Slashdot Mirror
Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job (nytimes.com)
The video game industry is richer than it has ever been. Its revenue in 2018 was $43.8 billion, a recent report estimated, thanks in large part to hugely popular games like Fortnite and Call of Duty. These record-breaking profits could have led one to think that the people who develop video games had it made. But then the blood bath began. From a story, shared by an anonymous reader: In February, Call of Duty's publisher, Activision Blizzard, laid off 8 percent of its staff, or nearly 800 workers, in a cost-cutting massacre. A few weeks later, the game studio ArenaNet cut dozens of positions, while smaller layoffs hit companies like Valve and the digital store operator GOG. And just last week, the video game giant Electronic Arts announced that it was laying off 350 people across the globe.
This brutal start to 2019 followed the closures of major game companies like Telltale, the makers of games based on The Walking Dead, and Capcom Vancouver, the large studio behind the popular action series Dead Rising in 2018. All in all, thousands of video game workers have lost their jobs in the past 12 months. In many of these cases, laid-off employees had no idea what was coming. One developer at a major studio told me in February that he and his colleagues had been crunching -- putting in long hours, including nights and weekends -- for a video game release, only to be suddenly told that security was waiting to escort them off the premises.
Worker exploitation has always been part of the video game industry's DNA. Executives with multimillion-dollar stock packages often treat their employees like Tetris pieces, to be put into place as efficiently as possible, then promptly disposed of. For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand. Some people who make video games receive decent salaries and benefits (experienced programmers at the richest studios can make six figures), but many do not.
This brutal start to 2019 followed the closures of major game companies like Telltale, the makers of games based on The Walking Dead, and Capcom Vancouver, the large studio behind the popular action series Dead Rising in 2018. All in all, thousands of video game workers have lost their jobs in the past 12 months. In many of these cases, laid-off employees had no idea what was coming. One developer at a major studio told me in February that he and his colleagues had been crunching -- putting in long hours, including nights and weekends -- for a video game release, only to be suddenly told that security was waiting to escort them off the premises.
Worker exploitation has always been part of the video game industry's DNA. Executives with multimillion-dollar stock packages often treat their employees like Tetris pieces, to be put into place as efficiently as possible, then promptly disposed of. For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand. Some people who make video games receive decent salaries and benefits (experienced programmers at the richest studios can make six figures), but many do not.
Essentially game development is now using a engine (like Unreal, etc) and hooking up scripts and creating assets. That is why so many "big" games look like clones at this point.
Experienced game developers *can* make six figures? Most experienced developers outside the game industry *do* make six figures.
If everyone and their dog want to do it, then there's lots of cut-throat competition and employers know they can treat you like crap. My relative found this out in the clothing designer industry.
Table-ized A.I.
The video game people do this because people take it.
I enjoy a high salary doing 40hours/wk doing C# and Java.
A lot of open positions.
Technically it could still be a dream job. Not all dreams are enjoyable.
"Worker exploitation has always been part of the EVERY industry's DNA"
There, FTFY
Bad headline.
Making video games CAN be a dream job.
But, probably not if you are doing so for a huge company. That's the same with almost any work that can be pleasurable, until you mix in a giant organization you have to please with a million bosses above you who all have a say.
The thing is, there has never been a better time to be a game developer and make games in a very small (sometimes just yourself) company.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hear lots of kids say that they want to be game developers because they like to play games and they need a job when they're adults.
These same kids may enjoy fishing too (some of them get outside...) but very few have aspirations of becoming commercial fishermen. Somehow they know that's a very rough job that's not for most people.
*Anybody* considering a career really needs to think through the work/life balance and pay, from clerk to physician, and do their research. Somehow I don't think most gamers ever do that when they decide to go to school to be a game dev.
I've told a few high-schoolers about EA Widows and they were really surprised to hear it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Some people who make video games receive decent salaries and benefits (experienced programmers at the richest studios can make six figures), but many do not.
So ... like other jobs?
But that's like ~SocIALisM~ bruh, we'll all slip down a slope where innovation stops and every video game is basically the same.... oh wait.
I always give younger people starting out their careers the same general advice that I was given and subsequently failed to heed as early as I should have: Find something you are good at and seek a job in whatever industry needs that skillset and will allow you to develop it further. Basically, I try to tell them to keep their "passion" for a particular cause or industry at bay, and develop their skills and resume instead. This is for two reasons.
1) You aren't going to become CEO of Sustainable Tech Incorporated because you loved what they stood for so much you took a job in the mail room. Sorry, it just isn't going to happen.
And, 2) You will learn to appreciate the benefit that different industries provide, and how just being good at something helps out your coworkers and customers.
The video games industry is notorious for running sweat shops that prey on the young and naive, people who would do better to find a steady, "boring" gig with a 401k and reasonable chances for advancement. Maybe something union, if that floats your boat.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
My interest ended when it was no longer possible for a single programmer (or a very small group) to make games anymore. When I was a kid growing up with my Atari 400 and Apple II I dreamed of possibly being able to come up with a new game idea, programming it, and getting it published somewhere. However by the time I was in college and getting my computer science degree I realized that those days were long over and games were far too complex to make by yourself. Not to mention the whole industry had changed drastically by that time becoming the meat grinder it is today.
Personally I don't know why anyone would want to make games for a living anymore. Even if you don't mind the grueling hours, crappy management, and relatively low pay, it sucks the fun out of what you used to enjoy.
That worked out.....OK maybe not.
and when I was, it was for mainframes, so the languages I know/knew (been trying to forget COBOL forever) would be of minimal use for game design.
However, it seems to be some of these mass laid-off employees could band together and form their own firm, no?
Clearly they've got the knowledge, and here would be a prime opportunity to make, not only a better game (free of P2P/P2W,etc) but a better working environment as well.
I dunno, I don't work in that field any more, maybe I'm way off...
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
This is just an indication of the market rejecting the shovel ware these companies release. They didn't make as much money as expected because not as many people want to play assassins call of far cry 17 where you do a bunch of boring chores for stupid NPCs. Games that actually offer something new to the market are doing fine along with the devs that work on them. No mention of Red Dead, Sekiro, Zelda ect.. These are titles that actually added something to the game market.
When the hiring manager has starry-eyed young hopefuls lined up out the door and around the block, who view a game developer job as the culmination of their lifelong dream, of course working condition will be shit. Because you're all easily replaceable. So you put in unpaid overtime during crunch time and get laid off after the product ships. Contrast this to someone who does non-glorified skilled work and has a reliable job and decent work/life balance.
From everything I've heard it can be extremely difficult and thankless working for a large Video Game corporation. So this is hardly a surprise. It's a lot more rewarding I imagine if you're an Indy Game designer who succeeds.
Companies all over are scaling back their fixed costs because they know another recession is coming in the next 6 to 12 months thanks to Trump's tariffs/trade wars/general instability. It'll be a bad one too, because the tools government normally uses to fight recession (tax cuts & interest rate cuts) have already been used by Trump in a failed attempt to boost his popularity.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If everyone wants to do something and it's seen as "cool", then you're ripe to be exploited. Employers see your crazy zeal, and they figure they can screw you over. Generally they're right. As the summary mentions, this isn't new. Nearly 20 years ago I used to know some fool who worked in video games in Silicone Valley. She burned herself up, got layed off all the time, and generally was exploited, but for whatever reason never figured out this wasn't Ok and thought it was normal. I'm fairly certain she still works in the games industry, probably still getting screwed over.
I'd make a wild guess that this used to be true for writers of movie and TV too. But they have a union that protects them. A union I'd add that occasionally has to go on strike to protect this.
I've worked for boring-old businesses as a developer for almost 20 years now. Exploitation happens, but I just quit and find a better place when/if it happens. If you're one of those "cool video game designers", you can't do that, because they're all sweatshops.
If the developers would grow some balls, they'd form a union and demand better conditions.
Game testers are treated even more like garbage, often they are employed by a separate company, and crammed into the basement for minimum wage.
This really isn't specific to the gaming industry.
My first job (printer company) I lost because we were acquired and they wanted to cull the herd.
My second job (storage company) I lost because we outsourced everything.
My third job (HPC company) I lost because our CEO was an idiot and ran the company into the ground.
My fourth job (storage company) I lost because we bought our biggest competitor, put them in charge of my division, and then strangely we took the brunt of the cuts.
experienced programmers at the richest studios can make six figures
Experienced programmers pretty much anywhere should be making six figures. If they're not, they're probably being taken advantage of.
This is hardly a new problem or something that people haven't been aware of for decades. The EA Spouse blog is almost 15 years old at this point and its the same story.
With the rise of Steam and in a broader sense digital distribution itself, there's no reason you can't make your own game. Minecraft became one of the biggest and most successful games of all times. More recently, Stardew Valley has sold millions of copies, and it too was made by an independent developer. You can even make big 3D games thanks to things like Kickstarter. Kingdom Come Deliverance raised money through crowdfunding and produced a title that's similar in scope to an Elder Scrolls games, so you're hardly limited to just 2D sprite graphics. I think Star Citizen raised more than any other Kickstarter project ever.
So if you think working for the man sucks, then quit and start your own company, make your own game, and be the one to reap the rewards of your own effort.
In order to have a middle class life - support a family of four ( own a house, own a car, health insurance (and dental & vision), retirement savings), all on a single income requires a six figure salary in most places in the USA.
My grandfather did all that ( a family of seven!) on a BLUE COLLAR pay check - and all he had was a ninth grade education.
What's different? Aside from the fact that there were more opportunities back then and that about 10% of people went to college (and college was much cheaper back then), he was in a union.
The union made sure people got training, acted as a buffer for technology changes, and made sure management didn't abuse the workers too much. I'm not saying it was perfect but it was better than today.
Back then, they had stakeholder capitalism. Everyone - investors, workers, local residents (government) - had a say in the company.
Now it's all investors' interests and everyone else can go screw. Wealth rules - everyone else drools.
Miner wants to destroy the local environment and pollute the drinking water and destroy the fisheries downstream?
It's all good. Pretest and then you hate: jobs, capitalism, and America! Tough shit if the residents of that mining town have to drink bottled tap water out of plastic bottles.
Stakeholder capitalism = good.
Shareholder capitalism = evil.
Working long hours for a company that doesn't give a shit about you is strictly for suckers. Get in at 8:30, leave at 5:30, take an hour for lunch. Go home and enjoy the money you make. Encourage everyone else to do the same. You will be fine.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Trying to squeeze film like development into regular desk job model isn't going to work. Once a film project is finish everybody disband and work on some other film.
There are a lot of solo game devs out there.
Just dont bother trying to compete with the pixel-blasting 3d shooters.
You have to be creative.
Anyone that thinks working for a major video game developer is a dream job has had some big time blinders on for a very long time. We've had numerous reports over the last decade about the crunch culture, overtime, stress, and etc that developers at major studios suffer from.
...are still being made.
No one says you have to make graphically and mechanically complex games.
What we used to consider top of the line video games are now considered leisure games. And there is a huge market for them.
If you want to make games with a small team, pick up all those throwback consoles and find something you want to create your own version of.
Work Safe Porn
Not sure what you are talking about. Mining companies for example destroyed much of America back in your Grandfathers day. Industry have zero controls over oversight. And the Unions didn't care about anything about "stakeholder" capitalism.
This is fake news from libtard media who just want to keep you down. Video games is a FUCKING AMAZING thing to work on. The pay is amazing. You basically just get to play video games day and night. Your surrounded by cool coworkers (very few blacks/gays/etc) and the workplace is party city 24x7. Best of all if you are good at playing video games you are guaranteed a job, no need to do university and to be honest your fine skipping high school too. The industry is a PURE MERITOCRICY and you get ahead by being better than the rest, not by learning useless shit in school or listening to the dumb fucking old folks at the libtard new york times.
It _can_ be part of massive companies, but there's plenty of companies people actually like working for.
But that is equally true of companies that make video games - some can be great to work for.
It's kind of absurd to claim video game jobs are bad, when what we are all rather obviously saying is "working under EA is bad". Why not just say that rather than trying to mislead someone who may want to develop games for a living?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Man if there were only an organization out there for the worker, like a union of some sort...
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
In order to have a middle class life - support a family of four ( own a house, own a car, health insurance (and dental & vision), retirement savings), all on a single income requires a six figure salary in most places in the USA.
Nope. California and some easter states that is true. Everywhere else it is not. My sister and brother in law made no-where near a six figure salary and had a house, car and three kids along with health insurance...
So that part is a lie. What else are you lying about? Lets see!!
The union made sure people got training, acted as a buffer for technology changes, and made sure management didn't abuse the workers too much.
"What's different" indeed. What is different is that unions no longer do that for you. Instead they take a cut of your paycheck for nothing much in return. Where are any indicators that modern unions are doing any of the things you say?
There was for a sure a time when unions were helpful and really helped people. But that time is gone, replaced by regulation that offers the same fundamental protections for workers - and doesn't take a big cut of your income to perform a redundant task.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I worked at a smaller studio for years in IT, and while it was absolutely grueling work, it was a crucible for pushing you to think creatively and pull together to make awesome things. The programmers are typically pulled fresh out of college for low salaries, but after a few years nearly all of them 'graduated' and moved on to jaw-dropping raises and positions at tech companies. The ones that didn't stayed for love of the community and culture, but over time the high performers got wise and learned their skills were highly sought after (i.e. creating account authentication systems from scratch, an in-house DB schema, system management tools,etc.). The freedom in that environment let all of us work on things that most companies would be terrified to tackle ; I learned as an IT person that programmers were either our greatest asset or our greatest liability
However, after getting sucked up by a large publisher, that spirit certainly began to dwindle a bit. Shortly after I got caught in a large layoff, however I too found that other companies outside of the gaming industry could benefit from my experience, and ironically it was a lot more money for a lot less work.
What I think can be missed is taking for granted the gaming culture in the workplace; when WoW had an expansion (or when Skyrim released), work 'STOPPED', and the whole company was talking about it. Watercooler talk about class specs or planning raids is something I really miss, as outside of the industry I'm typically one of maybe two people in a company that can talk about new game releases or announcements.
...is someone who hasn't been paying attention for the last 20+ years and sorry but that would suggest they're so inattentive to important things that they probably deserve to be paid and treated like disposables.
Sorry, but the truth can be painful.
Nobody's entitled to make a living wage "following their dream". That's not how the world works.
-Styopa
Exactly, if a few people start letting the companies exploit them like that then the companies will start to perceive it as normal and expected.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
It's a bannable offense to say this to one of the annointed class on twitter, but it's perfectly fine to use it to shit on "blue collar" types.
This should tell you exactly what your value as a developer is in "tech society", regardless of who you work for.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stancollender/2017/10/08/the-gop-is-a-deficit-fraud/ - Whichever is more true.
A union won't magically bypass supply and demand. There are literally people making games for free and they're better than a lot of the people getting paid to do it.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
When I see record-breaking revenue being referred to as recording-breaking profits, I must question the validity of the article: Revenue == Top-line (not profits) Earnings == Bottom-line (profits)
...
Quite a lot of us former game programmers ended up in the space industry -- who could have guessed that experience with realtime physics simulations translated to rockets and satellites?
This is why I only play indy games these days. I get more fun out of Rimworld, Cataclysm, & Dwarf Fortress as I ever did out of any of the AAA games spewed out these days.
Making games hasn't been a dream job since the 80s and maybe not even then. I grew up in the 80s and like millions got interested in technology through video games. I got deep into the hobby, wrote loads of half-finished games and even finished a few! One was a sort-of popular public domain missile command clone for the Mac that led to a job offer from Borland (they didn't know I was 16 at the time).
In those days, most games were made alone or in very small teams, by folks who worked close to the metal and truly, deeply knew the ins-and-outs of their chosen platform. I knew the Macintosh toolbox frontwards and backwards, other guys knew the Amiga co-processors soup-to-nuts. It was exciting to push the limits and you got to really own a project. It is hard to convey how satisfying it was to really make the computer do more than it was intended to do because you had hard-won deep understanding. Everything you knew you either figured out or was passed to you by your friends like ancient lore. It was magical to do technical work in a time before google or stackexchange.
A few of my friends in the community became professional game programmers about that time (late 80s / early 90s) and it was already changing. The emerging Windows standard and the appearance of engines was starting to insulate players from the metal (huge counterexamples like Doom notwithstanding). The teams were getting big, producers who weren't necessarily technical started taking over creative control, specialist artists and musicians started joining ever larger teams, and programmers were relegated to a more technical, and somewhat less creative roll.
I didn't see this first hand (I got into hardware in college and haven't looked back) but in chats with friends who went to places like EA, Disney, Sony, and so on, the job became more and more a grind.
Lots of tech jobs have death marches (I certainly do in ASIC design), but the difference is game companies like to pretend that they are doing YOU a favor by employing you. Like you should do technical wonders and work insane hours because you have the privilege to be living the dream making games. Screw that.
In other words, many of the things that attracted technical people to games in the first place have been taken away from us for decades now and yet the myth that working in games is some kind of dream job persists. I've known it kind of sucked from at least the mid 90s.
But the new developers simply won't believe it's possible.
It's how it is. It takes a lot of work.
A well regulated Economy being necessary to the prosperity of a free State, the right of the people to enjoy a reasonable and equitable share of the fruits of their labor shall not be infringed.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Why do you think it's now impossible to make games with a small group or solo dev?
You might need a "small group" just for the organizational and accounting aspects of dealing with the console makers that act as gatekeepers to your market. For example, the PlayStation developer signup form currently requires each developer to be a corporation or LLC with its own tax ID, an office with a static IPv4 address, and a domain name with website and email under that domain. SIE declines to do business with sole proprietorships, and many ISPs offer a static IP only to offices in commercially zoned areas, not to home offices.
There are literally people making games for free and they're better than a lot of the people getting paid
If this is the case, the scarce resource is not developers as much as marketing. It costs money to bring even a finished PC game to consoles so that users uninterested in PC maintenance rigmarole or behind a restrictive download cap can play.
Grandfather had a 1200 sqft house.
1 car
B/W TV or no TV
Radio
You can EASILY do that on min wage or slightly more in most of US. What you are bitching about is big screen TV, Netflix, Hulu, 3 cars, going out drinking multiple times a week, multiple cell phones, and on and on.
Compare apples to apples. You don't need a 3000 sqft house otherwise you DO need six figure.
To be treated badly by companies, by accepting such treatment just to keep doing their "dream job".
The whole game development industry seems fueled by the youthful energy of dreamers "just wanting to make games", and accepting crappy bosses, lower salaries, rushed schedules, unpaid overtime and other anomalies, that would drive people away in any other part of the software or media development industries.
Yeah, there's not much one person can do. It's a market offer and demand situation. Lots of software developers and artists get into programming & art because of a childhood desire to make video games.
If you can't take it anymore, you better leave. There always will be more fresh meat to grind, and young rookies perfectly happy to take your place on the meat grinder.
And you could also find you can make a lot more money too, doing a lot less stressful work.
It's a meme job. Get a STEM degree.
Say someone does decide to save up enough money from his or her day jobs to incorporate and start building games. One thing I realized when considering going this route is that not everybody who has worked in a video game studio is skilled in all parts of the process. Could you recommend any good resources for a game developer to build skills in marketing, both to promote a game to the public and to promote a game to the console makers who operate the storefronts?
Said the idiot who thinks using "teh" is some sort of stroke of brilliant refutation.
Some years back there used to be a (US?) print magazine titled "Game Developer Magazine". It existed from 1994 to 2013. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I read it at the time because of a general interest in programming and computer games. I didn't ever really expect to get a job doing it. And reading that magazine didn't really change that expectation...
There was basically about three kinds of articles they generally had:
--One was about new game hardware, software or related tech coming soon.
--One was called "Post Mortem" where after a game was released, they would have a manager talk about all the major problems they had along the way.
--The last was general management articles about running computer game production.
From reading this magazine occasionally for a couple years I gathered two things:
1. Many people who got hired to code were recent college grads in LA or Austin TX, who really just took the job to put something on their resumes. The lower coding jobs were low salary and long hours with little benefits, and they left as soon as they found anything better.
2. There were constant problems with employee turnover. Many articles were about how to set up content management systems so that it was as easy as possible to get new people up to speed and working productively.
I often wondered who the target audience for this magazine really was. From reading it, working at a game company really didn't sound like much of a dream job.
I spent over 13 years in Game Development, with Paradigm Entertainment, Ensemble Studios, Microsoft then my own company. Looking back, it was a terrible career decision. It was non-stop death marches, many co-workers had ridiculous egos, by the time you shipped, you hated the game. I should write a book. I would not recommend anyone game development as a career to anyone. The budgets required for a triple A title can only be financed by corporations, and they expect you to live at work. It is a lifestyle. If you do go into game development, go to work for Microsoft so there is lateral mobility.
Okay, put aside things like EA Widows and excessive overtime and layoffs. Take those things off the table entirely and ask the question: is game development a dream job?
Answer (unsurprisingly): no. It's a job. It's a job with slightly different parameters than normal programming, but I've been doing this for over 15 years, and I use the same tools most other programmers do (emacs, Visual Studio, a PC) and I work on teams with other programmers, I have to live with the decisions of managers that I disagree with, etc. Particularly as a developer of AAA games, it's not much different than when I worked at an oil company. A lot of the development is not very interesting. It's just code, man. Occasionally you get to scratch a creative itch, but most of the time it's just the same programming that you do anywhere else. (Except, usually, the pay is worse.)
There are some things that are better about the games industry than other industries. You might actually have fans of your work, people will find out about a game you made and express some joy they had in playing it. People are always interested in your job, and you get to mingle with artists and animators and writers.
But don't come to this industry expecting like it's not work just because the end product is entertainment. Think about what it really means to have a 'dream job'. You probably won't change the world here, or get rich, or become influential. If you're lucky, you'll work on a decent project with decent people, get paid passably well and make something that other people find entertaining or useful. Just like any other job.
A small/ solo shop can even be TOO successful...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flappy_Bird ...not a happy story, but it shows that impactful* solo development is quite possible.
*sorry 'bout the marketerspeak...
Get together and start your own company. The corporations showed you how it's done. Now beat them at their own game.
Well sure. I mean, you have to make sure that executives are being appropriately compensated. Look how much someone like Patrick Soderlund gets:
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-gave-outgoing-exec-patrick-soderlund-a-20-milli/1100-6461170/
Soderlund's employment agreement also netted him $46.2 million in stock-based awards for the fiscal year.
I know not every company is EA, but Jesus. I felt he was pretty horrible for the company, so knowing he got this much...well, it's EA as usual.
Return of the Obra Dinn, Kingdoms and Castles, all titles available on GoG by solo or duo developers.
What planet are you living on? On my planet, this is a golden age for the solo developer.
The problem is, and every large game company exploits this, is the fact that people play video games. People like video games. And eventually, a good chunk of those players get the idea that they want to do the next step and make video games.
The lucky ones stay independent - they get a book, do a few exercises, then realize they need a regular Day Job(tm) and do the games thing on the side.
The unlucky ones start applying for "dream video game" jobs at the companies whose games they play. And those companies know the people coming in are endless (endless supply). This results in low pay, over exploitation (I've seen rules where it was mandatory 60 hour workweeks, Monday through Saturday).
And health benefits? Well, perhaps you can be the poor guy who had TWO heart attacks before 30.
And quotas, always the quotas.
Once you've had enough and quit, or expire, well, you're out, and there will be a new guy occupying your seat while it's still warm.
The result is really, one should take a job doing "boring" development, do your 40 hours a week banging out accounting code or whatever, then work on video games on the side. The pay will be higher, the benefits better (although just doing 40 hours a week instead of 60, Mon-Fri instead of Mon-Sat, and no 120+hr crunch months will definitely be a huge benefit in and of itself), just it's not as flashy. But hey, it leaves time to have a hobby, or a life.
No, you only need around 50k and to not live above your means like far too much of the population does. Around 75k is the sweet spot where people feel the most secure. There are studies on this, go look them up.
If all your kids have smart phones, have cable, TVs in more than one room, bought a car new, bought a computer new, buy outer clothing outside of thrift shops, go eat out, kids go to private schools, and you never go to the library then 'you're doing it wrong'. Those things aren't required for a happy life but they will sap your money like crazy.
I have found the site very informative! I only recently came upon it, and wish I’d seen it sooner. It does a great job of pulling different topics/disciplines/perspectives — something unique and valuable here. Thanks — hope you keep it up! regards CSK vs KXIP dream 11
An UNION will stop the unpaid CRUSH time of 80+ hour weeks.
nice to see it in print so I can actually back up my claim
Blizzard laid off mostly IT and reporting staff and other administrative staff and people supporting marketing and HR. No developers lost their job. https://www.tweaktown.com/news...
This post might actually impact someone's dream of making video games. Yes, the competition is much but it's expected. As mentioned above, games like Fortnite and Walking Dead might not be making as expected, due to the monopoly of PUBG. However, before there was PUBG no one knew a game would literally go this viral, like really global. Personally, making video games should be a dream job, because we need a lot of game developers who can build lots of high quality epic games for the growing population.
Why did I leave?
Teams became too large, creativity left, no equity sharing, stagnating salaries, layoffs, long hours, working with prima donnas, and/or idiot producers, cookie cutter games. It stopped being fun.
Now I work at a tech startup and the hours, pay/equity sharing, and work environment is way better. and the work is way more interesting. To me it is, at least.
It's really not that fun to work in games. Worse if you end up on an inane, licensed product, because there's a high likelihood that the game your working on is terrible. And nobody even cares. Some development studios may be better, but not the ones I worked for.
The fed government changed the minimum pay to be considered a salaried worker to just under 50k.
It could do the same be setting the minimum pay for a salaried worker to 500k thereby converting just about all workers to hourly employees subject to getting paid overtime.
FWIW, I did the death march(s) in my 20s. I now tell the team, I'll put in overtime but not a crazy amount week after week. If our schedule demands overtime for an extended number of weeks, the schedule needs to be lengthened or features cut to not require extended number of overtime weeks.
Not going to sacrifice my health so some upper manager gets to put a check in the box saying 'delivered before the end of the year' or some artificial dead line.
I talk to car mechanics who lost their passion for cars. I have seen brew masters who had a hobby making beer, suck the life out of them turning it into a job. I hear cooks who start restaurants and tell everyone the first thing to know about a restaurant is don't try to start one.
Just fucking keep it small and niche. The problem is marketing it and getting it noticed in a sea of a gazillion other apps.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean some of us don't revel in it.
Stop killing yourself trying to get comfortable by making other people rich.
[a] Do not pump all of your best work into a corporation that will tell you what a valuable worker you are, right up until the moment you finish a project and they lay you off as an unnecessary expense.
[b] Do not hang your hat on a union that will suck you dry using your good work to offse the shabby work of three other "brothers" and padding the lives of the union bosses, but who are expending political capitol supporting things like cheap foreign workers (see: Trumpka)
Develop the talents you have and the skills you have learned, and find a way to make yourself and your work product valuable to others, directly. The only person who can make life hell for, and then fire, a plumber a carpenter or an electrician or another skilled worker who serves the public directly is: The Customers. When you totally control your work in ANY field and can freely choose who to serve, there's no dirtbag who can make a mess of your life and then threaten the wellbeing of your family by holding your job over you.
The USA was founded by people who were mostly independent workers, not interchangeable cogs in huge corporate machines answering to Wall Street hedge fund managers. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and the rest - all independent men who were essentially self-employed. The nation at that time did not send all kids to government-run educational facilities 5 days a week for 12 years to make them into interchangeable cogs with no creativity and self-confidence; that was an industrial era thing when big pre-automation mass production businesses needed a supply of such workers and it did not want them to be independent or creative except within narrow bounds. There was a day when Silicon Valley was full of free-wheeling free-thinking people who started all sorts of computer-related businesses where a person could more easily go from zero to hero, but too much power now is focused in the hands of companies with boards staffed by generic businessmen with MBA degrees and no other redeeming value.
If you want to write games and you do not want to do it under the current conditions, then you need to not only find some spiffy new graphics techniques, or some such thing; you need to come up with a new innovative business model, and make it one that will destroy the model used by the jerks running the current corporate game titans. In short: Come up with a way to do to Activision what Jobs, Wozniak and Gates did to IBM and DEC. The big boys today are making it easy; they're running back to the old model of users tied to monthly payments and servers and back then that model was destroyed by people offering software people could own and run all they wanted on theie own local systems untethered to any servers.
Cataclysm is by far one of the most comprehensive and best open source games around. Post Apocalyptic+sci fi+fantasy CRPG with multilevel construction, vehicle construction, and enough skills to take you weeks or months to explore and master.
Dwarf Fortress: procedurally generated history and lives with both a CRPG Adventurer mode and a Fortress city management mode, now interchangeable. The brothers who produce it are making ~100k/year in DONATIONs on a closed source freeware game that has been produced for 14+ years (I started playing it in ~2004 during college as a result of a a fellow student.)
Rimworld: Not in my opinion as good as the other two, but with its own interesting features and take. It generates character histories more like GURPS or Traveller or another game with both advantages/disadvantages tied to history trees, stats, etc. Characters in-game may have other relatives on-planet or elsewhere in the universe. It is even possible for a child to end up older than the parent thanks to cryosleep. Characters have their own motivations similar to Fortress mode of Dwarf Fortress, in comparison to Cataclysm's anemic NPC ai. Structure building in RimWorld can require less micromanagement than DF or Cat and has its own features and nuances.
That said you have to like the genre of 2d games they play into. If you prefer 3d adventure games or something like Subnautica, No Man's Sky, Conan: Exiles, or ARK, these games will not appeal to you. Dwarf Fortress *MAY* appeal to you if you're a fan of Minecraft, since Infiniminer, Minecraft, etc were inspired by its simplicity and multi-level exploration and construction.
that same intown grandfather's house is now selling for $450,000 or more unless it is in the neighborhoods with burgler bars on the windows - houses in more affordable towns or suburbs are $250,000 - their wages occasionally increased in the olden days
No sympathy here. None. All these people are participating in the Capitalist marketplace of ideas and selling of one's skills willingly. Happily taking that 6 figure salary to the bank every day, perusing the Mercedes or Tesla lots for their mobile status symbols. Then, they get the axe. Walked out of the building by security like they're suddenly criminals. LOL! Everyone who is a part of it deserves just what they get.
All the fired video game devs should just start their own company and make decent games worth playing...
is making it into a fulltime job.
there is too much money involved in AAA games today to not manage the whole production to death.
you can still enjoy making games, and even have a successful game, but then you should go the indie route.
ofcourse, the chance that it will be able to provide you with a steady monthly income is very small.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.