Jason Schreier has heard it's impossible to find senior leads due to mass dev burnout
- Thread starter Nirolak
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Hypereides
Member
I'm honestly not surprised if its true. Working in the industry is exhausting.
Developers are still underpaid, overworked, and work under questionable, and some times in inhuman, work conditions. No union does not make things any better. Overall, it creates a toxic work environment.
Those people who primarily benefit from this are the people in the business management.
Developers are still underpaid, overworked, and work under questionable, and some times in inhuman, work conditions. No union does not make things any better. Overall, it creates a toxic work environment.
Those people who primarily benefit from this are the people in the business management.
Shifty1897
Member
lol, unionize and watch all those jobs go straight to China. What's worse, working a lot or being unemployed?
Game development is never going to escape the situation it's in because there will always be someone who is willing to work terrible hours for low pay to make games. It's kind of like the fast food industry, but instead of it being a job everyone can do, it's a job everyone wants (initially) to do.
Ya think of all the people that worked on games such as Battleborn, Lawbreakers, etc. They seem to be decently made games, but just got overshadowed by other games out at the time. There are probably a ton of people that worked their ass off to get those games in a good spot, only to be failed by marketing / producers.
ClivePwned
Member
going indie doesn't mean you don't crunch. it just means when you do, you're crunching for yourself.
down 2 orth
Member
Cool, time to pay them more money + improve conditions.
shanafan
Member
I work a full-time job, and I would rather get more days off than more money.
down 2 orth
Member
I agree.
RumbleHumble
Banned
Not even a little surprised. What's the feasibility of unions as an answer here?
Raging Spaniard
If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Eeeh thats just one side of the equation. I see Sr. artist leads often, apply for them and hear nothing, not even an interview request.
Im not exactly underqualified either, Ive been art directing for years now and Im not terrible
The problem with filling art positions is manyfold. Lets get the obvious one out of the way first: sometimes you are not the right fit. Games have more broad genres now and it can be hard to find an artist that fits the required style.
As for the rest:
-Stubbornness or inability to promote from within. A big problem in many dev houses, the "new" is usually considered higher value than who you already have. This is unhealthy and leads to turnover because great talent leaves to get the promotion they deserve
-Non Artists judging art portfolios. HR can be surprisingly bad at choosing what artists get selected for an interview. They lack an eye for art and if you didnt work for a big AAA game you dont even get a chance.
-Unwillingness to take chances. With artists this is especially prevalent. I cant tell you how many jobs Ive lost out on because of an "Art Director from EA with 15 years experience, you gotta understand" Artists need to be tained and nurtured and its very hard to grow a spotless resume.
-Job requirements weed too many candidates out. Im a big proponent of "apply anyway, you never know" but a lot of artists look for any reason to hate themselves and not apply for jobs so when they see an opening requiring 6 years experience, 2D and 3D portfolios, at least one AAA game shipped and UI experience ... people just dont apply.
-Waiting too long for the perfect candidate. Ive seen medium to small sized companies in the Bay Area like NC Soft San Mateo or Pocket Gens have Lead or Sr positions open FOR A YEAR. They would have been much better off taking a chance on somebody on a trial basis instead of hurting their project.
Theres more to cover, but as a whole covering Sr. positions is hard because it catches a lot of talent between a rock and a hard place ... plus companies are way too picky and risk averse. You do have some burnout, of course, but its not nearly as simple as that, at least not in the art field.
Im not exactly underqualified either, Ive been art directing for years now and Im not terrible
The problem with filling art positions is manyfold. Lets get the obvious one out of the way first: sometimes you are not the right fit. Games have more broad genres now and it can be hard to find an artist that fits the required style.
As for the rest:
-Stubbornness or inability to promote from within. A big problem in many dev houses, the "new" is usually considered higher value than who you already have. This is unhealthy and leads to turnover because great talent leaves to get the promotion they deserve
-Non Artists judging art portfolios. HR can be surprisingly bad at choosing what artists get selected for an interview. They lack an eye for art and if you didnt work for a big AAA game you dont even get a chance.
-Unwillingness to take chances. With artists this is especially prevalent. I cant tell you how many jobs Ive lost out on because of an "Art Director from EA with 15 years experience, you gotta understand" Artists need to be tained and nurtured and its very hard to grow a spotless resume.
-Job requirements weed too many candidates out. Im a big proponent of "apply anyway, you never know" but a lot of artists look for any reason to hate themselves and not apply for jobs so when they see an opening requiring 6 years experience, 2D and 3D portfolios, at least one AAA game shipped and UI experience ... people just dont apply.
-Waiting too long for the perfect candidate. Ive seen medium to small sized companies in the Bay Area like NC Soft San Mateo or Pocket Gens have Lead or Sr positions open FOR A YEAR. They would have been much better off taking a chance on somebody on a trial basis instead of hurting their project.
Theres more to cover, but as a whole covering Sr. positions is hard because it catches a lot of talent between a rock and a hard place ... plus companies are way too picky and risk averse. You do have some burnout, of course, but its not nearly as simple as that, at least not in the art field.
I do wish the industry had a different shape. The blockbuster approach that eats up and spits out a lot of the talent in the industry is also incredibly market researched and slow on its feet wrt creativity. If we had more, smaller games from well-established publishers and generally lower, more budget/time-conscious production values, I'd think we'd be in a better place for both consumers and creators. As it seems you either work yourself to death as a cog in a slow-footed machine or as part of a small, passionate team struggling to make it all work without major publisher support.
Developers are quitting because of poor working conditions, not because they were forced to make New Super Mario Bros. U at gunpoint.
What the fuck does ARMS have to do with anything, if anything the gradual content rollout plan it has allows for a very relaxed schedule.
This.
Rellik
Member
Pretty much.You mean that people in their 30's and 40's with families don't feel like working 80-hour weeks?
Shit has got to change for things to get better
That's enough qualification to take Molyneux's job.
Jeronimo Jones
Member
It seems unsustainable to keep churning out so many AAA titles with huge budgets (and corresponding sales targets) while treating those who make the games as cogs in the machine.
As an adult with a career in another sector, despite my efforts, there are way more games than I can keep up with and not enough time to play the games I do buy. So even with "disposable" income, I refuse to spend hundreds of dollars every month on games I won't play until later.
I suspect those who are willing to do so religiously are propping the industry up with their spending, and unintentionally feeding the monster.
As an adult with a career in another sector, despite my efforts, there are way more games than I can keep up with and not enough time to play the games I do buy. So even with "disposable" income, I refuse to spend hundreds of dollars every month on games I won't play until later.
I suspect those who are willing to do so religiously are propping the industry up with their spending, and unintentionally feeding the monster.
Unionisation does not mean all jobs go to China.
Videogames are largely an art form and a culture. You lose that by asking a huge, cheap Chinese team to develop your game, unless you send your senior leads over there to begin with... Which makes the whole thing moot.
Unionisation is a great idea.
AtomicShroom
Member
No, game development is never going to escape the situation because every time someone brings up the union discussion, there's always some right-wing scaremonger to come along and ridicule the poster for no good reason.
Zombie James
Banned
Sorry, but the solution to this problem isn't to just put your head down and take it. People's lives and families are being strained and - at worst - ruined, people's health are being put at risk. We're talking about industries with no overtime pay, no residuals, and garbage management that holds no regard for the well-being of their staff. Just because 1/10 (or whatever) people are willing to voluntarily sacrifice every waking hour of their lives for literally no pay doesn't make it right.
Something I've been thinking about for a while; What's going to happen when we have 30+TFlop machines pushing 8K+ resolutions and the level of texture/art/polygonal detail we have today just won't cut it? Teams are eventually going to be even more massive, they're going to take wayyyy longer to make, and will be incredibly expensive.
AtomicShroom
Member
I mean this is why the industry preys on freshly out of school students: They're desperate for a job, they have no kids or significant other, no obligations. They actually enjoy the convenience of getting paid meals at work to crunch away for months on end. They have a huge loan to repay, so they'll literally do anything to elevate themselves above others so that when the project ends, they might be the one to be kept and brought on to the next project or turned into a permanent employee.
Aside from over-saturation of products and franchise fatigue, this is another pressing reason why yearly releases should not occur. Developers are worked at sweatshop hours in order to meet their deadlines and are not compensated at a rate in accordance with their services.
However, it does indeed not end with yearly releases. Rockstar is notorious for this, particularly their San Diego outlet with RDR. Both gamers and publishers (well mainly the publishers) put extreme pressure on developers to meet deadlines. Even when a game is delayed, the crunch continues.
We will likely see a crash in the AAA market within the next decade, as costs continue to skyrocket and more developers leave a grueling industry.
However, it does indeed not end with yearly releases. Rockstar is notorious for this, particularly their San Diego outlet with RDR. Both gamers and publishers (well mainly the publishers) put extreme pressure on developers to meet deadlines. Even when a game is delayed, the crunch continues.
We will likely see a crash in the AAA market within the next decade, as costs continue to skyrocket and more developers leave a grueling industry.
You got too many young people with stars in their eyes ready to take the place of the people who burn out. Once the supply eventually dries up, maybe unions or better work conditions might be a thing.
Sad Affleck
Member
Meat grinder.
And, obviously, they're replaceable with the next lot as soon as they burn out.
I love games, I want to make games, I know how to make games... but I have a family now. I can't really quit the job that pays better and has more reasonable hours for a job that pays far less and has crazy hours, no matter how much I want to do the other one more.
So I just do coding and art on the side. Game development is my HOBBY because as a career it's just... destructive.
It's something I've been thinking about for awhile as well - as a gamer and developer, I have no interest working in the game industry. I even started a thread here to get some thoughts on it.
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1195183
Sorry, mobile link.
http://m.neogaf.com/showthread.php?t=1195183
Sorry, mobile link.
I worked on AAA games for almost seven years, and while the work/life balance at my employer wasn't great, it wasn't as bad as some of the horror stories.
That being said, when I left games, my next job paid 30% more, had 401k matching, and much better quality of life on top of it. It wasn't as sexy as making games, but I felt like an idiot working so hard for so long, getting paid so little.
That being said, when I left games, my next job paid 30% more, had 401k matching, and much better quality of life on top of it. It wasn't as sexy as making games, but I felt like an idiot working so hard for so long, getting paid so little.
I got into programming so I could make games. The more I learned about the industry the less I wanted to work there. Now I have a wife and kids and even the occasional 70 hour week at my current job is a bit much. Having to pull a 100+hour week for weeks/months at a time making less money just doesn't make any damn sense for me. I'm pretty happy here.
Eventually the churn will be enough that AAA game quality will drop and sales won't meet expectations. When that happens it'll be interesting to see what changes.
Eventually the churn will be enough that AAA game quality will drop and sales won't meet expectations. When that happens it'll be interesting to see what changes.
Read this post over and over again cause so much of this is true. Feels like companies way undervalue the strength of hiring midlevel people to senior positions for the first time and will wait for a year trying to snake out some 15 yr vet thinking they'll be happy to make a lateral move out of their comfortable job.
They'd be much better off hiring sooner and fostering not even new but also not the most senior talent around the industry.
The problem with unionizing is the same as the problem that makes such practices sustainable in the first place. Young people willing to put up with a lot of bullshit to work on video games. If they're anything like the hardcore gaming nerds I've known, they tend to have a higher than average libertarian streak in their population.
It describes very well the state of the software industry nowadays. Im part of it for more than 10 years (not in videogames industry in particular, but software development) and theres a clear scarcity of senior / principal professionals.
Dev burnout is one reason, but as many stated here, working for a big corporation is not that good investment (in terms of future earnings, like equity) as it was some years ago. Thats why you see so many principal developers moving to high risk startups, though that high risk is just a label. If everything goes wrong, theres plenty of demand on the market to find another startup and try luck there.
Dev burnout is one reason, but as many stated here, working for a big corporation is not that good investment (in terms of future earnings, like equity) as it was some years ago. Thats why you see so many principal developers moving to high risk startups, though that high risk is just a label. If everything goes wrong, theres plenty of demand on the market to find another startup and try luck there.
Soldiussnaku
Member
They lucky they work 70, I believe Amy Henning, the creative director formerly at ND worked 80 hours for 10 years.
Its just completely unsustainable. I'm mildly surprised it lasted this long.
I suspect a crash to happen soon and not due to sales, but due to crippling work conditions.
It's bad enough as it is, with the next gen and 4k and the tech demands god knows how the AAA side of things will last long.
Some Nobody
Junior Member
That's the point of this article. They aren't choosing to work a lot, they're choosing to be unemployed (in gaming, and work elsewhere).
And you can't replace SENIOR leads with fuckin' college grads. Your games will be shit, quality will drop like a stone.
Ship it to China? What sells there may not sell here, so design philosophy is fucked. No, unions are a great option.
Service model wont change anything of dev burnout situation. It could make things even worst.
ARMs is the example of a game that missed the value mark a bit due to low content due to being a new IP. It was panned for this critically
And poor working conditions is due to the amount of work it takes to make new IPs with enough content and enough quality that will get players to buy it day one without going used. So it's absolutely due to needing to make a game at gunpoint, because you are trying to make a game within a time box and a budget but still hit all the checkboxes to succeed both critically and in sales
As anechdotal evidence, I work on backend web services/server stuff for a big online game studio and I know that another team here had a position for Senior AI Programming Specialist Engineer or something like that which went unfilled for nearly a year and a half. They literally couldn't find anyone with enough experience to actually do the job required. Very few programmers have 7-10+ years of experience too on the gameplay side of things, maybe 1/5 or 1/6.
Other teams are really different though. I'm 27 and the youngest person on my backend engineering team. There are a few really old artists. I guess it depends.
Other teams are really different though. I'm 27 and the youngest person on my backend engineering team. There are a few really old artists. I guess it depends.
Gai Murakumo
Member
Being driven to work 80+ hours sometimes for weeks at a time is draining on anybody. There are some fundamental work practices that need to change in the video game industry so that this burnout does not occur.
The Albatross
Member
I'm sure dev burnout is a factor, but this is caused much more by the economy being in full employment, and the tech sector having a ridiculously low 0-1% unemployment rate in most states where game development takes place. Tech companies are struggling to fill positions in general as there are more open positions than talent to fill them.
Far more than dev burnout is the horrible pay that game developers make versus other software development. Game developers make 20 - 50% less than the same role in general software development, and the hours are easier, there are managable deadlines, the benefits are better, the schedules make more sense, and the expectations are way more reasonable. Game developers make a pittance compared ot the software industry as a whole, game development managers are typically much worse than software industry as a whole, management is typically much worse, and everything about the game development sector of software sucks. Even otherwise good game development companies tend to pay experienced game developers somewhere between $60,000 - $85,000 depending on the role... Where as comparable experience in the rest of the sector is usually starting at $80,000 and extending well into the $120k or $130k range.
With software firms desperate for talent nowadays, it shouldn't be a surprise that game developers are smartening up and taking better jobs with more security, 20-50% higher pay, reasonable hours, no crunch, and less demanding work.
Far more than dev burnout is the horrible pay that game developers make versus other software development. Game developers make 20 - 50% less than the same role in general software development, and the hours are easier, there are managable deadlines, the benefits are better, the schedules make more sense, and the expectations are way more reasonable. Game developers make a pittance compared ot the software industry as a whole, game development managers are typically much worse than software industry as a whole, management is typically much worse, and everything about the game development sector of software sucks. Even otherwise good game development companies tend to pay experienced game developers somewhere between $60,000 - $85,000 depending on the role... Where as comparable experience in the rest of the sector is usually starting at $80,000 and extending well into the $120k or $130k range.
With software firms desperate for talent nowadays, it shouldn't be a surprise that game developers are smartening up and taking better jobs with more security, 20-50% higher pay, reasonable hours, no crunch, and less demanding work.
50% MINIMUM less in a lot of cases. I know that I happen to make much more than a lot of guys who work harder than me at our game company because I come from the web programming world and do web stuff, and everyone on our web team could leave tomorrow and find a job within a week that probably pays more. Other game devs don't have that luxury.
But yeah. Sometimes the pay is good if you're experienced and really good. But as a rule of thumb it's like literally half of what you could make at other places.
The older I get, the more I realize I never wanna work more than 40 hours a week for the rest of my life. Maybe 45. It's just not worth it on my mental health.
timetokill
Banned
This has been going on for well over a decade at this point, and I wouldn't be surprised if longer, but I can only speak from personal experience. The mantra is that once you hit 30 you really have to take a look at your life and decide if you want to live your life or if you want to compete with all the 20 year olds they hire that have no lives outside of work and don't mind working nonstop.
This industry preys on the passion younger people have for making games and wrings every drop of it out of them for about a decade, and then those people hear about a friend making twice as much as them for half the work and think, hey, this fucking sucks.
This industry preys on the passion younger people have for making games and wrings every drop of it out of them for about a decade, and then those people hear about a friend making twice as much as them for half the work and think, hey, this fucking sucks.
ThatStupidLion
Member
yup, have heard a similar saying thats in the OP, but is about working the VFX/animation industry...
most people leave the industry within 8 years iirc.
the movie industry is still alive on similar premises, so i don't see it changing much in the games industry either
most people leave the industry within 8 years iirc.
the movie industry is still alive on similar premises, so i don't see it changing much in the games industry either
Haha, this is kind of me. I got into programming because I wanted to make games since I was a kid, went to college for it around the time the 360 / PS3 were hitting and development time / costs were starting to go up... eventually my older self overcame my childhood dreams and I decided to go into regular software development instead. Still took a game industry job at one point, got to work on a game I played the hell out of before having the chance to work on it, and loved it up until the point layoffs hit (another reason working in the game industry sucks...). Now I'm back in regular software development with no intention on ever going back, though I do miss my former team and the experience of working on something I truly loved. That said, it's hard to beat a flexible work schedule, no real PTO restrictions (F U annual expansion pack releases around my birthday), and getting to work with the latest web technology.