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Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job

537 points by hourislate 8y ago

tluyben2 8y ago
Not anymore no. It used to be when I did it in the 80s and 90s. It grew up and it is hell now (if I may believe my friends in the industry). Edit; come to think about it: I made games a few years ago; educational games for government, utilities, zoos and education for money, so a job and that was still fun and really quite a dream job imho. But not big open world fps ofcourse :) Nice 2d games which is like the most anyway. Edit 2; what I liked about game dev in the 80s and 90s was the limitations of the machines: you could lock yourself up in the basement for weeks, eat and drink and dream optimizations while writing the most rancid (but in my eyes genious) code and in the end ship it and never think about it again. I would say it was far more of an intellectual challenge than (for most devs) now as all was always from scratch; engines did not fit in memory or were just too slow if they they did. Also; there was a clear end to deathmarches: after a while nothing fits anymore and you cannot optimize it further so you ship or just scrap it. Now you can continue forever marching, which must be hell.
- Pfhreak 8y ago
  Heh, I wouldn't say grown up. The work environment I had in games was an hr nightmare.
- spc476 8y ago
  In the early 80s, you could be a 15 year old and make a ton of money making a computer game. This got harder as time went on and computers got more complicated (and expectations rose).
trpc 8y ago
Legally exploiting others and making a fortune is a dream job. EDIT: not my belief btw, this is how things mostly work in the business world but most people who do that aren't self conscious enough to recognize that
- aarpmcgee 8y ago
  How so?
  - trpc 8y ago
    I can't describe it in a small comment. The more you reach the top of the food chain the more you will understand.
    - LUmBULtERA 8y ago
      You dream of legally exploiting others? That's depressing.
    - krageon 8y ago
      This is survivor bias in that the only people that get to the top are capable of understanding.
  - nukeop 8y ago
    It's because being the top dog feels great, duh.
- kaitai 8y ago
  There are a lot of downvotes to this comment and I don't think it deserves it. I think the comment adds something substantive to the discussion. If you want to rise far in our economic system, a willingness or eagerness to figure out how to exploit others legally is a definite advantage. All the HN discussion here is about, "Those workers should find something else to do!" All about the self, maybe a bit about unions. But no one has mentioned the people at the very top who make money. So, HNers, are all these companies closing (Telltale, Capcom Vancouver) because some courageous entrepreneur put their ethics, heart, and soul into a game company and just couldn't make it work, ending up penniless alongside their former employees? Or were they just not making "enough" money anymore? or what? What are the profits like in the game industry? Who gets them? If I follow the money, where does it go? Genuinely curious.
  - 8y ago
makotech222 8y ago
No, it still is a dream job, just a dream deferred so that capitalism can make a profit. Imagine if you didn't have to work for healthcare, food, shelter; making games in this environment would be a dream.
samcday 8y ago
> In many of these cases, laid-off employees had no idea what was coming. One developer at a major studio told me in February that he and his colleagues had been crunching — putting in long hours, including nights and weekends — for a video game release, only to be suddenly told that security was waiting to escort them off the premises. Man, that really sucks, if you think about it. I'm sure many people here on HN have worked very hard on something in their life. I know I have, and in a couple of cases I ended up being acutely unhappy with the outcomes. But, DAMN, at least none of my moments of extreme toil were punctuated like this.
- jfk13 8y ago
  In a civilised society, it would be illegal for an employer to behave like that. (Yes, I know, I'm imposing my view of what it would mean to be "civilised", and not everyone will agree.)
  - hannasanarion 8y ago
    There are plenty of countries where all employers are required to give certain notice, and you can't suddenly fire someone. It is outrageous that your ability to eat and pay rent can be taken away with zero notice in America.
    - thecatspaw 8y ago
      That just means they have to pay you for some time after they fired you. You can still be fired in an instant and be escorted out the door, especially if you have/had access to critical systems
      - Insanity 8y ago
        They could, and after that time you fall back on 'unemployment wage' by the government. Which is less than what you'd normally earn, but by the time that happens you probably have another job already.
      - 8y ago
lovetocode 8y ago
Game developers let themselves be exploited with low pay and unpaid overtime. They should grow a spine and say no to ridiculous work conditions. I am tired of hearing about it. They don’t need to unionize, they need to realize that they have a unique and valuable skill set. If we are talking specifically about programmers, we have the fortunate leverage to tell our employers to go piss up a rope with the weekly job offers we get. Edit: grammar
- mailslot 8y ago
  Every game development job I’ve had has been terrible by any measure... but I still crave to go back. It’s easy to put in long hours when everyone else does and you genuinely enjoy their company. It’s easy to forgo pay, when you have equity. You’re just never going to get the opportunity to work creatively with a talented team at Wells Fargo. It’s a totally different experience. If you’re concerned about a work/life balance or compensation, it’s not for you. I’d hate if game development turned into a typical corporate 9-5, and was inclusive of all skill levels. Pay is decent, if you’re established and are at the top of your game.
  - moate 8y ago
    >>I’d hate if game development turned into a typical corporate 9-5, and was inclusive of all skill levels. Why? If the quality of the games stays the same, what benefit is there for the employees to work 20 hour days during crunch? How is that inherently "good"? How would you make it better than "terrible by any measure"?
    - mailslot 8y ago
      How would gamers feel with 2x longer release cycles and higher cost and/or less features? Lower profit and higher expenses is the only way, but given the risks of any ambitious title, small studios are nearly always flirting with bankruptcy as it is. There’s no easy answer, but time to market and risk will suffer.
- sageabilly 8y ago
azhenley 8y ago
It is a dream job if I’m my own boss.
- beatgammit 8y ago
  Exactly. My dream scenario is to be in a situation like Tarn Adams, who works on a game he loves and lives off donations. Ideally, by that point I'd have enough to sustain myself without donations so that source of stress is gone. I don't want to work in the AAA game industry, I want to work for myself in the indie game industry on a project that both I and my supporters love.
  - azhenley 8y ago
    I made Flash games part time in college that made enough money for me to [barely] live off. I took it for granted and now wish I had committed to it full time. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
  - slamberth 8y ago
    Unfortunately, that situation caught up with Tarn recently. They've had to change their whole model due to rising health care costs and are now hoping for actual sales to keep them afloat. I think that just shows how all of the factors in the article (work conditions, health care, "crunch") are intertwined. People are torn between doing what they love and doing what pays well so they can stay afloat.
    - fragsworth 8y ago
      The silver lining is he's probably going to be rich as hell after it launches on Steam.
- ctdonath 8y ago
  Want to be? go for it. Cost of entry for macOS/iOS/tvOS is ~$1000 for total basic development & distribution hard costs on par with AAA studios; to wit a refurbished MacBook Air, Xcode, and Developer registration gives objective core tools to go from blank project to worldwide distribution. (Detail, talent, and advertising extra.) YMMV for other platforms.
ed312 8y ago
Throughout my childhood I enjoyed playing and making games. I eventually studied a mixture of CS and digital art in college in order to join the game industry. It was a dream job to me in so many ways - I imagined an open, friendly culture of people working together to create an immersive experience. The reality: minimum wage entry level, planned for "crunch" time >3 months long, constant fear of running out of "runway" (money), etc. All of this culminated with the company simply stopping paying people for a month before eventually shutting down. I tried one more game company (really just a fb/ios thinly-veiled gambling app) before I quit the industry for good. That was roughly 5 years ago - at this point I'm _just_ starting to re-kindle my love for games and creativity.
Creationer 8y ago
These conditions don't seem to be very different from many other American businesses. Unpaid overtime, minimal notification during layoffs. Video games get a lot of attention because they are the ultimate consumer product. Workers being treated similarly at a glass factory or an accounting form wouldn't make the news. Unionisation isn't going to solve fundamentally poor corporate performance or mismanagement. Ultimately people need to be willing to walk away from bad jobs. The best thing that has actually happened recently for game developers is the creation of the Epic store on PC - giving 88% of revenue to developers, instead of the 70% of many others stores. Its odd so many people seem to oppose that store on one hand, and support unionisation on the other.
Kiro 8y ago
This is not at all reflected among the actual workers in the different game development groups I'm in. People post polls about unionization all the time and "yes" never ever wins, not even close.
DaveSapien 8y ago
Uncertainty is the killer. There are many studios that are a dream to work for, make no mistake about it. The worst studios and the best studios, always require you (mostly on the software side) to at some point, work for free. Work unpaid hours to meet a deadline. Which would be ok, if there was some kind of profit share, there however is NOT that kind of compensation. What there is, is an uncertainty that you will have a job tomorrow. You could wake up with no job and zero return in your investment of your many hours of free time. It is though for employers, no doubt, but running a games studio as a standard business leaves a trail of disenfranchised people in its wake. A better approach, if possible, is to run a project as an individual business, each worker with some kind of performance compensation and responsibility for the product...imo
0815test 8y ago
Good thing that the NYTimes is finally raising awareness about this issue. There are so many alternative sectors that these highly-skilled workers could pivot to, not just the developers/coders but other roles as well, e.g. graphicians, 3D artists, UX designers etc. The pay and conditions in the rest of the industry are so much better, there's really no comparison.
wmil 8y ago
Jason Schreier has been pushing for game developers to unionize for a while now. In the case of programmers, it really doesn't make much sense. There's a lot of BS that can come with unions. They have transferable skills. It's just easier to change jobs. For more specialized workers a union probably does make sense, eg: 3d artists, game testers. But I think union organizers are really only interested in the programmers, because they'll probably generate the most dues.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  It certainly makes sense for game developers. They're being exploited with super long working hours, being let go at a moment's notice once a game is out the door, and their pay usually isn't that good. They'd benefit greatly from unionization same as everyone else working on these games.
- papermill 8y ago
  Jason Schreier has never worked as developer or in the gaming industry. It's insane how so many people give these people so much credence and attention. The guy literally doesn't know what he is a talking about. Also 3d artists and game testers/QA/etc are transferable skills just like programmers.
  - Slippery_John 8y ago
    What does it matter that he isn't a game developer? I don't need to be an industrial revolution era child factory worker to understand that the conditions they labored under were inhumane.
- notSupplied 8y ago
  Programmers need it the least. They are paid the highest and have the best alternatives employment options. I think we should be talking about the production artist and testers in a completely separate breath from the programmers. In fact, this could explain why people are arguing in circles here, they could be talking about separate groups in completely different situations as far as compensation & leverage goes!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gavman 8y ago
> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand. That's the crux of this entire article in one sentence. This might be an upopular opinion here, but right now the supply of developers overall [across all industries] is much lower than demand. No one is forcing a developer to work for a game studio. It might be your dream job, but if you're not treated well you're a highly talented skilled worker, go work for someone else. Let the supply diminish because of the working conditions and alternatives and suddenly studios won't have the option to treat their employees this way. edit: typos
- baud147258 8y ago
  I know one guy who is like that, he realized his dream by doing it as a side job and it look like he's been successful so far (released one game, worked as a writer for a handful of other games)
  - baud147258 8y ago
    Apparently the game he's worked on made at least 300k $, to split between the publisher (WE Games) and the guy and his two collaborator. And he used a good chunk of his share to fund games on kickstater
- glvn 8y ago
  When I was in college a few years back I had many colleagues that wanted to get into the game industry. Most all were pretty serious gamers and many seemed to have false expectations of what the industry was like, namely that: Playing Video Games === Creating Video Games. While I'm not one to tell someone what they should or shouldn't do with their careers (hell my mother wanted me to become a lawyer), I always made a point to tell them they should research the industry a bit more before making the leap. I know quite a few that ended up pivoting what field they went into after learning how brutal the gaming industry can be. Making games might be your dream job, just make sure you are fully aware of the realities of your dream job and decide if you are willing to accept that reality day in and day out.
- 8y ago
midnightclubbed 8y ago
Jason has done great work exposing the dysfunctional and exploitative parts of the game industry. However I am not so sure the issues are unique to games; bad management, product re-designs/pivots, underpaid support staff, investors with deadlines and expectations of ROI.
bubblewrap 8y ago
They are not being exploited. They are free to take on another job. Especially coders could certainly find jobs in other industries. And "Fortnite" is not the games industry. There are a variety of ways to make a living making games.
- NaNtales 8y ago
  Of course you can stop being exploited as a game developer by leaving the games industry---but why should people be forced to change their career in order to avoid exploitation?
  - ctdonath 8y ago
    They are welcome to jump in independently, produce their own games, and compete with the rest. They will then learn the realities of "GET IT DONE", that those whining at management about >40hr work weeks get trounced by those viewing projects as "24/7 with bio breaks". It's not about whether you have a right to follow a chosen career. It's about that chosen career being chosen by many more people than the market can support, the competition being ferocious, and the reality that those wanting to get it right get run over by those getting it DONE.
  - magduf 8y ago
    There's only so many jobs available in a career field. If there's far more people clamoring to take those jobs than positions available, why should employers bother to pay them more than a pittance? The employer who pays extremely well will be uncompetitive compared to the other employers. If employees don't like this, they should stop trying to get these terribly-compensated jobs, and go to other industries. There is a shortage of qualified developers in other industries. Salaries are very high, working conditions are generally good, so why do these masochists insist on "pursuing their passion" in the games field where this isn't the case? I'm sorry, I have no sympathy. It's not like these people don't have options. This is seriously a "first world problem" here. The big problem is that too many people seem to think that people have some kind of "right" to a career. They don't. As a society, people should have the right to a decent job and livelihood, I will agree. However, no one has the right to do their dream job, and get paid a fortune for doing it! Careers are subject to the laws of supply and demand like anything else, and games are not something vital to society where the government has any business stepping in with regulation to keep things running smoothly, as it does with things like electric utilities, infrastructure, education, or aviation safety.
nukeop 8y ago
Making videogames is a great hobby though. One of the traditional appeals of writing roguelikes is that you can spend minimal effort on graphics and related cruft and boilerplate, and jump straight into implementing any fun mechanic you can think off. If you like the idea of creating games, do something less stressful as a day job, and make games as a hobby. A single person can release a game made as a hobby. This way you have full control, no stress, and don't need to take financial risks.
xparco 8y ago
Correct, if you are a 9-5 slave prole
LostInTheWoods2 8y ago
This turned out to be an article about tech workers unionizing ... which I just don't see that as a solution in the tech industry in general, especially when companies have the choice to offshore their staffs. At the end of the day, we developers are well compensated, and have great mobility. If you find yourself getting a raw deal, just pickup your keyboard and go somewhere else.
basseq 8y ago
If you're into this topic, I highly suggest How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong by Jason Schreier, published on Kotaku this week. A deep insight into game development culture, and one particular AAA game. It's a long read (11,000 words), but worth it. https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964 https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964
CM30 8y ago
> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few 'passion' driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten more are lining up for the 'opportunity'. You can see this in all manner of arts or entertainment based fields, since there are far more people wanting to become artists/musicians/writers/whatever than there is demand for their services. You can see it in journalism, where in many cases organisations will try and get work done for free, and will pay so little that living off said wages is virtually impossible in a major city if you don't have a trust fund (though admittedly the huge increase in competition from the internet puts pressure there). And I even recall people saying it's one reason teaching wages aren't too high either. Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of 'passion', and to go where their skills are appreciated/where they're treated better/fairly compensated.
- monsieurbanana 8y ago
  That's only one half of the solution, the other half is taking into consideration that there's less demand for video games critics than there's people wanting to do it, and possibly choose another less crowded career.
  - CM30 8y ago
    Well, the article mostly focused on game development rather than game journalism, but you're right, both fields have many of the same issues. In fact, video game journalism may be the worst of both the game development and media worlds, since it's got all the downsides of both (low pay, long hours, unstable employment, companies struggling) plus an endless supply of newcomers who (like with game development) think it'll be their dream job. Oh, and the basic skill requirements to get employed are really low too. So it's like a minimum wage career people are passionate about getting into where pretty much anyone can do the work.
winterismute 8y ago
For the interested Italian speakers out there, we have a recurrent podcast happening at www.gameloop.it and we had an episode right after the Blizzard layoffs to which both a Technical Director at Activision (Canada) and a researcher in the field of Industrial Relations (who worked on an EU report of unionization in the creative industry) participated, the discussion that sparked was very interesting in my opinion, here is the episoda page: https://gameloop.it/2019/02/26/gameloop-podcast-gl22a-activision-licenziamenti-e-lavoro/ https://gameloop.it/2019/02/26/gameloop-podcast-gl22a-activi... (Italian only :( )
mips_avatar 8y ago
I feel like the video gaming industry is kind of like working for SpaceX. You dream as a kid of working on rockets, so you will take an incredibly difficult job for less money and perks than google. But it’s worth it if you love rockets.
praptak 8y ago
The market discounts the coolness factor of being in the game industry, so you effectively pay for being a game developer by crappy work conditions. Regarding the unionizing unions, I don't think I can express this better than RMS: "All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what democracy was invented for!" He was talking about human rights but this argument applies as well to work conditions.
brucemoose 8y ago
This seems all too often the case with development work in general. I see the same type of unreasonable expectations in devops. Maybe it's compounded by the software industry liking to hire young people with less experience but more free time. They may not yet have the soft skills to navigate unreasonable demands and give hard answers, and logistically a single person can more easily pull extra hours. I've found that as I get older it has become easier to push back on unpaid overtime type work (or simply not do it). Because it would be damaging to my family and relationships if I didn't, and that's a powerful motivator for me. But at the same time it's hard to compete with the output of people who somehow can grind all day every day, and through the weekend. I don't know if there's a way to level the playing field as long as employers are allowing and even encouraging this kind of unpaid self sacrifice.
- klohto 8y ago
  This is objectively wrong. DevOps continues to be the best paying field to work in. This is also accommodated by the fact that employers do not hire inexperienced people to DevOps because you probably don’t want them screwing up the whole release pipeline. Look up latest SO survey results and you’ll see that DevOps is very nicely paid even across Europe.
  - brucemoose 8y ago
    Oh... But I wasn't talking about salary, and Junior DevOps is most definitely a thing.
makerescape 8y ago
Game development draws a more artistic developer, I think, and artists are somewhat accustomed to having to give up money and security for doing what they love. Have you ever seen a successful union for musicians? And unions sometimes suck all the creativity and great making out of an industry—-think Detroit in the 70s. I personally would like to see more of the industry spread out across startups, with more employees participating in the stock packages that can potentially create truly life-altering one-time payments in the 6 and 7 figures. But the working conditions are very hard. I’ve accepted that, however, as the price I must pay to focus on what I love to do and get paid well for it.
GuB-42 8y ago
For tech workers, I think that making video games is "not a dream job" is an understatement. Except maybe for a select few. That's what I wanted to do. A short look at what the reality looks like was enough to make me run away really fast. I suppose the industry manages to lure in new talent who don't know any better, that's how they still manage to get people to work for them despite the terrible conditions. They project an image of an industry that is young (no shit, "old guys" jumped ship long ago) and fun to people who grew up playing video games and want to see the other side. That's not just the big studios. On the indie side, the good thing is that you are not exploited, the bad thing is that it is even harder, with low chances of success. The only team that I've seen personally and was somewhat successful are the guys who made Crosscode (I highly recommend the game BTW), and the process looked like hard and stressful work. The others ended up doing gigs completely unrelated to game dev in order to eat.
el_cujo 8y ago
The video game industry has the same problem a lot of creative jobs have: the work force is large. Companies can afford to treat employees like shit because there are so many fresh grads who want to be game devs lined up to take the place of anyone who complains. Compare that to writers/graphic designers who are often undercut by their peers who are willing to work "for exposure". Hopefully unionizing helps these guys out, but I think as long as there is such a big pool of people willing to suffer to have a shot in the industry, it's going to be an uphill battle.
leftyted 8y ago
Making video games is a dream job because lots of people want to make video games. Amazing that some people choose jobs for reasons other than high salary, job security, and low stress. Shocking that some people are actually motivated by oh, I don't know, actual interest in an industry! We can force employers to treat game devs differently via unionization or laws. If people want to discuss these kinds of measures, that's fine. But these people ought to recognize that these regulations will involve trade-offs. If you think the trade-offs are worth it, cool, but please acknowledge them. My feeling is that highly skilled programmers who are incredibly in demand in every industry do not need unions or special legal protection. They have options. Only by denying the existence of their free will can we pretend that this is a serious problem.
PorterDuff 8y ago
To what extent is the video game industry crunch culture driven by non-negotiable deadlines? (trade shows, Christmas, movie releases)
rongenre 8y ago
I left an engineering job at a finance startup in the mid 90's to take a "dream job" at a video game startup. It was.. awful: all the fun and creativity was being done by on the production/game design part, and the engineering was... both demanding and boring at the same time. It was weird realizing I was happier and feeling more creatively engaged when I was figuring out how to price derivatives.
papermill 8y ago
I thought everyone knew this already. And its been true for decades. When I was a CS major, everyone told me not to go into game development because you worked the most for the least amount of pay. Not sure why why this is so high up here. I'd think that the HN community would already know this by now. If not, there are plenty of game developer testimony all over social media and the internet.
makecheck 8y ago
I resisted spending any time on game development for a long time because I knew deep down how games are consumed extremely quickly. You can spend tons of effort to build a utility app that might prove its value every day for years and years, and may never lose all value. You can spend tons of time and effort developing a game that may become boring to players in a matter of weeks or months and never be used again. Ultimately I decided that game development is useful for building certain programming skills as a hobby, regardless of the “value curve” of the product. And if you expect nothing (i.e. you’re competing in a huge field of millions of games, nothing is special anymore), you can focus on what you’ve gained, which may be primarily the experience. I emphasize the hobby part; it’s useful to try it but it’s extremely backwards economically. I would always advise “other” programming jobs, with game dev. on the side.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  "because I knew deep down how games are consumed extremely quickly" Those are called "casual games". Most gamers will have games with (much) over 1000 h played .. I would not call that "consumed quickly"
ctdonath 8y ago
For a while I taught introductory programming to bright-eyed prospective game creators. The analogy I would use up front: driving a car is very different from building one; just because you liked playing games doesn't mean you'll like creating games - whatever part of "development" you're involved in. Of the hundreds I taught, I'm only aware of one who went on to "making video games" - and yes it was his dream job, he's willing to put in the insane effort & hours to make it happen, and he was duly rewarded. Killing Floor 2 FTW :-)
erik998 8y ago
I think in general software developers can use something like SAG to enforce a basic daily minimum rate. https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate-sheet/document https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate... Daily rates for developers, dbas, qa's and such... The same guild could make special rate sheets for different stages of a firm. For example SAG has a daily rate sheet for indy films, a software dev guild could have one for startups as well. This could at least prevent abusive startups. https://www.sagindie.org/signatory/ https://www.sagindie.org/signatory/ If you are a star developer equivalent to a celebrity actor, these would just be the minimum rates. There is nothing preventing a studio from paying more. If anything this would resolve the use of contract labor 1099 misclassifications. If you are good enough to get paid above 120k you could have a loan out corporation and deduct more of your costs while still paying union fees. https://abspayroll.com/loan-out-companies/ https://abspayroll.com/loan-out-companies/ https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-company-for-your-work-in-entertainment/ https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c... This wouldn't be a an factory type union. It would be something like a professional union like SAG. Read the rate sheets to get a better understanding.
4RealFreedom 8y ago
I don't know if this would work or could work but what about capping salaries? Something along the lines of you can only make 2X of the average from the bottom 50% employees.
jngreenlee 8y ago
Grandma's Boy made it look pretty cool :P
SonnyWortzik 8y ago
Based on the recent article by Jason Schreier (Kotaku) about the complete disaster of Anthem game development, it puts into light the mismanagement and the exploitation of these developers to churn out games as if it were a factory floor with little time and pressured to deliver. These developers are talented but you can only do so much with that talent when you have no time to demonstrate that talent and are being asked very unreasonable demands to deliver. Only to deliver a half baked product and asking their customers to dish-out $60+ to be a "beta" tester for a company racking up billions. This unionization is a must. This exploitation has to stop.
fearai 8y ago
Literally playing video games is now a dream job and people are still complaining smh
madrox 8y ago
I’ve never worked on games professionally, but I work in games media and have been able to watch this industry change up close. Video game development is really a different beast than the rest of development. They branched in the 80s the way apes and chimps did genetically. They don’t follow the same tech trends that the rest of the industry follows. I doubt a majority of game devs even know about HN. They socialize with different people. All it takes to appreciate this is to remember how caught off guard the whole industry was by mobile gaming being a thing. I’m not convinced supply/demand is really the reason why the games industry is the way it is. I compare it to the non-games tech industry and see the conversations, communities, and struggles they’ve had and the games industry is only starting to, and wonder if there is a connection.
bigtex 8y ago
In high school, (mid 90's) I desired to be a video game developer, because I thought hey I like to play video games so maybe that should be my career! That all changed when I read the Next Generation (greatest gaming mag of all time) issue on working in the gaming industry. After reading about conjugal visits on the office floor because husbands would be stuck at the office for weeks trying to the game finished, that was enough for me. As someone who wanted to get married and have a family this turned me off of going into the gaming industry and led we towards more a much more family friendly career. As for unionization, I don't think it will help. I have a good career, great salary, working from home 4 days a week and only commute 1 day but can come in after rush hour. I don't see companies being able to provide benefits like that if unions are involved.
- mrits 8y ago
  Unions seem to try to solve a problem to make sure everyone is treated fairly but they really just make sure everyone gets the same thing. If everyone gets the same thing I lose my motivation. It might be a character flaw but I know I'm not alone. I suppose it might not make a big difference in some industries but in the ones I've been involved in the few difference makers on a team kept us in business.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
LoSboccacc 8y ago
* being hired ruins everything as with every other craft, doing it on your terms is quite different and between kickstarters and the others there's plenty opportunities for the enterprising developers.
ngngngng 8y ago
I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for someone that follows a career path in which supply is higher than demand, and then they whine when they have to deal with the economic impact of supply being higher than demand.
- madsushi 8y ago
  Supply and demand aren’t perfectly measurable values. Supply and demand change all the time, and can even shift while you’re in school, or over the 40+ expected years of most careers. Telling someone to pick a career where demand > supply forever is impossible because if you believe in the market, supply will rise to meet demand.
noego 8y ago
I'm all for protecting the vulnerable and underprivileged. I'm all for universal healthcare, increased minimum wages/EITC, and increased taxes on the rich. But I'm very skeptical of the idea that white collar professionals earning well above the median, are somehow in need of "protecting". They have every opportunity to quit the video game industry and take up very lucrative and easygoing jobs in other industries. They are expressly choosing not to do so. That is their choice, and their burden to bear. Anything that reduces competition in the marketplace is bad for society as a whole. This is why I'm all in favor of anti-trust regulations and breaking up the tech giants. This is also why I'm not a fan of unions. Maybe a case can be made for specially disadvantaged demographics. I just don't see it for programmers.
- erik998 8y ago
  Those were my initial feelings as well. I guess the issue comes down to focusing on software development as a skill and having that skill rewarded in manner you can count on. Our industry is really similar to actors. They have SAG and their guild negotiates with the MPAA. So every studio needs to belong to MPAA. Every year they negotiate the daily/weekly minimum rates for actors with SAG. They are pretty flexible with different rates for indy films vs big budget films. It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such... https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate-sheet/document https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate... If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well. I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG. I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job. If your are over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point... https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-company-for-your-work-in-entertainment/ https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c... Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.
alexnewman 8y ago
"Making X Is Not a Dream Job" -> It's almost as if you are building something cool and exciting then some people find that as an additional reward as well.
darepublic 8y ago
Even when doing something you love if you have to do it at the command of someone else it can be misery inducing.
disease 8y ago
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that making video games for a corporation is not a dream job? I've entered 8 game jams and generally enjoyed the experience. It sucks when you can't complete your game but when I did it felt like I landed on Mars! I'd love to make games professionally put as is made clear in the article and comments, 'passion jobs' tend to suck.
mrbill29 8y ago
I got to say, reading the comments as someone who currently works in games, I don't understand why people think there's such a divide. Game development at this point is really not that different from other development. Do some studios suck at management? Yes, do some do management well? Yes. Just like other tech games has it's share of good and bad. Personally I don't work overtime and haven't since my first game job. Some people do, sometimes it's because they're covering for others work, sometimes it's because they want to put something special in they can call their own. Is games as an industry harder? Probably, games push current tech in every way possible. Does it mean you'll have to work harder to accomplish your goals? Also probably. But with games at least you're trying to do something no one else is most of the time. And when it hits it's something you can be proud of. Not everyone cares about that, but people in games often do.
commandertso 8y ago
The comments here have a fair number of people baffled at why folks would stay at jobs like this for any period of time. Here’s my thought based on working in games for around a decade; I left after that, in part for quality of life reasons. For folks that want to work in games, there can be a strong feeling that it is a quixotic quest; there aren’t a lot of jobs relative to the applicants, you’re chasing a dream, and the big places of employment often made the games that made you passionate about everything in the first place. Once you get that first job, you’re taught that you are not only one of the best, but that you’re lucky to be there. It’s easy to quickly bond with your comrades around the shared, stressful experiences. And to internalize that this is all ok because what quest doesn’t involve some pain? My first game job was in 2002, and my long, slow falling out of love with the industry started after shipping the first game I’d worked on. Once it had gone gold, we all took a couple weeks at 40 hours a week. After that, I was told by my boss that we all had to go back to 60 hour weeks. I asked why. The answer was, “that’s how we work.” That was when I started looking for a new job.
rubicon33 8y ago
It's incredible reading through the comments on this post and nobody seems to see the game industry for what it is: the canary in the coal mine. Programming within the game industry is sliding rapidly toward blue collar, and you'd be a fool to assume the problem is contained. The problem for programmers is simple - Supply and Demand. Thanks to a massive publicity push from big tech, the public is being sold - hook line and sinker - a story about how we're in a "shortage of developers" and how everyone needs to "learn to code". Combine that with the plethora of boot camps, and online materials, and it's never been easier to pickup JavaScript on a weekend and be coding a website. I've never seen people shoot themselves in the foot more. For god sakes, you're sawing your foot off at this point. There is now a massive wave of young developers, just getting their footing who will be entering a work force near you in the next 10-20 years. And don't forget about remote workers, they gun for your job too. It's becoming more and more technically feasible for a software shop in the US to hire a dev team based in, I dunno, China. I've seen it happen to a group of incredible devs. At the end of the day, the numbers didn't pencil in their favor. Ask yourselves if you really think the good times will always roll. Really ask yourself if Obama standing up in front of the nation beckoning for everyone to "Learn to Code" was really good for you, or good for the big tech companies that got him up there? Wake up, and smell the ashes. There are industry and economic forces actively working AGAINST you. Don't help them. Stop parroting the narrative that there is a "shortage of developers", for starters. And hedge your bets while you're at it - get really good at something. Specialize. Maybe it's firmware, maybe it's iOS AR, maybe its machine learning, find something niche, and get world class level good at it. In 15 years, hopefully you'll be one of the few still making "6 figure salaries".
- hellllllllooo 8y ago
  This. It's coming for the rest of the industry. Amazon and Google aren't encouraging young people to code for the good of the world. It's so the can hire people for less money once the pool is larger. The intent is to drive down the cost so that devs will do the exact same work and the company will take a larger cut of the profit. Once this gets to a point of exploitation like in the games industry a union is necessary unless you are lucky enough to choose the right speciality but this is a gamble.
- 8y ago
Tiktaalik 8y ago
My video game developers need unions story: I was a core developer on a major feature of Sleeping Dogs/'True Crime: Hong Kong' for 2+ years. At one point, when the game was still being published by ATVI under the title 'True Crime: Hong Kong', ATVI cancelled the game and 100+ developers were laid off including me. Fast forward a few months and miraculously Square Enix decided to pick up the publishing rights for the name, invested a few more months in polish to finish up the title and released it as Sleeping Dogs. I was of course delighted that this canned game saw the light of day and people were able to play it. In Sleeping Dogs, despite the significant work I put on the project my name appears in 'Special Thanks' instead of being listed as part of the development team. This is very unfair and inappropriate. Enforcing a clear set of crediting rules would be one of the things that a game developers union could do.
- danbolt 8y ago
  This is a bit off-topic, but a lot of my friends and peers who have Cantonese-speaking heritage (eg: Chinese-Canadian) have spent a lot of time playing Sleeping Dogs and I think deep-down there's a representation they resonate with in the game. Kotaku even did an article on the topic years ago.[1] Thank you for investing (uncredited!) time and work into the project, as I think it's likely given something special to a group of people. [1] https://kotaku.com/what-sleeping-dogs-gets-so-right-about-being-an-asian-a-1644011008 https://kotaku.com/what-sleeping-dogs-gets-so-right-about-be...
- jarsin 8y ago
  Did you use skookumscript? Just curious because they say it was heavily used in Sleeping Dogs. I like skookumscript and miss it now that I switched from unreal to unity.
  - Tiktaalik 8y ago
    Yes. The primary author of skookumscript worked at UFG. I helped designers debug many failing skookumscripts and built a lot of hooks for them for specialized missions.
- Guereric 8y ago
Fire-Dragon-DoL 8y ago
I figured it out just in time. I wanted to be a game developer just to realize that compared to normal software dev, you are underpaid and with worse work conditions (and very little to say on game design). And coding practices tend to be worse. My spinoff was to be jusy a software developer and it turned out so much better (at that point I also figured out that my passion was software development, not game development)
z3phyr 8y ago
These problems could go away if games are considered an extension of software industry instead of the grey area of art/media. Also, the barrier to entry into games is very low. This leads to mass influction of less than capable people, who still wrongly dream of making games.
Glyptodon 8y ago
I don't really understand why unions are the answer to what should be basic and universal ethical labor standards. Because, what, if you aren't in a union or unionized job you don't deserve to get treated decently? Because industries where unions and workers have less leverage should be able to treat workers worse? Or is the union thing just a reaction to lack of faith in other institutions? I don't hate unions, but I don't get them either. And I often suspect that structurally they're much more incentivized to containerize reforms rather than universalize them.
- sushisushisushi 8y ago
  Where do you think universal ethical labor standards come from? Organized labor is the source of the vast majority of the things we now take for granted. You know, like "the weekend." People actually risked their lives for it. All of the answers to your questions are in history books.
hexagonsun 8y ago
i've worked as a developer for 2 different gaming companies. it is most definitely not a dream job.
pslam 8y ago
It is appalling that the top 3 comments (at time of writing this one) are victim-blaming. "They should get better jobs". "There's a high demand so they should go elsewhere". "They should have known before they went there". Where have you been in the last few years, and how have you not learned anything about abusive practices which entrap people? These companies are basically abusive — they abuse their staff with long hours and low benefits, taking full advantage of the cool-factor to entangle them. As anyone who has the slightest empathy and has read anything in the news cycle in the last few years would know, people caught in this situation are often unaware they're being abused, blame themselves, and don't realize there is better elsewhere. If you're one of the people who are, right now reading this, thinking "That's a load of BS these people are idiots and they deserve what they get", then I implore that you think again and realize you are essentially blaming the victim. That's almost never the right side to be on. What we need to do is expose these companies for what they really. Put all these things out in the open and air them for all to see. Perhaps at some point we can have all the major studios unionized, and perhaps once their internal cultures become less toxic, their external one will likewise clear up a bit. Here's hoping.
- ahaferburg 8y ago
  Unionization is never going to happen, and won't have much benefit. Excessive overtime and crunch need to be outlawed. It's not a matter of whether or not it's paid, beyond a certain threshold it's a question of health. Nothing will change until people start suing. If companies can just abuse and then terminate people once their lives are ruined, they will continue to do so.
  - ketzo 8y ago
    Just out of curiosity, which people (or perhaps, organizations) do you think first pushed for overtime laws in the U.S.?
  - unethical_ban 8y ago
    Collective bargaining will never happen, but outlawing overtime will?
- 8y ago
hellllllllooo 8y ago
I'd love to understand how many people who frequent hacker news have actual experience with a union directly beyond what the have read? The anti union rethoric is strong in the US and it seems like a lot of comments start with the position that unions are bad and go from there without really understanding what they do or thinking through what things good unions can do well. Companies have spent a lot of time and money spreading this message so it's not suprising but it seems like a default position of many tech workers I've met in the Bay Area while they also grumble about many aspects of their job.
otikik 8y ago
Becoming a gamedev was my childhood dream. After I finished my CS degree I saw how horrible their lives were. And I noped and moved on to web dev. A good life. No regrets.
letsTalkMore 8y ago
Woah! Supply and demand! It's amazing!

537 points by hourislate 8y ago

Not anymore no. It used to be when I did it in the 80s and 90s. It grew up and it is hell now (if I may believe my friends in the industry). Edit; come to think about it: I made games a few years ago; educational games for government, utilities, zoos and education for money, so a job and that was still fun and really quite a dream job imho. But not big open world fps ofcourse :) Nice 2d games which is like the most anyway. Edit 2; what I liked about game dev in the 80s and 90s was the limitations of the machines: you could lock yourself up in the basement for weeks, eat and drink and dream optimizations while writing the most rancid (but in my eyes genious) code and in the end ship it and never think about it again. I would say it was far more of an intellectual challenge than (for most devs) now as all was always from scratch; engines did not fit in memory or were just too slow if they they did. Also; there was a clear end to deathmarches: after a while nothing fits anymore and you cannot optimize it further so you ship or just scrap it. Now you can continue forever marching, which must be hell.

Pfhreak 8y ago
Heh, I wouldn't say grown up. The work environment I had in games was an hr nightmare.
spc476 8y ago
In the early 80s, you could be a 15 year old and make a ton of money making a computer game. This got harder as time went on and computers got more complicated (and expectations rose).

trpc 8y ago

Legally exploiting others and making a fortune is a dream job. EDIT: not my belief btw, this is how things mostly work in the business world but most people who do that aren't self conscious enough to recognize that

aarpmcgee 8y ago
How so?
- trpc 8y ago
  I can't describe it in a small comment. The more you reach the top of the food chain the more you will understand.
  - LUmBULtERA 8y ago
    You dream of legally exploiting others? That's depressing.
  - krageon 8y ago
    This is survivor bias in that the only people that get to the top are capable of understanding.
- nukeop 8y ago
  It's because being the top dog feels great, duh.
kaitai 8y ago
There are a lot of downvotes to this comment and I don't think it deserves it. I think the comment adds something substantive to the discussion. If you want to rise far in our economic system, a willingness or eagerness to figure out how to exploit others legally is a definite advantage. All the HN discussion here is about, "Those workers should find something else to do!" All about the self, maybe a bit about unions. But no one has mentioned the people at the very top who make money. So, HNers, are all these companies closing (Telltale, Capcom Vancouver) because some courageous entrepreneur put their ethics, heart, and soul into a game company and just couldn't make it work, ending up penniless alongside their former employees? Or were they just not making "enough" money anymore? or what? What are the profits like in the game industry? Who gets them? If I follow the money, where does it go? Genuinely curious.
- 8y ago

makotech222 8y ago

No, it still is a dream job, just a dream deferred so that capitalism can make a profit. Imagine if you didn't have to work for healthcare, food, shelter; making games in this environment would be a dream.

samcday 8y ago

> In many of these cases, laid-off employees had no idea what was coming. One developer at a major studio told me in February that he and his colleagues had been crunching — putting in long hours, including nights and weekends — for a video game release, only to be suddenly told that security was waiting to escort them off the premises. Man, that really sucks, if you think about it. I'm sure many people here on HN have worked very hard on something in their life. I know I have, and in a couple of cases I ended up being acutely unhappy with the outcomes. But, DAMN, at least none of my moments of extreme toil were punctuated like this.

jfk13 8y ago
In a civilised society, it would be illegal for an employer to behave like that. (Yes, I know, I'm imposing my view of what it would mean to be "civilised", and not everyone will agree.)
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  There are plenty of countries where all employers are required to give certain notice, and you can't suddenly fire someone. It is outrageous that your ability to eat and pay rent can be taken away with zero notice in America.
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    That just means they have to pay you for some time after they fired you. You can still be fired in an instant and be escorted out the door, especially if you have/had access to critical systems
    - Insanity 8y ago
      They could, and after that time you fall back on 'unemployment wage' by the government. Which is less than what you'd normally earn, but by the time that happens you probably have another job already.
    - 8y ago

lovetocode 8y ago

Game developers let themselves be exploited with low pay and unpaid overtime. They should grow a spine and say no to ridiculous work conditions. I am tired of hearing about it. They don’t need to unionize, they need to realize that they have a unique and valuable skill set. If we are talking specifically about programmers, we have the fortunate leverage to tell our employers to go piss up a rope with the weekly job offers we get. Edit: grammar

mailslot 8y ago
Every game development job I’ve had has been terrible by any measure... but I still crave to go back. It’s easy to put in long hours when everyone else does and you genuinely enjoy their company. It’s easy to forgo pay, when you have equity. You’re just never going to get the opportunity to work creatively with a talented team at Wells Fargo. It’s a totally different experience. If you’re concerned about a work/life balance or compensation, it’s not for you. I’d hate if game development turned into a typical corporate 9-5, and was inclusive of all skill levels. Pay is decent, if you’re established and are at the top of your game.
- moate 8y ago
  >>I’d hate if game development turned into a typical corporate 9-5, and was inclusive of all skill levels. Why? If the quality of the games stays the same, what benefit is there for the employees to work 20 hour days during crunch? How is that inherently "good"? How would you make it better than "terrible by any measure"?
  - mailslot 8y ago
    How would gamers feel with 2x longer release cycles and higher cost and/or less features? Lower profit and higher expenses is the only way, but given the risks of any ambitious title, small studios are nearly always flirting with bankruptcy as it is. There’s no easy answer, but time to market and risk will suffer.
sageabilly 8y ago

azhenley 8y ago

It is a dream job if I’m my own boss.

beatgammit 8y ago
Exactly. My dream scenario is to be in a situation like Tarn Adams, who works on a game he loves and lives off donations. Ideally, by that point I'd have enough to sustain myself without donations so that source of stress is gone. I don't want to work in the AAA game industry, I want to work for myself in the indie game industry on a project that both I and my supporters love.
- azhenley 8y ago
  I made Flash games part time in college that made enough money for me to [barely] live off. I took it for granted and now wish I had committed to it full time. It was some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
- slamberth 8y ago
  Unfortunately, that situation caught up with Tarn recently. They've had to change their whole model due to rising health care costs and are now hoping for actual sales to keep them afloat. I think that just shows how all of the factors in the article (work conditions, health care, "crunch") are intertwined. People are torn between doing what they love and doing what pays well so they can stay afloat.
  - fragsworth 8y ago
    The silver lining is he's probably going to be rich as hell after it launches on Steam.
ctdonath 8y ago
Want to be? go for it. Cost of entry for macOS/iOS/tvOS is ~$1000 for total basic development & distribution hard costs on par with AAA studios; to wit a refurbished MacBook Air, Xcode, and Developer registration gives objective core tools to go from blank project to worldwide distribution. (Detail, talent, and advertising extra.) YMMV for other platforms.

ed312 8y ago

Throughout my childhood I enjoyed playing and making games. I eventually studied a mixture of CS and digital art in college in order to join the game industry. It was a dream job to me in so many ways - I imagined an open, friendly culture of people working together to create an immersive experience. The reality: minimum wage entry level, planned for "crunch" time >3 months long, constant fear of running out of "runway" (money), etc. All of this culminated with the company simply stopping paying people for a month before eventually shutting down. I tried one more game company (really just a fb/ios thinly-veiled gambling app) before I quit the industry for good. That was roughly 5 years ago - at this point I'm _just_ starting to re-kindle my love for games and creativity.

Creationer 8y ago

These conditions don't seem to be very different from many other American businesses. Unpaid overtime, minimal notification during layoffs. Video games get a lot of attention because they are the ultimate consumer product. Workers being treated similarly at a glass factory or an accounting form wouldn't make the news. Unionisation isn't going to solve fundamentally poor corporate performance or mismanagement. Ultimately people need to be willing to walk away from bad jobs. The best thing that has actually happened recently for game developers is the creation of the Epic store on PC - giving 88% of revenue to developers, instead of the 70% of many others stores. Its odd so many people seem to oppose that store on one hand, and support unionisation on the other.

Kiro 8y ago

This is not at all reflected among the actual workers in the different game development groups I'm in. People post polls about unionization all the time and "yes" never ever wins, not even close.

DaveSapien 8y ago

Uncertainty is the killer. There are many studios that are a dream to work for, make no mistake about it. The worst studios and the best studios, always require you (mostly on the software side) to at some point, work for free. Work unpaid hours to meet a deadline. Which would be ok, if there was some kind of profit share, there however is NOT that kind of compensation. What there is, is an uncertainty that you will have a job tomorrow. You could wake up with no job and zero return in your investment of your many hours of free time. It is though for employers, no doubt, but running a games studio as a standard business leaves a trail of disenfranchised people in its wake. A better approach, if possible, is to run a project as an individual business, each worker with some kind of performance compensation and responsibility for the product...imo

0815test 8y ago

Good thing that the NYTimes is finally raising awareness about this issue. There are so many alternative sectors that these highly-skilled workers could pivot to, not just the developers/coders but other roles as well, e.g. graphicians, 3D artists, UX designers etc. The pay and conditions in the rest of the industry are so much better, there's really no comparison.

wmil 8y ago

Jason Schreier has been pushing for game developers to unionize for a while now. In the case of programmers, it really doesn't make much sense. There's a lot of BS that can come with unions. They have transferable skills. It's just easier to change jobs. For more specialized workers a union probably does make sense, eg: 3d artists, game testers. But I think union organizers are really only interested in the programmers, because they'll probably generate the most dues.

CydeWeys 8y ago
It certainly makes sense for game developers. They're being exploited with super long working hours, being let go at a moment's notice once a game is out the door, and their pay usually isn't that good. They'd benefit greatly from unionization same as everyone else working on these games.
papermill 8y ago
Jason Schreier has never worked as developer or in the gaming industry. It's insane how so many people give these people so much credence and attention. The guy literally doesn't know what he is a talking about. Also 3d artists and game testers/QA/etc are transferable skills just like programmers.
- Slippery_John 8y ago
  What does it matter that he isn't a game developer? I don't need to be an industrial revolution era child factory worker to understand that the conditions they labored under were inhumane.
notSupplied 8y ago
Programmers need it the least. They are paid the highest and have the best alternatives employment options. I think we should be talking about the production artist and testers in a completely separate breath from the programmers. In fact, this could explain why people are arguing in circles here, they could be talking about separate groups in completely different situations as far as compensation & leverage goes!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gavman 8y ago

> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand. That's the crux of this entire article in one sentence. This might be an upopular opinion here, but right now the supply of developers overall [across all industries] is much lower than demand. No one is forcing a developer to work for a game studio. It might be your dream job, but if you're not treated well you're a highly talented skilled worker, go work for someone else. Let the supply diminish because of the working conditions and alternatives and suddenly studios won't have the option to treat their employees this way. edit: typos

baud147258 8y ago
I know one guy who is like that, he realized his dream by doing it as a side job and it look like he's been successful so far (released one game, worked as a writer for a handful of other games)
- baud147258 8y ago
  Apparently the game he's worked on made at least 300k $, to split between the publisher (WE Games) and the guy and his two collaborator. And he used a good chunk of his share to fund games on kickstater
glvn 8y ago
When I was in college a few years back I had many colleagues that wanted to get into the game industry. Most all were pretty serious gamers and many seemed to have false expectations of what the industry was like, namely that: Playing Video Games === Creating Video Games. While I'm not one to tell someone what they should or shouldn't do with their careers (hell my mother wanted me to become a lawyer), I always made a point to tell them they should research the industry a bit more before making the leap. I know quite a few that ended up pivoting what field they went into after learning how brutal the gaming industry can be. Making games might be your dream job, just make sure you are fully aware of the realities of your dream job and decide if you are willing to accept that reality day in and day out.
8y ago

midnightclubbed 8y ago

Jason has done great work exposing the dysfunctional and exploitative parts of the game industry. However I am not so sure the issues are unique to games; bad management, product re-designs/pivots, underpaid support staff, investors with deadlines and expectations of ROI.

bubblewrap 8y ago

They are not being exploited. They are free to take on another job. Especially coders could certainly find jobs in other industries. And "Fortnite" is not the games industry. There are a variety of ways to make a living making games.

NaNtales 8y ago
Of course you can stop being exploited as a game developer by leaving the games industry---but why should people be forced to change their career in order to avoid exploitation?
- ctdonath 8y ago
  They are welcome to jump in independently, produce their own games, and compete with the rest. They will then learn the realities of "GET IT DONE", that those whining at management about >40hr work weeks get trounced by those viewing projects as "24/7 with bio breaks". It's not about whether you have a right to follow a chosen career. It's about that chosen career being chosen by many more people than the market can support, the competition being ferocious, and the reality that those wanting to get it right get run over by those getting it DONE.
- magduf 8y ago
  There's only so many jobs available in a career field. If there's far more people clamoring to take those jobs than positions available, why should employers bother to pay them more than a pittance? The employer who pays extremely well will be uncompetitive compared to the other employers. If employees don't like this, they should stop trying to get these terribly-compensated jobs, and go to other industries. There is a shortage of qualified developers in other industries. Salaries are very high, working conditions are generally good, so why do these masochists insist on "pursuing their passion" in the games field where this isn't the case? I'm sorry, I have no sympathy. It's not like these people don't have options. This is seriously a "first world problem" here. The big problem is that too many people seem to think that people have some kind of "right" to a career. They don't. As a society, people should have the right to a decent job and livelihood, I will agree. However, no one has the right to do their dream job, and get paid a fortune for doing it! Careers are subject to the laws of supply and demand like anything else, and games are not something vital to society where the government has any business stepping in with regulation to keep things running smoothly, as it does with things like electric utilities, infrastructure, education, or aviation safety.

nukeop 8y ago

Making videogames is a great hobby though. One of the traditional appeals of writing roguelikes is that you can spend minimal effort on graphics and related cruft and boilerplate, and jump straight into implementing any fun mechanic you can think off. If you like the idea of creating games, do something less stressful as a day job, and make games as a hobby. A single person can release a game made as a hobby. This way you have full control, no stress, and don't need to take financial risks.

xparco 8y ago

Correct, if you are a 9-5 slave prole

LostInTheWoods2 8y ago

This turned out to be an article about tech workers unionizing ... which I just don't see that as a solution in the tech industry in general, especially when companies have the choice to offshore their staffs. At the end of the day, we developers are well compensated, and have great mobility. If you find yourself getting a raw deal, just pickup your keyboard and go somewhere else.

basseq 8y ago

If you're into this topic, I highly suggest How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong by Jason Schreier, published on Kotaku this week. A deep insight into game development culture, and one particular AAA game. It's a long read (11,000 words), but worth it. https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964 https://kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthem-went-wrong-1833731964

CM30 8y ago

> For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few 'passion' driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten more are lining up for the 'opportunity'. You can see this in all manner of arts or entertainment based fields, since there are far more people wanting to become artists/musicians/writers/whatever than there is demand for their services. You can see it in journalism, where in many cases organisations will try and get work done for free, and will pay so little that living off said wages is virtually impossible in a major city if you don't have a trust fund (though admittedly the huge increase in competition from the internet puts pressure there). And I even recall people saying it's one reason teaching wages aren't too high either. Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of 'passion', and to go where their skills are appreciated/where they're treated better/fairly compensated.

monsieurbanana 8y ago
That's only one half of the solution, the other half is taking into consideration that there's less demand for video games critics than there's people wanting to do it, and possibly choose another less crowded career.
- CM30 8y ago
  Well, the article mostly focused on game development rather than game journalism, but you're right, both fields have many of the same issues. In fact, video game journalism may be the worst of both the game development and media worlds, since it's got all the downsides of both (low pay, long hours, unstable employment, companies struggling) plus an endless supply of newcomers who (like with game development) think it'll be their dream job. Oh, and the basic skill requirements to get employed are really low too. So it's like a minimum wage career people are passionate about getting into where pretty much anyone can do the work.

winterismute 8y ago

For the interested Italian speakers out there, we have a recurrent podcast happening at www.gameloop.it and we had an episode right after the Blizzard layoffs to which both a Technical Director at Activision (Canada) and a researcher in the field of Industrial Relations (who worked on an EU report of unionization in the creative industry) participated, the discussion that sparked was very interesting in my opinion, here is the episoda page: https://gameloop.it/2019/02/26/gameloop-podcast-gl22a-activision-licenziamenti-e-lavoro/ https://gameloop.it/2019/02/26/gameloop-podcast-gl22a-activi... (Italian only :( )

mips_avatar 8y ago

I feel like the video gaming industry is kind of like working for SpaceX. You dream as a kid of working on rockets, so you will take an incredibly difficult job for less money and perks than google. But it’s worth it if you love rockets.

praptak 8y ago

The market discounts the coolness factor of being in the game industry, so you effectively pay for being a game developer by crappy work conditions. Regarding the unionizing unions, I don't think I can express this better than RMS: "All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people’s rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That’s what democracy was invented for!" He was talking about human rights but this argument applies as well to work conditions.

brucemoose 8y ago

This seems all too often the case with development work in general. I see the same type of unreasonable expectations in devops. Maybe it's compounded by the software industry liking to hire young people with less experience but more free time. They may not yet have the soft skills to navigate unreasonable demands and give hard answers, and logistically a single person can more easily pull extra hours. I've found that as I get older it has become easier to push back on unpaid overtime type work (or simply not do it). Because it would be damaging to my family and relationships if I didn't, and that's a powerful motivator for me. But at the same time it's hard to compete with the output of people who somehow can grind all day every day, and through the weekend. I don't know if there's a way to level the playing field as long as employers are allowing and even encouraging this kind of unpaid self sacrifice.

klohto 8y ago
This is objectively wrong. DevOps continues to be the best paying field to work in. This is also accommodated by the fact that employers do not hire inexperienced people to DevOps because you probably don’t want them screwing up the whole release pipeline. Look up latest SO survey results and you’ll see that DevOps is very nicely paid even across Europe.
- brucemoose 8y ago
  Oh... But I wasn't talking about salary, and Junior DevOps is most definitely a thing.

makerescape 8y ago

Game development draws a more artistic developer, I think, and artists are somewhat accustomed to having to give up money and security for doing what they love. Have you ever seen a successful union for musicians? And unions sometimes suck all the creativity and great making out of an industry—-think Detroit in the 70s. I personally would like to see more of the industry spread out across startups, with more employees participating in the stock packages that can potentially create truly life-altering one-time payments in the 6 and 7 figures. But the working conditions are very hard. I’ve accepted that, however, as the price I must pay to focus on what I love to do and get paid well for it.

GuB-42 8y ago

For tech workers, I think that making video games is "not a dream job" is an understatement. Except maybe for a select few. That's what I wanted to do. A short look at what the reality looks like was enough to make me run away really fast. I suppose the industry manages to lure in new talent who don't know any better, that's how they still manage to get people to work for them despite the terrible conditions. They project an image of an industry that is young (no shit, "old guys" jumped ship long ago) and fun to people who grew up playing video games and want to see the other side. That's not just the big studios. On the indie side, the good thing is that you are not exploited, the bad thing is that it is even harder, with low chances of success. The only team that I've seen personally and was somewhat successful are the guys who made Crosscode (I highly recommend the game BTW), and the process looked like hard and stressful work. The others ended up doing gigs completely unrelated to game dev in order to eat.

el_cujo 8y ago

The video game industry has the same problem a lot of creative jobs have: the work force is large. Companies can afford to treat employees like shit because there are so many fresh grads who want to be game devs lined up to take the place of anyone who complains. Compare that to writers/graphic designers who are often undercut by their peers who are willing to work "for exposure". Hopefully unionizing helps these guys out, but I think as long as there is such a big pool of people willing to suffer to have a shot in the industry, it's going to be an uphill battle.

leftyted 8y ago

Making video games is a dream job because lots of people want to make video games. Amazing that some people choose jobs for reasons other than high salary, job security, and low stress. Shocking that some people are actually motivated by oh, I don't know, actual interest in an industry! We can force employers to treat game devs differently via unionization or laws. If people want to discuss these kinds of measures, that's fine. But these people ought to recognize that these regulations will involve trade-offs. If you think the trade-offs are worth it, cool, but please acknowledge them. My feeling is that highly skilled programmers who are incredibly in demand in every industry do not need unions or special legal protection. They have options. Only by denying the existence of their free will can we pretend that this is a serious problem.

PorterDuff 8y ago

To what extent is the video game industry crunch culture driven by non-negotiable deadlines? (trade shows, Christmas, movie releases)

rongenre 8y ago

I left an engineering job at a finance startup in the mid 90's to take a "dream job" at a video game startup. It was.. awful: all the fun and creativity was being done by on the production/game design part, and the engineering was... both demanding and boring at the same time. It was weird realizing I was happier and feeling more creatively engaged when I was figuring out how to price derivatives.

papermill 8y ago

I thought everyone knew this already. And its been true for decades. When I was a CS major, everyone told me not to go into game development because you worked the most for the least amount of pay. Not sure why why this is so high up here. I'd think that the HN community would already know this by now. If not, there are plenty of game developer testimony all over social media and the internet.

makecheck 8y ago

I resisted spending any time on game development for a long time because I knew deep down how games are consumed extremely quickly. You can spend tons of effort to build a utility app that might prove its value every day for years and years, and may never lose all value. You can spend tons of time and effort developing a game that may become boring to players in a matter of weeks or months and never be used again. Ultimately I decided that game development is useful for building certain programming skills as a hobby, regardless of the “value curve” of the product. And if you expect nothing (i.e. you’re competing in a huge field of millions of games, nothing is special anymore), you can focus on what you’ve gained, which may be primarily the experience. I emphasize the hobby part; it’s useful to try it but it’s extremely backwards economically. I would always advise “other” programming jobs, with game dev. on the side.

hutzlibu 8y ago
"because I knew deep down how games are consumed extremely quickly" Those are called "casual games". Most gamers will have games with (much) over 1000 h played .. I would not call that "consumed quickly"

ctdonath 8y ago

For a while I taught introductory programming to bright-eyed prospective game creators. The analogy I would use up front: driving a car is very different from building one; just because you liked playing games doesn't mean you'll like creating games - whatever part of "development" you're involved in. Of the hundreds I taught, I'm only aware of one who went on to "making video games" - and yes it was his dream job, he's willing to put in the insane effort & hours to make it happen, and he was duly rewarded. Killing Floor 2 FTW :-)

erik998 8y ago

I think in general software developers can use something like SAG to enforce a basic daily minimum rate. https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate-sheet/document https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate... Daily rates for developers, dbas, qa's and such... The same guild could make special rate sheets for different stages of a firm. For example SAG has a daily rate sheet for indy films, a software dev guild could have one for startups as well. This could at least prevent abusive startups. https://www.sagindie.org/signatory/ https://www.sagindie.org/signatory/ If you are a star developer equivalent to a celebrity actor, these would just be the minimum rates. There is nothing preventing a studio from paying more. If anything this would resolve the use of contract labor 1099 misclassifications. If you are good enough to get paid above 120k you could have a loan out corporation and deduct more of your costs while still paying union fees. https://abspayroll.com/loan-out-companies/ https://abspayroll.com/loan-out-companies/ https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-company-for-your-work-in-entertainment/ https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c... This wouldn't be a an factory type union. It would be something like a professional union like SAG. Read the rate sheets to get a better understanding.

4RealFreedom 8y ago

I don't know if this would work or could work but what about capping salaries? Something along the lines of you can only make 2X of the average from the bottom 50% employees.

jngreenlee 8y ago

Grandma's Boy made it look pretty cool :P

SonnyWortzik 8y ago

Based on the recent article by Jason Schreier (Kotaku) about the complete disaster of Anthem game development, it puts into light the mismanagement and the exploitation of these developers to churn out games as if it were a factory floor with little time and pressured to deliver. These developers are talented but you can only do so much with that talent when you have no time to demonstrate that talent and are being asked very unreasonable demands to deliver. Only to deliver a half baked product and asking their customers to dish-out $60+ to be a "beta" tester for a company racking up billions. This unionization is a must. This exploitation has to stop.

fearai 8y ago

Literally playing video games is now a dream job and people are still complaining smh

madrox 8y ago

I’ve never worked on games professionally, but I work in games media and have been able to watch this industry change up close. Video game development is really a different beast than the rest of development. They branched in the 80s the way apes and chimps did genetically. They don’t follow the same tech trends that the rest of the industry follows. I doubt a majority of game devs even know about HN. They socialize with different people. All it takes to appreciate this is to remember how caught off guard the whole industry was by mobile gaming being a thing. I’m not convinced supply/demand is really the reason why the games industry is the way it is. I compare it to the non-games tech industry and see the conversations, communities, and struggles they’ve had and the games industry is only starting to, and wonder if there is a connection.

bigtex 8y ago

In high school, (mid 90's) I desired to be a video game developer, because I thought hey I like to play video games so maybe that should be my career! That all changed when I read the Next Generation (greatest gaming mag of all time) issue on working in the gaming industry. After reading about conjugal visits on the office floor because husbands would be stuck at the office for weeks trying to the game finished, that was enough for me. As someone who wanted to get married and have a family this turned me off of going into the gaming industry and led we towards more a much more family friendly career. As for unionization, I don't think it will help. I have a good career, great salary, working from home 4 days a week and only commute 1 day but can come in after rush hour. I don't see companies being able to provide benefits like that if unions are involved.

mrits 8y ago
Unions seem to try to solve a problem to make sure everyone is treated fairly but they really just make sure everyone gets the same thing. If everyone gets the same thing I lose my motivation. It might be a character flaw but I know I'm not alone. I suppose it might not make a big difference in some industries but in the ones I've been involved in the few difference makers on a team kept us in business.

deleted 8y ago

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LoSboccacc 8y ago

* being hired ruins everything as with every other craft, doing it on your terms is quite different and between kickstarters and the others there's plenty opportunities for the enterprising developers.

ngngngng 8y ago

I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for someone that follows a career path in which supply is higher than demand, and then they whine when they have to deal with the economic impact of supply being higher than demand.

madsushi 8y ago
Supply and demand aren’t perfectly measurable values. Supply and demand change all the time, and can even shift while you’re in school, or over the 40+ expected years of most careers. Telling someone to pick a career where demand > supply forever is impossible because if you believe in the market, supply will rise to meet demand.

noego 8y ago

I'm all for protecting the vulnerable and underprivileged. I'm all for universal healthcare, increased minimum wages/EITC, and increased taxes on the rich. But I'm very skeptical of the idea that white collar professionals earning well above the median, are somehow in need of "protecting". They have every opportunity to quit the video game industry and take up very lucrative and easygoing jobs in other industries. They are expressly choosing not to do so. That is their choice, and their burden to bear. Anything that reduces competition in the marketplace is bad for society as a whole. This is why I'm all in favor of anti-trust regulations and breaking up the tech giants. This is also why I'm not a fan of unions. Maybe a case can be made for specially disadvantaged demographics. I just don't see it for programmers.

erik998 8y ago
Those were my initial feelings as well. I guess the issue comes down to focusing on software development as a skill and having that skill rewarded in manner you can count on. Our industry is really similar to actors. They have SAG and their guild negotiates with the MPAA. So every studio needs to belong to MPAA. Every year they negotiate the daily/weekly minimum rates for actors with SAG. They are pretty flexible with different rates for indy films vs big budget films. It's not so hard to imagine a software developers guild where they negotiate for a daily/weekly minimum for developers, dba's, qa's, devops, and such... https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate-sheet/document https://www.sagaftra.org/production-center/contract/810/rate... If you are celebrity equivalent of a developer, then you can get paid more. There are no real restrictions. You don't see famous actors getting paid below the daily minimum. When they work for a big budget film they typically get x multiple times the daily rate. Also, if they want to work on an indy film they can agree to those minimum daily rates as well. I think its flexible enough so if you want to work for a nonprofit you can just accept the daily/weekly minimum vs asking full price if you work for FAANG. I don't think it's a crazy amount of protections but it sets aside a basic set of standards you can expect from job to job. If your are over 120k they suggest actors create a loan out corporation at that point... https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-company-for-your-work-in-entertainment/ https://firemark.com/2015/01/12/should-you-have-a-loan-out-c... Can you imagine all the FAANG companies having to setup a Software Industry Association to negotiate with a Software Developers Guild every year? It seems plausible. It's probably in their best interest as well. These companies could just dump any social issues on to the union and just focus on making profits. The ability to lock out competitors might force other big software dev employers to join the association as well.

alexnewman 8y ago

"Making X Is Not a Dream Job" -> It's almost as if you are building something cool and exciting then some people find that as an additional reward as well.

darepublic 8y ago

Even when doing something you love if you have to do it at the command of someone else it can be misery inducing.

disease 8y ago

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that making video games for a corporation is not a dream job? I've entered 8 game jams and generally enjoyed the experience. It sucks when you can't complete your game but when I did it felt like I landed on Mars! I'd love to make games professionally put as is made clear in the article and comments, 'passion jobs' tend to suck.

mrbill29 8y ago

I got to say, reading the comments as someone who currently works in games, I don't understand why people think there's such a divide. Game development at this point is really not that different from other development. Do some studios suck at management? Yes, do some do management well? Yes. Just like other tech games has it's share of good and bad. Personally I don't work overtime and haven't since my first game job. Some people do, sometimes it's because they're covering for others work, sometimes it's because they want to put something special in they can call their own. Is games as an industry harder? Probably, games push current tech in every way possible. Does it mean you'll have to work harder to accomplish your goals? Also probably. But with games at least you're trying to do something no one else is most of the time. And when it hits it's something you can be proud of. Not everyone cares about that, but people in games often do.

commandertso 8y ago

The comments here have a fair number of people baffled at why folks would stay at jobs like this for any period of time. Here’s my thought based on working in games for around a decade; I left after that, in part for quality of life reasons. For folks that want to work in games, there can be a strong feeling that it is a quixotic quest; there aren’t a lot of jobs relative to the applicants, you’re chasing a dream, and the big places of employment often made the games that made you passionate about everything in the first place. Once you get that first job, you’re taught that you are not only one of the best, but that you’re lucky to be there. It’s easy to quickly bond with your comrades around the shared, stressful experiences. And to internalize that this is all ok because what quest doesn’t involve some pain? My first game job was in 2002, and my long, slow falling out of love with the industry started after shipping the first game I’d worked on. Once it had gone gold, we all took a couple weeks at 40 hours a week. After that, I was told by my boss that we all had to go back to 60 hour weeks. I asked why. The answer was, “that’s how we work.” That was when I started looking for a new job.

rubicon33 8y ago

It's incredible reading through the comments on this post and nobody seems to see the game industry for what it is: the canary in the coal mine. Programming within the game industry is sliding rapidly toward blue collar, and you'd be a fool to assume the problem is contained. The problem for programmers is simple - Supply and Demand. Thanks to a massive publicity push from big tech, the public is being sold - hook line and sinker - a story about how we're in a "shortage of developers" and how everyone needs to "learn to code". Combine that with the plethora of boot camps, and online materials, and it's never been easier to pickup JavaScript on a weekend and be coding a website. I've never seen people shoot themselves in the foot more. For god sakes, you're sawing your foot off at this point. There is now a massive wave of young developers, just getting their footing who will be entering a work force near you in the next 10-20 years. And don't forget about remote workers, they gun for your job too. It's becoming more and more technically feasible for a software shop in the US to hire a dev team based in, I dunno, China. I've seen it happen to a group of incredible devs. At the end of the day, the numbers didn't pencil in their favor. Ask yourselves if you really think the good times will always roll. Really ask yourself if Obama standing up in front of the nation beckoning for everyone to "Learn to Code" was really good for you, or good for the big tech companies that got him up there? Wake up, and smell the ashes. There are industry and economic forces actively working AGAINST you. Don't help them. Stop parroting the narrative that there is a "shortage of developers", for starters. And hedge your bets while you're at it - get really good at something. Specialize. Maybe it's firmware, maybe it's iOS AR, maybe its machine learning, find something niche, and get world class level good at it. In 15 years, hopefully you'll be one of the few still making "6 figure salaries".

hellllllllooo 8y ago
This. It's coming for the rest of the industry. Amazon and Google aren't encouraging young people to code for the good of the world. It's so the can hire people for less money once the pool is larger. The intent is to drive down the cost so that devs will do the exact same work and the company will take a larger cut of the profit. Once this gets to a point of exploitation like in the games industry a union is necessary unless you are lucky enough to choose the right speciality but this is a gamble.
8y ago

Tiktaalik 8y ago

My video game developers need unions story: I was a core developer on a major feature of Sleeping Dogs/'True Crime: Hong Kong' for 2+ years. At one point, when the game was still being published by ATVI under the title 'True Crime: Hong Kong', ATVI cancelled the game and 100+ developers were laid off including me. Fast forward a few months and miraculously Square Enix decided to pick up the publishing rights for the name, invested a few more months in polish to finish up the title and released it as Sleeping Dogs. I was of course delighted that this canned game saw the light of day and people were able to play it. In Sleeping Dogs, despite the significant work I put on the project my name appears in 'Special Thanks' instead of being listed as part of the development team. This is very unfair and inappropriate. Enforcing a clear set of crediting rules would be one of the things that a game developers union could do.

danbolt 8y ago
This is a bit off-topic, but a lot of my friends and peers who have Cantonese-speaking heritage (eg: Chinese-Canadian) have spent a lot of time playing Sleeping Dogs and I think deep-down there's a representation they resonate with in the game. Kotaku even did an article on the topic years ago.[1] Thank you for investing (uncredited!) time and work into the project, as I think it's likely given something special to a group of people. [1] https://kotaku.com/what-sleeping-dogs-gets-so-right-about-being-an-asian-a-1644011008 https://kotaku.com/what-sleeping-dogs-gets-so-right-about-be...
jarsin 8y ago
Did you use skookumscript? Just curious because they say it was heavily used in Sleeping Dogs. I like skookumscript and miss it now that I switched from unreal to unity.
- Tiktaalik 8y ago
  Yes. The primary author of skookumscript worked at UFG. I helped designers debug many failing skookumscripts and built a lot of hooks for them for specialized missions.
Guereric 8y ago

Fire-Dragon-DoL 8y ago

I figured it out just in time. I wanted to be a game developer just to realize that compared to normal software dev, you are underpaid and with worse work conditions (and very little to say on game design). And coding practices tend to be worse. My spinoff was to be jusy a software developer and it turned out so much better (at that point I also figured out that my passion was software development, not game development)

z3phyr 8y ago

These problems could go away if games are considered an extension of software industry instead of the grey area of art/media. Also, the barrier to entry into games is very low. This leads to mass influction of less than capable people, who still wrongly dream of making games.

Glyptodon 8y ago

I don't really understand why unions are the answer to what should be basic and universal ethical labor standards. Because, what, if you aren't in a union or unionized job you don't deserve to get treated decently? Because industries where unions and workers have less leverage should be able to treat workers worse? Or is the union thing just a reaction to lack of faith in other institutions? I don't hate unions, but I don't get them either. And I often suspect that structurally they're much more incentivized to containerize reforms rather than universalize them.

sushisushisushi 8y ago
Where do you think universal ethical labor standards come from? Organized labor is the source of the vast majority of the things we now take for granted. You know, like "the weekend." People actually risked their lives for it. All of the answers to your questions are in history books.

hexagonsun 8y ago

i've worked as a developer for 2 different gaming companies. it is most definitely not a dream job.

pslam 8y ago

It is appalling that the top 3 comments (at time of writing this one) are victim-blaming. "They should get better jobs". "There's a high demand so they should go elsewhere". "They should have known before they went there". Where have you been in the last few years, and how have you not learned anything about abusive practices which entrap people? These companies are basically abusive — they abuse their staff with long hours and low benefits, taking full advantage of the cool-factor to entangle them. As anyone who has the slightest empathy and has read anything in the news cycle in the last few years would know, people caught in this situation are often unaware they're being abused, blame themselves, and don't realize there is better elsewhere. If you're one of the people who are, right now reading this, thinking "That's a load of BS these people are idiots and they deserve what they get", then I implore that you think again and realize you are essentially blaming the victim. That's almost never the right side to be on. What we need to do is expose these companies for what they really. Put all these things out in the open and air them for all to see. Perhaps at some point we can have all the major studios unionized, and perhaps once their internal cultures become less toxic, their external one will likewise clear up a bit. Here's hoping.

ahaferburg 8y ago
Unionization is never going to happen, and won't have much benefit. Excessive overtime and crunch need to be outlawed. It's not a matter of whether or not it's paid, beyond a certain threshold it's a question of health. Nothing will change until people start suing. If companies can just abuse and then terminate people once their lives are ruined, they will continue to do so.
- ketzo 8y ago
  Just out of curiosity, which people (or perhaps, organizations) do you think first pushed for overtime laws in the U.S.?
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  Collective bargaining will never happen, but outlawing overtime will?
8y ago

hellllllllooo 8y ago

I'd love to understand how many people who frequent hacker news have actual experience with a union directly beyond what the have read? The anti union rethoric is strong in the US and it seems like a lot of comments start with the position that unions are bad and go from there without really understanding what they do or thinking through what things good unions can do well. Companies have spent a lot of time and money spreading this message so it's not suprising but it seems like a default position of many tech workers I've met in the Bay Area while they also grumble about many aspects of their job.

otikik 8y ago

Becoming a gamedev was my childhood dream. After I finished my CS degree I saw how horrible their lives were. And I noped and moved on to web dev. A good life. No regrets.

letsTalkMore 8y ago

Woah! Supply and demand! It's amazing!