Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/why-your-games-are-made-by-childless-31-year-old-white-men-and-how-one-stud

by bconway • 13 years ago

365 170 13 years ago

Sumaso• 13 years ago

I don't see the gaming industry changing anytime soon.

Just like actors and actresses go to Hollywood to be in show business. Many programmers enter the gaming industry so they can work on games.

While I love video games, I can't see myself in the gaming industry.

cobrausn3• 13 years ago

As a 30-year old childless white man who left the games industry after a short 8 months in order to get married and spend time with my spouse, I can tell you that the assessment is fairly spot on. If you weren't putting in 12 hours daily, something was wrong with you and it was 'bad for team morale'. I was also pretty horribly underpaid, as evidenced by raising my salary over 200% by leaving.

Seems to me the 'white' part is being called out unfairly considering the rest of tech isn't a whole lot different, demographically speaking.

saraid216• 13 years ago

Not really. That kind of environment leads to a lot of prejudiced thinking. You see it happen in the rest of tech, too: people who have the screws twisted on them, willingly or not, cope one way or another... and most people cope by reinforcing their self-esteem with delusions of superiority.

That's one reason why we have religious wars over operating systems and programming languages and tool sets that you don't see in other engineering cultures. (And also why more relaxed companies focus more on the mantra of "right tool for the job".) Since I don't touch gamedev with an eleven-foot-pole, it's not clear to me how much of a cost has been incurred by this.

And it's this exact kind of thing which lets unexamined biases manifest in the hiring process, leading to an overpopulation of white males.

cobrausn3• 13 years ago

Er, not saying there isn't a cost incurred (or, rather, a potential gain ignored) by having a homogenous environment, but...

and most people cope by reinforcing their self-esteem with delusions of superiority

That I would like to see a source on.

EDIT:

I will go ahead and say that the article makes the point that such labor has a 'dehumanizing' effect... and in such condition, bonds between people in the same situation who aren't part of the cause are usually strengthened, in my experience.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

The reason other engineering cultures don't have religious wars is because they have been around for longer than computer and software engineering have. As a result, they are dominated by old, experienced industry veterans who have learned long ago the value of using the right tool for the job.

In contrast, software especially has a lot of new, young blood (average age in software is significantly lower), and one thing young people love doing is claiming superiority over each other. And the best way of doing this is via religious wars about operating systems, programming languages, etc.

Whenever I hear someone claim "such and such programming language is the best!!!" they are either 25, or they are older but they hang out with 25 year olds and their maturity has regressed to that level.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

Two tangential points I want to hit quickly.

First, most software developers are taught "computer science" (or an imitation of it) in their formal education, not engineering.

Second, software is mostly not engineering. Engineering is very measurable. But software includes a lot of design and craftsmanship. If software dev. were restricted only to the portion that could reasonably be called pure engineering it would be a very, very small subset of mostly systems code. Indeed, a good hunk of software dev. could properly be called merely arts and crafts, under such a strict interpretation.

I think this explains some of the religious wars, because the debates are more aesthetic such as "do you prefer charcoal or pencil" than engineering "which is better steel or aluminum", because purely engineering questions tend to have very much more straightforward answers.

Camillo2• 13 years ago

The factors explained in the article definitely have to do with most game developers being childless, male 30 year olds. They have nothing to do with race: I see no reason why a black or asian 30 year old childless man with a passion for games should be less likely to put in those insane hours than if he were white.

Why call out "white men" in the headline, then? This is actually a story about the importance of letting employees work reasonable hours and have a balanced life; the problem is that nobody cares about that - or at least, the PA Report thought nobody would. So they chose a headline that makes it look like a far more marketable story about sexism, racism and the tech industry. It's cheap, but it probably ends up bringing more links and traffic.

kqr2• 13 years ago

The title is based on a survey which was conducted:

  Your average industry professional is a 31 year old white 
  man (86 percent of the respondents were male, 82 percent 
  were white)

http://gameqol.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Quality%20of%2...

zdw• 13 years ago

This comes down to supply and demand - people want to work on games, and don't see a way to get a experience and/or a paycheck out of it outside the large companies.

This isn't weird, because people aren't rational - I know plenty of people who took degrees in fields where the supply of labor outnumbers the jobs available, and thus work less than ideal hours, for less pay and more abuse than they should.

I'd love for everyone to be able to do what they love, but frankly this is frequently the result.

Also, there's an unfortunate truncation on that URL...

ijk2• 13 years ago

I think that's changing a bit, though. There are a lot more independant developers and people who are skipping the mainstream publishing/dev-studio industry and finding better success. And if they're both irrational choices, why not?

Some examples: the game that swept the GDC Choice awards was Journey, made by a small independent studio with an exclusivity deal rather than a more traditional publishing relationship. Minecraft is one of the best-selling games of all time: the XBox 360 version alone sold more than Gears of War 2, to give you a point of comparison. The average indie game won't see this level of success, of course, but neither will the average big-publishing mainstream game.

NickPollard3• 13 years ago

As someone with 5 years experience in the industry, this article is spot on the money for everything I experienced.

It's a huge problem, both by discriminating against people unwilling or unable to put in ridiculous hours, and by driving away those talented women and men who are finally becoming experienced experts when they become so burned out they have to leave the industry.

I worked in games for 5 years. I no longer do. I had a lot of good times but I'll never work for a mainstream games company again.

gameIntern2• 13 years ago

I'm a software engineering student about to start an internship(Paid, 4 months) at a major game studio.

I am considering applying for a job once I complete the internship if everything goes well.

I would like to see if the studio where I will work has a decent workflow. If not I would be willing to tough it out as a generalist programmer while trying to apply to other jobs that interest me in another industry. The idea is to have decently impressive job on my resume and to have fun at work.

Do you think this is a reasonable idea?

NickPollard3• 13 years ago

For some perspective: I had a good 5 years, I had a lot of fun, and I don't regret it. Whilst I will complain strongly about a lot of the things wrong in the industry, the truth is that I made a good wage (compared to most of my non software-developer friends), got to do some cool stuff, and had a good time doing it. For the most part, the industry is getting better and it's not near the level it used to be.

If you go into it with your eyes open and don't let yourself get pushed around, consciously or otherwise, you'll do Ok. Just get in the habit of working sensible hours and in sensible ways, and if you get taken to task for it, stand up for yourself and explain why it's important that everyone works in a sustainable manner. Good managers (and they do exist) will understand.

ardit33• 13 years ago

Keep in mind that your job might look bad in your resume. Given the bad rep gaming companies have, only people that are inexperienced/not that good, or clueless go to the industry.

I know you have to start your career somewhere, but keep that in mind.

MartinCron2• 13 years ago

I'm a long-time generalist with what you would call broad experience. I've flirted with overwork, burnout, and social gaming, though not all at the same time.

My perspective is that who you're working with and how you're working is a lot more important for day-to-day happiness and job satisfaction than the specifics of what you're working on.

dicroce2• 13 years ago

I really, truly, honestly believe that above 9 hours a day for an extended period of time actually ends up hurting your development efforts.

You want developers who come into work and WORK. Not work a little, check a little HN, work a little, eat, check a little Reddit. Living at work forces coping mechanisms like this on you because you really only have a finite amount of creative attention.

dicroce2• 13 years ago

btw, this is coming from someone who once lived in his car (in the parking lot) at work for 6 months, so I know what i'm talking about!

cobrausn3• 13 years ago

According to a recent study, 4 hours a day of focused work was the best way to maintain long-term creativity and focus.

http://www.newser.com/story/117942/why-successful-people-wor...

potatolicious• 13 years ago

You'll find no disagreement anywhere on that point. The nature of the games industry is not based on any rational basis - the overwork is cultural, deeply ingrained, and completely irrational.

People who are overworked for extended periods have negative productivity - you can't throw a rock without hitting a dozen studies that have proven this decade after decade.

This sort of management and process is pure cargo cult - this is the way blockbusters have been made since ages past, so this is the way blockbusters will continue to be made, even if it is woefully inefficient and costs more than a saner attitude about work.

For a long time the regular non-game software industry was a lot like this also, except unlike the games industry there wasn't a long enough lineup of impressionable, desperate young graduates waiting to be drawn and quartered by the executioner inside. Nothing meaningful will change until the supply of people willing to take on this horrible system dries up.

jiggy20112• 13 years ago

Doesn't look like it'll happen any time soon. Many graduates seem to be doing degree courses focused around games rather than general CS.

The number of games jobs as a % that I see advertised is pretty high as well.

spindritf• 13 years ago

> you can't throw a rock without hitting a dozen studies that have proven this decade after decade

Please, throw that rock. We had this discussion[1] and the conclusion was that there is no (known to the participants) solid study relevant at least to "knowledge" work, if not for software development directly.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4623289

acgourley• 13 years ago

I want to believe you're right. But I fear game industry is sufficiently large and long lived that if you were right, someone would have tried it, come out ahead, and created a new cargo cult cuture. I think that a more likely explanation is that working long hours has huge diminishing returns, but for game development tasks the teams come out a bit ahead. This may have to do with the fact that many of the mainstream games in question have fairly established practices and structure, and a lot of the work is building a huge pile of uninspiring content. Literally modeling rocks and dirt, for example.

azakai• 13 years ago

> I really, truly, honestly believe that above 9 hours a day for an extended period of time actually ends up hurting your development efforts.

Maybe for a lot of people, but generalizations like that are never true for everybody. Different people have different amounts of time they can work without reducing productivity.

tomku• 13 years ago

This is a major reason why I gave up on my childhood dream of being a game developer. The industry is screwed, and it'll continue to be as long as it's profitable to create games like that.

In fact, it's only going to get worse as people keep expecting more and more out of next-gen games. AAA game budgets can't keep skyrocketing like they did over the past decade, and that means squeezing the workforce to produce more with less.

danielweber• 13 years ago

What happens if the workforce walks away?

If you have the idea of "I must work on games, no matter what," you will be rewarded commensurately.

If you have the idea of "I want to work, and games would be cool, but not worth more than an extra 5 hours of work per week and losing $5,000 of salary per year," then the industry would have to pay the talent more.

GuiA• 13 years ago

If you ever want to fulfill your childhood dream, you can always go indie.

If you're a programmer, contracting out the art/music is very common, and the indie dev community is quite small and self-organizing for that kind of stuff.

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

It's all the things that are wrong with software development in silicon valley with the extra seasoning of a huge backlog of people who will do anything to break into the industry. There's no shortage of 20 somethings with coding chops willing to work 60, 80, or 100 hours a week at 2/3 or 1/2 the pay they'd make outside the game industry. And the same goes for artists too. So game companies hoover up that talent and crank out games, although it comes at a cost because it's not exactly the best model for quality or sustainability.

Edit: And the major downside of working this way is that you don't have the slack needed to truly innovate (technically or artistically).

Some companies do a better job (Valve comes to mind), and those companies tend to focus on quality and unique IP over schedule pressure. Also, indie game development is becoming a bigger part of the industry. The bad-old-ways are still hugely profitable for many game studios though so I imagine it will take a good long while for things to change.

Edit2: Also, the working conditions part is just one way that game dev is maybe 20-ish years behind software dev (on average) in terms of best practices. You can see this in lots of other aspects as well such as development patterns, QA, tooling, release management, etc.

kitsune_• 13 years ago

Most trendy, fashionable and 'glamorous' jobs are like this. A lot of suckers want to get into the field, and the employers know this.

I know people who work in haute-couture shops. They typically clock in 14+ hours per day, and regularly work insane hours on the weekend. The weeks leading up to a fashion show / collection are brutal. These people have years of experience and managerial responsibilities, yet their salaries are absolutely laughable (I'd say a waiter often earns more than them).

petercooper• 13 years ago

Similarly, a rather sad thing about the magazine publishing industry (especially fashion) still is that many workers are unpaid (except, perhaps, expenses) interns for years at a time fighting to get a tiny number of paid jobs. We even see the intern thing in our own tech industry: http://techcitynews.com/2013/04/08/were-hiring-join-our-team...

I think this article goes a way to answer why young people dominate the games development industry, but not really why they tend to be white or male, if that's true.

guard-of-terra3• 13 years ago

The amusing thing here is bunch of unpaid interns living on ramen, renting a two bedroom flat for a collective of four, work 12 hours a day writing elaborate articles on luxury, fashion and festive lifestyle.

w1ntermute5• 13 years ago

> Most trendy, fashionable and 'glamorous' jobs are like this.

Which is why the smart thing to do is to go for the most unfashionable job (or market, if you're starting a business) you can find that provides a product that your customers simply can't live without. You just don't want to be selling an elastic product, and you don't want to be in an industry where there's supply-side competition from people who are doing the work purely because they enjoy it.

Healthcare is especially good in this respect. People will (quite literally) die without your product, and the payer is just about as far from the consumer as you can get, which makes demand highly inelastic. Your business isn't profitable? No worries, just double your prices. What are they going to do, stop paying you? And how much competition are you going to get (as a worker) when the work can't be outsourced and you can't hire a kid out of high school to do the work based on his GitHub profile?

jseliger• 13 years ago

>Healthcare is especially good in this respect

I agree with your overall point but will temper it some by noting that there are VERY high barriers to entry (http://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/10/20/why-you-should-beco... for one discussion I wrote) and those barriers are enforced by regulators. That being said, once you get the necessary credentials to enter the market the gig is pretty sweet and pretty protected.

The real benefits, however, appear to accrue at the lower end of the profession (nurses, P.A.s) and the very high-end (specialists). The great middle (family docs, internists) appear appear to be hurting.

Oh, and dentistry is awesome from a money / lifestyle point of view, but it's not much respected (http://www.theonion.com/articles/local-prostitutes-eagerly-a...).

munificent8• 13 years ago

> Which is why the smart thing to do is to go for the most unfashionable job

That assumes that you don't get any value out of having a glamorous job. Sure, there are tons of people that want to be game developers. Why? Because a lot of things about being a game developer are awesome! You get a laid-back working environment, you get to work with artists and other exciting, creative people, the work is technically challenging, you spend your day looking at monsters and explosions instead of spreadsheets and forms. People you meet will be excited to talk to you about your work. If you're lucky, you create something that people will form real emotional attachment to.

It's not smarter to choose a higher-salary job, because salary-maximization is not the goal of life. You spend much of your waking life at work, and a bigger salary won't give you those hours of your life back. You may as well try to make them be something you love.

Crake9• 13 years ago

"I know people who work in haute-couture shops."

Me too, or costume production, rather. It's insane how much they have to work for so very little pay. It's hard to tell if they're happy or unhappy, overall--they seem proud of their work, but at the same time, incredibly stressed over bills and whether they'll still have a job after a certain production's wardrobe is finished.

(This is skipping over the sewing people who went to college for it and now work at starbucks or whatever. These people are also a much larger percentage of the total than the people who were even able to get into the industry at all.)

justinhj• 13 years ago

Counter example here. 42 and still happy and thriving in the games industry and married with children. I'm happy to say I have read my kids stories every night of their lives (out of town trips excluded), and make it home for a family meal 95% of the time. You can't do this at every game company, but there are enough out there that you can find them.

jstelly2• 13 years ago

I'm in a very similar situation. Finding the right company (or starting your own) seems to be the key to happiness. Don't write off the entire industry because of bad companies.

schoper2• 13 years ago

Using "white" as a casual negative adjective is weak. I can respect non-whites using it as a term of anger or hatred. We're all big boys. But seeing it used as a term of self-hatred leaves me feeling more than a little disgusted.

patrickaljord• 13 years ago

> I can respect non-whites using it as a term of anger or hatred.

Did you just say it's respectable to hate on white people?

schoper2• 13 years ago

To clear up any misunderstanding: Is it ever acceptable to have feelings of anger and hatred? Yes, surely. There are situations in life that demand that response. Are whites the only acceptable target? Surely not.

calibraxis• 13 years ago

Well, I wouldn't necessarily call it self-hatred, just as it's reasonable for many males to "hate" the male gender. I have serious issues with the social construct of gender, with its inculcation of aggression/subordination and bizarre attitudes, dress codes, etc. As a male, it's acceptable for me to "hate" maleness, and I think that's better than leaving only females to dismantle patriarchy.

(Then again, in the sense that I dislike the odd parts of me which have been bent by race and gender, and actively wish them to disappear, maybe there is something to calling it "self-hate". But it's like the self-hate of a novice, who wishes to transcend their current inability.)

So hopefully we might accept that race is a similar, complicated -ism, and it's fine to be a "race traitor" or gender traitor if yours dominates.

Camillo2• 13 years ago

Frankly, you sound very similar to those homosexuals with strongly traditional religious beliefs who try to purge themselves of their "twisted" part.

hacker7893• 13 years ago

> It's fine to be a "race traitor" or gender traitor if yours dominates.

Your use of the word "dominates" is disingenuous. Let's imagine:

- - -

There exists a country in which 95% of all leadership in government and industry is male. There are a few women here and there, but for the most part, it's all men at the top. And at the top, people are pretty protected. They can generally get away with whatever they want, as is often the case.

This country has gender roles. Legally enforced gender roles. Women are viewed as more fragile caregivers. Men are viewed as sturdier providers. People at the top of society are pretty insulated, but for everyone else, these gender roles are a fact of life.

For a given crime, men are held to higher standards, and they are subjected to more brutal punishments. Men overwhelmingly find themselves in dangerous, thankless jobs.

Young men tend to work menial jobs, while young women tend to attend university.

Men do not live as long in this society. An overwhelming amount of public money and attention is spent on issues that primarily affect women.

And when a woman is perceived to be slighted, men and women are expected (and socially rewarded) for rushing to her aid. Men, being sturdier, are expected to fend for themselves.

- - -

Every well-off feminist man I've encountered would say that men in that society are not victims of sexism—they are simply victims of patriarchy.

Why on Earth would one call that system "patriarchy"? Aside from the top of society, men have it worse in this society. Men have it much worse. Why lump the men at the top in with the men at the bottom just because they all have penises?

Please realize that men can be sexist toward other men. Men can actively oppress other men on the basis of their gender. Men love competing with other men. Men love one-upping other men. Men love protecting women from those other, less civilized men. In short: Many men love oppressing other men.

For poorer, underprivileged men, it's incredibly marginalizing to hear a hyper-privileged man display his plumage and say it's alright to hate males, because males "dominate" society.

Unfortunately, repeating that mantra costs that hyper-privileged man nothing, yet it can potentially increase his social standing among other hyper-privileged men. So why wouldn't he?

Crake9• 13 years ago

"As a male, it's acceptable for me to "hate" maleness, and I think that's better than leaving only females to dismantle patriarchy."

Please don't hate yourself for the way you were born.

Believing in the moral righteousness of self-hate over unchangeable attributes invalidates the mantra of pro-GLBT rights groups everywhere. People have told me all my life that I'm disgusting and degenerate and innately evil because of something I have absolutely no control over. I don't like seeing GLBT hating themselves, and I don't like straight people hating themselves either, whether agender or female or male.

Would you tell a trans guy that he should hate himself for being male? No? Why a cis guy, then? Because the average trans guy does not want to be considered any different from the cis guy.

Of course, there are some feminists who believe that trans men are traitors to females everywhere for trying to "become" part of the patriarchy. These feminists say that trans men are just women that are trying to make a grab for male privilege, but the reality is just that the trans guy is trying to be who he is. He can't help the way he was born. And yet, here you are saying "it's fine" to be considered a "gender traitor" and that it's acceptable to "hate" maleness. Can you see how this is harmful to GLBT? We're already really marginalized as is because of the general attitude of "you were born the wrong way."

But I can't help it, and neither can you.

Do you see where I'm going with this? I hope you can understand, at least a little.

theorique2• 13 years ago

Yeah, agreed, it was not clear why calling out White was useful in the title.

"Youth" and "maleness" were relevant. Younger people tend to be more "desperate" and willing to trade time and health to "make it" in their career of choice. They are also less likely to have young children. Males tend to be more passionate about the gaming industry.

But what is it about White people that makes them more likely to go into the gaming industry? Nothing, right? So it's not relevant to call it out in the title.

jiggy20112• 13 years ago

FWIW my friends who have worked in the games industry worked with a lot of chinese and indian co-workers.

wonderzombie2• 13 years ago

I wouldn't call it self-hatred. It's point out a glaring reality that's invisible to a lot white people. If they hadn't put that in the headline, it might otherwise have gone unremarked that it's mostly white people. Whiteness can be quite difficult to see if you are yourself white.

Put another way, it's not the whiteness itself that's objectionable, at least not exactly. It's the lack of diversity. It just so happens that the lack of diversity presently and historically manifests as a bunch of white dudes. And a great many white dudes just don't notice; for them, that's the "default."

wonderzombie2• 13 years ago

Sorry but if you're going to downvote me at least do the courtesy of explaining why. I have been polite and constructive.

I thought whether you agreed with a comment or found it to your own liking was supposed to be orthogonal.

KaoruAoiShiho• 13 years ago

They're not even white. Japanese and Korean games are also very popular.

BSousa4• 13 years ago

I as well quit the industry because of this. While I never had it that bad (I knew I couldn't be productive after 8-9 hours so I just left at the time) nor was I ever 'attacked' for it, I can imagine I may have been overlooked on raises/promotions for it.

But there is one good thing I would say about the industry. You LEARN ALOT. C/C++/AI/Shaders/Animation and the intrinsics of low-level hardware, all in a days work. Compared to most folks I know that didn't spend time in the industry, their only experience with those topics was a semester in University.

Just yesterday there was a topic here in HN about python/ruby being slow, and while going down to C was suggested, I find appalling that most of the replies to those were 'it is hard to find a decent C programmer' or 'most of the ruby/python devs don't know C'. I can honestly say I this isn't an issue for me and for most I know that I worked in the industry. Heck my previous job had me writing nginx C modules and C++ cross platform (iOS/Android/Mac/Windows/Linux) download/caching/audio code.

endtime3• 13 years ago

"C/C++/AI/Shaders/Animation" is "a lot" to learn in a career?

BSousa4• 13 years ago

No, I mentioned in a day. Sometimes you mess with all that kind of code in a day (I mentioned C and C++ as base)

jmduke• 13 years ago

Compared to the fundamentally CRUD-like nature of most startups?

npsimons• 13 years ago

There may be a bit of a filter here on HN: it's very startup web dev heavy, so you won't see many people wasting their time (yes, it would be a waste of time for them) going down to the hardware level. Try working in a more applied domain, such as industrial, where real-time low-level hacking is a daily occurrence, and you will find many extremely competent low-level programmers, who don't work insane hours, because it's more important to get the code right (lives depend on it), than it is to keep to some market driven schedule. Sure, it's not as glamorous, but it pays the bills. It also doesn't very often have the challenges of maintaining one codebase across multiple platforms, but you learn pretty quickly when each new project is a whole different architecture, with a different assembler, IDE, buses, memory model, register layout, etc, etc. On top of which you have to know your domain at least well enough to get requirements from your users . . .

heyitswin• 13 years ago

Making games is probably one of the most time intensive things in the world, and people only see the final product. Times have definitely changed, technology has advanced, but game making is still extremely labor intensive for humans.

sageikosa2• 13 years ago

Statistically, the odds are that for any random thing being done in the US of A, the majority doing it will be white and male. Age and childlessness are probably relatively well co-related, so we only have to account for one of those.

What is comes down to is that the steady supply of labor entering a field causes it to be a buyers market.

Thrymr• 13 years ago

Hardly the "majority". White males are less than 40% of the US population. I don't think we're going out on much of a limb to say that they are overrepresented in the game industry.

sageikosa2• 13 years ago

"Plurality" then, still the odds are on the white guy for any random task. I'm not really making a judgment, just trying to frame thoughts on the significance of the correlative factors. For non-random tasks (such as game development) we can certainly look to see why the variance of the population diverges from the variance of the general population and hypothesize to our hearts content.

jamieb• 13 years ago

The games industry is populated by young, inexperienced people and that has two effects:

1. A belief that any obstacle can be overcome, any deadline met

2. One tool in the toolbox: I can personally make this happen by writing enough clever code

There is very little:

a. Has this been done before?

And even when that is present, a total absence of

b. How long did it take them?

As is said in the article, management selects people from the first group, and actively punishes anyone who asks questions.

Now, this latter may be true in any large industry where there's more money than sense, but so far my experience is that only in the games industry is this coupled with insane hours and a hit-driven industry that makes failure a guarantee of layoffs.

eldude• 13 years ago

This article is true to a T.

An avid gamer all my life, I joined a game company to work on a gamer centric non-gaming project. Without saying much about my time there, it culminated upon completion with the entire team being laid off, with only the lowest paid hardest working "white childless males" being kept on because they fit the founder's expectations of ideal workers.

crazygringo• 13 years ago

So, here's my honest-to-god question.

When I was last interviewing for programming jobs in New York, only one of the places I interviewed at (and I looked at a lot of companies) wanted people working more than 40 hours a week, on a regular basis (they were a startup with a fixed runway). All the other places (a mix of established companies and startups) made it very clear that work-life balance is important to them, and that normal workweeks and generous vacation time was to be expected.

So I read these stories about people being asked to work 80+ hours a week, and I can't for the life of me figure out why anybody does this, when there are so many companies which don't ask for it. And it's not like the 80+ hour jobs pay any better, as far as I can tell.

What's going on here? Is it geographical? Industry-based? Do some programmers just not know any better?

jarek• 13 years ago

When these people want to work on games, they want to work on games, not "at a programming job." You see phrases like "childhood dream" going around, and to people who spent their childhoods playing games, making games is much cooler than making any other kind of software.

numo162• 13 years ago

It was my "dream job" to work in some big name game studio one day. Then, after reading studio horror stories and working in other normal programming jobs, I realized that I had all this extra time outside of work that I could use to make games on my own terms. That made the decision easy for me :)

jrockway• 13 years ago

made it very clear that work-life balance is important to them, and that normal workweeks and generous vacation time was to be expected

What they tell you in the interview is very rarely what happens in real life. Every company says they have a dynamic environment where you work on interesting problems for 40 hours a week at above-market salary. The reality is often different.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

I've seen this in a friend who has worked with some larger gaming companies through the years. When he first told me in high school that he wanted to make video games, I was skeptical. I had read many reports on the status of the games industry; the long hours, the high stress, the lack of respect from leadership. But I supported him.

Through the next few years, he got job offers right out of college from some larger studios. Eventually he picked a small, local studio that went bankrupt without releasing a single game. Apparently that took him by surprise, and he vowed he'd never be in that situation again. He took a job at a top-five company (where he was later laid off, proving some irony). He then went to another top-five, and he complained about everything I worried about for him.

When I asked him why he put up with this, why he didn't take his talents elsewhere, his response was romantic. He liked the games coming from these studios, and had always wanted to be a part of it. He liked the games from Maxis, and wanted to be where they were. He liked the games from Blizzard and wanted to be where they were. It didn't matter what the working conditions were, he was there.

It's taken him a few years to get over the romantic idea of working for the company whose games raised him as a child. It's much different on the inside, and it takes a while for that to sink in. I can't speak for the entire industry, but that was his perspective as I've seen looking through the small gap his life has left me peek through.

mimiflynn3• 13 years ago

I've been living and working in NYC for several years now and my expereince with this has varied. It depends on what industry you're looking at. Making websites or apps for marketing and advertising firms will always demand more of your time per week. Startups expect a developer to act like a founder by living and breathing their work. Doing the same work for a financial firm will not so much (although the full timers at my last job were expected to work 10 hr days). I'm currently at a big bank and my hours are regular and with reasonable deadlines.

photorized• 13 years ago

No company in their right mind would formally "require" insane hours upfront. But if you wear fewer than 37 pieces of flair, you will find yourself under a lot of indirect, cultural pressure.

Most companies have reasonable employment policies on paper.

munificent8• 13 years ago

I was a game programmer at EA for eight years.

> The real problem however is not that they are immature when they get in, but that too often they get out once they reach maturity,

I worked on one game where more than 50% of the engineers had never shipped a game before. Those that had spent all of their time fire-fighting the messes created by the energetic yet clueless brigade of novices.

> Many companies want to own your work even when you’re off the clock. “Here at Nine Dots, we aren't using any non-concurrence agreements, so these personal projects can actually benefit them financially if they make something that is commercially viable,” Boucher-Vidal said.

This was also another major reason I left EA. I couldn't work on games in my free time. Meanwhile, the stuff I did at work didn't actually scratch that itch: it was either huge franchise games I couldn't care less about or technology stack stuff that wasn't an actual game. I spent more time feeling like I was "making games" when I didn't work at EA.

> Until there is evidence that other models will work, and that's going to take a hit game or two, very little with change, and the revolving door of young, white, childless men will continue to make our games.

I honestly don't believe this will significantly change. I compare the game industry to the music industry. In both, you have:

1. A product that people don't need to consume.

2. A product where consumers increasingly expect prices to be tiny or zero.

3. Hordes of young people who want to do it.

4. Work that is intrinsically satisfying for its own sake.

Push aside all of the bullshit and making games is crazy fun. Lots of people want to make them. Lots of people want to play them too, but they don't really want to shell out much cash to do so. I think the end result of this is that it's just a domain where it will be a young person's game and it's very hard to make a lot of money.

Yes, some companies will be able to make real money at it, but for every Rolling Stones, there's a thousand local independent bands playing dive bars that you've never heard of.

And that's OK. I was in one of those bands you've never heard of once. It was awesome. When I had kids, I gave it up, but I certainly don't regret it. Maybe we should think of making games the same way: a fun thing to spend a few years doing when you're young and have the time.

SomeCallMeTim3• 13 years ago

>> The real problem however is not that they are immature when they get in, but that too often they get out once they reach maturity,

> This is pretty spot-on.

I've studiously avoided working for EA (they almost had me once, but I said no when they pulled a bait-and-switch on the project that convinced me to interview to begin with), but I've been in the industry for 20+ years, mostly working for smaller companies or doing consulting.

I think that while most people (historically) have worked for big companies, that there's a new trend (Kickstarter/crowdfunding) that is making it possible for indie developers to compete, and more importantly, to make a reasonable income while they develop the game.

Granted, a lot of game Kickstarters fail, but then a lot of the people who put them on are not as qualified as they need to be to impress the public.

>I honestly don't believe this will significantly change. I compare the game industry to the music industry.

EXACTLY! And Kickstarter is democratizing the music industry as well! Heck, throw in the movie industry -- there were 17 Kickstarter-backed films at Sundance this year [1], and musicians are using Kickstarter (and digital distribution in general) to get away from the awful music labels that almost universally eat up their profits.

The biggest problem in games/music/movies is typically that you have to make them before you can sell them. All three industries are really hit-driven. If they don't strike the right chord when the product is released, then any money invested in production is lost. So the investors get very conservative about what they'll make, and the general quality goes down as they try to reduce costs in stupid ways (80+ hours a week etc.).

Crowdfunding turns this idea around completely, in that you can invest a small amount of time and money in trying to prove that your idea has legs, and if it does, then the product can be made with the money put in by your fans. If it doesn't, then you either fix your idea or start from scratch with the next idea.

And if none of your ideas work, then it's off to a different industry. The public has spoken.

I'm a game developer with a family and a social life. It can be done. [2]

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/blog/kickstarter-funded-films-hea...

[2] I have yet myself to "hit the jackpot" with anything I've made; some of my time is spent doing consulting (I'm a programmer), where I make enough money to pay for the time I spend trying to make games. My burn rate is low (even with a family) in part because I left the Bay Area because this is what I want to do, and in order to do it I can't have a huge mortgage that forces me to have a day job that I can't quit. It's all about deciding what your priorities are and then acting on them.

agentultra• 13 years ago

Do you have a blog or link to your work? I'd be very interested in reading about the experiences of someone who has a successful "career" making games while providing for a family.

munificent8• 13 years ago

> I've studiously avoided working for EA

For what it's worth, I found work-life balance increased steadily during my tenure at EA. The whole ea_spouse thing brought a lot of attention to problems. It still wasn't great, but it was better than when I started.

When I left EA, I was working 40 hours a week reliably. This was in large part, though, because that was a high priority for me and I moved off game teams and onto shared tech stuff because it was less high-pressure, even though that wasn't ideal for my career.

> And Kickstarter is democratizing the music industry as well!

I'm really excited about Kickstarter too. However, even when it works well, I don't think you get much more than a living wage. I think that's OK, but it's worth keeping in mind that it isn't a golden ticket.

I also worry that the social structures around Kickstarter have not settled down yet. Right now, I think a lot of money coming in is based on novelty or optimism. As Kickstarter matures (and more projects fail) I think both of those will wear off. It can still work, and I hope it does, but it won't be as easy as it is right now.

> The biggest problem in games/music/movies is typically that you have to make them before you can sell them.

Yes, it's inevitable in any product where the initial cost is very high and the marginal cost is effectively zero. Digital content like games and movies one example. Drugs are another, I think. I wonder if oil drilling is similar?

It seems like in all of these cases, a consequence is conservatism in investment leading to missed opportunities.

mortenjorck• 13 years ago

I agree with everything you've said except for one thing: Giving it up. EIther making games or making music.

Both of these pursuits are entirely compatible with having kids and a normal job, so long as you pursue them in a way compatible with your lifestyle. You don't have to go on the road and live out of a van to be in a band; you can pick up some cheap hardware and software and record at home. Record a vocal take, change a diaper, add some reverb, let Dropbox sync the file for your bandmates to add to tomorrow.

Same thing for games. There's no reason you can't make an indie game when you're older and have more responsibilities; you just need to work with the right kind of team, on the right kind of game, with the right kind of scope.

munificent8• 13 years ago

I thought about adding some caveats when I said "gave it up", but didn't for simplicity's sake. I do still have my gear and every now and then I pluck on it.

Yes, you can still record solo, but that's making music. What I gave up was being in a band. Keeping up with bandmates, practicing regularly for several hours a week, and playing shows in bars is possible but much harder when you have kids. I also find it much harder to keep up momentum when it's just me and just in my free time.

Ditto for making games. You certainly can make them in your free time (and I do), but it's a different experience from what you can get jammed in the same room with a few other inspiring people for hours at a time. In today's "everything digital, everything asynchronous" world, I think we seriously undervalue to importance of being there with people.

unoti• 13 years ago

> There's no reason you can't make an indie game when you're older and have more responsibilities

Something else that people will start to understand more over the next few years as programmers get older: Once you get past a certain age, you tend to have less responsibilities again. Once the kids leave and you start to pay off your car and so on, possibilities begin to open up.

nilkn• 13 years ago

Aren't your four bullet points essentially true of a large number of web applications in tech hubs like Silicon Valley?

The only point I might contest for that analogy would be (2), but I think we are still seeing a trend towards disrupting traditional payment systems (e.g., people expect Facebook to be free and funded by ads).

And it's worth mentioning that Silicon Valley startups do have their fair share of underpaid, overworked positions. But I think that is slowly changing, and we are seeing startups--especially ones that have been around for a few years--paying market or even above market wages for reasonable 40-50 hour work weeks.

Hell, I was just reading an old thread on reddit--about 3 years old--where people were posting their salaries. I was shocked to see a lot of people working at Google, Facebook, or a Silicon Valley startup, with a few years of experience, posting that they made $80-85k in salary. That's what I'd expect in South or Midwest, but not the Bay Area. Now fresh grads there are getting $100k with signing bonuses (at least from Google/Facebook).

munificent8• 13 years ago

Yes, I think the startup market may be similar. Two differences are that right now there are so many startups, there is still strong demand for programmers. The game industry is actually not that big, so the demand for game programmers hasn't been as high.

Also, I think the startup scene is newer. While there are some younger developers now whose childhood dream is to build a website, there aren't as many of those as there are people who grew up playing videogames and who want nothing more than to make them.

As the web gets older and you have more adults whose software experiences during their formative years revolved around websites (or, I guess, soon, mobile apps), that may change.

CountSessine• 13 years ago

I was a game programmer at EA for eight years.

Six years here.

This is pretty spot-on. One of the main reasons I left the industry was because I got tired of it being perpetual amateur hour. I felt like I didn't know much and yet I often knew more than those around me. I worked on one game where more than 50% of the engineers had never shipped a game before. Those that had spent all of their time fire-fighting the messes created by the energetic yet clueless brigade of novices.

I agree completely. I still remember the HR presentation where they talked about how long most of the developers at our studio had been with the company. I had only been there 6 years and I was somehow one of the 10% most senior people at the studio.

At one point our studio (EA Burnaby) was run by a nice fellow named Jonathan Schappert who later went on to be CEO at Zynga. I'm told that his vision for the studio was for some small percentage (like around 5%) of the programmers to be senior engineers - SE3's or better - and for the rest of the programmers to be kids straight out of school. You can imagine how this 'pyramid of excellence' worked out in practice.

Aloisius• 13 years ago

Why do games require so many developers to work 20 hour days? Aren't most of games built on commercial engines that do most of the heavy lifting?

I've been following the Doublefine guys and a lot of their development was put into making developer tools. I suppose I understand that, but when I hear of these 400 person teams building a game that takes 4 years to make, I'm honestly a little bewildered.

ijk2• 13 years ago

A huge chunk of that team size is artists, level designers, testing, audio, and studio overhead. Not that there aren't lots of programmers too, especially in a game with lots of scripted levels and separate systems. But it isn't like it's a team of 400 programmers.

Also, while the engines do most of the visual stuff, which was what a lot of the '90s-era tech-talk revolved around, they do nothing to implement your gameplay.

Here's the credits for one of those big-team games, as an example (81 or so engineers/scripters, but only a fraction of the total team size): http://www.mobygames.com/game/xbox360/call-of-duty-black-ops...

pasquinelli• 13 years ago

i can tell you the reason this happens at shitty, small developers making low budget games: designers.

i wouldn't presume to comment beyond that though.

papsosouid• 13 years ago

First of all, the US is not the entire world. Especially not when it comes to video game production. From my experiences, game development studios in Canada, the US, and Japan have all had employees with ethnic backgrounds that seem roughly similar to the overall ethnic backgrounds of their region. The US is ~70% white, the fact that game studios in the US are ~70% white should not be used as evidence of a problem.

pkaler• 13 years ago

I worked in game development for 5 years and left when I was about 28 years old. This article is pretty much spot on.

I like to work a lot. I like to work 60 to 80 hours a week. The things is that reward has to be somewhat commensurate with effort. And as a developer you are expected to take a discount compared to adjacent markets. That just doesn't make sense when you have a car, a mortgage, and like to take two vacations a year.

webjprgm• 13 years ago

I stopped reading at: "Ironically, in starting a video game studio to fight these issues and prove that games can be made with sane schedules, Boucher-Vidal has had to put off getting married and starting a family. “Luckily, my girlfriend is incredibly supportive,” he said."

Your actions show your real priorities. How can he really mean what he's trying to do if he doesn't live it himself?

I imagine this article gives me a very limited caricature of what's happening, but I'm busy and will go read something else now.

freehunter2• 13 years ago

Being a founder is a lot different than being an employee. Many in leadership don't live the life they hope their employees have. I know my CEO travels a lot, puts off a lot of family time, and works insane hours. He still gives us plentiful vacation time, great benefits, and even paternity leave. He doesn't do it because he likes the lifestyle, he does it because it's what he feels needs to be done to give his company a shot at changing the industry.

Liken it to a family. When I was a child, my mom was awake before us kids to make breakfast, got us to school and then went to work, picked us up from school and made dinner, and was in bed after us while she was cleaning the house. She did this to ensure that us kids led a good life and had the things we needed. Her kids and her home were her priority, like a CEO's employees and company are their priority.

swalsh• 13 years ago

This has nothing to do with gaming in particular. But experience has taught me something. Working more hours != producing more. Daily productivity is a finite resource. You have a choice, you can spread it out over the whole day, or you can try to cram it in 8 hours. Its a lot easier to do all day long. Cramming it in 8 hours is harder. So when I go to work, and look at these family guys who come in at 9 and leave at 5. They get my respect and my jealously, not because i want to work less hours. But rather because I'm not capable of starting productivity at 9am. Its a completely counter intuitive concept, the idea of diminishing returns is hard to grasp as a kid.

mrcharles• 13 years ago

I've been making games for nearly 15 years now. I am an early 30s white man. I am good at what I do, and can work anywhere I want, at this point in my career. I'm happily married, though we don't have (nor want) kids.

I think the article is somewhat accurate, but I think it also pays short shrift to the improvements that are happening in games.

One of the big things I've noticed in recent years is the amount of people who enter games who are aware of the quality of life issues, and practice work to rule more often than not. It puts pressure on managers to learn to schedule properly, and it puts pressure on directors to learn when to cut.

On top of that, there are a lot of studios that lean older in terms of age. Ubisoft Montreal is a good example of this; I couldn't tell you what the average age is, but I know that it's just as likely someone has a kid at home as not, and that also puts a lot of pressure to run things right.

Also a lot of the managers these days have kids at home that they want to see, so if nothing else, they are improving their methods for selfish reasons.

There's still a long way to go in games, but the game industry today isn't anything like what it was in 2000. It has been nearly a decade since I was expected to pull an all-nighter, for one. It's been nearly that since I was expected to work both a saturday AND a sunday.

These days it's not impossible to find developers who believe in quality of life. But what is very very possible is to find a place to work where it won't be held against you that you have a family at home, and I think that's largely what this article is missing.

That recent photo eulogy of Lucas Arts talked about things that I literally have not seen since before 2005; it's not shocking that a studio which would expect people to miss funerals and prioritize work over relationships would fail to put out games of quality.

The game industry still has far to go, there's no doubt about it. But if you want to have a family, there are large swaths of the game industry these days who are perfectly willing to accommodate you without complaint.

laeus• 13 years ago

This is extremely accurate based on my 11+ years of experience in the industry (across two studios). After some large AAA projects threatened people's relationships and overall happiness, many steps were taken to improve things, such as near-elimination of crunch and a high overall amount of respect for people's personal lives.

Note that I actually fit into the article's title as a 35 year old guy who doesn't plan on having kids. I will often spend a few extra hours polishing something up because I relish the end result and because it energizes me to come in to work every day. Sure, I could make "double the money for half the work" in some other industry, but I love making games and can't imagine sacrificing my passion to make some equation look better on paper. But I never pressure others to stay late, and from what I'm seeing these days, more and more studios are converting to a reasonable outlook on developer productivity and happiness.

nathanfp• 13 years ago

Would be really interesting to see what kinds of games/benefits occur in a company that changes gears and embraces more flexible work weeks bringing in older and more experienced workers.

star0zero• 13 years ago

Another great piece on the same topic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/lucasarts-eulogy-...

Key quote? "If the cost of a fun game is a failed marriage, then it may be time to admit that the cost is too high." - agreed.

yalogin• 13 years ago

Why is this just a game industry problem? I thought the whole valley has this problem. No?

incision• 13 years ago

Sounds about right.

The friends I've had spend time in games industry have either left or transitioned to design consulting for all the same reasons cited.

However, I tend to think this problem is in the process of solving itself through the continued rise of "indie" game development and slow collapse of studio tiles [1].

There are all sorts of great outlets for people who are so inclined make and publish games that didn't exist even 5 years ago.

Developers/designers don't have to buy into the established industry culture to make and consumers don't have to pay into it to play.

1: http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/1/3439738/the-state-of-games-...

st8ic• 13 years ago

The fact that they are childless indicates that they don't have time to have children, but how the hell is the fact that they're white relevant to the point they're trying to make in the article?

numo162• 13 years ago

> The fact that they are childless indicates that they don't have time to have children

Or they don't want them...It may be anecdotal, but I know a good many of people around age (26) who don't really want to have kids

Crake9• 13 years ago

Yeah, seriously. (I'm one of them.)

cobralibre• 13 years ago

A great many people simply cannot fathom the idea of mature, responsible adults choosing not to procreate.

victor9000• 13 years ago

you also have to consider the amount of talent that this industry will never see simply because developers have done their due diligence ahead of time, have identified these quality of life issues, and have redirected their careers.

snaky• 13 years ago

>Your average industry professional is a 31 year old white man with one to three years of experience

I wonder, where was that 31 year old professional all his first 28 years? And how could you call professional a man with three years of experience, let's leave a one year?

ianstallings• 13 years ago

This applies to start ups also. The mentality is that it's nothing but coding 12-14 hours a day and anything less is, well, less. I try to fight this type of thinking by showing how others have done it rationally and how it truly is just another engineering challenge that can be solved with proper techniques.

But what doesn't help is the hordes of people that seem to be invading the industry, yet again, in search of riches and just want to learn the bare minimum. Get in and get paid so they can get out. The analogy I often use is poker. For some it's just a way to strike it rich and the lure of those riches draws a lot of people in. But for some of us it's a way of life. We wake up in the middle of the night yearning for the game. And no matter how much we make we'll never walk away because we love the game so much. How can you explain that to someone who just wants to hit aces, scoop a pot, and then leave a "winner"?

Put simply - how can we bring rational thinking back to startups? How can we convince others that experience is important, engineering and architecture are important, tools are important, and it's not just some quest for riches?

jamesrcole• 13 years ago

The article's title claims it's going to show why the people making the games are white, but the article makes no attempt to actually do so. (And, no pointing out statistics is not the same as explaining why).

thenomad• 13 years ago

This helps explain why I'm starting to feel the games industry isn't catering to people like me as far as storylines go.

I find that AAA games are often very disappointing in as far as they're full of one-dimensional characters, terrible cliches and limited understanding of anyone who isn't young and male. (I'm relatively young and male, but enjoy stories that aren't entirely filled with people like me.)

There's a market for video games with a storyline written by someone with some maturity. It might even pay for sane office hours...

InclinedPlane3• 13 years ago

A big part of that is that the whole of the game is built in a rush by people with no free time who are probably chronically sleep deprived. The machinery of the game ends up being essentially propped up on sticks and held together with bailing wire. As such the stories that you can fit in such rickety and uncertain machinery is typically the most linear. The more complex and dynamic a story is the harder it is to avoid big bugs within the story itself or due to the interaction of the story and the game engine. It also makes testing much more difficult, which is already short on resources for most games.

There's so much churn in the basic technology of gaming systems that it makes it difficult if not impossible to concentrate on only story telling.

Crake9• 13 years ago

I've been similarly disappointed in the failure to deliver a coherent storyline for some of my most anticipated games in the last year or so.

Dead Space 3 and Mass Effect 3, I'm looking at you. :(

Macsenour• 13 years ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Crunch time, or working more than 40 hours a week, is Producer Failure. Either they didn't make the schedule correctly, or they let feature creep in.

More than once I've walked around the dev people and told them to go home after 8 hours.

__--__• 13 years ago

I'm also a 29 year old childless white man working in the games industry and yes, the numbers and discussion surrounding the demographics of games workers are accurate. The problem is, it doesn't prove the premise made in the article.

The argument being made is that game are bland and homogenous because they're made by childless white men. The childless white men the article is talking about aren't actually making the decisions about anything that goes into the game. They are assembly line workers, not management. You could replace them all with an outsourced team from India or hire an all female team and the only thing that would change is the bug count and level of productivity.

The end product would remain the same because it's being driven by executives.

jstelly2• 13 years ago

It is possible to work in the games industry and have a family and not crunch all of the time. It should be possible to determine which companies have or do not have this problem without actually working for them. Look for a company with a large population of experienced developers with families and you'll be much less likely to encounter a culture like the one described in this article. I've been in the games industry a long time and my working conditions are great. It seems like it would be more useful for people working in the industry to publish information about bad cultural issues at specific companies than to generalize about the entire industry.

louthy3• 13 years ago

The reason I left the games industry after 10 years (aged 31) was because there was a serious lack of professionalism with project delivery, which leads to ridiculous hours, and the pay really isn't worth it after a while.

As the consoles got more and more powerful, the pressure to deliver next-gen experiences just overwhelms the team. Quite often at the expense of delivering good gameplay.

I worked at a number of medium sized development houses, and the failure rate was probably 75%+. Some games wouldn't make it to market after 2 years+ development, some would make it to market but the publisher buried it (no real marketing). The most successful title I worked on was one for Nintendo, where the focus was on the gameplay (our producer was Shigeru Miyamoto). Even that title was massively late.

I was an engine and tools programmer and I believe the level of complexity of the systems being developed (to fit into consoles with very little power, slow memory etc.) was pretty high compared to development in most other fields. So the rewards should be there too.

However, I think the constant struggle that development houses have to keep their heads above water - due to the high failure rate of games - means that the rewards aren't competitive. So naturally you start looking elsewhere, especially if you have new found responsibilities in your life.

It's a shame really, because it's actually one of the most fun and creative fields to develop for (in my experience) - however it's just set up for burnout and disillusionment.

I left 7 years ago to form a healthcare software startup here in the UK and haven't looked back since.

Crake9• 13 years ago

Off topic sort of, but--how is the programming market for developers in the UK? I'm an EE major and think it'd be cool to live abroad for a while after I get my degree, but I've heard the UK doesn't treat their engineers very well. Does this extend to developers too?

louthy3• 13 years ago

There's a strong startup community in the UK (well London at least), also lots of games companies, and then you have the financial sector where the rewards are very high (if soul destroying). So yeah there's lots going on.

Obviously it depends which company you work for in terms of how well you're treated, that's obviously an intangible. For example I employ several developers now, and I very, very rarely ask them to work out of hours.

If they have ever done it then it's because they wanted to, I also will stop them working excessive hours - which stops the peer-pressure aspect of the long-hours culture.

I give clear ownership of key areas of our product to developers, so they feel a sense of pride and responsibility for what they're doing.

I will also offer pay rises when I feel they're underpaid, I don't want to wait until they're halfway out of the door before offering what they're worth. Also I'm flexible with working-hours and remote working.

It's not hard to have a basic respect for your staff.

Even the games industry which I said didn't pay well, with long hours etc. is good to work in as a young developer. It's a very creative environment to be in, and most of the programmers I worked with were hyper-talented and have gone on to running their own startups, or are high up the food chain now.

So in terms of learning ones trade and gaining long term contacts it's great.

dscrd• 13 years ago

Does this apply to those extremely rare game studios that produce good games?

trotsky• 13 years ago

It seems like some sort of natural law that any industry with a lot of revenue and teens/young adults dream of working in ends up with similar issues. Poor work environment, poor or deceptive compensation, tons of time or travel, psychopathic management and some sort of age bracket.

That best describes the game industry, but it fits the major label side of the music industry, the bottom 95% of pro snowboarding, military combat, resort work and i'm sure there's more.

And if include a set that misses just one of the traits you arguably could ad tv and film, the junior level investment banking scene, pro sports maybe.

Hell, startup employee is a fairly close fit as well.

I think it's just human nature - young people have a lot of passion, energy and without a stretch of office employment may lack some of the context necessary to decide how exploitative or appropriate various demands are.

Given some of the common psychological traits often associated with officers and directors at many firms, it's not surprising that a certain number of them would see no problem in or perhaps even their responsibility to structure their business or process to take advantage of (exploit) this pool of people that dream of being part of it.

At some point, whether or not the constant crunch turnover and burnout is worth it versus a more sustainable style that increased retention and experience level seems like an unsolvable riddle for any firm thats culture has been built on crunching.

Anybody who has made it to senior management in these places has done so by being successful at executing the model and getting their underlings to work under those conditions. If you can't stomach it you won't stick around. So essentially upper management is full of people who have shown they're cool with it and have seen it work. Some probably flat out enjoy it.

With this kind of environment it's hard to believe you could even finish pitching the idea, let alone get enough traction to investigate or even come up with a plan to implement something that would take so long to have any measurable results.

Unless great results came quickly, I'd be surprised if they had more than two years before everybody got sacked and they reversed coarse

azatris2• 13 years ago

Perhaps it's a bit offtopic, but as I have not found myself a good pet language that I'd truly make my favourite yet, being a 21-year old university student, is there any other reasons of studying, learning C++ as an all-around language, than being in the game industry? The dream of working for a company like Valve has pushed me into learning C++, but I am not so sure anymore whether that is a good choice due to both the horror stories and simple statistics. I want to make the best possible investment in my future and so these kind of articles are strong manipulators.

I do love programming, even more than games, so it wouldn't be a problem for me to work at something less gamey. But should I nonetheless continue with cherishing C++ and making it the best language for me? Your replies are highly valued. Also, I do understand, that in reality, it's unlikely ever about just one language.

gordaco2• 13 years ago

C++ has plenty of uses outside games and it's still one of the most demanded languages, although here on HN most people seem to work on web development and rarely need C++.

The truth is, if you don't like C++, you won't like working on an industry that relies heavily on it (however, not every game is done in C++, and certainly few games use it exclusively), so in that case it may be a good idea to go for another industry where you feel more comfortable. If you like C++, of course, keep using it, and don't worry about finding a C++ job, they're still very common.

The best advice, and the one you'll read around here most often, is: don't learn a single language. It's OK that you specialize in C++ (so do I), but never put all your eggs on a single basket. From C++ you can very easily go to C, Java and C#, which also provide a lot of jobs, and outside of the C family there is a whole universe of languages you should always be aware of.

azatris2• 13 years ago

I really like the way C++11 is and I already see how it is in so many ways more likeable than Java as an OO language. But a question arises: would the common C++ jobs be maintaining legacy C++98 codebases?

Also, when I am thinking about possibly being in web development, then is it a much more diverged path from the C family or could I somehow keep this as an open option? Is the easiest solution simply learn e.g. Javascript in parallel?

rks404• 13 years ago

Dear childless 31 year old white men: Thanks for the all the good times!

gcb0• 13 years ago

And the studios will just flick a swtich and change that? they don't even care about better games. it's all about sales. and rightly so.

The issue is marketing and what the market become recently.

Games now work just like hollywood. It's just a matter of releasing something with the right name at the right time.

brohn• 13 years ago

As a game developer I work on average 38 hours a week, and have never done more than 70 in a week. I come in for weekends once or twice near the end of a project and I've never pulled an all-nighter. From what I've seen this is also the case for most other programmers where I've worked, as most have families or actual lives.

I've seen high-employee turnover before, and it's generally down to the company demanding too much overtime or being disgustingly underpaid. There's plenty of companies about now that understand overtime doesn't = productivity.

>Your average industry professional is a 31 year old white man with one to three years of experience

I've got no idea how true this is, but in my experience it's around 3-6 years average, though I've never worked for an indie or mega-studio, and I'm based in the UK.

p6v53as• 13 years ago

Being a game developer is similar to being an astronaut or a pilot sometime ago. Just wait a bit and it will solve itself out.

bwang8• 13 years ago

Is the small percentage of veteran developer really due to low retention rate? I am guessing it is more due to the industry not being as big 10 years ago. 20% of respondents with 10+ years could means the gaming industry gotten 5 times bigger 10 years ago.

parnas• 13 years ago

My sons thank you 31 year old childless white man. I don't believe they will also become 31 year old childless white man because 1, they are asian, and 2, they won't even take the trash out to the can, even if the can was where it was supposed to be...

hkarthik• 13 years ago

I'm curious where those of you who "left the gaming industry" ended up.

Are you guys now belting out CRUD apps using the latest web framework like the rest of us? Or did some of you walk away from programming all together?

I'm just curious what a "post gaming" career looks like. Feel free to share any numbers on how your pay/lifestyle changed as a result.

Why your games are made by childless, 31 year old white men

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