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>Several of the developers who contacted me for this story said they were fed up with layoff cycles and had left the video game industry entirely. Some told tal

by tsotha 12y ago

>Several of the developers who contacted me for this story said they were fed up with layoff cycles and had left the video game industry entirely. Some told tales of endless relocations and unreasonable hours, and bragged that in their new fields, they were paid more to work less. Yeah... this isn't exactly news. You work in the gaming industry because you love video games. It's not a career. It's a job you do when you have youth and health and minimum entanglements. When you get married or get older or get just plain sick of working around the clock for not much money then it's time to look around for something more stable and remunerative. It's ridiculous to compare video game industry jobs with Big Grey Financial Company. If you want comparisons, look at the movie industry, where people get together to work on a project and then all get laid off when it's done.

bowlofpetunias 12y ago
The comparison with the movie industry is obvious, but what about retaining skill and knowledge, which is vital in the software industry? The tools people use in the movie industry are commodities with relatively slow innovation. People can get by on more or less the same skill set they had 15 years ago, and once the movie has been shot, virtually nobody has gained any new knowledge. The game industry has to considerably up their game (no pun intended) with every new release. The only way they can keep up the movie-style cycle if a company producing a new game can pick up developers just laid off by someone else. I doubt if that is sustainable in the long run. At some point hiring new devs with very recent experience will become more expensive than retaining knowledge. The game industry will always have more dramatic cycles because any company is as successful as their last game, but the current state of affairs just reeks of immaturity.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > The comparison with the movie industry is obvious, but what about retaining skill and knowledge, which is vital in the software industry? Well at the same time the technologies you used to make the game you worked on 2 years ago are probably going to be obsolete in the new game you'd be hired to work on. There's only a few jobs in the game industry where highly specialized, technical people are valued and retained. And there's a ton of talent pool to pick up fresh people from out there who are decent at what they do - probably more than there are jobs for them. Look at Mercury Steam, they had no experience doing a AAA game (unless you consider Jericho one of them, but I'd say it was rather average in scope), and yet they managed to convince Konami they could do a reboot of Castlevania and they did it pretty well without much prior experience in the similar genre or scope.
- thomasz 12y ago
  > The tools people use in the movie industry are commodities with relatively slow innovation. People can get by on more or less the same skill set they had 15 years ago, and once the movie has been shot, virtually nobody has gained any new knowledge. I'm pretty sure you can only say that because you do not have the slightest insight into the movie industry.
- tsotha 12y ago
  >The tools people use in the movie industry are commodities with relatively slow innovation. People can get by on more or less the same skill set they had 15 years ago, and once the movie has been shot, virtually nobody has gained any new knowledge. I don't think that's true at all, particularly with the amount of CGI they're putting into modern films. CGI changes pretty quickly, too - an effect that was good enough last year looks dated if you put it in this year's release.

by tsotha 12y ago

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

The comparison with the movie industry is obvious, but what about retaining skill and knowledge, which is vital in the software industry? The tools people use in the movie industry are commodities with relatively slow innovation. People can get by on more or less the same skill set they had 15 years ago, and once the movie has been shot, virtually nobody has gained any new knowledge. The game industry has to considerably up their game (no pun intended) with every new release. The only way they can keep up the movie-style cycle if a company producing a new game can pick up developers just laid off by someone else. I doubt if that is sustainable in the long run. At some point hiring new devs with very recent experience will become more expensive than retaining knowledge. The game industry will always have more dramatic cycles because any company is as successful as their last game, but the current state of affairs just reeks of immaturity.

ekianjo 12y ago
> The comparison with the movie industry is obvious, but what about retaining skill and knowledge, which is vital in the software industry? Well at the same time the technologies you used to make the game you worked on 2 years ago are probably going to be obsolete in the new game you'd be hired to work on. There's only a few jobs in the game industry where highly specialized, technical people are valued and retained. And there's a ton of talent pool to pick up fresh people from out there who are decent at what they do - probably more than there are jobs for them. Look at Mercury Steam, they had no experience doing a AAA game (unless you consider Jericho one of them, but I'd say it was rather average in scope), and yet they managed to convince Konami they could do a reboot of Castlevania and they did it pretty well without much prior experience in the similar genre or scope.
thomasz 12y ago
> The tools people use in the movie industry are commodities with relatively slow innovation. People can get by on more or less the same skill set they had 15 years ago, and once the movie has been shot, virtually nobody has gained any new knowledge. I'm pretty sure you can only say that because you do not have the slightest insight into the movie industry.
tsotha 12y ago
>The tools people use in the movie industry are commodities with relatively slow innovation. People can get by on more or less the same skill set they had 15 years ago, and once the movie has been shot, virtually nobody has gained any new knowledge. I don't think that's true at all, particularly with the amount of CGI they're putting into modern films. CGI changes pretty quickly, too - an effect that was good enough last year looks dated if you put it in this year's release.