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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.
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)
That worked out.....OK maybe not.
Game testers are treated even more like garbage, often they are employed by a separate company, and crammed into the basement for minimum wage.
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.
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.
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.