5 ms·

Is it run like the movie industry? AFAIK in the movie industry few publishers and or studios actually have any production staff on hand. Instead what happens i

Is it run like the movie industry? AFAIK in the movie industry few publishers and or studios actually have any production staff on hand. Instead what happens is a core team write and pitch a movie idea. Only after they've gotten funding and done preproduction then they hire contractors short term (1-3 months) to make the movie. In games most studios hire all the staff. They then have the issue that between projects 90-95% of the staff have nothing to do. There's no income and the company is burning money. Unions may or may not help those movie contractors get a good price for their services but they don't guarantee jobs any more than the game industry AFAIK. Should video games be run more like the movie industry? As for your idea of "getting burned" because a company wants to make a different game, I have a game designer friend who used to think that way. He seemed to forget he was being paid $80k a year for his game ideas regardless of if they got used or not. If he wanted to profit from his own ideas he needed top stop selling them for salary to his employer.

corysama 8y ago
It’s not run like the movie industry yet. But, gamedev managers have been trying to push it that way for well over a decade for exactly the reason you mentioned: It’s really hard to keep a large team busy enough to pay their own salaries all the time. Many people’s jobs are focused on early or late in the process (ex: concept art vs testers). Pipelining multiple games is the obvious solution, but keeping everything lined up is much, much easier said than done in such a chaotic industry. However, the conversion to Hollywood-style waves of contractors hasn’t happened in games largely because the workers aren’t as interchangeable as they are in movies. Game pipelines have been very custom and quirky. It takes a long time to ramp up and get effective at a particular studio. That makes hiring and releasing a whole team for a single project very inefficient. Or, at least it has been that way. All this is a big reason why Unity and Unreal Engine have become so popular. By becoming standardized pipelines, they “make hiring much easier” because new hires can show up already familiar with the engine. Give it another decade and the Hollywoodization of gamedev may yet happen.
- meheleventyone 8y ago
  Also companies have seen what has happened to contract VFX houses who have experienced an enormous race to the bottom and where the situation is even more exploitative than games. Which is not to say this won’t happen in games but that if it does it will more closely resemble that situation than more traditional movie roles protected by strong unions.
azernik 8y ago
The situation now is more like the old studio system - they broke down in the 60s or so, partly because of government anti-trust action (studios also owning theaters, etc.) and partly because of increasing unionization (that model makes it quite hard to switch jobs for better pay, especially when there are very few players). I don't think the video game studio system is under that kind of pressure, but it also allows independent studios to function. (I find the modern movie and TV industry similar to the tech world, where each movie is a startup. That's even how a lot of the business are structured - directors and writers put together a pitch, sell investors or production companies on it, and then form a company to produce the film.)
wpietri 8y ago
> He seemed to forget he was being paid $80k a year for his game ideas regardless of if they got used or not. Money is one reason people do things, but rarely the only one. Especially smart, creative people. The notion that people lose the right to complain as long as the paychecks keep coming is poisonous.
- greggman 8y ago
  I'm not saying you shouldn't complain but on the other hand to me it's like a director complaining someone didn't watch her movie under perfect conditions or a book author complaining someone read the last chapter first. the game designer sold his idea to his company and then complained the customer didn't use the product the way the designer wanted. it might be frustrating but it's not the designer's choice. the designers choice was arguably not to sell the idea in the first place. once sold it's no longer theirs to control in general that designer's attitude was forgetting that they had actually gotten paid for their ideas. they took their salary for granted and forgot they had a business arrangement of getting paid for their ideas.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    A major difference being that a book reader doesn't say they're doing anything in particular with the book. People hiring creatives, though, very rarely say, "Well, we'll give you your money, but there's a 70% chance we'll fuck you over." Important other differences include exclusivity (readers aren't), amount of time wasted (after the book is published, each additional reader consumes approximately zero author time), type of relationship (readers are consumers; creative employers are collaborators), and expectations of control (which are common for creative workers). A closer analogy is a film director being upset that the studio didn't live up to the expectations created during the deal negotiation process. That happens all the time with films, and approximately nobody tells directors, "You got paid; STFU."

corysama 8y ago

It’s not run like the movie industry yet. But, gamedev managers have been trying to push it that way for well over a decade for exactly the reason you mentioned: It’s really hard to keep a large team busy enough to pay their own salaries all the time. Many people’s jobs are focused on early or late in the process (ex: concept art vs testers). Pipelining multiple games is the obvious solution, but keeping everything lined up is much, much easier said than done in such a chaotic industry. However, the conversion to Hollywood-style waves of contractors hasn’t happened in games largely because the workers aren’t as interchangeable as they are in movies. Game pipelines have been very custom and quirky. It takes a long time to ramp up and get effective at a particular studio. That makes hiring and releasing a whole team for a single project very inefficient. Or, at least it has been that way. All this is a big reason why Unity and Unreal Engine have become so popular. By becoming standardized pipelines, they “make hiring much easier” because new hires can show up already familiar with the engine. Give it another decade and the Hollywoodization of gamedev may yet happen.

meheleventyone 8y ago
Also companies have seen what has happened to contract VFX houses who have experienced an enormous race to the bottom and where the situation is even more exploitative than games. Which is not to say this won’t happen in games but that if it does it will more closely resemble that situation than more traditional movie roles protected by strong unions.

azernik 8y ago

The situation now is more like the old studio system - they broke down in the 60s or so, partly because of government anti-trust action (studios also owning theaters, etc.) and partly because of increasing unionization (that model makes it quite hard to switch jobs for better pay, especially when there are very few players). I don't think the video game studio system is under that kind of pressure, but it also allows independent studios to function. (I find the modern movie and TV industry similar to the tech world, where each movie is a startup. That's even how a lot of the business are structured - directors and writers put together a pitch, sell investors or production companies on it, and then form a company to produce the film.)

wpietri 8y ago

> He seemed to forget he was being paid $80k a year for his game ideas regardless of if they got used or not. Money is one reason people do things, but rarely the only one. Especially smart, creative people. The notion that people lose the right to complain as long as the paychecks keep coming is poisonous.

greggman 8y ago
I'm not saying you shouldn't complain but on the other hand to me it's like a director complaining someone didn't watch her movie under perfect conditions or a book author complaining someone read the last chapter first. the game designer sold his idea to his company and then complained the customer didn't use the product the way the designer wanted. it might be frustrating but it's not the designer's choice. the designers choice was arguably not to sell the idea in the first place. once sold it's no longer theirs to control in general that designer's attitude was forgetting that they had actually gotten paid for their ideas. they took their salary for granted and forgot they had a business arrangement of getting paid for their ideas.
- wpietri 8y ago
  A major difference being that a book reader doesn't say they're doing anything in particular with the book. People hiring creatives, though, very rarely say, "Well, we'll give you your money, but there's a 70% chance we'll fuck you over." Important other differences include exclusivity (readers aren't), amount of time wasted (after the book is published, each additional reader consumes approximately zero author time), type of relationship (readers are consumers; creative employers are collaborators), and expectations of control (which are common for creative workers). A closer analogy is a film director being upset that the studio didn't live up to the expectations created during the deal negotiation process. That happens all the time with films, and approximately nobody tells directors, "You got paid; STFU."