Is The Game Industry A Happy Place?

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29292/Analysis_Is_The_Game_Industry_A_Happy_Place.php#comment58886

by chaostheory • 16 years ago

74 20 16 years ago

chipsy• 16 years ago

I've gradually got to thinking that gaming is a field that is extremely poorly understood(even by enthusiastic practitioners like myself), and that it is why it can so easily turn into an destructive tarpit.

The problems start at some extremely base assumptions of concept and focus - stakeholders will often treat a game as a branding exercise akin to a toy, just on a larger scale. Or they might conceive of it like a movie, with a Hollywood-style marketing push. Or it might be treated as "entertainment software," with a focus on having the best technology and the most features. All of these are not really correct, but we can fool ourselves into thinking they're correct because entities outside of the industry(namely, IP owners and other hardware/software manufacturers) will bring their money and their world-view/assumptions to the table, and through sheer trial and error game devs have found a few ways to satisfy these stakeholders and make something that can potentially turn a profit, even though the historical record indicates that the "value" the stakeholders brought to the table usually wasn't a contributing factor in the biggest hits.

But once you start down that path, the top-down directive forces the development team to start doing unnatural things that work against product viability and realistic ship dates. Soon, everyone's dissatisfied and it just becomes a hellhole where the team works as individuals, takes their paychecks, and "looks out for number one." But a lot of people want to work in the industry, and they'll take bad money over no money.

It's the same problem as in startups as a whole - find an original, scalable game concept. Work on making it marketable. Then you can start spending big to make a refined, feature-heavy implementation.

_delirium• 16 years ago

This was an interesting, albeit admittedly anecdotal, comparison from the comments:

  I've had several jobs in game companies, and several non-game jobs too. The 
  biggest difference I've noticed is that outside the game industry it feels like
  co-workers, managers, etc. are actually happy to see you at work. Outside the 
  games industry there seems to be a strong sense of networking, a sense that 
  people want to find good workers they can build a team with so they can all 
  move up the company ladder. In the game industry, everyone else in the
  industry is like a competitor, someone who might steal that job you want.

fmora• 16 years ago

I agree with you. I've worked developing enterprise software at a big corporation and 40 hours is just the amount expected. 50-60 hours on crunch time is already a lot. Have to say I've been very happy. Although things can go to shit if you have the wrong boss even in a good corporation.

seekely2• 16 years ago

This observation is just not true, or maybe it varies depending on your position. As a developer in the industry, you will rarely be without a job or in a position where you can not jump to another studio. Once you are in the industry, you will end up with friends at studios all over the place. The turnover and 'grass is greener' syndrome in the industry is just too high for networking not to naturally happen. You do not even have to try.

As for the friendless of the people, while I like working in games for the games, the culture that develops around the people working on games is the bigger draw.

dkersten• 16 years ago

As a developer in the industry, you will rarely be without a job

This is true for any competent software developer with half reasonable contacts or experience (at least here in Ireland - a week ago I had a conversation with a recruitment company and they confirmed that there are more jobs than good programmers here).

jpcx01• 16 years ago

Great comment to link to! He should have been the one writing the article.

gigafemtonano2• 16 years ago

I had pretty popular podcast and a relatively popular free game on the app store, and I can agree that the gamers are a tougher audience than the general public. There are bad podcasts but you usually don't see reviews ripping them apart for trying. Likewise there are free games which obviously took more work than some of the one button apps I've seen on the app store, yet everyone who plays it feels the need to leave a snide remark. I personally wish the app store had the option of turning the comments off like YouTube. Maybe Apple wasn't ready for the cynicism of the gaming public. I know I wasn't.

electromagnetic• 16 years ago

Take it this way, you got gamers to pay enough attention to your game long enough that they would take the effort to leave a bad comment.

I worked as a game reviewer and I could actively avoid bad games, so there's obviously an element in the game you made that was drawing people's attention and keeping it. Find that element, redevelop and release anew.

From what I could tell a new-franchise in games had as good odds as a movie of hitting big - IE purely random. Simply try again.

I'd be happy to help if you have any questions.

gigafemtonano2• 16 years ago

I'm in the midst of doing more or less what you're suggesting. In addition to new content I'm going to try to strip out some of what people seem to have disliked. The idea that you're supposed to listen to feedback and make changes accordingly doesn't seem so easy when the feedback is hostile or totally unhelpful.

SoftwareMaven3• 16 years ago

My two experiences in the gaming industry taught me to stay away. The first was as I finished up my college degree, building the PC version of "Space Jam", the game (oh, boy, was that a fun one). The second was last year working on League of Legends (awesome game if you like PVP!).

In both cases, it was very apparent that the industry is built around taking advantage of peoples' passions and love of gaming. Pay is low, hours are ridiculous, and respect is sadly missing. People put their heart and soul into what they are building and get tossed with little to no thought whatsoever.

If you are absolutely passionate about working in the game industry, I say go for it. But go in with eyes wide open: it is a tough place to be.

It is more entertainment industry than software industry, and, just like most other entertainment industry groups have guilds/unions to protect their interests (screen actors guild, screen writers guild, etc), there probably ought to be a computer programmers guild as well.

Leon• 16 years ago

League of Legends is a fun game - it's the only reason I still have a windows install. Good job on making the game awesome.

SoftwareMaven3• 16 years ago

I wish I could take credit (I wasn't on the game engine but rather the matchmaking/store/chatting part), but I was working with some real geniuses there (technical and creative).

Still, by far and away the most interesting Java project I've ever worked on. I'd never heard of so many enterprisey technologies around a game before (unfortunately, I don't know what would be covered under my NDA, so I probably can't say much more than that :).

nethergoat• 16 years ago

Much of the problem is a result of the publishing model - deadlines are inherently more stressful when they're inflexible and you're expected to deliver a 100% finalized product.

My studio (EA2D, a new division of EA) is developing web-based games. We get to have all the fun of building badass games without the stress of delivering a hard-media product. In response to the post title: yes, for us, it is a very happy place.

Incidentally, we're aggressively hiring the best and brightest: http://www.ea2d.com/jobs/

Contact me directly: mikeb@ea2d.com

LaPingvino• 16 years ago

I got the feeling the flash rockstar and flash game engineer descriptions are swapped...

seekely2• 16 years ago

There are unhappy people in every industry and in every position. But the game industry has surpassed the tipping point for popularity and 'glam' to make the detractors have enough social incentive/attention to be very vocal.

There are legitimate gripes, complaints and out right abuses in the game industry. But much of the brokenness in process or hours or management or etc also exists everywhere else. It is the unfortunate nature of a work environment. You do not read/hear about everywhere else as much fewer people are passionately following their output or dreaming of breaking in.

robotron• 16 years ago

I kind of see the truth to that comment but you're missing the larger picture. There really is an entirely different world in the games industry. I haven't worked in it myself but have had friends in the industry since the late 90's and my fiance has been in that industry since the mid-2000's. Everyone in the industry loves it, but you're constantly going through the layoff/buildup/crunch/layoff cycle with long, long, long hours. Did I not mention long hours?

rdtsc• 16 years ago

I would say the observation is accurate. I think the owners / employers see it as a supply and demand problem. There are a lot of enthusiastic, gung-ho novice programmers would give an arm and a leg to be in the gaming industry.

Many enjoyed playing games, so naturally they decided to into the this field. These individuals will compensate their lack of experience and theoretical understanding of many CS subjects with sheer enthusiasm, they will work 12 hour days, weekends, for relatively low pay, putting up with lots of crap, until ... they burn out. When they burn out, there is another battalion of enthusiastic kids waiting at the door and, then the cycle continues.

It is not that this doesn't happen with other programming jobs, but there are just not that many people who are as excited about database scalability or say, machine learning as there are individuals excited about games. Exploiting someone like that and having them burn out, would mean having to look long and hard to replace them. Therefore pay is better, hours are better and the environment is healthier.

robryan• 16 years ago

I'm not sure how many they have working on it but Starcraft 2 strikes me as something that the developers have been given a load of time to do justice to a Starcraft follow up.

In contrast though it seems like the WoW devs have a pretty brutal schedule in order to pump out expansions and updates fast enough to keep giving the millions of players enough to do that they won't stop paying the subscription.

Is The Game Industry A Happy Place?

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