3 ms·

The question ultimately is: how do you create an ecosystem which fairly compensates and doesn't brutally overwork game staff? Relying purely on game sales is di

The question ultimately is: how do you create an ecosystem which fairly compensates and doesn't brutally overwork game staff? Relying purely on game sales is difficult. Games are expensive to produce and gamers, sans whales, are generally quite price sensitive. Gamers are also a famously tough crowd to please. Indie game economics work by saving costs on production, either by keeping art simple so many fewer artists are required or otherwise constraining the game space. Even then, the majority of indie games flop. I don't have an answer, but everywhere I've looked in the games industry, margins are razor thin.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
The main issue as I see it in the game dev space (can't speak to other parts of the gaming industry) is that faaaar too many people naively go into it because they like playing video games, got into programming because they were on the computer anyway, and then hop into the industry bright-eyed and bushy tailed. That's just a recipe for mistreatment. Whereas in web-dev, for example, no one is excited at the prospect of developing a new CRUD app for some megacorp, so we get paid handsomely for our skills. Unions may be controversial in the broader software development sphere, but they're obviously desperately needed in game dev. (P.S. Re: "margins are razor thin": A lot of this comes down to the gaming industry's version of Hollywood accounting. The big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc. are making a killing off of their mistreatment of their studios' staff)
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  > (P.S. Re: "margins are razor thin": A lot of this comes down to the gaming industry's version of Hollywood accounting. The big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc. are making a killing off of their mistreatment of their studios' staff) Sorry, I meant "everywhere I look outside of the big publishers" instead of "everywhere I look." Of course, the big publishers make crazy money by milking old franchises and through large economies of scale. If that's the kind of games industry we want, then it looks like the working model is oligopoly.
mschuster91 4y ago
> The question ultimately is: how do you create an ecosystem which fairly compensates and doesn't brutally overwork game staff? This is a problem that has to be solved by those actually able to do something, and that is the regulatory agencies for the US and EU, not multinational corporations or placing the responsibility on individual consumers. The multinational corporations have no interest in kneecapping their "competitive advantages", and consumers don't care or don't even know just how fucked up the entire entertainment industry is ("crunch time" isn't just an issue in games, but also in movies!). That's stuff like actually enforcing labor regulations (e.g. the Directive 93/104/EC that prescribes a maximum week work time of 48h)... and that linked together with stuff like passing "supply chain laws" (that hold corporations liable for labor rights violations by their suppliers) should put a stop on these practices. Unfortunately, labor regulations enforcement is pretty scarce in the EU as it is, and the US are pretty much a regulatory wild west, at least when seen from an European perspective.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago

The main issue as I see it in the game dev space (can't speak to other parts of the gaming industry) is that faaaar too many people naively go into it because they like playing video games, got into programming because they were on the computer anyway, and then hop into the industry bright-eyed and bushy tailed. That's just a recipe for mistreatment. Whereas in web-dev, for example, no one is excited at the prospect of developing a new CRUD app for some megacorp, so we get paid handsomely for our skills. Unions may be controversial in the broader software development sphere, but they're obviously desperately needed in game dev. (P.S. Re: "margins are razor thin": A lot of this comes down to the gaming industry's version of Hollywood accounting. The big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc. are making a killing off of their mistreatment of their studios' staff)

Karrot_Kream 4y ago
> (P.S. Re: "margins are razor thin": A lot of this comes down to the gaming industry's version of Hollywood accounting. The big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc. are making a killing off of their mistreatment of their studios' staff) Sorry, I meant "everywhere I look outside of the big publishers" instead of "everywhere I look." Of course, the big publishers make crazy money by milking old franchises and through large economies of scale. If that's the kind of games industry we want, then it looks like the working model is oligopoly.

mschuster91 4y ago

> The question ultimately is: how do you create an ecosystem which fairly compensates and doesn't brutally overwork game staff? This is a problem that has to be solved by those actually able to do something, and that is the regulatory agencies for the US and EU, not multinational corporations or placing the responsibility on individual consumers. The multinational corporations have no interest in kneecapping their "competitive advantages", and consumers don't care or don't even know just how fucked up the entire entertainment industry is ("crunch time" isn't just an issue in games, but also in movies!). That's stuff like actually enforcing labor regulations (e.g. the Directive 93/104/EC that prescribes a maximum week work time of 48h)... and that linked together with stuff like passing "supply chain laws" (that hold corporations liable for labor rights violations by their suppliers) should put a stop on these practices. Unfortunately, labor regulations enforcement is pretty scarce in the EU as it is, and the US are pretty much a regulatory wild west, at least when seen from an European perspective.