5 ms·

Underrated comment. It's even worse when you consider that the engines are generally already made, you only need developers to do what you could almost call gl

Underrated comment. It's even worse when you consider that the engines are generally already made, you only need developers to do what you could almost call glorified scripting compared to engine development. I think Unity and Unreal probably have to pay their devs a reasonable salary. But having devs work in Unity or Unreal to produce a game is not really all that hard. That's kind of the point of Unity and Unreal.

luaKmua 5y ago
Having done work in a variety of contexts from Game Engine development to working in Unity, what you are describing is only true for the most trivial of projects. Larger projects (especially AAA) have so much customization of the engines and pushing of their boundaries that they require just as much technical expertise as engine development for many of the required tasks. There are advantages and disadvantages for using these engines. They soften the "getting started" part of game dev for newer people, but for complicated projects it tends to be kicking the can down the road for dealing with deeper issues. You'd be hard pressed to squeeze good perf out Unity while fully using the HDRP and not understanding the ins and outs of the pipeline.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Agreed. I really doubt the parent comment has any idea what they're talking about.
offtop5 5y ago
Have you actually worked with a game engine. I'll say any day of the week game programming is harder than front end web dev
- johnnyanmac 5y ago
  I didn't take their comment that way. I saw it more in that it's not the early '00's anymore where every company had their own custom engine. you can hire devs into a company with experience in UE4 or Unity and skip a significant amount of onboarding, especially if they are hired early into a project. There are certainly hard parts, but this means you can pay junior engineers to worry about "easier" parts of the game while letting the seniors/leads worry about architecture, infrastructure, and optimization. Not too unlike a front end web dev from what I've hears. And for "street cred" I've worked in all 3 environments, unity projects, UE4 projects, and custom engines.
  - offtop5 5y ago
    >But having devs work in Unity or Unreal to produce a game is not really all that hard. From OP. Even with an engine game dev is much harder than front end web dev. The depressed salaries are due to the amount of passion game devs have. Then again doing something in Unity is much easier than building an engine out. I credit Unity with teaching me to program.
_dps 5y ago
Unity famously hired Mike Acton (a minor hero in parts of the C++ world, and a major hero if you restrict to games). I am quite certain they pay people like him, doing infrastructure engine work that scales across all users of Unity, something in the ballpark of what he could make at a tech company. But most game programmers are not doing anything with that kind of leverage, and I think that's largely contributing to the business' ability to pay them substantially less than they could at a FAANG.

luaKmua 5y ago

Having done work in a variety of contexts from Game Engine development to working in Unity, what you are describing is only true for the most trivial of projects. Larger projects (especially AAA) have so much customization of the engines and pushing of their boundaries that they require just as much technical expertise as engine development for many of the required tasks. There are advantages and disadvantages for using these engines. They soften the "getting started" part of game dev for newer people, but for complicated projects it tends to be kicking the can down the road for dealing with deeper issues. You'd be hard pressed to squeeze good perf out Unity while fully using the HDRP and not understanding the ins and outs of the pipeline.

jayd16 5y ago
Agreed. I really doubt the parent comment has any idea what they're talking about.

offtop5 5y ago

Have you actually worked with a game engine. I'll say any day of the week game programming is harder than front end web dev

johnnyanmac 5y ago
I didn't take their comment that way. I saw it more in that it's not the early '00's anymore where every company had their own custom engine. you can hire devs into a company with experience in UE4 or Unity and skip a significant amount of onboarding, especially if they are hired early into a project. There are certainly hard parts, but this means you can pay junior engineers to worry about "easier" parts of the game while letting the seniors/leads worry about architecture, infrastructure, and optimization. Not too unlike a front end web dev from what I've hears. And for "street cred" I've worked in all 3 environments, unity projects, UE4 projects, and custom engines.
- offtop5 5y ago
  >But having devs work in Unity or Unreal to produce a game is not really all that hard. From OP. Even with an engine game dev is much harder than front end web dev. The depressed salaries are due to the amount of passion game devs have. Then again doing something in Unity is much easier than building an engine out. I credit Unity with teaching me to program.

_dps 5y ago

Unity famously hired Mike Acton (a minor hero in parts of the C++ world, and a major hero if you restrict to games). I am quite certain they pay people like him, doing infrastructure engine work that scales across all users of Unity, something in the ballpark of what he could make at a tech company. But most game programmers are not doing anything with that kind of leverage, and I think that's largely contributing to the business' ability to pay them substantially less than they could at a FAANG.