4 ms·

1) Many of them don't. The turnover of grunt level coders and QA staff is huge, and the senior figures in the industry mostly made it through the days before cr

by jarcane 12y ago

1) Many of them don't. The turnover of grunt level coders and QA staff is huge, and the senior figures in the industry mostly made it through the days before crunch-time was simply "all-the-time", and now have the seniority to avoid it themselves. 2) An endless supply of True Believers. The games industry feeds on exploiting the idealism of youth. Young guys who grow up with 'making games' as their dream job, but no idea how the sausage is made, are hired up for QA jobs and junior programming jobs with promises to do just that. And when they burn out or realize they're just going to be doing bug testing for the rest of their lives because they don't actually have the experience to be anything else, the industry shrugs and hires one of the thousands of others lining up at the door with the same dreams. The whole reason the indie market in games has exploded is precisely because of this, I think. The ones who burn out but still have the talent, or who're smart enough to avoid the AAA system to begin with, just say fuck it and make their own games like almost everyone once did in the 80s. Market standards have shifted from necessarily expecting only the AAA experience, and while few indie games are going to rival the sales of the next hoorah-FPS game, if you're lucky, talented, and willing to spend a fuckload of time self-promoting, you can eke out a living without the meatgrinder.

mjn 12y ago
I agree with (1), but it's much beyond just low-level staff; even senior people have considerable turnover. Since I'm an academic AI researcher, I've tried to cultivate contacts with AI leads at AAA companies, because they often have interesting problems and perspectives, especially on how AI and design interact. A problem with this is that they keep leaving! For various reasons, of the senior AI people I know pretty well (AI leads on games like Sims 3, Black & White, Halo, F.E.A.R., etc.), all but one no longer work at "AAA" game companies. Some stayed in the industry but moved into a consulting role where they could control their own hours and assignments better; some branched off and started small indie-game studios; some moved to a non-game tech job; and some went to grad school. People have different motivations, but there seems to be a feeling that the job of AAA AI lead is getting more and more boring and management-constrained, while the working conditions are getting worse. And on the other hand, that the alternatives are better than they used to be (much bigger indie-game scene, more relevant academic programs, etc.), so maybe it's time to get out and do something else.
- jarcane 12y ago
  I have suspected for some time that, at the present rate of churn, game dev is increasingly moving to a movie-like model, where a given crew assembles for one product, then scatters when it's over. It's certainly the way I'd expect things to go if I were applying at most studios these days.
  - pandaman 12y ago
    It makes sense in the movies to hire a crew of contractors just for the shooting because shooting takes few weeks, months tops. A game production can take anywhere from a year to several years, contractors usually don't want to commit for such long terms so it will take a while just to staff your project. Then, as you have shipped, you let go all your contractors and immediately start hiring new ones for the next slated project? Makes very little sense. The churn you are seeing now is the effect of the poor financial state of the industry. A lot of studios are spending more money to make the games than the games bring back. Such studios eventually have to get out of business either through bankruptcy or through being shuttered by its holding company. As a studio is nearing the inevitable end people employed there are leaving and the studio starts hiring, sometimes this is amplified by the management trying to "fix" the expensive production problem by expanding. Since the stable and profitable studios do not hire much, especially among people without industry experience, most of the new hires go into the studios that are already circling the drain and will be laid off in a year if not a month. This is what's creating the impression of the high churn IMO.

by jarcane 12y ago

mjn 12y ago

I agree with (1), but it's much beyond just low-level staff; even senior people have considerable turnover. Since I'm an academic AI researcher, I've tried to cultivate contacts with AI leads at AAA companies, because they often have interesting problems and perspectives, especially on how AI and design interact. A problem with this is that they keep leaving! For various reasons, of the senior AI people I know pretty well (AI leads on games like Sims 3, Black & White, Halo, F.E.A.R., etc.), all but one no longer work at "AAA" game companies. Some stayed in the industry but moved into a consulting role where they could control their own hours and assignments better; some branched off and started small indie-game studios; some moved to a non-game tech job; and some went to grad school. People have different motivations, but there seems to be a feeling that the job of AAA AI lead is getting more and more boring and management-constrained, while the working conditions are getting worse. And on the other hand, that the alternatives are better than they used to be (much bigger indie-game scene, more relevant academic programs, etc.), so maybe it's time to get out and do something else.

jarcane 12y ago
I have suspected for some time that, at the present rate of churn, game dev is increasingly moving to a movie-like model, where a given crew assembles for one product, then scatters when it's over. It's certainly the way I'd expect things to go if I were applying at most studios these days.
- pandaman 12y ago
  It makes sense in the movies to hire a crew of contractors just for the shooting because shooting takes few weeks, months tops. A game production can take anywhere from a year to several years, contractors usually don't want to commit for such long terms so it will take a while just to staff your project. Then, as you have shipped, you let go all your contractors and immediately start hiring new ones for the next slated project? Makes very little sense. The churn you are seeing now is the effect of the poor financial state of the industry. A lot of studios are spending more money to make the games than the games bring back. Such studios eventually have to get out of business either through bankruptcy or through being shuttered by its holding company. As a studio is nearing the inevitable end people employed there are leaving and the studio starts hiring, sometimes this is amplified by the management trying to "fix" the expensive production problem by expanding. Since the stable and profitable studios do not hire much, especially among people without industry experience, most of the new hires go into the studios that are already circling the drain and will be laid off in a year if not a month. This is what's creating the impression of the high churn IMO.