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Frustration and Unhappiness In the Games Industry
Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander recently wrote an editorial about the atmosphere of irritation and dissatisfaction that pervades all aspects of the video game industry. Developers are often overworked and unfulfilled, gamers have no qualms about voicing their disapproval (sometimes quite warranted, sometimes not), and the media, in trying to please both groups, often fails to satisfy either. Why is there so much strife in an industry ostensibly focused on having fun? From the article:
"More and more developer sources I talked to suggested that fatigue, hostility, being at odds with one's employer and questioning one's career course is frighteningly common in the game industry. That being the case, it seems natural that elements like emotional detachment, anxiety and a lack of fulfillment make their way, even subtly, into the products the industry creates and into the ecosystem around the industry and its audience. 'Because of the secrecy and competition, a lot of development teams end up having a siege mentality — batten down the hatches and refuse to come up for air until the game's done,' says [an] anonymous developer. 'Game development has a way of taking over your life, because there's always more that can be done to improve perceived quality. I've seen a lot of divorces in my time in the game industry. I feel like it's much greater than average, but I have no statistical evidence.'"
The newest games are crappy recycles of old games. Same ideas recycled over and over again for ages. There is almost nothing new in the gaming industry and nobody takes the risk to experiment with innovative ideas. That is why the retro gaming scene gained so much popularity. Especially in Europe there are lots of fans of the retro games produced before year 2000. I have seen people in the train playing Super Mario on NES emulator on their ultra fast laptops. Some people does not have a single PC game installed on their Windows or Linux computers, but wide variety of emulators for gaming. This speaks magnitudes about the appeal of the recent games.
Is this common in your own industry?
FTFC Joel Payne says:
+0 Meh
My weirdest experience with gaming has been with the Left 4 Dead series.
In both games, Valve has spent the first two or three weeks after release fixing any bug big bugs. After that they basically only fix a bug if it ends up crashing the game client. Bugs that allow you to lag out the players, crash the server, change maps when you're not supposed to, get maximum scores for an entire map even when your team dies, and spawn extra infected AI bots exist for both games, and never get fixed.
After those first few weeks, the only changes they make are ones that are trivial to implement -- very minor balancing fixes like changing the damage things do, or adding game modes that vary what weapons/monsters get spawned. None of the changes the community actually requests are ever added, like a working lobby system. There is basically no communication between the developers and community.
It's an odd disconnect. Especially for an industry that likes to hire directly out of it's hobby modding community.
May I recommend you form a union? Or maybe just a guild/mutual benefit society that allows you all to prevent your employer from working you 80 hours a week for no overtime? Just like in show business, there will always be some 17 year old in his garage with no wife, kids or mortgage that would be happy to do your job for less money, more hours and no complaint. Something generally has to be done before the labor pool destroys itself and the ONLY people you can find to do the work are 17 year old greenhorns; the video game medium will never develop artistically if the work environment is actively hostile to people who want to spend a lifetime doing it.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Engineer here - I wish I could say that you were right about engineers. Believe you me, we have just as many argumemts; however, the stakes are often higher and so the politics fall by the wayside in the face of numbers and simulation. That doesn't mean trivial things don't blow out of proportion, though...
Bizarrely, the first spat I was involved in at my current place of employment revolved around whether a stiffening section could be correctly referred to as a 'truss' (as I called it), or whether it was a 'strut' (as my boss called it). I pointed out that a truss is made up of struts, but I was quickly admonished by my boss and told that a truss consists of pin-jointed members only, whereas this was a single piece of material with cutouts in it and it therefore could not be a truss. Now, I disagreed and cited numerous texts which provide examples of trusses (such as the box truss) which support moments at corners - and that was when my boss fired me. As it was, we realised that it was ridiculous and I was immediately rehired, but you can see how something as minor as terminology can get out of hand. Ultimately, we compromised and referred to it as a 'web' in the documentation.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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The game industry is trying to wring growth out of a stagnating customer base, that requires increasing the money each customer pays.
Maybe modding will finally move to where it belongs: To opensource engines that give you access to ALL code, not just the parts included in the SDK and no central authority that'll decide it's no longer worth the money to keep fixing bugs because users are supposed to move on to the next iteration of the product..
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
gaming industrialized circa 1995, with the advent of cd. big companies moved into gaming, bought or smashed out small companies, or small companies got bigger. 'competition' ensued, which was supposed to be a good thing. but, competition was to get the most money to please shareholders with minimum risk.
...... ^n, are the reincarnations of those days' games.
what happened ? innovation, free spirit, enthusiasm of discovery, excitement, adventure that made its way into games in early days of gaming in 10-15 years preceding 1995 got out of the picture. it was much better to capitalize on existing formats, tried and surefire methods, even existing titles than to take risks with new things. everything is to please shareholders.
and because all the companies did or had to do it, at least which have a wide reach, people came to accept this as the reality of gaming. unfortunate in itself, for those who remember 1980-1995. ironically, games of those time still play good in regard to gameplay, and actually most of the prime titles that are selling again and again in 2,3,4,5
not only the games deteriorated in quality, but also their prices have gone up, and stabilized at certain price levels. thanks to the perception of marketing departments of megacorps, which decide these things independently and at large.
this is the way with capitalism. supposed competition does not end up being to the favor of the customer - all companies try to escape with the minimum satisfaction they can get away, while taking maximum money with no risk. and when entire industries act in this mindset, mediocrity becomes a standard, and people come to accept mediocrity as the reality of life.
Read radical news here
"In South Carolina (a "right to work" state) there was a story about a factory looking for experienced machinists with advanced training and offering to pay $12 per hour, which is approximately what a fast food worker would make after a year or so."
I can verify the South Carolina situation. I live there and work at a vo-tech. (We have retrained a few machinists and machine operators as weldors because there is a modest shortage of those and they can travel nationwide for contract work.)
Machinists are available because manufacturing took a dive. Boeing moved to Charleston for very good reason. Everything is cheaper down here which greatly cushions the effect of low wages. What I'd pay in property taxes in North Jersey would buy a nice house and lots of acreage in SC.
As for "right to work", that "right to compete" is an advantage because manufacturers can simply leave union states and move South. If the South goes union, they can simply outsource and shut down their plants.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Google may have won "Best Employer" in the US, but they would be considered McDonald's level in Scandinavia and a lot of the western european countries.
Except for the fact that a whole bunch of those "McDonald's" employees are now multi-millionaires. And those that missed the IPO boat are still getting paid WAY more than their equivalent in Sweden. Except for the vacation time (which is a definite lifestyle difference - most engineers I know in the US have 1/2 that much, but never use it all anyway), all of those other perks are more than made up for (ie you can pay for them yourself and still be ahead) by the higher salary.
But hey, people have different priorities. I work with a bunch of engineers originally from a few different Northern/Western European countries with similar working conditions, and they all say they are here because they LIKE the faster pace of the work and the extra disposable income...
Except for the vacation time (which is a definite lifestyle difference - most engineers I know in the US have 1/2 that much, but never use it all anyway), all of those other perks are more than made up for (ie you can pay for them yourself and still be ahead) by the higher salary.
It's a "lifestyle difference" because our corporate culture makes it one. Engineers in the US don't (generally speaking) not take vacation because they abhor time off. They don't take vacation because the company makes it clear to them that vacation time is bad. It's not done in any overt way. People would rebel against a company policy that says "we give you three weeks of vacation, but insist you take only half of it". It's done in the way people who actually use their vacation are treated. The way that you're subtly pushed to not be "that guy".
I've worked in companies where the staff was subtly pushed to avoid time off. I've worked in companies where they weren't. Guess what? In the latter case, everyone finds (perfectly valid and reasonable sounding) excuses not to take time off. In the former, people make use of their vacation time and are happy to do so. I've never really met a fellow worker, engineer or otherwise, who really just liked his/her job SOOO much that they never wanted to take a few days off.
It may very well be true that European countries overdo it. There's probably a reasonable argument there. On the other hand, it seems pretty obvious to me that a lot of American companies underdo it. There's pretty much reams of research showing that productivity at most 60-80 hour a week, never take a break, companies is not significantly different (and depending on the type of work, can even be lower) than productivity at more reasonable companies. Just because you're at work for 16 hours a day and I'm only there 8, does not per se mean you're getting more done than I am.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
“What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom “to” and freedom “from.” – Marilyn vos Savant
From my Swedish perspective, in the US, "Freedom From" often gets neglected.
Besides, I doubt taking care of your workforce, for the cases of work where their loyalty and experience actually matters, is really bad business anyways. I do know of one example for a pure development house, where they switched from 8h workday to a 6h workday, as an experiment in productivity. The result? Staff were more focused, more creative and more productive. During the 6h workday, they produced about as much code as previously during 8, but the produced code got cleaner, with fewer bugs, saving a lot of time for new features.