I've been making games for nearly 15 years now. I am an early 30s white man. I am good at what I do, and can work anywhere I want, at this point in my career. I

I've been making games for nearly 15 years now. I am an early 30s white man. I am good at what I do, and can work anywhere I want, at this point in my career. I'm happily married, though we don't have (nor want) kids. I think the article is somewhat accurate, but I think it also pays short shrift to the improvements that are happening in games. One of the big things I've noticed in recent years is the amount of people who enter games who are aware of the quality of life issues, and practice work to rule more often than not. It puts pressure on managers to learn to schedule properly, and it puts pressure on directors to learn when to cut. On top of that, there are a lot of studios that lean older in terms of age. Ubisoft Montreal is a good example of this; I couldn't tell you what the average age is, but I know that it's just as likely someone has a kid at home as not, and that also puts a lot of pressure to run things right. Also a lot of the managers these days have kids at home that they want to see, so if nothing else, they are improving their methods for selfish reasons. There's still a long way to go in games, but the game industry today isn't anything like what it was in 2000. It has been nearly a decade since I was expected to pull an all-nighter, for one. It's been nearly that since I was expected to work both a saturday AND a sunday. These days it's not impossible to find developers who believe in quality of life. But what is very very possible is to find a place to work where it won't be held against you that you have a family at home, and I think that's largely what this article is missing. That recent photo eulogy of Lucas Arts talked about things that I literally have not seen since before 2005; it's not shocking that a studio which would expect people to miss funerals and prioritize work over relationships would fail to put out games of quality. The game industry still has far to go, there's no doubt about it. But if you want to have a family, there are large swaths of the game industry these days who are perfectly willing to accommodate you without complaint.