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Man, you have swallowed every last drop of the koolaid they're selling you. Consider this situation: You've spent most of your life training yourself as a gam

Man, you have swallowed every last drop of the koolaid they're selling you. Consider this situation: You've spent most of your life training yourself as a game developer, only to find out that every company you'd like to work for will drive you like a slave. 50+ hours per week is not merely an option, but a necessity if you want to remain competitive. And since everyone wants to be a game developer, that means your salary is less than in other types of compsci jobs. So, that culture stuff you're speaking of? It's bullshit. Ultimately it's a method of getting you to do the bidding of others. It's not about you at all. No one is looking out for you, and while you may feel like you're part of a team, that team has no loyalty to you. If you stop performing at peak level for even a couple months then your prospects will be severely harmed. Employees get to feel proud they've literally sacrificed part of their life to help someone else succeed. And you're supporting pervasive lawbreaking in the name of "that's just what it takes"! If game companies are finding it hard to recruit talent, well, that's probably because people are finally wise to their ways. You won't find anyone who was more in love with the idea of being a game developer than I was, but the reality of the industry is abhorrent. The shared culture has utterly decimated any hope of work-life balance in the gamedev industry in the US. My options were to work elsewhere or to move overseas. And by working elsewhere I get more cash, get to work on problems that are more interesting, and I learn more. European developers seem to have figured out how to develop next-gen games without any of the bullshit methods of control you've described. Maybe US companies should start caring how.

jbackus 13y ago
> So, that culture stuff you're speaking of? It's bullshit. Ultimately it's a method of getting you to do the bidding of others. It's not about you at all. No one is looking out for you, and while you may feel like you're part of a team, that team has no loyalty to you. If you stop performing at peak level for even a couple months then your prospects will be severely harmed. > Employees get to feel proud they've literally sacrificed part of their life to help someone else succeed. Your tone suggests outrage but you're just describing the nature of competition. You are agreeing to trade your time and skills for money. "Getting you to do the bidding of others" is a cynical way to put it, but if a certain type of team building yields good results why would a company not go down that path? Of course you're going to be replaced if the you aren't producing the results you were hired for, this is the nature of competition. There is no fair or unfair. Employees are not sacrificing part of their life for someone else, they're trading their time to someone else. No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer. That's a fine-sounding statement but in reality if you want to be a game developer in the US then you'd better be willing to live a life where you wake up, go to work, get home sometime later than 8pm, spend ~2 hours unwinding and maybe visiting with your SO, and then go to bed. Repeat forever. A lot of times even on weekends. The studios I worked for all made it regular habit to make pizza available in the evening and then refuse to allow devs to leave. Crunch time became a way of life. Anyone who dared not to like it risked ostracism. Those who were fired for it severely harmed their career prospects, precisely because every other employer has the exact same culture of insanity. Put that way, it's more than a little bleak. If I sound outraged, it's because it's outrageous that it somehow became the norm in the US and that nobody bats an eye because "that's just the way it is." It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change. I'm saying the companies had better change themselves before the nice little train of momentum they've built up from legions of starry-eyed young developers finally runs out when those developers realize they could be going off and starting their own companies rather than playing by your rules.
  - dalke 13y ago
    "It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change." Why not? What if game developers were to unionize? Or we were to strengthen the 8-hour work day laws? Or boycott the most egregious companies? What's wrong with those or other ways of forcing the companies to change?
    - sillysaurus2 13y ago
      It's a social problem: those who don't want to work 50+ hour weeks are made to feel as if they're a bad employee. Those who don't need to work 50+ hour weeks are steadily assigned an increased workload until they are. It's a nuanced situation that I doubt a legal system could address without introducing horrific unintended consequences of the new laws, as new laws so often do. Unionizing is only effective in situations where employees can band together into a shared social framework. During the industrial revolution this was facilitated by the massive size of workplaces. But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs. I think ultimately the solution is to start our own companies imprinted with a culture of employee well-being and work-life balance. If it's a success, and it's located in a gamedev hotspot, then all of the top talent will want to work there. This synergizes well with free market aims, because competitors who don't get top talent soon go out of business.
acron0 13y ago
GTA V was developed in Dundee, Scotland. In Europe.
- hobbes 13y ago
  The original was developed in Dundee. Rockstar North, who developed GTA V, are based in Edinburgh. Thankfully, there are still a handful of game developers in Dundee. One of the original designers on GTA now runs Tag Games in Dundee, which does some quality mobile games.
golergka 13y ago
I work a steady 40 hour week and only do additional hours if it's my fault. And I don't even live in a first-world country.
Shorel 13y ago
Do you really have data about the actual Rockstar developers? That's what we are interested in knowing. Everything else you are writing is speculation and propaganda.
celticninja 13y ago
given that rockstar is a UK company then I think we can safely say that it was developed by European developers who have decent working conditions and hours.
- teamonkey 13y ago
  The UK allows employees to opt-out of the working time directive. My experience was that you signed the opt-out by default when signing your contract. You could always opt back in again, but the cultural pressure to do overtime was huge, and you could kiss good bye to any bonuses if you don't crunch. Without bonuses the pay was crap. [edit] I'm not talking specifically about Rockstar or games companies - this is standard practice in many sectors.
nhangen 13y ago
50 hours/week is nothing, especially for people that want to produce. I'm working around 70 now as a founder, and would love to trade that for 50.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  Well, you're a founder. You're working for your own aims, not someone else's. Under those circumstances, I'll see your 70 hours and raise you 10.

jbackus 13y ago

> So, that culture stuff you're speaking of? It's bullshit. Ultimately it's a method of getting you to do the bidding of others. It's not about you at all. No one is looking out for you, and while you may feel like you're part of a team, that team has no loyalty to you. If you stop performing at peak level for even a couple months then your prospects will be severely harmed. > Employees get to feel proud they've literally sacrificed part of their life to help someone else succeed. Your tone suggests outrage but you're just describing the nature of competition. You are agreeing to trade your time and skills for money. "Getting you to do the bidding of others" is a cynical way to put it, but if a certain type of team building yields good results why would a company not go down that path? Of course you're going to be replaced if the you aren't producing the results you were hired for, this is the nature of competition. There is no fair or unfair. Employees are not sacrificing part of their life for someone else, they're trading their time to someone else. No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer. That's a fine-sounding statement but in reality if you want to be a game developer in the US then you'd better be willing to live a life where you wake up, go to work, get home sometime later than 8pm, spend ~2 hours unwinding and maybe visiting with your SO, and then go to bed. Repeat forever. A lot of times even on weekends. The studios I worked for all made it regular habit to make pizza available in the evening and then refuse to allow devs to leave. Crunch time became a way of life. Anyone who dared not to like it risked ostracism. Those who were fired for it severely harmed their career prospects, precisely because every other employer has the exact same culture of insanity. Put that way, it's more than a little bleak. If I sound outraged, it's because it's outrageous that it somehow became the norm in the US and that nobody bats an eye because "that's just the way it is." It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change. I'm saying the companies had better change themselves before the nice little train of momentum they've built up from legions of starry-eyed young developers finally runs out when those developers realize they could be going off and starting their own companies rather than playing by your rules.
- dalke 13y ago
  "It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change." Why not? What if game developers were to unionize? Or we were to strengthen the 8-hour work day laws? Or boycott the most egregious companies? What's wrong with those or other ways of forcing the companies to change?
  - sillysaurus2 13y ago
    It's a social problem: those who don't want to work 50+ hour weeks are made to feel as if they're a bad employee. Those who don't need to work 50+ hour weeks are steadily assigned an increased workload until they are. It's a nuanced situation that I doubt a legal system could address without introducing horrific unintended consequences of the new laws, as new laws so often do. Unionizing is only effective in situations where employees can band together into a shared social framework. During the industrial revolution this was facilitated by the massive size of workplaces. But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs. I think ultimately the solution is to start our own companies imprinted with a culture of employee well-being and work-life balance. If it's a success, and it's located in a gamedev hotspot, then all of the top talent will want to work there. This synergizes well with free market aims, because competitors who don't get top talent soon go out of business.

acron0 13y ago

GTA V was developed in Dundee, Scotland. In Europe.

hobbes 13y ago
The original was developed in Dundee. Rockstar North, who developed GTA V, are based in Edinburgh. Thankfully, there are still a handful of game developers in Dundee. One of the original designers on GTA now runs Tag Games in Dundee, which does some quality mobile games.

golergka 13y ago

I work a steady 40 hour week and only do additional hours if it's my fault. And I don't even live in a first-world country.

Shorel 13y ago

Do you really have data about the actual Rockstar developers? That's what we are interested in knowing. Everything else you are writing is speculation and propaganda.

celticninja 13y ago

given that rockstar is a UK company then I think we can safely say that it was developed by European developers who have decent working conditions and hours.

teamonkey 13y ago
The UK allows employees to opt-out of the working time directive. My experience was that you signed the opt-out by default when signing your contract. You could always opt back in again, but the cultural pressure to do overtime was huge, and you could kiss good bye to any bonuses if you don't crunch. Without bonuses the pay was crap. [edit] I'm not talking specifically about Rockstar or games companies - this is standard practice in many sectors.

nhangen 13y ago

50 hours/week is nothing, especially for people that want to produce. I'm working around 70 now as a founder, and would love to trade that for 50.

sillysaurus2 13y ago
Well, you're a founder. You're working for your own aims, not someone else's. Under those circumstances, I'll see your 70 hours and raise you 10.