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Try not to take it personally, there are both devs who are replaceable and devs who aren’t, and with ~40 Call of Duty titles on almost as many platforms, a mill

by dahart 4y ago

Try not to take it personally, there are both devs who are replaceable and devs who aren’t, and with ~40 Call of Duty titles on almost as many platforms, a million and one people have worked on it, some doing more mechanical port work than others. There’s truth in there; the games industry is tough, and it’s relevant that some studios that (for example) demand lots of overtime haven’t seen any large exodus, or sometimes there is high turnover and the studio still survives, to parent’s point. There’s a higher level layer to this, that from a publisher’s point of view, there are a lot of smaller studios that are easily replaceable, and I’d speculate studios go out of business over contracts lost to other studios far more often than over employee walkouts (which of course fuels the need for overtime to be competitive). This is true for games and for VFX production in the US, enough people want these jobs that high turnover doesn’t seem to slow the business.

Kapura 4y ago
- dahart 4y ago
  > Stop perpetuating shit you read on some gamer forum Whoa brother, maybe cool your jets and don’t make hasty assumptions. I was a lead game dev for a decade. I didn’t work on Call of Duty, but I did work on some large titles, and I did put in two decades of work hours in one decade. The studio I worked at was always perpetually on the edge of closing, and that was used to push people to work harder. I also worked another decade in VFX too, and saw the same things. In the mean time, both studios actually did suffer closures for the reasons I cited, and they were both replaced by other studios. If you have experience to share and not just logic, I’d love to hear more about it. Otherwise, I’d encourage being careful about making assumptions. The business world is already tricky and exploitative, tearing people down who point it out doesn’t solve much.
  - echelon 4y ago
    I would love to read a write-up of your experiences if you have written them down somewhere or plan to do so in the future.
    - dahart 4y ago
      Hey thanks! I actually never even thought of writing it up outside of here, I’ll have to let that thought steep for a while. I give talks to college game dev and CS classes every now and then, and there are quite a few tidbits over the years I’ve added in comments here on HN. Maybe someday I could smoosh it together into something coherent. I’m just not sure it wouldn’t be crushingly boring. :P
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
It's particularly ironic that you mention CoD as an example of how you can treat gamedevs as replaceable cogs. Here's the history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Call of Duty then and now are very different. Back then, it was more like an indie movie. Now, it's Disney size. Their animators are cogs.
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Well for what it's worth my friend is still with them, or at least what you could call the main descendant of that team. They don't treat him as a cog. In fact he was their first full time remote employee as I understand it, as he got sick of living in Tulsa. No offense Tulsans, but when you've lived in the PNW for a while it's kinda hard to give up all the trees, mountains, etc. I do miss thunderstorms though.
- dahart 4y ago
  That is a great story, and should be an inspiration to aspiring gave devs. As you can clearly see in the thread, I did not bring up CoD. Two comments above me were discussing it. I was just pointing out that it’s now a huge franchise. All the franchises, large and small, have cycled through many, many programmers and artists and designers. It does not disrespect your friend to point out that there are multiple studios he didn’t start that are now developing CoD, or to point out that it has been ported to so many platforms that there has been a metric ton of unsexy porting work alongside the original content work. Having worked on both game and movie franchises, I can safely say that there’s less room for individual input. Not none, just less. I’ve witnessed whole studios (both in games and films) push and push to work on an original non-franchise production, because everyone knew it’d be more fun and felt less like being a cog. The fact that your friend made a wildly successful franchise is absolutely great for him, and for his business, but you can’t claim that it’s creatively great for everyone else involved, even if it does support them financially.

by dahart 4y ago

Kapura 4y ago

dahart 4y ago
> Stop perpetuating shit you read on some gamer forum Whoa brother, maybe cool your jets and don’t make hasty assumptions. I was a lead game dev for a decade. I didn’t work on Call of Duty, but I did work on some large titles, and I did put in two decades of work hours in one decade. The studio I worked at was always perpetually on the edge of closing, and that was used to push people to work harder. I also worked another decade in VFX too, and saw the same things. In the mean time, both studios actually did suffer closures for the reasons I cited, and they were both replaced by other studios. If you have experience to share and not just logic, I’d love to hear more about it. Otherwise, I’d encourage being careful about making assumptions. The business world is already tricky and exploitative, tearing people down who point it out doesn’t solve much.
- echelon 4y ago
  I would love to read a write-up of your experiences if you have written them down somewhere or plan to do so in the future.
  - dahart 4y ago
    Hey thanks! I actually never even thought of writing it up outside of here, I’ll have to let that thought steep for a while. I give talks to college game dev and CS classes every now and then, and there are quite a few tidbits over the years I’ve added in comments here on HN. Maybe someday I could smoosh it together into something coherent. I’m just not sure it wouldn’t be crushingly boring. :P

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago

It's particularly ironic that you mention CoD as an example of how you can treat gamedevs as replaceable cogs. Here's the history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32833895

actionfromafar 4y ago
Call of Duty then and now are very different. Back then, it was more like an indie movie. Now, it's Disney size. Their animators are cogs.
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Well for what it's worth my friend is still with them, or at least what you could call the main descendant of that team. They don't treat him as a cog. In fact he was their first full time remote employee as I understand it, as he got sick of living in Tulsa. No offense Tulsans, but when you've lived in the PNW for a while it's kinda hard to give up all the trees, mountains, etc. I do miss thunderstorms though.
dahart 4y ago
That is a great story, and should be an inspiration to aspiring gave devs. As you can clearly see in the thread, I did not bring up CoD. Two comments above me were discussing it. I was just pointing out that it’s now a huge franchise. All the franchises, large and small, have cycled through many, many programmers and artists and designers. It does not disrespect your friend to point out that there are multiple studios he didn’t start that are now developing CoD, or to point out that it has been ported to so many platforms that there has been a metric ton of unsexy porting work alongside the original content work. Having worked on both game and movie franchises, I can safely say that there’s less room for individual input. Not none, just less. I’ve witnessed whole studios (both in games and films) push and push to work on an original non-franchise production, because everyone knew it’d be more fun and felt less like being a cog. The fact that your friend made a wildly successful franchise is absolutely great for him, and for his business, but you can’t claim that it’s creatively great for everyone else involved, even if it does support them financially.