I worked in the game industry for eight years before leaving and I have a more nuanced perspective on this. Yes, the large supply of aspiring game devs has a lo

I worked in the game industry for eight years before leaving and I have a more nuanced perspective on this. Yes, the large supply of aspiring game devs has a lot to do with it. And I think the crunch is driven in part by a lack of project management expertise caused by the brain drain that endemic crunch leads to. But it's not just that. Every job has a mixture of tangible and intangible rewards. Game development scores relatively poorly on the tangibles: less pay, fewer benefits, less free time. But for many people, it scores incredibly highly on the intangibles: - Spending your day writing code that makes insurance rate calculations comply with the latest changes to Iowa tax law versus making an orc explode if you hit it with an axe just right. - Working in an office that lets you wear chinos on casual Friday versus wearing whatever you like, coming in when you like, and being surrounded by culture and people that resonate with you. - Working with accountants and lawyers versus artists and sound designers. - Working on a product used begrudgingly by employees of some giant accounting contractor versus make a game you love to play. - Sitting next to folks doing the bare minimum just to get a paycheck versus the comradery of being on a team that really believes in what they're doing. - Writing code that's difficult because it encodes Byzantine legal regulations versus code that's difficult because it uses the latest graphics algorithms to push hardware as much as possible. - Being at a company no one's heard of making software know one knows versus being at a brand your friends all know working on products they're excited about. (Anecdote: When I flew to Orlando to interview at EA, I ended up mentioning it to a guy sitting next to me at the airport. He looked at me like an absolute celebrity. "Dude, you're gonna be working on Madden?" I still remember that moment.) So, yeah, the hours and the pay suck. But when you're in your twenties you tend to have a lot of time and not a lot of bills. Working on something that resonates with your peers, your culture, and your passions is really valuable. I wish big companies exploited that less, sure. But you see low pay and crunch even at small non-exploitive companies which implies to me that much of this is simply people rationally trading off tangible rewards for intangible ones that are more meaningful to them. I find it really weird how much software engineers criticize taking a pay cut to make games while simultaneously romanticizing leaving tech completely to become a farmer, writer, chef, social worker, etc. (all of which, for the record, have miserable hours and shit pay). Game devs are essentially doing the same thing but at least they get to use their tech skills in the process. I'm glad I'm not at EA anymore because my values and priorities changed. But I don't regret my time there and it got me my current job at Google. If I'd spent that time chasing some other low-paying dream like writing fiction, it's much less likely I would have been able to make that transition.