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That's the economic basis of any product though. No difference between video games and any other piece of software, if you don't make money you go out of busine
by moate 7y ago
That's the economic basis of any product though. No difference between video games and any other piece of software, if you don't make money you go out of business. The pay rate and quality of life differences are based on other economic factors discussed elsewhere in the thread (supply of devs who desire game dev jobs is much greater than the demand for those devs, driving price down).
- Macha 7y agoFor a non-game product, there's less of an need to continously introduce new features for revenue as your product has a longer window of being relevant. Once you move to business facing SaaS, you can even charge for continued access to the same software. There's very few games that managed that model, and nowadays the only two succesful subscription only games I can think of are WoW and FFXIV, so I think it's fair to label it a dying business model.
- moate 7y agoI agree with your assessment that the lifecycle of a game is much shorter than other pieces of software, but that doesn't change the the fact that "if people don't pay for this product, all the money we spent making it will be wasted" is just how capitalism and sales work. Also, you're looking at subscriptions in games wrong. Think about micro-transactions on candy crush or similar games. Nobody charges you for monthly access to the game, they charge you for increased access to specific features.
- ThrowawayR2 7y agoSure, but the original question was about software jobs in general. Most software jobs are for bespoke software developed to support a business, internally (LOB apps) or externally (web sites). Very few software developers work on products.