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This is what happens when you do something that a lot of other people aspire to do. Growing up, many of the girls in my schools would talk about how they want t

This is what happens when you do something that a lot of other people aspire to do. Growing up, many of the girls in my schools would talk about how they want to go into fashion or interior design (thankfully most them figured out that it would be hard to make ends meet unless they had some particular talent, and the luck and patience for sales and marketing); many of the boys talked about how they wanted to get into game development, many of them acquiring poseur-level knowledge of the field, playing around with development tools. When you have a continuous supply of giddy, overjoyed young applicants who have dreamt since childhood of working a position and want nothing more than to pour their life into what you're making, they will gladly accept pay and working conditions below the general standard for the applicable skills.

microcolonel 9y ago
To expand a bit, there's a bit of a trap in the truism "you should do what you love". On the surface, it seems to say that you should do the singular thing which you love the most, but you may love more in reality to do something other than that singular thing. I'd say that you should do what you will love the most to have been doing, all things considered. If bathroom in a bag, a 30-70% pay cut, and seasonal firing still leaves game development at the top of that list, then don't sweat it.
ivm 9y ago
It also got worse after social, mobile, and indie bubbles. Nowadays a small number of companies control most of the market. In 2012 I had more freelance gigs than I could handle, but 3 years later it was impossible to find something decent.
- Jare 9y ago
  Oddly enough, the working conditions at some (many?) of the most successful social/mobile game companies are pretty great.
  - ivm 9y ago
    They have enough cash to not work on a brink of bankruptcy[0] all the time – Valve has great working conditions too. [0]: http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-succes...
smallnamespace 9y ago
There is literally a part of labor economics that studies these issues: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential tl;dr people get paid more for doing unpleasant things, and take pay cuts for jobs that people like
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  What that wiki page is missing is a discussion of actual desirability, and perceived desirability of a job (I'm sure actual academic discussions of the theory do include it). Because game development seems objectively more unpleasant than some of the other programming jobs. It certainly seems more unpleasant than my work situation, and with worse pay.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    Markets are subjective, not objective. Measures of objective goodness have absolutely no place in market phenomena. If you want more objective markets, you will have to influence the actors through a side channel (and you have to be actually right, not just think you're right!).
bsenftner 9y ago
And before games, software, the web, apps and "entrepreneurship", boys were sold to become rock stars or athletes and women we sold to become wives. Sounds silly, but that is actually true.
johnvanommen 9y ago
That was my experience too. When I was a teenager and attending college, I invested hundreds of hours learning how to make video games, on top of years I'd invested during high school. My teachers strongly discouraged me. It took me about 6-8 years to realize that my teacher were right, and writing software for banks is a lot more satisfying than working for Electronic Arts.
wutbrodo 9y ago
Politics, movies, game development, fashion: it's simple heartless supply and demand. If the intrinsic motivation across your labor supply is higher than average, there's going to be downward pressure on all the other facets of the job (pay, work environment, etc). The really tragic twist is that for many of these, they only need to hint at the person's dream instead of actually fulfilling it. So they get a few years to chew up starry eyed 22 year old interns and spit out jaded 26 year olds, just in time to pick up the next generation. Growing up in LA, I saw a fair few of these for Hollywood among my friends. They tend to aimlessly drift towards law and real estate in LA

microcolonel 9y ago

To expand a bit, there's a bit of a trap in the truism "you should do what you love". On the surface, it seems to say that you should do the singular thing which you love the most, but you may love more in reality to do something other than that singular thing. I'd say that you should do what you will love the most to have been doing, all things considered. If bathroom in a bag, a 30-70% pay cut, and seasonal firing still leaves game development at the top of that list, then don't sweat it.

ivm 9y ago

It also got worse after social, mobile, and indie bubbles. Nowadays a small number of companies control most of the market. In 2012 I had more freelance gigs than I could handle, but 3 years later it was impossible to find something decent.

Jare 9y ago
Oddly enough, the working conditions at some (many?) of the most successful social/mobile game companies are pretty great.
- ivm 9y ago
  They have enough cash to not work on a brink of bankruptcy[0] all the time – Valve has great working conditions too. [0]: http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-success.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2015/04/minimum-sustainable-succes...

smallnamespace 9y ago

There is literally a part of labor economics that studies these issues: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential tl;dr people get paid more for doing unpleasant things, and take pay cuts for jobs that people like

vanderZwan 9y ago
What that wiki page is missing is a discussion of actual desirability, and perceived desirability of a job (I'm sure actual academic discussions of the theory do include it). Because game development seems objectively more unpleasant than some of the other programming jobs. It certainly seems more unpleasant than my work situation, and with worse pay.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Markets are subjective, not objective. Measures of objective goodness have absolutely no place in market phenomena. If you want more objective markets, you will have to influence the actors through a side channel (and you have to be actually right, not just think you're right!).

bsenftner 9y ago

And before games, software, the web, apps and "entrepreneurship", boys were sold to become rock stars or athletes and women we sold to become wives. Sounds silly, but that is actually true.

johnvanommen 9y ago

That was my experience too. When I was a teenager and attending college, I invested hundreds of hours learning how to make video games, on top of years I'd invested during high school. My teachers strongly discouraged me. It took me about 6-8 years to realize that my teacher were right, and writing software for banks is a lot more satisfying than working for Electronic Arts.

wutbrodo 9y ago

Politics, movies, game development, fashion: it's simple heartless supply and demand. If the intrinsic motivation across your labor supply is higher than average, there's going to be downward pressure on all the other facets of the job (pay, work environment, etc). The really tragic twist is that for many of these, they only need to hint at the person's dream instead of actually fulfilling it. So they get a few years to chew up starry eyed 22 year old interns and spit out jaded 26 year olds, just in time to pick up the next generation. Growing up in LA, I saw a fair few of these for Hollywood among my friends. They tend to aimlessly drift towards law and real estate in LA