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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
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
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
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.
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...
“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.