5 ms·

If the answer is to quit the game industry and just become a consumer, its very likely that the outcome will just be worse games and equally bad working conditi

by mym1990 5y ago

If the answer is to quit the game industry and just become a consumer, its very likely that the outcome will just be worse games and equally bad working conditions.

sokoloff 5y ago
I worked in games for a few years. For a good company, whose games sold well. With good leaders in charge. It still sucked compared to industry positions I took later. There’s a lot more pressure to ship for Christmas, to demo for E3, etc. New consoles invariably have terrible documentation (“it can never not be forgotten to fail to initialize the blah”), and in general the game (and entertainment broadly) industry is less linear/more hit-driven than others. I also hated that it broke my enjoyment of playing games if I got distracted wondering how they did some effect or why their renderer had a certain glitch.
DrBazza 5y ago
It entirely depends on what type of game you enjoy. Triple AAA MMOs and movie tie ins? They'd likely become worse, or just boilerplate drop-in graphics to WoW into Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. Or some of the extremely high quality indie games? I'd take many of the indie games over WoW or CoD any day of the week. I don't need MMOs to enjoy a well written game.
- mym1990 5y ago
  Indie games are certainly having a moment! I remember first playing stardew valley and then learning that it was a 1 dev show. Crazy.
gruez 5y ago
The bad conditions are caused in part due to excess supply, so companies have their pick of desperate/abuse-tolerant employees. Having less workers would force companies to compete on working conditions.
- beefield 5y ago
  Makes me wonder why FAANG do not try to pick desperate employees? Or do they?
  - gruez 5y ago
    Because their passion is for gaming jobs, and that's what they're desperate for. They're not desperate for any job in particular.
  - csande17 5y ago
    Ever wonder why so many tech companies donate to "learn to code" organizations?
  - gopher_space 5y ago
    Leetcode tests screen out several different kinds of people. Similar to government dev positions, there are irritating barriers to entry that a developer with experience simply doesn't have to deal with.
  - scruple 5y ago
    They do. I personally know at least a dozen extremely talented software engineers who have left Blizzard alone for FAANG in the last 3 years. Could bump that up to a solid 2 dozen if we included Riot, and go back 5-7 years. edit/ These game companies themselves are also quite incestual, for want of a better word. Once a developer moves from one team in one company to another team in another company they typically try to heavily recruit the solid folks that they "left behind," as it were. And I get that, but, anecdotally, it's never been something that I did when I moved around in my non-games industry. It's never even really crossed my mind.
  - pandaman 5y ago
    FAANG recruiters seem to be under the same impression that majority of HN members are: they think programmers in games are so abused and desperate that they can be picked up for peanuts and free snacks after having jumped through every hoop. Could be just me though as I know many engineers who jumped from games to FAANG so they might have had better recruiters. Out of those about half come back after couple of years and the other half seems to stick for a while.
UnpossibleJim 5y ago
100% anecdotal, but I left games a little less than 2 years ago (after being in them for 12 years or so) to work on cloud computing for accounting solutions. While I'll admit the jokes are a little different, but the people are nice and the working conditions are great. They believe in the clock, dude. They live by that thing. OT has to be accounted for and approved, and they don't really care for it when estimates aren't met. It's a little pressure, but it's nice. And they pay better. It's great. I'm really enjoying it. I snipe people from my old work (who are willing to leave games) whenever I see an opening.
pdimitar 5y ago
No. The problem is: there are too many people willing to work in game development in bad conditions. If supply dwindled, the game companies will have to improve working conditions or face huge delays in delivering their next cash cow.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Making more games and game studios would also decrease the free supply. And it's a solution that doesn't involve asking people to quit the job they love so they can get their soul sucked at an advertising company.
  - pdimitar 5y ago
    You take this as an attack towards your passion -- it's not that but it's not my place to try and convince you further. Also offering a theoretical that so far isn't happening isn't an interesting argument.
    - scrollaway 5y ago
      I work in finance.
- mym1990 5y ago
  I think the likely outcome from attrition of good employees is that eventually the company just goes out of business or gets acquired. Of course industry standards would have upward pressure to improve conditions, but a lot of that would come from greenfield endeavors. Unless you think these transformations happen overnight, supply dwindling and working conditions being reevaluated would most definitely decrease quality of games in the short term.

If the answer is to quit the game industry and just become a consumer, its very likely that the outcome will just be worse games and equally bad working conditions.

sokoloff 5y ago

I worked in games for a few years. For a good company, whose games sold well. With good leaders in charge. It still sucked compared to industry positions I took later. There’s a lot more pressure to ship for Christmas, to demo for E3, etc. New consoles invariably have terrible documentation (“it can never not be forgotten to fail to initialize the blah”), and in general the game (and entertainment broadly) industry is less linear/more hit-driven than others. I also hated that it broke my enjoyment of playing games if I got distracted wondering how they did some effect or why their renderer had a certain glitch.

DrBazza 5y ago

It entirely depends on what type of game you enjoy. Triple AAA MMOs and movie tie ins? They'd likely become worse, or just boilerplate drop-in graphics to WoW into Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. Or some of the extremely high quality indie games? I'd take many of the indie games over WoW or CoD any day of the week. I don't need MMOs to enjoy a well written game.

mym1990 5y ago
Indie games are certainly having a moment! I remember first playing stardew valley and then learning that it was a 1 dev show. Crazy.

gruez 5y ago

The bad conditions are caused in part due to excess supply, so companies have their pick of desperate/abuse-tolerant employees. Having less workers would force companies to compete on working conditions.

beefield 5y ago
Makes me wonder why FAANG do not try to pick desperate employees? Or do they?
- gruez 5y ago
  Because their passion is for gaming jobs, and that's what they're desperate for. They're not desperate for any job in particular.
- csande17 5y ago
  Ever wonder why so many tech companies donate to "learn to code" organizations?
- gopher_space 5y ago
  Leetcode tests screen out several different kinds of people. Similar to government dev positions, there are irritating barriers to entry that a developer with experience simply doesn't have to deal with.
- scruple 5y ago
  They do. I personally know at least a dozen extremely talented software engineers who have left Blizzard alone for FAANG in the last 3 years. Could bump that up to a solid 2 dozen if we included Riot, and go back 5-7 years. edit/ These game companies themselves are also quite incestual, for want of a better word. Once a developer moves from one team in one company to another team in another company they typically try to heavily recruit the solid folks that they "left behind," as it were. And I get that, but, anecdotally, it's never been something that I did when I moved around in my non-games industry. It's never even really crossed my mind.
- pandaman 5y ago
  FAANG recruiters seem to be under the same impression that majority of HN members are: they think programmers in games are so abused and desperate that they can be picked up for peanuts and free snacks after having jumped through every hoop. Could be just me though as I know many engineers who jumped from games to FAANG so they might have had better recruiters. Out of those about half come back after couple of years and the other half seems to stick for a while.

UnpossibleJim 5y ago

100% anecdotal, but I left games a little less than 2 years ago (after being in them for 12 years or so) to work on cloud computing for accounting solutions. While I'll admit the jokes are a little different, but the people are nice and the working conditions are great. They believe in the clock, dude. They live by that thing. OT has to be accounted for and approved, and they don't really care for it when estimates aren't met. It's a little pressure, but it's nice. And they pay better. It's great. I'm really enjoying it. I snipe people from my old work (who are willing to leave games) whenever I see an opening.

pdimitar 5y ago

No. The problem is: there are too many people willing to work in game development in bad conditions. If supply dwindled, the game companies will have to improve working conditions or face huge delays in delivering their next cash cow.

scrollaway 5y ago
Making more games and game studios would also decrease the free supply. And it's a solution that doesn't involve asking people to quit the job they love so they can get their soul sucked at an advertising company.
- pdimitar 5y ago
  You take this as an attack towards your passion -- it's not that but it's not my place to try and convince you further. Also offering a theoretical that so far isn't happening isn't an interesting argument.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    I work in finance.
mym1990 5y ago
I think the likely outcome from attrition of good employees is that eventually the company just goes out of business or gets acquired. Of course industry standards would have upward pressure to improve conditions, but a lot of that would come from greenfield endeavors. Unless you think these transformations happen overnight, supply dwindling and working conditions being reevaluated would most definitely decrease quality of games in the short term.