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Wow, lot to unpack there. The thing is they generally do quit, if you look at Gamasutra's yearly industry survey you'll see a huge bimodal distribution of less

Wow, lot to unpack there. The thing is they generally do quit, if you look at Gamasutra's yearly industry survey you'll see a huge bimodal distribution of less than 3 years and 10+ years. The average industry career ends up being about 3 years. Here's a situation that I saw a lot when I was in the industry: 1. Get a new gig in a different town(usually because the previous studio cratered). Sell your house, move your family and get settled because this studio seems like it's being run sanely. 2. 4-6mo later crunch time hits. Mandated 80hr/week with 6-7 day work weeks. Anyone who takes even half a day off catches a ton of shit. Heck, I get yelled at for leaving the office at 11pm one day. 3. No funds(remember 30-50% less pay) or time to find a new gig and you've got a mortgage/rent/family to support. 4. Game fails/sucks because of crunch or other reasons. Studio closes/layoffs. 5. Repeat step #1. I would hazard a good 80% of people in gamedev are paycheck-to-paycheck(I know we were). So while it's easy to just claim they should quit that's not as simple in practice.

walru 9y ago
They force people out who have 15+ years. (eg. It was age 37 for me). Thankfully they asked me to write documentation and train a bevy of testers to take my place before letting me go (once the eight race tracks for the game I was creating were completely designed). The saddest thing (of this story)? This game, from a major mobile publisher, never even made it out of beta because their monetization component had no traction. As an aside, they also ended up scraping my tracks and replacing them with drone simple turn left/right then jump. Repeat. (because of the amount of work it was going to take to implement...) That is one of too many stories. Truth is, nearly every/maybe all game development studios is poorly managed.
- ehnto 9y ago
  I wonder why that is. Would you say your company's founder started out with a passion for games or was it more corporate/started for profit? I have wondered if the high failure rate is a mismatch of three key issues; passion and understanding for the medium in the company culture, management not knowing how to manage technical/artistic creators, and then the fickle nature of the target market. Great games made by amazing developers can tank because they don't have the business chops. Management can't get a handle on what they are actually managing, because that has proven notoriously hard even when the software product isn't nearly as complicated as a game. Even in ideal circumstances with a great team, game, and execution, your game can flop because it just wasn't flavor of the month or you released behind a more favored title. I would love to hear what people think a great studio would look like.

walru 9y ago

They force people out who have 15+ years. (eg. It was age 37 for me). Thankfully they asked me to write documentation and train a bevy of testers to take my place before letting me go (once the eight race tracks for the game I was creating were completely designed). The saddest thing (of this story)? This game, from a major mobile publisher, never even made it out of beta because their monetization component had no traction. As an aside, they also ended up scraping my tracks and replacing them with drone simple turn left/right then jump. Repeat. (because of the amount of work it was going to take to implement...) That is one of too many stories. Truth is, nearly every/maybe all game development studios is poorly managed.

ehnto 9y ago
I wonder why that is. Would you say your company's founder started out with a passion for games or was it more corporate/started for profit? I have wondered if the high failure rate is a mismatch of three key issues; passion and understanding for the medium in the company culture, management not knowing how to manage technical/artistic creators, and then the fickle nature of the target market. Great games made by amazing developers can tank because they don't have the business chops. Management can't get a handle on what they are actually managing, because that has proven notoriously hard even when the software product isn't nearly as complicated as a game. Even in ideal circumstances with a great team, game, and execution, your game can flop because it just wasn't flavor of the month or you released behind a more favored title. I would love to hear what people think a great studio would look like.