The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires

http://newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/04/the-guilt-of-the-video-game-millionaires.html

by sizzle • 12 years ago

194 135 12 years ago

sizzle8• 12 years ago

I have a hunch that successful start-up founder that did not come from affluent families would share the same sentiment expressed by the game devs in the article.

I'd like to hear some opinions on this issue. Being a first generation born in the U.S. myself, this cognitive dissonance in terms of higher tech-job salaries compared to my parents, resonates with me deeply. This really bothers me now since my parents spent their whole lives providing to get me here. I had a highly parsimonious upbringing, which has helped me spend wisely and save money. I can totally relate to these guys feelings.

jeremymcanally• 12 years ago

I can relate, too. My mom was a single mom, and for much of my childhood, she worked as a lunch lady where she made about $375 a month after taxes and the extortionately priced (IMO) insurance plan we were offered. She's now 60 and still works 12 hour days in a factory and has no retirement to speak of really.

I do carry a lot of guilt that I easily make more in a week than she makes in a month, but at the same time, I know that's what she wanted for me when I was a kid. She was incredibly supportive of my hobby of programming and "computer stuff." She was super encouraging when it came to technology and learning more about it. I think she knew it would lead to a better life for me in the end, and for that, I'm incredibly grateful to her. And hey now that I'm doing well, I'm sure to return the favor whenever I'm able to (though she's rather proud so I usually have to slip it in around her birthday or Christmas ;)).

So while yeah I still carry a bit of conflict over it, I also see it's what she wanted all along and am sure to show my appreciation as much as humanly possible.

bm1362• 12 years ago

I'm of a similar background. My brother and I are both software devs, making more than 3x as much out of college than her at 62.

We both collectively send enough money that she has retired and stopped working. It's not my decision to make for you of course but you should consider reducing the burden.

F_d_anconia• 12 years ago

You're mother sounds like mine. That being said, I can almost guarantee that the single thing your mother wants for you is to be happy. I can also almost guarantee that what makes HER happy is knowing she did her part to provide the best possible situation for you to become successful and more importantly happy.

What's funny is that us (the offspring) feel guilt over the one thing that both us and our parents had been striving for (our personal success).

I am by no means successful by coloquial definition but I remember when my mother and I were living on welfare. I remember when I would help her with her janitorial job (it was embarrassing and I couldn't stand seeing her do it). But tl:dr... She and my father are comfortable now and I'm happily living paycheck to paycheck in the city I love.

Come future success or not (I hope for the former) I support my mother's dream of seeing me happy and successful as she supports my dream of building a successful company. So do yourself a favor and called your mother, tell you you love her and you're happy with the life you have and will have. She'll appreciate it.

Tl:dr:Call your damn mother and tell her you love her. Be happy with the success that you have that she set you up for the best she could.

refurb3• 12 years ago

Interesting and well written article.

I think the issue that causes a lot of this emotion around money is the fact that we as a society like to think that the harder you work, the more money you make.

It's obviously not a true statement at all.

When you come into a lot of money for relatively little effort (the comparison of the kid vs. the mother), you start to feel like you don't deserve it at all.

"Why do I get $1M for a few months work when my mom gets $20K/yr for busting her ass?"

gyardley3• 12 years ago

You get $1M for a few months work because you work hard to put yourself in a position where you potentially could get $1M for a few months work, and then you get a little bit (okay, perhaps more than a little bit) lucky.

It's interesting how different people react differently with respect to wealth. My relatively modest personal success is by no means solely a product of hard work - yes, I put myself in a position where I could get lucky, but I still needed a hell of a lot of luck. I didn't always know what I was doing, and things could've just as easily gone south.

That said, I've never felt the slightest bit of guilt over anything related to money. The way I see it, undeservedly, disproportionately good things happen all the time in our society, and they have to happen to somebody. Why shouldn't that somebody be me?

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

So if something horrible happened to you - arising out of social structures, rather than getting hit by lightning, if you see what I mean - would you accept it with similar equanimity?

rooster84• 12 years ago

I'm all for attributing success to hard work, but it's hard to deny that a large part is also having the right kinds of smarts. Perhaps you lump that in with "luck," but if so, that makes luck into an incredible catch-all.

It can be a real struggle to wrestle with the guilt of catching so many fortunate breaks in life. Not having a mental illness. Not growing up in a ghetto. Access to a good education. Parents who loved me.

I'll have to try out your last statement in your post. I tend to ask myself "Why should it be me?" What a great idea to respond with the question "Why shouldn't it be me?"

techwatching• 12 years ago

Different generations also have access to different opportunities.

throwawaymsft2• 12 years ago

The (untrue) corollary is that if you don't have money, it must be because you aren't worthy (i.e., aren't working hard, aren't skilled, etc.).

Our not-so-logical brain jumps to strange conclusions and I think there's subconscious tension at play.

gordaco2• 12 years ago

I think that this may be mostly an American thing. This is why in Europe we have better social systems (national health, etc): generally, we don't think the poor are people who fucked their lives up, we think that they're mostly unlucky and we should help them. This may, or may not, be one of the causes of social mobility being greater here (http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...).

I've always disliked the American rhetoric (I'm sometimes tempted to use the word "propaganda") of being a self-made man, precisely because of this corollary.

rooster84• 12 years ago

You're correct that it's not a true statement, but that fact alone is of little comfort when trying to overcome the guilt.

onewaystreet• 12 years ago

It's this kind of view that is often the reason why the poor stay poor. I don't know anything about Ismail's mother, but I would bet that she didn't put much value on all his "computering." The rich tend to place more importance on mental work whereas the poor tend to value physical "busting your ass" work.

gordaco2• 12 years ago

Sorry, this is simply false. The only reason the poor value the physical work is that, often, it's the only immediate source of income they have (and they're much more desperate for an immediate source of income). As much as we like to believe otherwise, getting a degree on a "marketable" field (something which is less and less possible for poor people every year) does not automatically mean that many more doors are open to you. And spending the evenings studying, learning programming or whatever on your own is not possible when you have to work insane hours.

It's a vicious circle for the poor and a virtuous one for the rich. The latter have the time (and the means, when they need it) to maximize the mental work, while the former don't.

sizzle8• 12 years ago

I don't know anything about Ismail's mother, but I would bet that she didn't put much value on all his "computering."

Yeah, but should you really be pointing the finger at her? You really feel like she's at fault for her ignorance of modern, tech-related opportunities if she grew up under completely different societal pressures of a different generation? Even despite the fact that (with a "busting your ass" mentality) she never forced her son to get off the computer and find a suitable job?

Point being-- she may have voiced her (honestly ignorant) opinion on his "computering" habits because he failed to articulate the job prospects in the tech field to her on a level she could respect. If she was not making ends meet for the family, he would surely have a job to help out.

andrewljohnson• 12 years ago

I don't know how you got from the fact that hard work doesn't guarantee more money, to the proposition that hard work does not correlate with more money.

I think hard work correlates heavily with money - the people who both work hard and work smart are the ones who make the biggest waves in history. Showing up early and staying late are part of the winning equation, for founders at least. And even if you have all the luck, smarts, and connections, hard work is going to give you a better financial outcome.

pg said, "Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast."

http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

asolove• 12 years ago

I think the point is that while hard work has a strong positive correlation with success in most circumstances, the scale of that correlation is dwarfed by other factors like where you were born, how you were raised, and who you have access to.

Working hard is like going uphill: anyone who does it is getting higher, but some people are busting their ass just to climb up a trash heap and others are getting to the top of Everest by helicopter.

pekk• 12 years ago

Most of the millions of people who are grinding their lives away on really hard work, like hard physical labor, are really not making any significant amount of money.

Only some of us are lucky enough to be in a spot where we get good return on their work.

On the other hand, it isn't really hard to find people who ended up with a fortune or a cushy spot because they won the birth lottery or had connections.

Undeniable observations like these are what weaken the correlation of hard work with money, if we can be honest about it for just a minute or two.

Similar observations show that showing up early and staying late do not necessarily lead to a lot more things being accomplished.

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

While the two can be correlated, they aren't always.

Sometimes you just happen to catch lightning in a bottle and create a fart app before everyone else does and make a ton of money without doing much work at all. And sometimes you work 80 hour weeks for a few years and your company crashes and burns anyway.

jwatte2• 12 years ago

Except the startup worker has a 1:20 chance of any pay-off, and much less chance of a meaningful event that compares to "the rest of your life."

ekianjo5• 12 years ago

I think the issue that causes a lot of this emotion around money is the fact that we as a society like to think that the harder you work, the more money you make. It's obviously not a true statement at all.

Well, for most people, if they don't work, they won't get much money. If they work hard, they will get more. That's still very true even today. That's why there are people who take 2 jobs to better sustain their families, for example.

Of course, if you have academic qualifications, you don't need to work very hard to get money. But then you have supposedly worked hard at some point of your life to get these qualifications in the first place. There was an investment of time and hard work in the first place.

Becoming millionaire by making games is just like making money doing music. It's random and most people will struggle all their lives to actually make a living out of it, while a few lucky ones will be extremely successful (short term at least, long term no one knows).

nitrogen• 12 years ago

Yes, but the range where income is linearly proportional to work is very small, and depends on other factors. The absolute maximum you can hope to achieve in such a system is increasing income by 4.2x, by working 24/7 without sleep or food.

cookiecaper• 12 years ago

Games, like movies and music, is a "hits" business. You don't get very far with steady, incremental improvement; it's all about an explosive event that is usually extremely difficult to replicate without specific deliberation for this purpose.

We've heard about music companies using software to optimize their tracks for maximum "hit appeal", and I think that's what indie games people need to learn if they're looking to get rich. If you want to make it big, imitate and mutate the other popular games, don't try to get fancy. Minecraft is a very simple concept and garnered a large following despite major usability deficits. 0x10c was based on a custom assembly language and fared not so good.

There can be a method to getting rich quick on this medium, but most game developers won't like it.

munrocape2• 12 years ago

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”[1] I wonder if an influx of get-rich-quick devs will occur if enough of this posts gain traction.

[1] John Steinbeck

null_ptr• 12 years ago

That influx is already happening and has been happening for a while now, that's why all those 3-month coding boot camps are popping up everywhere, selling shovels in a gold rush.

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

What is interesting is that people don't even know they have a complex about money until they get "rich." I've watched many people, perhaps a hundred, go from "working to pay the bills" to "holy crap I can pay all my current and possibly my future bills with the money I now have." That doesn't include the guy who lived in our neighborhood and won the CA lottery one year.

It affects people in ways they don't expect. If its sudden (like lottery winning or sudden IPO surge) it can be difficult to process. But it is an important thing to realize that one is processing an exceptional event. Like having a loved one die or a spouse suddenly divorcing you.

Not everyone feels "guilty", not everyone feels "smug." A lot of millionaires and billionaires in the Bay Area are outwardly unchanged. But the bottom line is that the emotion comes from the cognitive dissonance between values and reality. What do you value? What is reality?

One woman I knew at Google was massively conflicted when she started work at Google. She always felt that she would help the homeless folks she saw, if she had more money than she needed. Upon becoming rich (on Google stock value), now she found that she wanted to save the money she had for her future kids education and needs. Was she a bad person? Before? After? Do your kids hate you if you give away their college education to the local foodbank? Do your peers hate you because you could close the current food gap at the foodbank and you don't?

When people tell me they wish they were rich, I tell them to be careful what they wish for.

Edited for clarity.

chrisBob• 12 years ago

I think the lottery analogy is perfect, and that is what my wife and I call it when I work on games: "What are you working on?"

"Buying more Ocean C'Motion lottery tickets"

So far my lottery tickets are losing money, but it is fun for the same reason buying a Powerball ticket is fun.

mcv2• 12 years ago

I think the issue that causes a lot of this emotion around money is the fact that we as a society like to think that the harder you work, the more money you make.

Yeah, that's a stupid and harmful myth. Hard work will make you a living, but nobody ever got rich from hard work. To get rich, you always need some degree of luck. In mobile games more so than others; you need the right kind of exposure, some critical momentum.

jeffmo• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_wealth_syndrome

gammarator• 12 years ago

This article also talks about some of the unexpected emotional complications of extreme (relative) wealth:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2011/04/secret-fea...

ken47• 12 years ago

This speaks to the humility of said developers. There are plenty of people who would happily take the sudden millions without giving much thought to the morality of the situation.

sparkzilla• 12 years ago

Forbes estimates that the average game earns four thousand dollars? That doesn't seem right. I got 32 downloads ($32) for mine.

adamnemecek• 12 years ago

Angry birds made millions. If you average it out, you might get thousands. But yeah, knowing the average does not really give you all that much insight.

natejenkins• 12 years ago

That's the difference between the mean and the median. The median profit for a game is probably much closer to your number, but the mean is the average of all the games like yours (there are many) plus the rare game that makes $10 million or more.

xamlhacker• 12 years ago

I guess mean and median happen to be very different in this case.

hershel• 12 years ago

The median income for game in the app store was less than $1000 in 2011. I'm sure it has came down since.

spada• 12 years ago

i recall reading something a couple years ago that ~800,000 apps on the store have zero downloads.

average means very little here.

euske• 12 years ago

Although I'm not making much money myself, I can very well understand this guy's sentiment. As Eric Raymond pointed out, in a hacker community, good fame is sometimes more valued than money. But even fame can be sometimes too much.

jcampbell1• 12 years ago

Consider the following statements:

A) We live in a meritocracy

B) Meritocracies are fair

Most people accept that A is false. We all know a fucktard that managed to get rich by being manipulative and destroying value. The problem is that people then fail to realize that B is also false.

Meritocracies are not fair. Allocating wealth to the people that provide a large amount of entertainment, seems fair, but it is not fair in a broad sense of the word. Meritocracies reward those with good health, good luck, good parents who are encouraging, and the lucky gamete club who have high intelligence or exceptional physical skills.

Meritocracies are like democracy: "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

Working hard on a startup doesn't really earn you anything. The best you can hope for is that hard work increases your luck surface area. Keep in mind, that there are people that came from better sperm and eggs who will work just as hard but have a much higher chance of success.

brc2• 12 years ago

I read a lot of whining on this thread (and many other, recently as well). 'Fair' pops up a lot.

The world is not fair. You can either spend your time griping, or you can spend your time living.

I sense a lot of 'daddy' models of wealth swimming in peoples heads.

http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

If you didn't win the birth lottery it's not a death sentence. You can still win. Measure your progress against your own expectations, not against the lottery winners.

barrkel2• 12 years ago

The world is not binary either, and that doesn't mean that we can't adjust society to increase or decrease the amount of fairness. It also doesn't mean that the adjusted amount of fairness in society and its rules (both laws and social norms) can't have positive or negative effects on overall total welfare.

Oh, and also: nobody wins. Some just take longer to lose.

quasque2• 12 years ago

The world is not fair, therefore we should collectively just shut up and put up with this enduring inequality? The majority of the world's population are living in poverty, and well over a billion people are entirely destitute. Lacking food, water, healthcare, sanitation, education - can they still 'win'?

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

And then there's situations like this: https://www.secret.ly/p/feexnrnpunzjadkhinaegigziy

(HN auto-kills secret.ly submissions, but I'm willing to bet this will be a top story next week when verifiable details emerge.)

EGreg2• 12 years ago

Guys winning is relative to the game you play. Do you really think every game is going to be fair?

In the games which everyone MUST play - healthcare, food, shelter - there should be a minimum safety net for ALL. This can be achieved using Basic Income.

But fairness? What exactly does that mean? At the end of the day those who do better in the game will get a better reward and maybe do better in the future etc. Is this because they had more "talent"? Or got more lucky? What is fairness here?

At the end of the day, people want to be happy and healthy.

ACow_Adonis2• 12 years ago

While I agree with Paul Graham about a lot of things, its worth pointing out that the man's wikipedia page says he was born (in the US, sorry, in the UK, my bad), went to Cornell where he graduated at 22, then practically straight on to Harvard to do masters, and then a PhD, and is primarily noted for being rich because he was bought out by Yahoo. Something that cannot happen for the majority of people, merit or no, and if that black swan didn't happen for him, i imagine we'd have a significantly different opinion of him. Indeed, who is to say that Yahoo didn't make a complete mistake? We'll never know i guess because we can never see the opportunity costs of alternate futures we haven't experienced.

While its possible to end up being rich if you didn't win the birth lottery, its pretty obvious Paul Graham did win it, and you'd have to be numerically or statistically illiterate to not realize that where you start the game is basically the most powerful predictor of both riches and poverty...

Frankly, i wish we could just get over this nonsense of equating extremes of wealth and merit, since there seems to be such little empirical evidence of how to equate the two, or agreement on what merit even is...

One thing that does seem empirically obvious though. Rich people aren't "individually responsible" for wealth themselves. No one has walked out of the amazon forest in a loin cloth and already been a billionaire because of how much wealth they were able to create while there by themselves...

/no offense intended to Paul Graham, he was just used in the example, but from reading his essays I'm guessing he's not terribly insecure :P

koonsolo• 12 years ago

If you can read and post on Hacker News, you've already won the birth lottery. Some babies are born in North Korean prison camps. If you live in the western world are handy with technology, you definitely won the birth lottery.

bluekeybox4• 12 years ago

Philosophical question (don't take offense, please):

Why should we be rewarding "unlucky" gametes?

Please note that I don't consider the likely answer "because they have something useful to contribute to society" as a good one because it assumes that one individual mind (with all its hopes and biases) can comprehend what is really good for society in the long run (think thousands or tens of thousands of years).

barrkel2• 12 years ago

ISTM you're approaching a social Darwinist (i.e. 20th century fascist) perspective there.

Take your philosophical angle: do you think society is better off in the long run for having had Socrates, Plato, Aristotle?

How many unlucky Aristotles are we wasting in poverty in Africa?

I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Which "one individual mind" is comprehending, and what is it doing with this comprehension (is it a judge)? Why is tens of thousands of years important - is that because you explicitly want to discount intelligence and knowledge, and only look at the biological ramifications? By that metric, humans might be better off if we wiped out all mammals and devolved into flowers - you haven't established what good even means (it cannot be survival, since that fails Hume's is/ought rule).

rhizome• 12 years ago

Consider a different angle: can luck be created for others? Is it already? Is there a benefit in expanding the amount of luck in the world? Consider the possibility that a subtext of a lot of these discussions is the hoarding of luck.

tim3332• 12 years ago

If by 'rewarding "unlucky" gametes' you mean helping out the less bright and similar, we do it because it's nice and most people prefer it that way. An alternative of weeding out the unlucky gametes was tried by Hitler but proved unpopular.

anatari• 12 years ago

These things aren't binary. I believe the USA is more meritocratic than it's not. Also depends on what you define as merit. Is having capital a merit? In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility.

B) Yes, meritocracies are not equal by definition, but again, I think it is more fair than not. Fair does not mean equal, it means being "thought to be right" so it will depend on each person's morality. I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.

quasque2• 12 years ago

I guess you're thinking of an unlikely "Harrison Bergeron" type of scenario. But if such a world was instead achieved instead via highly advanced medicine and universal access to health care, then why not? I would consider that a best case scenario for humanity's future.

loup-vaillant2• 12 years ago

* In the eyes of the economy anything that has utility has merit, and capital certainly has very high utility.*

Depends on your utility function. Capital can certainly prove very useful for whoever is wilding it, but the near-edge of this sword can easily cut us when the wielder happens to be a sadistic psychopath. Or when the power of money corrupts the wielder. Or when the costs of building that capital (externalities such as pollution, rip-offs, lay-offs…) outweigh any later benefit…

Fair […] [depends] on each person's morality.

Luckily, we humans appear to have a fairly stable morality across individuals. (There are psychological experiments on moral dilemmas, and as far as I know, they indicate we agree on most of the important things. Though there are some "off-switches" in our moral systems —religion, "following orders"…)

* I for one, certainly do not want to live in a world where good health has no advantages over bad health, even if I was unhealthy.*

There are two aspects you need to keep track of. On the one hand, the absolute advantage, and on the other, the comparative advantage.

Height for instance is a comparative advantage. We tend to look up to taller people, merely because they are taller. So they're more followed, they "get all the girls", better jobs, and so on. But if everyone was taller, it wouldn't change a thing. That's a purely comparative advantage.

Health on the other hand has an absolute component. If we were suddenly immune to all diseases, the world would be a significantly better place.

In other words, you wouldn't care if everyone was taller, but you would like everyone to be healthy.

FLUX-YOU• 12 years ago

There was a blog post here recently that I can't find. It spoke about how someone starting from the bottom of the labor pool and getting promotions to middle management. The blog made the analogy that he'd climbed a mountain from the base to a certain height.

In another example, there's another person born with access to wealth, connections, and high-quality education. This one can reach the peak much more easily because he started higher on the mountain, but in both examples, the same amount of 'distance' was covered.

The second example could easily find a job as middle management and just coast through life. That's not really impressive given his starting conditions. He hasn't really moved much on the mountain if he decides to do this (maybe even going backwards).

In a meritocracy, the praise for this absolute progress is lost because the goal posts on the mountain are more-or-less sticky, slowly pushed higher as technology and social advances moves us towards bigger accomplishments. Also, the slope of the mountain is steeper when it's closer to the earth, which is often shaped by the powerful.

No one will likely give you a higher salary despite that you struggled through awful jobs, tight budgets, and many other inconveniences of not having wealth. They don't care how you acquired the 'skills' you have, as long as you have them.

This is fairly obvious stuff, but a meritocracy that ignores this other dimension of merit really irks me. America in particular (only because I live here) is a society that really doesn't reward this other dimension of effort but continues to use the feel-good narrative of hard work and long hours for whatever purposes.

Of course I'd have a completely different view on American meritocracy if we were in a real post-scarcity world.

CJefferson• 12 years ago

Look at many articles, including this one: http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america...

I'm afraid the USA is much less meritocratic than Europe. In the USA, the class into which you are born is a more important factor in where you will end up than it is in Europe (which I realise is the opposite to most people's belief).

loup-vaillant2• 12 years ago

Nitpick: your quote about "the worst form of government" generally assumes we're living in a democracy. But the people don't rule. Money does. So it's not a democracy.

Or, the definition of the word changed, and 90%+ of the people still uttering it haven't got the memo. (I have few kind words for those who have.)

username2232• 12 years ago

But the people don't rule. Money does.

That sounds like Meritocracy 2.0.

kartman• 12 years ago

I like to think what we value drives our day to day actions. Often, the rewards for those actions are along another dimension and independent of your values.

If we are lucky enough to line up our values and the rewards we get for our actions, that might be a happy life :).

In this case, I speculate the guy wanted to build something fun, the reward came in $, so there is angst of values driving the action vs the reward of the action. It's great he is so aware of it though.

In a path dependent process like life, I feel a good way to measure yourself is % increase over your former self, along any dimension and quantification you see fit.

bane• 12 years ago

Meritocracies are not fair.

True, for a meritocracy to be fair implies there is a fair arbiter. In absence of a fair arbiter people use something else as a proxy, money is typical.

narrator• 12 years ago

The system isn't a democracy or a meritocracy, it's the system with all its ugliness, obfuscation, ambiguity, complexity and pettiness that comes with it being composed of lots of people seeking their own interests. Stop trying to turn it into an abstract philosophical concept. Just deal with it as best as you can, and if you really understand it well or just let dumb luck lead you down the right path you might even be able to hack it like the guy in this story.

WalterBright2• 12 years ago

Hard work actually has very little to do with success. Effective work is what matters.

marincounty2• 12 years ago

Who you know, and a wealthy father will take you far in life. This is Always conveniently left out of the speeches. I guess out of some kind of denial. i've only heard one wealthy person publicly admit his wealth and opportunities in life was because of their father. Yea, there's a reason the wealthy stay rich--generation after generation. The man who spoke the truth was George Soros. Growing up in Marin I have seen the process first hand. If you are a poor kid trying to make it in America, keep your wealthy friends close, if you can stomach it--I couldn't. I guess today it's called networking. Ugh!

ekianjo5• 12 years ago

Meritocracies reward those with good health, good luck, good parents who are encouraging, and the lucky gamete club who have high intelligence or exceptional physical skills.

I wonder what's the good luck doing in the middle of your argument... but it's plain not true. I know a ton of smart people who didn't end up becoming widely successful nor rich once they entered the job market (or tried to create something on their own). If at all, who YOU KNOW and relate to is more important than your own skills, that's why even dumbasses from university were able to get great jobs, because they were great at socializing and making the network work for them, while their own skills at doing anything were actually very poor.

And that's fair. Even people who are not highly intelligent can make it to the top of society (look at politicians, hehe). Look at all the immigrants from different countries who actually ended up being successful after starting lower than anyone else in society.

And I'm not sure what is your definition of fair. There are some people who assume stuff is not fair when they don't get their share of the cake at every party. That's not what fair means in a broad sense.

Crito• 12 years ago

If everyone exceeds to their full potential, then those with greater potential will see greater success. That seems problematic to you, but what are the alternatives?

Those with less potential exceeding beyond there potential is nonsensical. If that happens, it only means that you incorrectly estimated their potential in the first place.

Alternatively if we limit success such that those with the most potential can never realize the full extent of their potential, how is that fair? Those people only get one life, you should not deprive them of their ability to live it to their fullest.

ericd2• 12 years ago

I've always liked this quote from Enemy at the Gates (set in the USSR during WW2):

I've been such a fool, Vassili. Man will always be a man. There is no new man. We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbour. But there's always something to envy. A smile, a friendship, something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world, even a Soviet one, there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts, poor in gifts. Rich in love, poor in love.

duaakshay2• 12 years ago

Expanding on: "Meritocracies are like democracy: "the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.""

Assuming the goal of any system of government (e.g., democracy) or marketplace (e.g., meritocracy for society, opportunity etc.) is the advancement/ progress, a meritocracy fails where the value it attaches to certain events/ attributes is flawed. It rewards something more than it contributes to progress, and insufficiently rewards something that brings greater value.

Bringing it back to the original post, I have often shared the opinion that currently providing entertainment, is rewarded more than it deserves in the current state of our meritocracy. One could contribute more to the advancement of society e.g., by improving energy efficiency but the person would not really be rewarded as disproportionately for doing so.

I find it sad therefore that so many smart people are driven to game development and not solve other more pressing problems. Or probably that society currently attributes so much value to entertainment.

ekianjo5• 12 years ago

I find it sad therefore that so many smart people are driven to game development and not solve other more pressing problems. Or probably that society currently attributes so much value to entertainment.

Nobody is driven to game development, it's an individual choice. And your perspective that there are more pressing problems is an illusion. The more pressing problems are from your own point of view. From someone else's, making a living may be their top pressing problem before caring about anything else. And there are people who are genuinely good at making games, and they should keep doing it as long as they can bring good games on the market, because it benefits gamers as well. Gamers don't buy games to throw their time and money away, they do it also because they have fun with it, it stimulates them, makes them excited or relaxed, or in other words make them live in more ways than they would usually live. Not talking about flappy bird here, but there's a number of games that have depth and where you learn stuff by playing that develop your intellect as well.

Entertainment is important, because for most people, daily work is NOT entertaining nor fulfilling.

VMG• 12 years ago

It starts even earlier

A-1) There is such a thing as "fair"

baddox• 12 years ago

For an argument that relies so much on the word "fair," you should really start by defining it. Does "fair" mean equal? Equality of opportunity? Equality of results?

bildung• 12 years ago

The problem is that people then fail to realize that B is also false.

Indeed. Interestingly, the term meritocracy also had a negative meaning when it was coined in the 1950s: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy#Etymology

That meritocracy is interpreted in a positive way is a relativly recent phenomenon.

ssully• 12 years ago

Not sure if this happens to many people who are well immersed in the tech industry now, but I have had my future career reduced to just "sitting at a desk all day" by friends going into more "labor" intensive careers. They constantly bring it up as something they would never want to do because it sounds boring. This also leads to some resentment from them when I have had a steady paid internship since my sophomore year of college, while all they have gotten is unpaid internships or nothing at all.

I personally have never let this bother me because I know what goes into my work and I know how difficult it can be. Despite that I do believe those stigmas attached to my job from friends could creep in on me if I were in a bad place in my life, or maybe even in an excellent financial situation like many of the devs in this article.

It's

jwatte2• 12 years ago

That article has terrible fact checking. Braid being the first indie success? How about "Doom"? Games having questionable moral and artistic value? Would you ask the same thing about a TV show? The article at the same time got out wrong, and said nothing I thought was worth saying.

eropple• 12 years ago

The modern indie "movement" is largely defined as being a reaction to the large, corporatized state of game development around when--wait for it--Braid came out. So using that as a signpost is both valid and sensical.

And many games have questionable moral and artistic value. Maybe even most. That makes the ones that reach past that so wonderful.

marincounty2• 12 years ago

They shouldn't feel guilty, but if thy were hired by their friend in the early 2000's, with no programming experience, and the friends father set up the Everything; Don't act like you were the Horatio Alger of the Computer industry. I remember a whole lot of drinking, not much programming, and a large company buying your company out. The company looked at your company and shut it down. My real agrivation is this "friend" don't tell me what a cake walk it was back then(he made it out like they were all geniuses)--yes, when I found out the real scoop, I was a little surprised he didn't ever come clean with me. The problem was I gave this dude a fair amout of money when his family pretty much cut him off, and we were all at the age when we were looking for a little help.(The dude was always broke whenever we did anything.) I'm not bitter, but just surprised. I guess he was trying to impress his girlfriend with all the genius stuff?

notastartup• 12 years ago

How do you replicate such an overnight success with games? What is the most common trait for such titles? It just sheer luck of the draw?

CmonDev2• 12 years ago

A lot of quality and a bit of innovation for indies - craft is not agile. Personal brand helps. Marketing for those with money.

noname123• 12 years ago

I think it has to do with the cognitive dissonance between society's judgement onto individuals to amass wealth and that individual's sense of personal fulfillment. Suppose you're an immigrant who won the H1B lottery to come to US from Nepal and earn 10-20x the notional amount of income you'd at home, way more than your parents. Would you be happy?

Like the immigrant, children of the families whose mom's earned only $20K was launched from their socio-economicsphere to another one, the millionaire and above and one citizen in the elite citizenry of one million. Like the immigrant, the children of suddenly acquired wealth still identify the values of his/her original "homeland," values such as humility and hard work instead of vanities and the weariness of those who have had a luxury to be "anxious" about self-fulfillment.

The immigrants will not find a sense of belonging, a sense of even accomplishment in the new land. Strangely, they find themselves bewildered as their families and the mantras of what they've been reciting all their lives all have touted as the "touchstone" of their journey. Now that they've arrived, they feel first elated, then slight flatlined, then keeping up the appearances and confused and then cheated and robbed.

We've been telling ourselves that starting that startup, taking that job offer, going that school will enable us to have the X: the money, the respect, the cachet, the X and only after X, we'll be whole and then we'll really do the Y, what we really want to do. Or we lock ourselves in a mental prison, disavowing what society have imposed on us regarding X and paint a black & white picture of us pursuing Y and the man forcing X on our throat.

But why do we not consider ourselves whole? That is the question we push to the back of my mind chasing the X's and Y's of the day in an attempt to make up for the feeling of incompleteness (like a snake devouring its tail).

sizzle8• 12 years ago

I often go down these paths of reasoning, then end up questioning my existence and realizing how short life truly is. This keeps me from dwelling too much on unavoidable situations in the day-to-day.

I have experienced the phenomenon of "launching" into a higher socio-economic sphere, being a first generation born in the US. Once I realized my parents could never relate and that they provided this opportunity for me to surpass their standard of living, the money stopped mattering as much as the time I spent with my parents fleeting existence.

I would live with the lifelong regret of chasing more money over helping my parents in their last stages of their lives. That's why I chose to stay somewhat local and take care of them, a nursing home would never even begin to cross my mind.

I owe my successes in life to their hard work, and it makes me feel complete to make sure they never have to suffer through that stress of providing again. I often wonder what it's like with friends that get kicked out at 18 and have to fend for themselves. Interesting dichotomy.

enowbi• 12 years ago

This story encapsulates the complexities of the human nature. For every individual with guilt about his new-found wealth there at least two on the other extreme who would loose no sleep over it and sometimes even if the wealth is ill-gotten.

drawkbox• 12 years ago

Games, like comic strips and a good laugh, are crucial to keeping people happy. There is lots of value to what games bring for education and allowing a person to get lost in fun for a few moments. Games that bring joy should enrich a developer that brings it.

It is amazing how things have changed though, he wouldn't have gotten rich even 10 years ago as there would have been no outlet. That shows the importance of the new industries and how the money is somewhat actually going to creators, where before they create and come away with nothing.

cdcarter• 12 years ago

If you've suddenly or not so suddenly come into more money than you need for your day-to-day lifestyle, I am more than willing to help you find a not-for-profit hunger relief, education, or arts organization in your local community.

It can be hard to find not-for-profits that have good administrations and align with your values. Working in the industry has helped me identify them, plus I know quite a few areas of the US from having lived there. I'm happy to share any expertise I may have to help you find a public charity in your community worth supporting. Email is in my profile.

eeeficus• 12 years ago

OK give me the money and I'll deal with the guilt!

thelogos• 12 years ago

I can't really relate to how these guys feel because I've never been that rich but I can definitely relate to some of that guilt that they're speaking of, watching my own mother wake up every morning to slave away in a factory.

Just travel around, go to SE Asia for example and look around. You'll see little 6 years old kids selling chewing gum and bottled water at the bus station. I really can't tell you how I feel seeing this day after day.

Little kids should be happy. They should be playing with their friends and going to school. Not selling lottery tickets and chewing gum at a bus stop.

When I was young, I went to school with many kids like this. Most of them drop out because their parents couldn't pay for tution and books.

While I'm not anywhere close to rich, I might as well be Bill Gates compared to these kids.

So I wonder to myself, why should I have all this while they have nothing? The guilt plays itself on many levels. When I feel like I'm slacking off, I think about my mother. I think about all those poor kids.

I've been given so much, yet I'm still not good enough to take full advantage of it.

I hope that one day if I ever become rich, I won't be so delusional as to think that that a huge part of success isn't just luck.

For some reason, the older I get, the more I keep dwelling on the fact that life is incredibly shitty and unfair to 99% of the people out there. Strange, whereas many people I know instead look at their richer peers and wonder, why shouldn't I have more?

sizzle8• 12 years ago

I share this sentiment expressed in your post, coming from a similar upbringing. If we met at work, I'd imagine that we would quickly bond over the fact of having a similar outlook of the world we live in.

My parents slaved away working all their lives similarly, and made a point to remind me of these children in their home country that have no chance of living a life like me. I grew up with this perspective and balance that guilt by doing community service and giving back to those less fortunate (note: not blindly donating but rather things like feeding the homeless etc).

These are the cards that life has dealt us, be humble and give back when you can but to dwell on being born into an inescapable standard of living is just mentally taxing and quite harmful after a certain point.

CmonDev2• 12 years ago

Government workers are an expenditure. Indie game developers are business that generates money for the country. Minecraft's Notch paid quite a lot of tax by the way.

The Guilt of the Video-Game Millionaires

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