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Developer Stress Crippling Game Innovation?
hapwned writes "Jason Della Rocca, the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), looks at the big picture of the grim, dead-end careers of game developers. From the article: 'More fundamental is the notion that immature practices and extreme working conditions are bankrupting the industry's passion - the love for creating games that drives developers to be developers. When the average career length of the game development workforce is just over five years and over 50% of developers admit they don't plan to hang around for more than 10, we have a problem. How can an industry truly grow, and an art form evolve, if everyone is gone by the time they hit 30?'"
You publish an article that software designer is the one of the top 10 jobs to have :)
Visit my site @ http://www.madtorrent.com
The question seems retorical but I'll answer it anyway. If the people being hired are all 25 years old, the problem will remain. I have seen more and more offerings or game developer educations. Most of these are reduced computer science programs at universities, which frankly doesn't solve the problem. Recruiting earlier will require a lower education program which teaches programming. Perhaps special programs at high schools, or more likely compartmentalized education from certification schools. I'm not sure if an option like these would help developers or not, but it seems logical for it to be an option if publishers want better developers to work with.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
I can honestly say I don't want what 99% of these people make in their 5 years at the grindstone in full time game development.
Now these people must have got into it initially for the love of games - and even if they jack it all in and get a 'real' job, I assume they'll still like games.
We're going to end up with a huge glut of people with real jobs (i.e. can do whatever they want) moonlighting in the evenings making quality mods, small games for online distribution etc etc.
Much more what I want to buy anyway and should be a nice bit of fresh air
If you think most people lose their creative spark by 30, look at the average of art directors and creatives in advertising firms. It's not that different from engineering, it takes time to get good at it.
This doesn't just apply to game developers, but most software developers as well. It's a risky business, and for most innovation developers are forced to put their career, money/life savings on the line whenever an innovative product is developed. How can we be innovative when we can't pay our mortage payments?
There aren't enough investors out there to put money on risky software development projects, so we are often forced to take big risks ourselves when it comes to ideas we are passionate about. And frankly, people with lots of money often don't understand what we're doing.
There are 10 types of people in the world; those who can read binary, and those who can't.
Just like the Atari devs split and founded Activision... I think that a small company is the best for game development.
I grew up wanting to be a game developer. I spent a lot of my free time as a kid in front of a computer writing code, designing my own games. But as I get older and am actually out in the workforce the thought of working 80 hour weeks making a salary on the lower range of what programmers in general make has turned me away from the industry. The next step, once the majority of CS majors have been scared away from game programming, is the farm the work out to programming "sweat shops" in other countries to make rehashes of the same games that have been coming out for years. Unless there are some major changes in the game industry the only real innovations are going to end up coming from indie game developers who work some other job to make a living and develop games in their spare time.
Like the old, OLD Activision method of a single developer designing a game and actually getting credited on the product packaging. When someone figures out how to implement that design model again, you'll have the next craze of video games.
It appears there's a correlation between the "famous names in game development" and the "career-minded senior developers in game development." Correlation isn't causation, but which end is wagging which? Is it because they're a rare breed to stick around so long, or because they're a rare breed who have excellent gaming ideas? Maybe they're just rare because of the career stress. The likelihood of making a name for oneself in the industry is pretty slim. The industry is incestuous and churn after November (after Retail Christmas) is a big problem. If you have to start your career over every year or two, who wants to keep up that grind forever? But maybe it's just a matter of a group of people who like instant gratification in their games, who also want instant gratification in their career path, and they usually don't find it. Ninety percent of everything is crap, and that goes for the workforce in any industry too. There may only be room for a few bright spots to float to the top, while the rest continue to wallow below.
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Suppose I hire the kind of people who are creative enough to create a good game, and then I hire people that are able to code that creativity into a functioning product. Isn't this a much better model than hiring 50 super-coders to bust out YAJMF? (Yet Another John Madden Football) Game development is expensive to get right, but if you have a team that can make lots of good and different games, games good enough to develop franchises from (i.e. Zelda and Mario), then you will win. If you take one painfully stale idea and re-release it over and over, it will cost you more each time in order to generate the same sales, because PEOPLE GET BORED. It should be real obvious how to manage creativity, but apparently few want to take charge and do it. There's such a ready supply of young kids looking to "code games" that they can be duped into thinking that "some company" is cool when in fact it's a slave ship. Any gaming company that leverages creativity over slave hours and slave pay will be the champion in the long run, bar none.
stuff |
And here I thought cloning the same old games year after year was the problem... my bad. Well that and the fact Duke Forever isn't done yet...
"Humans are considered to be primitive, the third smartest species on Earth"
Creative spark plays a relatively minor role in AAA game development. Most of the 'overworked' crowd is doing 2 things: generating code and generating art. But even the artists typically need more skill than creativity, and in my experience the older artists tend to produce both more and better stuff (thanks to experience, particularly with the tools). For example, if the artist is going to generate an elf character ... that might typically involve one day of inspiration, and two weeks of pixel pushing. Even if he's twice as slow during that 1 day of inspiration, he'll more than make up for that extra day thanks to his familiarity with tools. On the code development side, I think we all understand how experience renders advantage.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
This is so two years ago. More and more game companies are adopting sane schedules and better production schedules. There is still a ways to go of course, but it's getting better by leaps and bounds. My last project I only crunched a combined 2 months. Much better than the 14 months of crunch I did two projects ago. The REAL problem with innovation in "big" titles is that the development teams are getting too large. On a 60 person team only a select few actually get to give design input on what the game is. There just isn't enough time to get input from every team member that wants to share their ideas. You can't afford to prototype enough to get to everyone's ideas, so to be fair no one's ideas are prototyped. Back when a game could be made with 10-20 people, every one could go crazy with ideas and everyone could contribute. That just isn't possible now. Except of course with the small teams making the flash games and things like that.
Balderdash.
Arguments such as these have been made hundreds of times over about every creative profession, and there are enough counterexamples to prove it's utter bunk. Take Cezanne. He did most of his important, really revolutionary work in the last few years of his life. He was only actually discovered by the around the turn of the century, when he was finally honored with an exhibition. Monet himself came up to him and esposed his genius, saying he was, in fact, the greatest genius of them all. He said (T. J. Clark's paraphrase) "Maybe... but back to work!" Can I offer you, perhaps, John Milton, or Robert Frost, or, hell, Neal Stephenson (he's 46, you know)?
Young people generally have the advantage that they're poor, desparate to make their mark on the world, too inexperienced to know what they're doing is stupid. Their brains also have a higher degree of plasticity, but this countered on the other end of the scale by the experience and wisdom that comes with age. What happens to older artists is that they get rich when they're 30 and are too busy with the trappings of fame and fortune to really produce anything good after that. After all, I don't think the decline in the Harry Potter books is because Rowling (not a spring chicken, by the way, she's 40) is now incapable of true innovation, but because she's writing big sloppy books as fast as she can. She knows they'll sell and her dedication to the craft of writing has become lax.
As my profile states, I'm a reformed game programmer. I've written a couple of bitter posts on Slashdot about working in the game industry. I'm better now. :-)
But the stress caused by poor quality architecture and code cannot be understated. Coders begin to hate the designers and artists after awhile and that, as you can guess, really causes problems. If the designer wants that really cool scene or feature or art, but the coder is stressed out the kazoo with debugging the last 3 new features and hasn't seen his new born child awake since it was born, you can imagine how he would react to the new feature.
The solution is a self-learning development process. A.k.a., CMM. I met some game developers who've only worked in Game Companies who sneer at that kind of talk, but the more seasoned veterans (working 10+ years) actually liked the idea. When you reduce the stress on the developers, and improve productivity, they can spend time making stable code that can be used to build cool, new features on it.
More importantly, it will rebuild the relationship between coder and artists, designers. That is the single most important relationship in the game process, IMHO.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Actually, fast turnover means less innovation. All the fresh kids just out of school making the same mistakes as their predecessors. Then they burn out before they learn from the mistakes and come up with better ways of doing things.
And speaking of games, take Will Wright and his Spore project...
OK what have we got here? Overworked developer. Inadequate tools. Unreasonable deadlines. Exponentially increasing content. Parallelisation problems. Increased competition. Increased Expectation. Aaaannnd... C++....hmmmmm.
OK. Looks like a classic case of square peg in round hole syndrome. Take two courses in Lisp and read up on a fractal generation algorithims.
And for Christ's sake kid, lay off the coffee.
May the Maths Be with you!
Sure its going to sound like console bashing, but look at the market. When you make a product more accesible it becomes very tempting to try and maximize that even further. As businesses grow and the market evolves, publishers are under greater pressure (mostly greed) to abuse that market. The easiest way is to ignore innovation, create broader appeal to already existing franchises (often through dumbing down) and pump it out and make it available for anything that moves. As an example on what's being done to something like The Sims. You can trash it all you want, but its a prime example of a very popular franchise. Initially they announced 7 EPs. Its a lot, but the market is there. Then they announced they'd start putting it on anything that could play it. Consoles, phones, handhelds, etc. Get a smart watch, Maxis will port it.
Now they haven't saturated things enough, they're releasing mini-eps in between EPs. Why? Because EA has reportedly been sucking out, except for The Sims franchise, its their cash cow. The game isn't going to innovate.
You can see it in the underlying structure of the game. People who have taken apart the code and looked at it call it disgusting, the little things are missing. Problems that have existed since the original game, but instead of fixing those to produce quality, they're going to pump out 3 more platforms and another 2 expansion packs. If EA could market a gaming device who' sole purpose was to play The Sims, they would.
That market is changed, and if you want quality, I really think you have to stick with small developers who are in it for the love of the game.
You mean game developmers are humans? That by the time they are 30 wise up and aren't willing to slave away 12 hours a day for someone else?
Wow.
And you mean companies get rid of people once they aren't willing to work 12 hours a day because they have a life and don't like being treated like slaves anymore?
Amazing, really, it is.
Welcome to reality for the rest of the world. At least here in America you get to wise up and have a life at 30. 90% of the world will slave away until they drop dead.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Who the hell marked this as insightful?!? Creativity is not generally age related, but I'd hardly be surprised to find that in most (but not all) people it drops off significantly when they're put under too much pressure. Did you actually RTFA? OK, that's probably a stupid question. Think of the following authors whose creative output was most significant after the age of 30:
J.R.R. Tolkein
C.S. Lewis
J.K. Rowling
(In fact just think how many authors publish their first novel *after* turning 30: loads.)
And what about the film industry? Steven Spielberg? Peter Jackson? Ridley Scott? George Lucas? (Oh wait... sorry, I didn't mean that last one, but you get the picture.)
Oi! Mods! WAKE UP!!!!
I don't understand people who go after this career because they "love games." It always concerned me when someone told me they want to become a programmer because they like games. HELLO! Everybody loves games! You're joining the profession for all the wrong reasons! Sometimes I'd ask the person if they've ever even programmed. Answer? "Nope!" I admire the willingness to fight for a dream, but I frown on the lack of research before committing a lifetime to it. Why programmer instead of another facet of game production? Oh, the money, you say... Notice how programming itself is not mentioned as an interest in any way here? Yes, it concerns me too.
The games people love are nothing like the process of coding them. Anything that is remotely fun and exciting in programming has nothing to do with what makes Madden fun and exciting. The average consumer can love Final Fantasy -- no, I'd even say there are many, many hardcore fans. But the vast majority of those that love that franchise are not meant to ever, ever become game developers. It's apples and oranges.
Playing games is exactly that -- PLAYING. But coding a game is no child's play. It's work -- and hard, hard work. If producing a graphical manifestation is the only joy you see in coding, I'd seriously reconsider the profession. There are other ways to contribute to creating a game without being the code monkey. There's marketing, story writing, graphics, concept designing, testing, and even managing.
If those don't appeal to you any more than coding does, then why choose coding? What? For money? That's a whole different can of worms that I'm sure you can already see is a repeat of what I just finished saying.
In my humblest opinion, programming is fun on its own, and it really doesn't matter what it is you're coding so long as it is challenging and stimulating. Sure, coding games can fit that, but to start on this path without actually loving the path itself seems risky at best and a terrible, life-long mistake at worst. In short, don't choose a path that makes you walk through shit and garbage. That path just so happens to be the rest of your life. You better damn well choose a route you'll enjoy every minute of.
I thought it was a lack of imagination that was killing the game industry.
MadOgre.com
I wonder if the sentiment is true on the other side of the earth? Do the Japanese devs feel this way too? From what I've read, Nintendo devs are a very proud bunch and lots of them have been doing it for a long time. I don't know for certain, but I wonder if they're under the same time pressures as, say, EA? We've all read stories about EA's marketing dates dictating everything. Is that true for Nintendo? If it is true, I certainly wouldn't have noticed, cuz all their games seem so polished. SSBM? Wind Waker? All top notch (in terms of quality). Can't say the same for EA. I actually bought the first Sims game for gamecube way back ... 10min into laying out my house, it froze on me. First time I had a game crash/freeze on me (on a console). I haven't bought an EA game since.
Anyways, I'm rambling. Just wondering if the japanese devs feel the same? Anyone have any insight into this?
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
This is a common problem that plagues every booming industry... especially advertising. Your bean counters arrive, and apply their "insight" and "wisdom" to running the business and increasing productivity. The end result is deadlines, avoidance of solutions that are too difficult to schedule (or understand), reuse of code and concepts that should be trashed... in all: a bad work environment. Game developers, like myself, strive for the cutting edge. The idea of mandated shortcuts pisses us off.
Game development is a creative art. You can't rush or schedule that kind of a process. No project management book or body of knowledge can overcome this. As long as game publishers drive for more efficiency and output, they will burn out their staff. Game development is a business that needs a bit of fat (free time). You need more freedom to develop and burn code to test new concepts. Investing in throw-away code is almost always a business "no no."
Business folks expect that all problems in computer gaming have known solutions. This idea is false. There's a ton of R&D for just about every algorithm. There's not necessarily a "one size fits all" solution to any given problem. And even a solid algorithm can often be implemented in over a dozen different ways.
I've worked for a couple of places that tried to run game development like regular software engineering projects. They did not succeed. Sometimes, entire industries need to ditch the MBAs and embrace what got them to where they are in the first place. Operating efficiency is only a good thing, so long as it doesn't negatively impact your staff, quality, and sales.
Building games is completely different that any other kind of software development. It needs to managed that way... special needs in mind.
If more of the source code was open, less developers would be needed. As time goes on, less and less developers are needed, until finally none are needed and we end up with programmers out of jobs and large variety of the same game.
That's not true.
Take John Carmack for example. He releases all his code with games after a while. Not only that... He's pretty much licensed out his engines to other companies before he does that. Yet we didn't see every single game using code from Quake or Doom and then ditching all their devs. In fact we usually see this companies hire on more.
Secondly, most companies do this already through licensing... These days either they are licensing the Doom3 engine or Unreal Engines.
That and others build from scratch depending on their needs.
However, I would say that making this open source really helps fledgling devs to figure out the "how'd they do that?" kind of questions.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Your argument is a variation of the broken window fallacy, because you're saying that making things less efficient is good because it creates work. It's incorrect because if things were more efficient there would still be plenty of work, but it would go towards making progress rather than maintaining what we already have.If that's a problem, then someone would hire programmers again to make new kinds of games.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Software Developer is the best job in America: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/0 4/12/1353238
I agree. When people in any industry in the past have run up against shitty working conditions, unreasonable management, and crappy pay (for the hours they put in), they've unionized. It's an entirely reasonable thing to do, especially considering how close to Hollywood games are getting and how many trade unions are in effect in the film industry.
And don't start with the "Oh, developers are too independent, too maverick, too high tech to be unionized." That's the exact same way you could've described auto workers 70 years ago, and they formed the UAW. Say what you will about it lately, the UAW did a LOT to improve conditions and pay for the "high-tech" workers of their time.
I've been thinking about this issue lately, and I'm stuck with a conundrum: Why are people so interested in modding commercial games, when they could use a Free game engine instead and have their work more widely available?
There are a couple of possible explanations for this:
However, none of these reasons seems to provide a complete explanation for why there isn't even a single example of an extremely popular GPL game. I mean, there's no reason whatsoever that the next Counterstrike couldn't be built on Cube or the GPL'd Quake 2 source... so why isn't anyone doing it?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You're being exploited because you let yourselves be. That's the harsh truth.
If you want a life, you need to control the business aspect where money is generated. Otherwise the machine is going to use you up and spit you out, if there's one thing conclomerates like EA have shown, is you can beat programmers stupid and (new) ones keep coming back, begging for more.
Get involved with the business, own the IP, sit on equal footing.
Yes, business sucks sometimes. Coding sucks sometimes too. If you're able to distingush people with the clue from those without, use that to outbid people. Yes, there's big budgets involved - but there's also people with big pockets who will fund things that look like they'll make money.
Entrepreneurs: See the above? Find some really good programmers and PARTNER with them.
Otherwise? Well.. I'm sure there's a fresh crop of programmers to burn out next year.
..don't panic
I worked in the games industry in PC game development for about 5 years coming out of college. Some good things. I had my own office, there were pinball machines and game consoles in the break room, you could get pizza billed to the company delivered any time after hours etc. Also I learned some very important things about software development. Things like designing self contained code that can not break/interfere with unrelated code. Also learning that just because an app is more or less code complete means very little in the overall completion of your product, the real work is just beginning when that project hits QA. We had a QA lab inhouse and it was interesting to get perspective from interacting with those guys. Also the job made me better at testing my own code because if I did not test it well, I was just going to have 20 entries in the bug tracker when i got to work the next morning. Now on to the bad things. 60 hour weeks were very common. When there are milestones or internal project reviews or E3 or some gamign conference require special builds it is more like 70-80 hours with no weekends. When you have a team of 8 programmers and on any given day 4 of you are still there at 9pm it psychologically does not seem so bad because everyone is going through it together. Likewise when you show up on a Sunday and you see all the familiar cars in the parking lot you do not feel as though you are getting 'screwed' on your weekend. It is kind of amazing what you can get used to but in the end it does feel like young single programmers pretty much are the fuel of the gaming industry. When they are tapped out there is always more fuel waiting to jump onboard. Over time you realize all those perks are just lures to keep you at work as much as possible. When you are 22 some of these sacrifices are not so bad and you are constantly learning new things. When you move on to your second and third projects you start to realize that the problems are no longer new and being at work 60-70 hours a week for a salaried job is more annoying that it used to be. It is annoying things that change over time like hardware technology and machine API's relearning these things over and over every couple years is not intellectually rewarding it feels more like a chore. You can make a good living in games but most places pay a fairly modest salary and then have project completion bonuses that can be VERY rewarding if the product does well. Unfortunately programmers are just one part of the equation on whether or not a project sells well but we ARE the only part that does 20+ hours of free overtime every week for a couple years. Unless your product does great it is entirely possible that you walk away with the equivalent of 5-10$ per hour of bonus money for all that OT you worked which is really a raw deal. Ive been out of games for about 5 years now and would not consider going back. I do not regret my time there because I learned a great deal, but leaving the industry yields more money for fewer hours of easier work. Not a hard decision in retrospect.
Hrm.... Well free as in GPL code.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake#Source_code
The source code of the Quake and QuakeWorld engines was licensed under the GPL in 1999. The id Software maps, objects, textures, sounds and other creative works remain under their original license. The shareware distribution of Quake is still freely redistributable and usable with the GPLed engine code. One must purchase a copy of Quake in order to get the registered version of the game which includes more single player episodes and the deathmatch maps.
Sure its not free as in BSD, but doesn't cost anyone to download and use (and even release a commercial game) as long as they adhear to the GLP license.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
There are different kinds of stress...
I used to get quite stressed working in Burger King, for example, because we had hard-limited resources (fixed number of staff, fixed number of burgers, fixed rate of production etc) but very variable demand (we were in a place which could be either totally dead quiet, or hyper busy beyond our ability to serve). Now the job itself wasn't what made it stressful, it was dealing directly with customers who got irate because we were in a train station and if we didn't serve them quickly they could miss their train.
Similarly, I often get a bit stressed in my job as a games developer. Not usually because of the work I have to do, but often the circumstances which I need to do it in. But not because I have game-buyers sitting around me telling me the game is gonna suck, either. Things like last-minute new content, demo work for shows like E3 or TGS conflicting with game production work, schedules which bear no relation to reality.
Yeah, my job isn't dangerous like someone on a construction site, except when I plug a 110V American devkit into a 240V UK mains supply without a transformer (oops), but when I get stressed I do feel it just as much as I did in my no-thought-required job.
Game dev and music blog
There's nothing wrong with an up or out mentality in an industry. Both big law firms and management consulting firms employ this strategy. Having a revolving door of fresh blood may be what allows the industry to flourish with new creativity instead of stagnating with aging dinosaurs.
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[insert funny
Technical innovation has been raging in games, screenshots are ever more beautiful year after year, sound is terrific, and physics are improved. It's the content and themes that are stalled in a never-ending regurgitation of last year's offerings, and this is a result of producers wanting a "safe-bet" for the stakeholders money.
Its hard to really care when you're an artist working on games. All you hear is, "the game industry makes more than hollywood" and all you see is very low wages incomparison to hollywood fx artists, insane deadlines, tons of tedious work, little control over idea because it came down from the suits, no room for advancement, and it sucks the life out of you.
The industry supposedly makes so much money and yet the salaries are like 40k to 60k, while the work days are 12 hours.
Its not a fun job.
The days of garage games are pretty much over due to the amount of time it takes to make a good 3d game.
The game industry was great for artists and programmers, but then the suits came in. Yup those vultures from the entertainment buisness, such as the movie and music industry decided to get their hands on the gaming cash.
No longer are the days of the garage game developers who make millions making a hit game. Now you go and work for the suits if you want to make a game. You get shit pay and thats the way it is.
How much money did Halo make? How much do you think the guy who animated Master Cheif made?
Peanuts.
It's a shitty buisness thats been raped by the buisness majors.
which is why i've decided to leave it and go into film and advertising.
The problem with the industry (or at least as I experienced) is that most of the stress comes from the looming spectre of "Do what we say or you will be replaced." You make the games you're told to make, and if you don't there's 10,000 other pimple faced kids with a copy of "Making Games for Dummies" ready to take your place for half your salary. Want to be creative? want to be innovative? Tough. As the story a couple days ago about Wal-Mart pointed out, The stores are looking for publishers who do what they are told.The publishers are looking for studios who do what they are told. Studios are looking for designers who design what they are told, and designers are looking for programming teams that do what they are told. Everyone who "dreams" of being in the business is just so happy when they get an opportunity that they just get taken advantage of, and become another cog in the corporate machine.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Jason Della Rocca, the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), is a clueless blogger?
This is actually modded +5 Interesting?!
Please...
(I will however agree that this is not *news* at all... Or even /. worthy.)
And look at all the innovative new products that are coming out of Hollywood these days.
Last I checked, the focus group and clueless executive professions weren't unionized.
Don't outsource your core business. When you're a games developer, outsourcing development, the publishers will wonder why they're dealing with you when they can work directly with the developers, and the developers will wonder why they're developing for you when they can develop for the publishers.
I worked as a game developer for several years. I loved the work, but I was underpaid and it definitely hurt my personal life (i.e. I had none).
During my last project, we were actually told by management that a 60 hour week was now mandatory (with all of us being salaried). That's when I gave them my 2 week notice.
Note that I often put in more than 60 hours in a week before that. But it was my choice, sort of. I needed to do it to get the work done but no one was saying I had to punch a clock.
This sort of jackass management behavior went on through every game project I worked on. Not only are the devs on a 5 year burnout cycle, but the game industry seems to attract some of the most juvenille and inexperienced managers I've ever seen. These are the wannabe corporate ladder climbers who couldn't get jobs at real companies. They promise deadlines to publishers that they can't possibly hit and then work their devs to death in an attempt to meet them.
The only other time I've seen such incompetence was with some of the dot-bombs of the late 90s. But in the game industry this goes on more often than not.
Contrast that with where I am now. I'm a senior dev working on a lot of technically interesting code. It's not games anymore but guess what? I work 9 - 6 and I make 2x what I was paid as a game developer.
Sure game dev was my passion but mismanagement has a way of changing your priorities. Would I professionally work on games again? Sure. But only if I owned the company.
Ten years ago I fled my passion of game development to the much dryer realm of chip design because I thought the game industry wasn't going to be kind to the middle aged, married with children crowd.
My friends that stayed confirm. It really sucks, because the best programming I did and saw done was coding games.
The scale of today's games makes it much more difficult for a small, private company to make much of an impact-- which is about the only place I'd want to work.
No, open source game engines would mean that instead of paying a huge load of cash for an engine, that huge load of cash would be available to pay programmers to modify the engine. Instead of slave driving coders to build yet another throw away engine, they could concentrate on working on gameplay. And instead of needing a million dollars up front just to think about making a game, smaller developing houses might be able to compete, rather than see the industry whittled down to a handful of giant corporations who run sweatshops.
If we're having trouble making a living, it's because we always have to go out and reinvent the wheel. Eventually people get sick of paying again and again for the same damn thing.
If game companies get away with overworking or underpaying their employees, it's only because there is apparently an oversupply of coders eager to work in games. This is a lot like professional acting or singing. Everybody wants to do it, and those who aren't the best at it won't get any great reward, but may still be happy to be involved on some level. Sooner or later, the invisible hand will set a steady scale rate for developers with the requisite experience. What is probably most needed are HR people who are able too weed out the enthusiastic but mediocre from the pool of qualified candidates. Working a clueless hack to death isn't going to do anything to help your quality or release date, and as the industry matures, I think compensation levels will as well. Too much money is at stake to play Monty Burns with the workforce.
Four. I don't even personally know anyone who has been in the game for 10. 2-3 is the norm, and I eeked out one last year.
It is a fast-paced, high-stress, thankless, low-paying, non-creative field. It didn;t used to be this way, bottom lines and the almighty dollar used to still play a big part in things but now it is just insanity.
I have personally witnessed more innovative and fun titles get axed to move the talented folks on the team to work on some budget title or licensed product to meet a deadline than anything else. It is disheartening for everyone involved, and crushing to many. Who wants to work like that? Not creative talented individuals, but code pushers who just work in the confines of some pre-built engine and collect a meager check.
I really want to see the Revolution make good on their claims of open/indie development for the system. Online distribution and a free/low cost accessible dev system would produce so many great and unique games. Xbox 360 is still too expensive and has too many barriers to really take off in this area and will just be a haven for ports and such, the Revolution has a rela chance to break into new territory and if they do I think a real revolution will begin.
The industry needs to collapse and come down off of this Hollywood emulation they so desperately cling to, it has become derivitive, immature, inaccessible, expensive... and for what?
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
The older you get, the less you play games. .
:)
Sorry. The average age of a gamer is 28 -- or at least it was three years ago when I needed that stat for a story. The Entertainment Software Association has been showing a steady increase in the average age of gamers for years, due to the fact that the original Gen X gamers are getting older but actually don't stop playing games, according to the head of ESA (who made this point a centerpiece of his keynote address at E3 in, oh, 2001), so I'm willing to bet the average age has risen by a year or two already. The ESA's current stats indicate that 39% of frequent players are over 35 years old. So if the majority of gamers aren't over the age of thirty already, it won't be long before they are. Therefore, by your own logic, it'll be even more important to hang on to designers in their thirties.
just because I'm cynical, it doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.
It doesn't make you right either.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who