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Any developer with half a brain should know that the game industry should be avoided like the plague. Long working hours, abusive management, racism (the Kixeye
by w1ntermute 14y ago
Any developer with half a brain should know that the game industry should be avoided like the plague. Long working hours, abusive management, racism (the Kixeye debacle), the issues just go on and on.
Take patio11's advice and go into B2B, you'll make money hand over fist with much more manageable working hours.
- danudey 14y agoI work at a mobile game development company in Vancouver, and it's great here. Best environment I've ever worked in. Good people, good management, get in at 8:30 and leave at 5, etc. Not everyone in the industry is scum, though it's certainly not uncommon.
- chucknelson 14y agoThere are always exceptions, but there sure is a large amount of anecdotal evidence for not-so-great working conditions in general across the gaming industry. If you follow gaming news you'll also hear over and over about lots of "crunch" time, etc.
- Karunamon 14y agoI've only heard about that at a few big name companies (i.e. EA, Zynga) who's working conditions are legendarily bad. What about some of the other big players? Nintendo? Microsoft? Rare? Square Enix? Valve?
- rictic 14y agoHoly cow, how did I miss that Kixeye story? It read like a horror story. I guess they weren't exaggerating when they used insanity wolf to advertise for jobs, talk about a toxic environment.
- hkmurakami 14y agoDon't forget good apples like Valve :(
- w1ntermute 14y agoDoesn't it say in Valve's handbook (the one released earlier this year) that it doesn't actually consider itself to be a gaming company?
- StavrosK 14y agoThat doesn't make it true.
- w1ntermute 14y agoIt means that their mentality is significantly different from other game companies, which means that generalizations of gaming companies drawn from their work culture are much more tenuous.
- lmm 14y agoOr it means their handbook doesn't entirely line up with the actuality.
- tsotha 14y agoI wonder. They don't release a lot of titles. But Steam is a gold mine. I wouldn't be surprised if that's where most of the money comes from these days. If true they're really not a game company but rather a distribution company.
- DrStalker 14y agoWhat sort of company does the handbook say they are?
- chucknelson 14y agoI would love to see the average hours worked for a Valve employee. Probably more than 8-10...
- unavoidable 14y ago
- thecosas 14y agoRiot Games is also a standout of a great place to work from what I've heard.
- dcpdx 14y agoMy brother works there as a QA, and he's enjoyed every minute of it. There is a reverence and appreciation for their users that trickles down from the CEO into the rest of the company that seems to be the exact opposite of the situation at Zynga.
- gdulli 14y agoCorrect. A developer with a full brain would know better than to extrapolate a few examples to an entire industry.
- w1ntermute 14y agoDoesn't matter if there are exceptions. When there are so many job opportunities out there for developers, why take the risk?
- snogglethorpe 14y agoI think the general lesson is "don't be a idiot." I know several people working quite happily at gaming companies (doing, from what I can see, some pretty cool stuff), and those game companies who are the most abusive generally have well-known reputations as such. I suppose it might not be the best industry to go into straight out of college, when you have little leverage and lack industry smarts...
- mtrimpe 14y agoOr you would identify the most likely underlying cause of the stereotype: that the games industry is an industry of love, just like fashion, music, theater or art. That means that there is a much more abundant supply of labour and that the demand side is exploiting this by offering lower wages, worse working environment, crazier hours etc. The main difference between fashion, music and art is that the discrepancy is much more poignant in the games industry because there's an abundant supply of well-paying cushy jobs just around the corner which involve almost the exact same skill-set to compare against.
- mtrimpe 14y agoOr you would identify the most likely underlying cause of the stereotype. The games industry is an industry of love; just like fashion, music and theater are for example. That means that there is a much more abundant supply of labour and that the demand side is exploiting this by offering lower wages, worse working environment, crazier hours etc. The main difference between market industries like fashion, music and art is that the discrepancy is much more poignant in games because there's an abundant supply of well-paying cushy jobs which involve almost the exact same skill-set to compare against.
- hdragomir 14y agoLet me assure you, working at wooga, in Berlin, is nothing like what you just described.