when we started that it would become something more than this crappy commercial combat masturbation. But, apparently and ultimately, this is what the market wants.
pandaman 9y ago
Salary and hours depend on where you work. Bioware probably does not pay much but, say IW/Treyarch, are a different story all together [1]. As for improving people lives, why do you think games don't do that? People had been remembering games they played for decades. Games have an impact. Strangers will see a t-shirt with a game studio logo and come to you talk about its games. Does it happen with the Healthcare IT too? 1. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/358040/exhibit655.pdf http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/358040/exhibit655.pdf
sidlls 9y ago
HN cracks me up sometimes. Compare the derision and skepticism hurled at would-be video game developers to the praise people working countless hours on pointless "portfolio side projects" on github or whatever get, just for a minor boost in the grueling interview process or because they're so passionate about it or whatever. At least these people (who are certainly being exploited, often in ways that violate labor laws) are getting some real work experience while they're at it.
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  > Compare the derision and skepticism hurled at would-be video game developers to the praise people working countless hours on pointless "portfolio side projects" on github or whatever get Ok: one is fun, ~100h spread out over any period you want (e.g. a year: 2h per weekend), completely 100% beholden only to yourself, no strings attached. The other... well, I’ve never worked there, but I’ll quote someone who seems to know: “certainly being exploited, often in ways that violate labor laws.” Are you honestly comparing what people are describing here to side projects? honestly: what side project have you ever worked on that treated you that way?
  - sidlls 9y ago
    The amusement is from the comparison to the use of side projects as a proxy/signal for "passion" as part of the job application process and resume support, not side projects in general. Of course more generally the exploitation of open source work by commercial entities is also ignored in this context, which is also amusing. The number of side-projects that are used for free by commercial entities profiting off them dwarfs the number used to generate income by consulting or as a business. But that's just fine because "open source."
- mightybyte 9y ago
  You do have a point that they're getting real work experience. But that's where the similarities end. I've never heard stories about health problems, stress, and burnout from side projects. I'm sure it probably happens to some people, but it's almost certainly nowhere near the same rate that it sounds like it happens in the game industry.
jaaron 9y ago
Overall I agree with you. I was very skeptical when I took a job at Riot Games several years ago. Luckily, Riot operates a successful massive online game and therefore operates more like a traditional internet company than it does a traditional game company (at least with respect to engineering culture and work/life balance). So it is possible. It's just going to take enough executives and producers to take a risk (while their competition continues to crunch) and see the long term results. That or we see some sort of union/guild action which most engineers shy away from.
Insanity 9y ago
I work in healthcare, it really is not 4x the pay, at least not in Belgium. I do enjoy the altruistic aspect and I do indeed work about 40 hours a week. But I believe that people who are attracted to game development are not immediatly attracted to healthcare systems. Just a guess :-)
- ddnb 9y ago
  You can't really compare Belgium and the US though, with Belgium being in the top of egalitarian countries[1], far ahead of the USA. Talks about income should be be held between your country and your neighbouring country to have any relevancy. [1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/101706 http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/101706
nice_byte 9y ago
Everything else is just really boring by comparison.
shubhamjain 9y ago
I has asked this question a while back here [1]. The consensus is game developers don't see making them as a "job"; to them, it's about working on something magnificent, being part of a team they have dreamt about since they were kids. Of course, they burnout few years down the line, only to replaced by a new batch of zealous developers. There's an endless supply of fresh graduates who are fervent about working on an AAA title. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747550

georgeecollins 9y ago

I can't speak for others, but for me when I started: - It's much more fun to work on something creative and with creative people than not. Yes, people will say there is a creative aspect to almost anything, but I think games (and probably other things like film) are really different. - It is a big deal to work on something that you can identify and people will have heard of or understand. I used to be able to go into a store and point at the boxes that had my name written on them. - When I was younger I really just tended to work a lot anyway.

smallnamespace 9y ago

Some people just love games so much that they're willing to sell their souls and/or health to work on them. That's kind of how I feel about academia right now -- seems highly irrational from a financial or job security standpoint for most people to get a grad degree and aim for tenure, yet there are still droves of people willing to make that trade.

xfer 9y ago
You are assuming that most grad students aim to be a professor, you have any data to back it up? Since that has not been my experience at all.
- loeg 9y ago
  I don't think you need to make that assumption. Regardless of the number of grad students leaving academia, there is a huge and increasing backlog of postdocs waiting for professorship.
- mikebenfield 9y ago
  This is a recurring topic here, but this varies a lot by field. In many fields literally the only reason to go to grad school is to (try to) become a professor.
- smallnamespace 9y ago
  On the flip side, I'm pretty sure grad school is not financially rational if you intend to go to industry. At best, you'll get a scholarship and maybe a teaching salary/stipend of ~30k over 5-6 years. In my experience, people who can do a PhD could've been making 2-3x that much in industry. PhDs do get hired at a higher position, but you can easily get there the normal way over 5 years. IMO a lot of grad school students are just here to immigrate.
  - xfer 9y ago
    A chance to work on hard research problems; that is not possible without mentoring for most people. If everything you do in life is just money to you; then sure PhD is irrelevant and you find absurd reasons like immigration to justify it.

taneq 9y ago

You go into the industry because you want to make games. You leave when you get sick of games companies taking advantage of your "passion for games" to offer you an exploitative deal.

paulryanrogers 9y ago
This is how it appeared to me after a few years of mods and game prototypes. SAAS jobs pay the bills with a better life balance than what many game studios are offering.
- grogenaut 9y ago
  Don't judge for other people and their priorities. For some of them it IS life. Maybe it shouldn't be but there are plenty of young devs working for Google/Amazon/Startup working too hard on stuff that may be way less rewarding. Games were life for me but I was paid relatively well and I came from and went back to "industry". Still in "Games" though so a few years at a studio helped me learn some valuable engineering skills and made me a "bonafied" (lol) game dev to most people. I don't claim to be a dev.
  - paulryanrogers 9y ago
    Sharing my perspective isn't judging for others. Certainly each person has to find what works for them and their situation. Still, I caution people to consider the possibilities they may be sacrificing.
a_t48 9y ago
And then you leave, and then you realize you miss shipping games. :(
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Yep, pretty much. Been out of the industry for four years now, and I miss shipping games. But then recruiters in the game industry contact me, and I just can't bring myself to go through that mess again and the pay cut I'd have to accept, most likely. And I'm not even that highly paid in my current industry (in fact, I think my wages are a lot more depressed than they could be because I spent several years in the game industry working for much lower wages)

SmirkingRevenge 9y ago

Most of them probably just have unrealistic expectations and ideas about what it will be like to work at a game shop. This probably applies to designers and engineers both. Although can you really do that well in healthcare IT? I've worked in a tangentially related space, and from the glimpses I've seen in healthcare, its all a giant clusterfudge (and pay wasn't that great either).

cableshaft 9y ago
I've worked a couple of jobs in healthcare IT, and worked with several other big companies while working those jobs. I'd say you're not wrong. And it's an industry where it seems like no one really has their acts together when it comes to properly managing their data or communicating their requirements in a consistent or timely fashion to the people they need to build their software, while pretending otherwise and thinking forcing everyone to take the same online HIPPA class every year is all they need. And yeah, the pay isn't too great, unless you're an executive or founder.
- SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
  > And it's an industry where it seems like no one really has their acts together when it comes to properly managing their data or communicating their requirements in a consistent or timely fashion to the people they need to build their software, while pretending otherwise and thinking forcing everyone to take the same online HIPPA class every year is all they need. Wow, that has been my experience exactly. I think the odds are pretty high that there will be an "Equifax moment" in healthcare IT in the not-so-distant future.
  - stuxnet79 9y ago
    Did a short stint at a healthcare IT company and also was surprised at how dysfunctional the whole industry is - can't say I was very impressed. At this point, my CV is peppered with healthcare related roles, positions I feel like I've already pigeon-holed myself :(

santaclaus 9y ago

> you could be improving people's lives I'd say games (and any art, for that matter) can and do improve lives.

ivm 9y ago
Art usually is not designed as a Skinner box that keeps you awake until 5am and motivates you to skip school, so you can sit at a gaming café all day. While I found some great friends during the "gaming years", most of the time games were ruining my life.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  #notallgames
- santaclaus 9y ago
  Eh? Yea there are crap games out there. There is also crap music. And crap health IT software.
  - ivm 9y ago
    The best games are also the most addictive. At least many single player titles end sooner or later but online ones are endless.
    - jacinda 9y ago
      Would it also follow that the "best" drugs are the most addictive?
    - wutbrodo 9y ago
      > The best games are also the most addictive Pft says who? Few of my favorite games can be described as addictive. You can't simultaneously make the argument that "addictiveness" in the sense you're using it is bad, and then quickly switch word senses to claim its a requirement for very good games.

mattnewport 9y ago

Disclaimer: wasn't able to read the article behind the paywall. A lot of programmers get into the game industry because there are interesting technical problems to solve. Personally I'd have a hard time working on what look to me like deathly dull problems in fields like healthcare IT. For good, experienced programmers in the game industry I don't think the pay gap is as big as you suggest. I know a lot of game industry veterans who have taken higher paying positions in big tech companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple but I don't think your average corporate programming job pays comparably. I started my own VR company in the healthcare space which gives me the opportunity to continue working on interesting games technology while also hopefully improving people's lives but for my own personal motivation the work has to be interesting to me, not just paying the bills and benefiting end users (although both of those are important).

sidlls 9y ago
I don't know about industry wide, but I do know colleagues who went from gaming to other ("corporate programming") jobs, even non-profits, and got a boost in pay. Game shops chew up their employees and spit them out, mainly because there is no end in sight to the number of young, naive people willing to take any kind of abuse for the prospect of having their name in the credits of a game.
- dagw 9y ago
  The game industry pays pretty badly for the first few years when they can expect people to work out of 'passion'. However if you're one the handful of people that can thrive in that environment and move past the chew up/spit out stage and become one of the senior engineers that actually keeps the ship together then the pay can be very good.
- mattnewport 9y ago
  Gaming is a big industry. My experience is mostly in 'traditional' games companies shipping what used to be boxed AAA console and PC games. A chunk of that experience was at EA which has a lot of senior employees with many years of experience who are being paid reasonably competitively. Not Google/Facebook money generally but not horrible. Things might be different in younger companies doing mobile game development, I haven't worked in that environment. Big companies like EA recognized some time ago that they couldn't afford to lose their most experienced employees by "chewing them up and spitting them out" any more and have become more competitive for senior devs in both pay and working conditions. I still think there's work to do there but it's not as bad in my experience as some people seem to think.

59nadir 9y ago

I took a job at a game studio because it was one of the few places that was looking for Erlang developers (one of three in the area at the time). It was also my first professional programming gig after having done programming as a hobby for the last 14 or so years, so all in all it was a pretty good deal. I have a much bigger network of people and companies to exploit now and so my next job very likely won't be at a game studio. It is a shit industry full of people who don't value programmers all that highly, except maybe the mythical hard-core engine programmer, while simultaneously overvaluing idea people to an almost absurd degree.

astrobe_ 9y ago

It looks like you're better off contributing to or modding FOSS games for free on your free time. At least you get positive direct feedback from the players when you do something people like.

bsenftner 9y ago

There was a hope, originally, back when we started that it would become something more than this crappy commercial combat masturbation. But, apparently and ultimately, this is what the market wants.

pandaman 9y ago

Salary and hours depend on where you work. Bioware probably does not pay much but, say IW/Treyarch, are a different story all together [1]. As for improving people lives, why do you think games don't do that? People had been remembering games they played for decades. Games have an impact. Strangers will see a t-shirt with a game studio logo and come to you talk about its games. Does it happen with the Healthcare IT too? 1. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/358040/exhibit655.pdf http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/358040/exhibit655.pdf

sidlls 9y ago

HN cracks me up sometimes. Compare the derision and skepticism hurled at would-be video game developers to the praise people working countless hours on pointless "portfolio side projects" on github or whatever get, just for a minor boost in the grueling interview process or because they're so passionate about it or whatever. At least these people (who are certainly being exploited, often in ways that violate labor laws) are getting some real work experience while they're at it.

nothrabannosir 9y ago
> Compare the derision and skepticism hurled at would-be video game developers to the praise people working countless hours on pointless "portfolio side projects" on github or whatever get Ok: one is fun, ~100h spread out over any period you want (e.g. a year: 2h per weekend), completely 100% beholden only to yourself, no strings attached. The other... well, I’ve never worked there, but I’ll quote someone who seems to know: “certainly being exploited, often in ways that violate labor laws.” Are you honestly comparing what people are describing here to side projects? honestly: what side project have you ever worked on that treated you that way?
- sidlls 9y ago
  The amusement is from the comparison to the use of side projects as a proxy/signal for "passion" as part of the job application process and resume support, not side projects in general. Of course more generally the exploitation of open source work by commercial entities is also ignored in this context, which is also amusing. The number of side-projects that are used for free by commercial entities profiting off them dwarfs the number used to generate income by consulting or as a business. But that's just fine because "open source."
mightybyte 9y ago
You do have a point that they're getting real work experience. But that's where the similarities end. I've never heard stories about health problems, stress, and burnout from side projects. I'm sure it probably happens to some people, but it's almost certainly nowhere near the same rate that it sounds like it happens in the game industry.

jaaron 9y ago

Overall I agree with you. I was very skeptical when I took a job at Riot Games several years ago. Luckily, Riot operates a successful massive online game and therefore operates more like a traditional internet company than it does a traditional game company (at least with respect to engineering culture and work/life balance). So it is possible. It's just going to take enough executives and producers to take a risk (while their competition continues to crunch) and see the long term results. That or we see some sort of union/guild action which most engineers shy away from.

Insanity 9y ago

I work in healthcare, it really is not 4x the pay, at least not in Belgium. I do enjoy the altruistic aspect and I do indeed work about 40 hours a week. But I believe that people who are attracted to game development are not immediatly attracted to healthcare systems. Just a guess :-)

ddnb 9y ago
You can't really compare Belgium and the US though, with Belgium being in the top of egalitarian countries[1], far ahead of the USA. Talks about income should be be held between your country and your neighbouring country to have any relevancy. [1] http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/101706 http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/101706

nice_byte 9y ago

Everything else is just really boring by comparison.

shubhamjain 9y ago

I has asked this question a while back here [1]. The consensus is game developers don't see making them as a "job"; to them, it's about working on something magnificent, being part of a team they have dreamt about since they were kids. Of course, they burnout few years down the line, only to replaced by a new batch of zealous developers. There's an endless supply of fresh graduates who are fervent about working on an AAA title. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8747550