3 ms·

Games have the equivalent of directors who receive millions, like Sid Meier, Tim Sweeny, John Carmack, Gabe Newell, Markus Persson. And movies have the equival

mywittyname 8y ago
I feel like the programmers and artists are far more important to a game than the grips and extras are to a movie. For sure, there are some programmers and artists that work on trivial grunt work, but I'd absolutely consider lead P&As to be the equivalent to star actors. If you change any one of them out, you'll probably end up with a very different game feel.
- tachyonbeam 8y ago
  The movie equivalent of devs is probably set builders, prop builders, people working on visual effects, costume design and artistic makeup. These are highly skilled jobs, but these people are considered replaceable by the movie executives, and so are not paid millions. The same can be said for devs. If you want to be paid a lot, you have to convince people that you are not replaceable.
- krapp 8y ago
  >If you change any one of them out, you'll probably end up with a very different game feel. The feel of the game is created through the cinemtography, sound, visual effects, assets, acting, etc. The only way programmers actually have an effect on the way the game feels to the player is if they screw up and introduce some game breaking bugs or fail to implement face rigging properly or something like that. Otherwise, no, I'm sorry, but programmers are to modern games what production staff are to movies. Necessary, but utterly inconsequential in terms of the value of the final product for the consumer.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    Take Fallout 3/4 and New Vegas. The concepts for the games were largely the same, so was the initial tooling. The difference was the development teams. The games have a completely different feel. Dev teams are not interchangable cogs. Different developers will have different ideas for solutions to problems, game mechanics, etc. And different artists will create a completely different assets, even if given the same themes to work with.
  - Impossible 8y ago
    I might be biased as a programmer but I'm also guessing you've never worked on a video game and have a slightly romantized view of game development? If you have worked on games potentially you've worked on a product that had very clear separation of responsibility and where game play programmer and game designers were the same role? Just like PMs and designers don't wholly own product direction for a web or mobile application, game designers and artists don't entirely own game feel and even if they do they are often gated or empowered by systems developed and designed by programmers. In most cases designers are also programmers ("scripters") so you can make the further argument that game system design actually is just a form of programming, even if the designers aren't always writing code in the traditional sense.
gamblor956 8y ago
Games have the equivalent of directors who receive millions, like Sid Meier, Tim Sweeny, John Carmack, Gabe Newell, Markus Persson. And movies have the equivalent of underpaid overworked devs: extras and grips and so on. No, they really don't. Sid Meier, et al, make relatively little of the money of the games sold under their name, with the exception of Carmack and Newell, who own/majority owned their studios outright. In contrast, the spoils in Hollywood and Music are shared with a much larger group, which sustains the industry in a way that the obscenely hit-based nature of gaming can't. Also, to note: almost all workers on a Hollywood production (meaning movies released in America, not just those actually made in Hollywood, CA) are union members or protected by union rules even if they aren't yet members. Even extras. After your third role as an extra, you generally have to get/qualify for SAG-AFTRA membership. Finally: Hollywood has the lovely concept of overtime. I have a great many friends who work in the industry, and they love overtime. It starts at time and a half, and the multiple increases every few hours over the day and week so that theoretically a crew member (but not cast member) could be making 5x of their base hourly rate after a few days of Hollywood's equivalent of crunch time. (Exact amount of hours in a day/week before hourly rates go above 1.5x varies per union, but generally starts at 12 hours/day or 50 hours/week). Needless to say, because abusing their workers gets so expensive, studios plan production to limit crunch time during a production. While it's relatively common for production schedules to include overtime, generally only mismanaged productions run into crunch time. There is no equivalent in the gaming industry, and so crunch time of a year or two is common (see e.g., EA and Telltale Games). F/X studios operate like gaming studios, so those workers are relatively abused. Like game programmers and other game studio employees, they have largely resisted unionization and so are generally the only group of Hollywood workers that can be said to be both unpaid and overworked.
- neaden 8y ago
  I saw a joke on Twitter, can't remember who said it. Is Netflix's new Black Mirror Choose Your Own Adventure a movie or a game? It's a movie, you can tell because everyone involved got paid for overtime.
- Animats 8y ago
  Yes. The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839,[1], which represents most of the major studio animators in California, has tried to organize game developers, at least the artists and animators. They have not been successful. They'd be glad to talk to you if you're a game developer. I've seen their union reps at local SIGGRAPH meetings. [1] https://animationguild.org/ https://animationguild.org/

mywittyname 8y ago

I feel like the programmers and artists are far more important to a game than the grips and extras are to a movie. For sure, there are some programmers and artists that work on trivial grunt work, but I'd absolutely consider lead P&As to be the equivalent to star actors. If you change any one of them out, you'll probably end up with a very different game feel.

tachyonbeam 8y ago
The movie equivalent of devs is probably set builders, prop builders, people working on visual effects, costume design and artistic makeup. These are highly skilled jobs, but these people are considered replaceable by the movie executives, and so are not paid millions. The same can be said for devs. If you want to be paid a lot, you have to convince people that you are not replaceable.
krapp 8y ago
>If you change any one of them out, you'll probably end up with a very different game feel. The feel of the game is created through the cinemtography, sound, visual effects, assets, acting, etc. The only way programmers actually have an effect on the way the game feels to the player is if they screw up and introduce some game breaking bugs or fail to implement face rigging properly or something like that. Otherwise, no, I'm sorry, but programmers are to modern games what production staff are to movies. Necessary, but utterly inconsequential in terms of the value of the final product for the consumer.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  Take Fallout 3/4 and New Vegas. The concepts for the games were largely the same, so was the initial tooling. The difference was the development teams. The games have a completely different feel. Dev teams are not interchangable cogs. Different developers will have different ideas for solutions to problems, game mechanics, etc. And different artists will create a completely different assets, even if given the same themes to work with.
- Impossible 8y ago
  I might be biased as a programmer but I'm also guessing you've never worked on a video game and have a slightly romantized view of game development? If you have worked on games potentially you've worked on a product that had very clear separation of responsibility and where game play programmer and game designers were the same role? Just like PMs and designers don't wholly own product direction for a web or mobile application, game designers and artists don't entirely own game feel and even if they do they are often gated or empowered by systems developed and designed by programmers. In most cases designers are also programmers ("scripters") so you can make the further argument that game system design actually is just a form of programming, even if the designers aren't always writing code in the traditional sense.

gamblor956 8y ago

Games have the equivalent of directors who receive millions, like Sid Meier, Tim Sweeny, John Carmack, Gabe Newell, Markus Persson. And movies have the equivalent of underpaid overworked devs: extras and grips and so on. No, they really don't. Sid Meier, et al, make relatively little of the money of the games sold under their name, with the exception of Carmack and Newell, who own/majority owned their studios outright. In contrast, the spoils in Hollywood and Music are shared with a much larger group, which sustains the industry in a way that the obscenely hit-based nature of gaming can't. Also, to note: almost all workers on a Hollywood production (meaning movies released in America, not just those actually made in Hollywood, CA) are union members or protected by union rules even if they aren't yet members. Even extras. After your third role as an extra, you generally have to get/qualify for SAG-AFTRA membership. Finally: Hollywood has the lovely concept of overtime. I have a great many friends who work in the industry, and they love overtime. It starts at time and a half, and the multiple increases every few hours over the day and week so that theoretically a crew member (but not cast member) could be making 5x of their base hourly rate after a few days of Hollywood's equivalent of crunch time. (Exact amount of hours in a day/week before hourly rates go above 1.5x varies per union, but generally starts at 12 hours/day or 50 hours/week). Needless to say, because abusing their workers gets so expensive, studios plan production to limit crunch time during a production. While it's relatively common for production schedules to include overtime, generally only mismanaged productions run into crunch time. There is no equivalent in the gaming industry, and so crunch time of a year or two is common (see e.g., EA and Telltale Games). F/X studios operate like gaming studios, so those workers are relatively abused. Like game programmers and other game studio employees, they have largely resisted unionization and so are generally the only group of Hollywood workers that can be said to be both unpaid and overworked.

neaden 8y ago
I saw a joke on Twitter, can't remember who said it. Is Netflix's new Black Mirror Choose Your Own Adventure a movie or a game? It's a movie, you can tell because everyone involved got paid for overtime.
Animats 8y ago
Yes. The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839,[1], which represents most of the major studio animators in California, has tried to organize game developers, at least the artists and animators. They have not been successful. They'd be glad to talk to you if you're a game developer. I've seen their union reps at local SIGGRAPH meetings. [1] https://animationguild.org/ https://animationguild.org/