Quality of Life Issues Holding Back Game Industry

zenrender writes "With all the craziness regarding EA_Spouse's blog entry, it looks like some more organized groups are starting to chime in: Open Letter from the IGDA (International Game Developers Association). See Also Quality of Life White Paper, also from the IGDA."

Comments

Game programming is a vocation

[bay43270]

People don't get into game programming for the money and the good hours. Neither do priests, teachers, firemen, policemen or soldiers. Complaining about the long hours in the video game industry is like complaining about the color of the sky. Just deal with it or pick a different profession.

With half the skills an EA job requires, you could get a very nice low-stress job working half the hours. My job isn't especially interesting, but it pays the bills easily and it's very low stress. Plus, I can start working on my more interesting hobby-programming when I get home (between 4:30 and 5 in the afternoon).

Or if you can't settle for less than an interesting, high-demand job, then you must really enjoy what your doing -- in that case, shut up and get back to work!

Re:Cognitive dissonance

[CommanderData]

If at first you don't succeed... Try again! Looks like your comment faired much better than it did yesterday.

For what it's worth I thought it was funny both times :)

Re:What's it like in Japan?

[jasno]

After a 2 1/2 week stint in Japan a few years back, I came to realize that, at least as far as engineers are concerned, the Japanese don't work much harder than Americans. They also had about the same distribution of slackers vs. workaholics.

They did seem to have longer commutes, and they definitely partied harder, but work? Nope.