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.'"

Comments

Because they're console exclusives

[tepples]

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.

Or it might speak more about PC game publishers' failure to think outside the FPS/RTS/MMO box. Due to the historical lack of large PC monitors until the rise of HDTV, major companies tend not to publish PC games in genres traditionally associated with consoles. Apart from Street Fighter IV, most fighting games are made for one or more consoles but not the PC. So are most "party" games like Mario Party. These people who emulate Super Mario World might be playing a comparable PC platformer if only one existed.