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[Neptonic]

MillennialsGAF are probably old enough that they've quit the industry already

GAF killed my childhood dream of making video games when I learned how much it actually sucks

 

[Dreamwriter]

I’ve been in the game industry for like 15 years, I’ve only once ever had to deal with a long bad crunch. There is a stereotype in the industry about how it’s all long crunch hours, but these days that’s really the exception, not the rule.

To really see burnout, look at Amazon programmers.

 

[jschreier]

There is a stereotype in the industry about how it's all long crunch hours, but these days that's really the exception, not the rule.

Having talked to a whole lot of people and, well, just published a book that covers this subject extensively, I can promise you this is not true.

 

[Antialias]

I've worked on game engine development for nearly 8 years and I don't crunch, I'm paid substantially more than average for a developer in my country, and I'm surrounded by people who have been doing this for decades. So I don't really recognize the toxic work environment in the OP.

We do have difficulty finding senior engineers, but that's more an issue of finding someone who can command the respect of a lot of very smart people, which is extremely hard. Burnout isn't something I've ever personally witnessed. Much more common is leaving because the work is not creative enough.

 

[Beelzebubs]

Having talked to a whole lot of people and, well, just published a book that covers this subject extensively, I can promise you this is not true.

Gonna have to take Jasons word on this

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I've worked on game engine development for nearly 8 years and I don't crunch, I'm paid substantially more than average for a developer in my country, and I'm surrounded by people who have been doing this for decades. So I don't really recognize the toxic work environment in the OP.

We do have difficulty finding senior engineers, but that's more an issue of finding someone who can command the respect of a lot of very smart people, which is extremely hard. Burnout isn't something I've ever personally witnessed. Much more common is leaving because the work is not creative enough.

In my experience, working on stuff like middleware, engines, and tools is a lot closer to traditional software/application development than game development (assuming a standalone development team not tied into a game dev/publisher directly who may tie such development into a game title's release schedule). Not nearly as many crunches if any, and generally better pay and hours.

I've been in the game industry for like 15 years, I've only once ever had to deal with a long bad crunch. There is a stereotype in the industry about how it's all long crunch hours, but these days that's really the exception, not the rule.

While it's a lot better than when I started out over 15 years ago, the bolded isn't really true based on my interactions with friends/colleagues still in the industry.

 

[jschreier]

In my experience, working on stuff like middleware, engines, and tools is a lot closer to traditional software/application development than game development (assuming a standalone development team not tied into a game dev/publisher directly who may tie such development into a game title's release schedule). Not nearly as many crunches if any, and generally better pay and hours.

Which makes sense. You're working on products that just need to function properly and work efficiently, which makes it way easier to estimate a proper schedule. You don't have to worry about the amorphous, elusive "fun factor" or any of the other crazy factors that go into generating design, art, and content.

 

[mdubs]

This quote by Jason from the article is good:

And I just don't have a solution for how you mitigate that or alleviate it. Organizing is one option, but seems impractical. It has to come from people deciding, "I'm going to come home at a reasonable hour because I'm not going to sacrifice myself for this game." Maybe in an ideal world if everybody did that it would lead to more reasonable production schedules, but right now it seems like the games that we are playing and the games that we are loving and the games that do all these incredible things are just the result of this terrible workforce practice and labor exploitation, really—even though people volunteer to do it—and it has all sorts of negative consequences that I think are intangible so we can't really see them.

We can't see the numbers of people who are burning out in this industry, or veterans that are leaving the industry entirely because they're sick of the crunch.
I think it's a nuanced issue, because how do you tell people No, you can't stay later and try to make this the best game possible? It's tough. There's a quote that I always reference, one of my favorite quotes in the book, from [The Last of Us and Uncharted 4 co-director] Neil Druckmann: "How do you avoid crunch? Don't try to make Game of the Year." Which is [an idea] I think is prevalent among game developers. How do you argue with that?

Meanwhile people are saying "but just work less hours" as if the solution is that simple.

 

[justsomeguy]

I still know a couple folks still in games in senior/executive roles that I worked with in the past when we were still in more junior positions, but a lot of us who would be in senior roles have moved out of games to other things quite a while ago. Hard to pass up better pay and working hours for similar development positions outside of games, especially in places like the SF Bay Area given the cost of living.

Yup came here to mention the pay aspect. If you can code, lead a team and manage people then you can move across to enterprise software for 2x the pay and half the hours per week.

 

[Lady Gaia]

At some point if you pride yourself as a company employing humans, maybe turn off the fucking lights at a certain point so people have to go home.

I agree that there’s a real problem in need of a solution, but it’s naive to think that the solution is that simple. Creative professionals aren’t effective on a rigid daily schedule. They’re not retail cashiers. How you structure a work environment to let someone on a roll be productive while giving them the flexibility to unwind when they need it is a really hard problem. Fear is a terrible motivator bad managers use in place of real insight and empathy, but good people managers are few and far between.

Oh, but then you wouldn't get Game of the Year. Right.

It’s a hit-driven industry. A game that gets marginally more recognition rises to the level of must-have and suddenly receives an order of magnitude or more increase in sales, which in turn funds ongoing development. A game with mediocre reception can result in layoffs, and a few in a row can shutter a studio.

There are no easy answers here, but as gamers there are things we can do. Stop buying games based on marketing alone. Support small, independent efforts. Refuse to support the used game market that fattens the pockets of retailers at the expense of developers.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

This quote by Jason from the article is good:

Meanwhile people are saying "but just work less hours" as if the solution is that simple.

I don't actually believe extended crunch that has employees working past 60 hours a week yeilds better results. No one can be totally focused every waking hour at work for months on months. That's why in order to actually solve this someone needs to do a real analysis on if devs even utilize the totallity of their hours at work effectively. If they only work effectively 50 hours out of 65 why are we keeping them there longer?

 

[Neith]

heh...70 hours. Try 100.

If yer that interested and concerned about money and materials in this world that you need to work 100 hours a week no one is going to feel sorry for you.

 

[mdubs]

I don't actually believe extended crunch that has employees working past 60 hours a week yeilds better results. No one can be totally focused every waking hour at work for months on months. That's why in order to actually solve this someone needs to do a real analysis on if devs even utilize the totallity of their hours at work effectively. If they only work effectively 50 hours out of 65 why are we keeping them there longer?

Because production is a disaster (like in Uncharted 4, with multiple delays) and they have to get the game done?

 

[Neith]

Also, I can see why people leave. There is less individual praise in this medium for your art and expertise than in many other mediums.

I mean you do all this great work, and hardly a fucking soul even knows YOU did it.

 

[justsomeguy]

I don't actually believe extended crunch that has employees working past 60 hours a week yeilds better results. No one can be totally focused every waling hours at work for months months. That's why in order to actually solve this someone needs to do a real analysis on if devs even utilize the totallity of their hours at work effectively. If they only work effectively 50 hours out of 65 why are we keeping them there longer?

You really don't get benefit from extended crunch . I'm a dev lead (not games) and just occasionally we've had to push hard for a couple of weeks to hit a deadline - ten hour days, maybe one weekend day.

Quality drops incredibly quickly. Productivity follows hot on its heels. Some work you can more easily crunch on - bug fixing for example - but if you're designing and building new stuff, your delivery suffers pretty quickly.

So you make a deadline and maybe squeak through a quality gate but in that time you've built up technical debt (slows future delivery, reduces future quality) and worn out your team.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

Because production is a disaster (like in Uncharted 4, with multiple delays) and they have to get the game done?

Production being a disaster points to many issues though. Games are a sum of pieces I understand but just saying, "we need to get it done work 70 hours indefinitely" when you can't even get 70% productivity out of people working that long doesn't make actual sense.

I'm very serious when I say there are limits where no matter what peoplw claim you aren't getting value out of the extended hours.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I don't actually believe extended crunch that has employees working past 60 hours a week yeilds better results. No one can be totally focused every waking hour at work for months on months. That's why in order to actually solve this someone needs to do a real analysis on if devs even utilize the totallity of their hours at work effectively. If they only work effectively 50 hours out of 65 why are we keeping them there longer?

Because once a date is committed to, a bunch of other things start getting planned around that release date - marketing campaigns, submission schedules for first-party standards review, reservations at manufacturing/duplication (especially during busy/crowded periods when everyone else also wants to use their services), dedicated space and partner campaigns with retail - having to change a date is costly to a publisher because of how much other stuff gets affected, and why publishers avoid trying to make any release date delays whenever possible. It's not about work being done effectively and efficiently.

Hence why the team is pushed to crunch to meet a date, why QA test cycles get shortened, why easily fixed bugs slip through, and why even major bugs manage to also get shipped through because the publisher makes and arrangement with the first party platform holders to waive the issue and still get them to pass cert anyway because they'll just address it in a patch.

 

[RadarScope1]

Gamers are rather insatiable though. Look at how delays are seen. And also look at the derision of indies and remasters, which are becoming more important.

I haven't read the whole thread yet but this is what I going to point to.

It won't be popular viewpoint here, but a HUGE part of the problem lies with us, the gamers and consumers. We are not only insatiable but nearly impossible to please. Every single issue a game might have is because the devs were lazy or just too dumb or too uncaring to take care of the problem. And we treat independent developers no differently than major studios, so "going indie" isn't a solution. In fact it's probably worse because consumer standards don't change but the resources do. Your product becomes just another "shitty indie game" to people at that point.

I am in no way saying we are solely to blame, because the machine of annual sequels and constant drip feeds of content set us up for this over the years. Truly stupid business decisions by some of the companies have fed our cynicism, too. But we have to face the fact that the medium we love is in part threatened by own crazy hunger for the content. It's a house that could collapse upon itself. Think about many great and visionary games we could be losing out on because seasoned developers don't want to stay in the industry. I'm willing to bet a huge part of the malaise people feel right now toward current gen games and their lack of creativity is due to the fact that so many major games are being made by lesser experienced people on 100-hour-a-week treadmill to fulfill a microtransaction-based business model.

 

[StereoVsn]

I’ve been in the game industry for like 15 years, I’ve only once ever had to deal with a long bad crunch. There is a stereotype in the industry about how it’s all long crunch hours, but these days that’s really the exception, not the rule.

To really see burnout, look at Amazon programmers.

Amazon is just a bad example for developers in software dev. However they give huge financial incentives to work those crazy hours and have rapid upward movement if you can handle it. Game dev doesn't usually offer that.

 

[kaf]

I recently left a studio where we were unable to fill a director level role, for almost 1.5 years now (still unfilled). It got to a point where they were interviewing incredibly junior and pretty unqualified individuals.

The last director had left due to the extreme crunch that some of us ended up inheriting due to the vicious release cycles / content cadence the department had to maintain.

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

Or maybe, just maybe, people like you just aren't buying enough of those games for them to get made anymore.

Ultimately, everything bad or good in this industry boils down to you, the consumer. Gamers love to boogeyman Activision or EA or whoever but the reality is, they're only doing what you proved to be worthwhile.

Why are the single-player offline narrative-driven games GAF loves so much not being made as much anymore? You didn't buy enough of them.

Why are their microtransactions in games? Because the cost of making games has exponentially increased, but you told publishers that you refuse to pay any more for a new game then you did 5, 10, and 15 years ago.

And so on and so forth.

This is bullshit. It's not always about market fit. Publishers do stuff all the time that anyone with a nose in the market can obviously see will go badly. Decisions from the publisher side aren't always rational purchase chasing actions.

The biggest example I can remember of this? The Wii. Major, really, actual games sold millions of copies. Not just mini game collections - Call of Duty ports sold great. Games cost less to make and sold more. The publishers should have coated the Wii in software.

Instead the gaming industry collectively shoved their head up their ass and pumped out poorly running 360 games with ballooning budgets, Hollywood voice acting and unskippable expensive CGI cutscenes. Shitty knockoffs of the popular games that actually did sell. And so many flops followed. For years. And we've been losing developer houses ever since. I promise you this isn't because gamers didn't buy enough copies of their little pet game or genre. It's because publishers, by and large, are dictating a business directive that is fundamentally broken. Among many other complicated reasons, of course, very few of which have anything to do with how many copies of Game X someone on GAF bought.

In the case of micrtransactions and multiplayer, that's just short term opportunity cost. Those games make more money. It doesn't matter how much you damage your brand in the process, or if the product itself doesn't make any sense. Do it anyway!

 

[Septimus Prime]

Because once a date is committed to, a bunch of other things start getting planned around that release date - marketing campaigns, submission schedules for first-party standards review, reservations at manufacturing/duplication (especially during busy/crowded periods when everyone else also wants to use their services), dedicated space and partner campaigns with retail - having to change a date is costly to a publisher because of how much other stuff gets affected, and why publishers avoid trying to make any release date delays whenever possible. It's not about work being done effectively and efficiently.

Hence why the team is pushed to crunch to meet a date, why QA test cycles get shortened, why easily fixed bugs slip through, and why even major bugs manage to also get shipped through because the publisher makes and arrangement with the first party platform holders to waive the issue and still get them to pass cert anyway because they'll just address it in a patch.

Regarding the bolded, often it's budgetary concerns that lead to insufficient/shortened QA. Since QA is usually a time and materials type of cost, the cost is measured in man-hours, so QA gets dumped into crunch because you can get more man-hours of work done per day if you just work more hours per day.

As a QA vendor, I find that one solution to this problem is to just bluntly inform customers that you will charge more for overtime hours. Most of the time, this gets them to consider alternative options, like longer cycles or adding more testers.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

Because once a date is committed to, a bunch of other things start getting planned around that release date - marketing campaigns, submission schedules for first-party standards review, reservations at manufacturing/duplication (especially during busy/crowded periods when everyone else also wants to use their services), dedicated space and partner campaigns with retail - having to change a date is costly to a publisher because of how much other stuff gets affected, and why publishers avoid trying to make any release date delays whenever possible. It's not about work being done effectively and efficiently.

Hence why the team is pushed to crunch to meet a date, why QA test cycles get shortened, why easily fixed bugs slip through, and why even major bugs manage to also get shipped through because the publisher makes and arrangement with the first party platform holders to waive the issue and still get them to pass cert anyway because they'll just address it in a patch.

No I get why they "do" crunch. My statement has to do on whether it's an effective use of your team's time. Can you 7-7, 7 days a week for 3 months and expect your team to effectively utilize those hours simply on the basis that if you throw more working time at the project it will for sure mean more gets done? It doesn't work like that. Long term crunch is just wasted hours eventually.

The gaming industry is notorious for it and part of that is just because it's a sum of parts industry with hard deadlines. But there seems to be a lack of contingency, project management experience and leadership able to convey that crunch isn't actually effective as a consistent exercise. Again. Can you feasible have people put forth 100% effort 80 hours a week with no breathing room? You can't.

 

[XiaNaphryz]

Regarding the bolded, often it's budgetary concerns that lead to insufficient/shortened QA. Since QA is usually a time and materials type of cost, the cost is measured in man-hours, so QA gets dumped into crunch because you can get more man-hours of work done per day if you just work more hours per day.

As a QA vendor, I find that one solution to this problem is to just bluntly inform customers that you will charge more for overtime hours. Most of the time, this gets them to consider alternative options, like longer cycles or adding more testers.

Most QA folks here in California are hourly, and thus must be paid overtime due to California laws, so cutting QA time to reduce costs doesn't really work for game devs/publishers here who have large on-site QA teams. When I started out in my career in QA, overtime pay actually got my yearly income to a decent amount. The downside of course was the 60-90 hour weeks during the last 3-4 month push to a final gold master build.

 

[Drkirby]

I'm in the Software Development industry, I have heard litterally nothing good about working in Game Development. Long Hours, relatively low pay, hard work. Just not worth it IMO.

There are a bunch of development Studios here in Dallas too. Live about two blocks away from Id.

 

[Auto-Reply]

GAF killed my childhood dream of making video games when I learned how much it actually sucks

Yeah, when I was younger I imagined it must be heaven to work on a game that I loved playing back in the day. Hard pass in 2017, I would already quit jobs way less demanding under way better conditions than working in a game studio (their studios look awesome in pictures, pool table, gym, magnificent kitchen, must be a blast working there... until you realise there is a reason why these places look like that because they expect you to basically live there lol)

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

No I get why they "do" crunch. My statement has to do on whether it's an effective use of your team's time. Can you 7-7, 7 days a week for 3 months and expect your team to effectively utilize those hours simply on the basis that if you throw more working time at the project it will for sure mean more gets done? It doesn't work like that. Long term crunch is just wasted hours eventually.

The gaming industry is notorious for it and part of that is just because it's a sum of parts industry with hard deadlines. But there seems to be a lack of contingency, project management experience and leadership able to convey that crunch isn't actually effective as a consistent exercise. Again. Can you feasible have people put forth 100% effort 80 hours a week with no breathing room? You can't.

I completely agree with this. I only wish that more managers would see the reality.

Software development (and many other in general needs to shake off this delusion that more hours will always mean more productivity. It's been said again and again for ages now, by many smart people.

The industry seems to have absorbed the lesson that more developers (without proper management) won't improve the progress, but they still think they can wring more from each employee.

I'm in the Software Development industry, I have heard litterally nothing good about working in Game Development. Long Hours, relatively low pay, hard work. Just not worth it IMO.

There are a bunch of development Studios here in Dallas too. Live about two blocks away from Id.

Exactly. The decision has always been:

Normal software development: maybe bad working conditions, but market value salary and mobility.

Game software development: extremely likely horrible working conditions, under market salary, and less employment opportunities.

I really wonder which one I'll pick. I really respect everyone that works on games, they have the drive for it.

 

[rakkadakka]

Having talked to a whole lot of people and, well, just published a book that covers this subject extensively, I can promise you this is not true.

Hey man bought the book and read it one day.

Great stuff.

 

[jdstorm]

I haven't read the whole thread yet but this is what I going to point to.

It won't be popular viewpoint here, but a HUGE part of the problem lies with us, the gamers and consumers. We are not only insatiable but nearly impossible to please. Every single issue a game might have is because the devs were lazy or just too dumb or too uncaring to take care of the problem. And we treat independent developers no differently than major studios, so "going indie" isn't a solution. In fact it's probably worse because consumer standards don't change but the resources do. Your product becomes just another "shitty indie game" to people at that point.

I am in no way saying we are solely to blame, because the machine of annual sequels and constant drip feeds of content set us up for this over the years. Truly stupid business decisions by some of the companies have fed our cynicism, too. But we have to face the fact that the medium we love is in part threatened by own crazy hunger for the content. It's a house that could collapse upon itself. Think about many great and visionary games we could be losing out on because seasoned developers don't want to stay in the industry. I'm willing to bet a huge part of the malaise people feel right now toward current gen games and their lack of creativity is due to the fact that so many major games are being made by lesser experienced people on 100-hour-a-week treadmill to fulfill a microtransaction-based business model.

This is a flawed arguement. If you ran a bakery you wouldn't say that your buisness' biggest issue was that you had insatiable customers who wanted too many cakes/pastries/breads ect. You would either expand your bakery to produce more baked goods or you would produce the same amount and raise your prices.

Admittedly this issue seems to be much more complex in the games industry*, however it still boils down to bad management.

*I do not work or know anyone working in the games industry.

Spoiler

So please disregard if i sound like i'm full of shit

 

[hardcastlemccormick]

I haven't read the whole thread yet but this is what I going to point to.

It won't be popular viewpoint here, but a HUGE part of the problem lies with us, the gamers and consumers. We are not only insatiable but nearly impossible to please. Every single issue a game might have is because the devs were lazy or just too dumb or too uncaring to take care of the problem. And we treat independent developers no differently than major studios, so "going indie" isn't a solution. In fact it's probably worse because consumer standards don't change but the resources do. Your product becomes just another "shitty indie game" to people at that point.

I am in no way saying we are solely to blame, because the machine of annual sequels and constant drip feeds of content set us up for this over the years. Truly stupid business decisions by some of the companies have fed our cynicism, too. But we have to face the fact that the medium we love is in part threatened by own crazy hunger for the content. It's a house that could collapse upon itself. Think about many great and visionary games we could be losing out on because seasoned developers don't want to stay in the industry. I'm willing to bet a huge part of the malaise people feel right now toward current gen games and their lack of creativity is due to the fact that so many major games are being made by lesser experienced people on 100-hour-a-week treadmill to fulfill a microtransaction-based business model.

Every other industry has an enthusiast market that they cater to, and yet somehow they figure it out. Well to varying degrees of course.

This blaming the consumer BS just doesn't fly. It's not like the publishers are trolling GAF or similar boards and taking notes on the 14 year olds who complain about something. They've got their own market studies. Hell, I'll complain about games and stuff but I bet every single point I make here has been endlessly debated inside of the company, and people fought to keep it either in or out.

I'm not in the gaming industry but I've seen leadership sink their own boat. The consumers don't really show up on the radar.

 

[BossDarkseid]

The Uncharted 4 chapter of Jason's book has so far been particularly disturbing. I actually got really angry at the quote from (I think) one of the ND co-owners about "Well we don't technically "require" any crunch, they just want to do it!"

At some point if you pride yourself as a company employing humans, maybe turn off the fucking lights at a certain point so people have to go home.

Oh, but then you wouldn't get Game of the Year. Right.

Haven't read the book yet but is there anything about Blizzard? Because I got sent a recruitment video in an email a month or two ago and it was essentially a fluff piece about how wonderful they are, their culture and benefits and the location...with someone saying they would go hang out with different co-workers every evening for their first couple of weeks in the job and find new things about the area.

At first I was "Aw, that sounds nice" but then I was like "....but its probably bullshit" because what company as big as Blizz would let something like that happen for long, in the games industry.

The ND thing doesn't sound surprising, but shows how little they value the individual...because while someone working overtime on a project could be interpreted to mean they take pride in it and want to to excel, considering how you are expected to do crunch at ND and people get left out and made to feel unwelcome if they don't...seems like a toxic place to work after the honeymoon is over.

It's like Druckmann and Co know its an issue...but no one is actually willing to place the individual above accolades to do something about it. Like if you moved from another state or country to work at ND...when would you find the time to actually get some rest then go out and make friends/have a relationship? >_>

 

[Syril]

Haven't read the book yet but is there anything about Blizzard? Because I got sent a recruitment video in an email a month or two ago and it was essentially a fluff piece about how wonderful they are, their culture and benefits and the location...with someone saying they would go hang out with different co-workers every evening for their first couple of weeks in the job and find new things about the area.

At first I was "Aw, that sounds nice" but then I was like "....but its probably bullshit" because what company as big as Blizz would let something like that happen for long, in the games industry.

There's a Diablo III chapter, but it's mainly about the period from Error 37 to Reaper of Souls.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

I completely agree with this. I only wish that more managers would see the reality.

Software development (and many other in general needs to shake off this delusion that more hours will always mean more productivity. It's been said again and again for ages now, by many smart people.

The industry seems to have absorbed the lesson that more developers (without proper management) won't improve the progress, but they still think they can wring more from each employee.

Well in general it's your project manager'a responsibility to convey to the projwet sponsor this information. But even more so the planning stage of your project should be in depth enough that you can try to avoid going largely over budget or largely over schedule.

I don't work in games (or software) so I dont know the extent of the planning phase of the projects so I can't speak there but I do know IT is notorious for going over schedule. The extent of money spent around the core project (ie marketing an unfinished game) is part of what forces managers to seek crunch instead of other avenues of loading. But even then, eventually a project manager does have to stand up to the big management and tell them that you're not getting anything out of this if you cant keep productivity up which is impossible over 70-80 hour weeks.

You can't make magic happen. Just send everyone home after X hours. You can better manage a team for 50 hours than you can for 80 anyway.

 

[BossDarkseid]

There's a Diablo III chapter, but it's mainly about the period from Error 37 to Reaper of Souls.

Ah, I'd still find that interesting to read. That sort of...quasi-crisis management would probably be a miniature slice of hell I can't imagine it was plain sailing at all considering how RoS reworked some systems and added quite a bit to the game.

Gonna get the Kindle version of this once I've finished some other stuff I'm reading at the moment, always enjoyed Jason's work.

 

[justsomeguy]

Most QA folks here in California are hourly, and thus must be paid overtime due to California laws, so cutting QA time to reduce costs doesn't really work for game devs/publishers here who have large on-site QA teams. When I started out in my career in QA, overtime pay actually got my yearly income to a decent amount. The downside of course was the 60-90 hour weeks during the last 3-4 month push to a final gold master build.

Not sure how it is in the games industry but often a huge amount of team is 'overhead' : project managers, team leads, etc. Etc. Those guys are on annual wages. So if you can cut a week from the schedule by burning QA bucks and people, you'll still save huge amounts. Plus of course it's always, ALWAYS test that gets squeezed to make a deadline.

 

[BriareosGAF]

18 year game industry veteran, including >16 years at the same company, checking in. Yes, I do feel like a unicorn at times. Although I work with people with longer stints, so not really.

FWIW the senior talent hiring problem is, very slowly, working to correct this. If you are a senior rendering engineer for instance, oh the leverage you have. A lot more senior devs working remote now, for instance.

 

[Wolfgunblood Garopa]

I just got a degree involving Software Development, and half the people in the CS/Engineering school were there, at least partially, because of the influence video games had on their life (those involved with Software, specifically). The only people who want to work on video games are the ones who are in the specific major for it, and most of them want to go work at Blizzard or go Indy.

Pretty much everyone who has the skills and likes video games, doesn't want to enter the field. I'm posting on a video game forum, and wouldn't touch video game development with a ten-foot pole. A software developer is one of the best jobs you can get, why would you trade that in to go work on video games? Literally one of the worst jobs in America vs some of the best. It's no contest.

My story is similar- went to school to learn programming because of my interest in games. I decided to work in other industries when it was clear what a toll working in games would take on my life. Since then I've had a great career, working in various industries making good money with low stress and good job stability. Very rarely do I ever have to do anything outside of a normal 9-5 work week.

 

[GameAddict411]

There is definitely going to a game market crash coming. We won't see it for a while, but as the rising costs and higher stakes per project increase, the higher are the losses. People in the gaming industry are working like slaves. In fact I won't be surprised if the gaming industry has one of the youngest retiring workers. There is needs to be a push towards alternative methods to game development.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Most QA folks here in California are hourly, and thus must be paid overtime due to California laws, so cutting QA time to reduce costs doesn't really work for game devs/publishers here who have large on-site QA teams. When I started out in my career in QA, overtime pay actually got my yearly income to a decent amount. The downside of course was the 60-90 hour weeks during the last 3-4 month push to a final gold master build.

Yeah, there's definitely a dichotomy between me trying to steer clients to alternatives while some testers all me if there are overtime opportunities available so they can make some more money.

One other potential solution I'm toying with is to take a scrum-like approach, where time and budget are fixed, and what gets done is based on priority. It's really hard to remove people from the traditional ways, though.

 

[Enduin]

Are there any sizable studios that have actively enforced maximums for weekly hours? Or is the most "progressive" thing still the "we don't 'require' crunch time" line?

 

[Antialias]

18 year game industry veteran, including >16 years at the same company, checking in. Yes, I do feel like a unicorn at times. Although I work with people with longer stints, so not really.

FWIW the senior talent hiring problem is, very slowly, working to correct this. If you are a senior rendering engineer for instance, oh the leverage you have. A lot more senior devs working remote now, for instance.

The value a software engineer can command is definitely going up thanks to other industries paying very well.

On the other end of the spectrum, the skillset of a game artist is not very portable and thus they can't make as many demands of their employer.

It feels like many places in the games industry try to pay partially in reputation and offer less competitive salaries as a result. Anecdotally, Naughty Dog is particularly guilty of this. Perhaps they should stop trying to tell people it's a privelege to work for them, because all that will do is attract excitable youngsters who won't stay around.

 

[Fafalada]

that I often see the same senior positions go unfilled for 6-12+ months (and sometimes notably longer). I've also heard form some higher up publisher people that this is definitely a problem in the industry.

Not saying it's not a problem (talent drain has always been an issue in this industry), but IME - established "AAA" teams gravitate to the other end of age spectrum. Especially in US/UK based studios.
In part IMO because such environments can be intimidating for the younger hires, but that's another story.

At some point if you pride yourself as a company employing humans, maybe turn off the fucking lights at a certain point so people have to go home.

People that want to would just work from home in that case (I'm not just saying that - I've literally been there myself). The problem is when you have an established culture of crunch, breaking it basically becomes a retraining exercise for some people.

 

[Perineum]

I'll go senior design a game.

Sign me up brews!

 

[Vark]

I'm in the middle of my 16th year. I know a large percentage of folks who've switched industries or gone industry adjacent (serious games, etc).

Work life balance just becomes more important when you're in your 30s. A lot of people start having kinds and want to raise families that they actually get to see. Poor pay, bad benefits, and extreme conditions become less enticing.

 

[Raging Spaniard]

Senior Art positions are probably the easiest to get and have the most straight-forward application process. There's also a quite big demand for senior talent.
What you seem to be looking for or applying for are lead/supervisor roles where you don't do much actual work and rather direct and manage others. These are harder to come by, naturally, and need either connections or extremely strong portfolios.

I dont know why you would make that assumption, Im a workhorse that handles most aspects of art production and I am not trying to move away from that, dunno why you got the opposite impression.

If you find some of these easy art positions, feel free to send them my way

 

[Wozzer]

Whilst it's very true that there are a lot of poorly ran studios across the games industry, it's not a universal truth.

If you've a passion to develop games then don't feel dissuaded by the horror stories. There's plenty of resources out there to get an impression of what it would be like to work at a given studio, in most aspects. Find one that fits your goals, balances work with life and respects their employers.

Also as games transition into service models and have experiences spreading across platforms the breadth of opportunities expand and the traditional need for industry experience reduces.

Thankfully, Riot wasn't like that and I loved my five years there. Seriously, if anyone considers a career in the game industry, look at Riot. Their mission is to be "the most player-focused game company in the world," and they absolutely mean it. It's just an incredible place to be.

Echoing this sentiment. As someone currently at Riot, and in QA a discipline that often gets the worst of the horror stories, I couldn't be happier.

 

[DKo5]

If you watch any behind scenes/making of videos and the dev team has a bunch of grey hair that game is probably going to be awesome.

Funny story - coworker went on a recruiting trip to a university and got asked by a soon-to-graduate "Is your entire studio all old dudes?". My coworker was maybe 34 at the time.

 

[UserDoesNotExist]

Hell, the same thing happens in academic science. People don't leave because they're not good enough to be a professor, they leave because they've learned what being a professor actually entails.

 

[HowZatOZ]

I wonder if the push for burn on the bigger studios will eventually lead to far less AAA but more "indie" yet not really in the context we know of it today. The title indie is already being blurred with a lot of past AAA developers leaving and starting their own studios, bringing the ethos that they gathered from working in the big league and offering higher quality independent titles. If we continue to get more and more AAA devs leaving the big studios in favour of more control on their schedules and lifestyles we could see that quality we know and love from indies potentially shift, offering a variety of styles not yet seen.

I can definitely attest though to development burnout though not in the context of a AAA studio, but moreso from working on a game for final year uni in a team. We hit a roadblock halfway through the year thanks to our only "artist" leaving, and so had to revamp the entire game from scratch essentially utilising programming to create an art style. It fucking sucked, and it was brutal even if it was only a uni assignment. I can't count the nights I was up past midnight fixing shit even though I wasn't the true programmer but lead dev.

Hell, I've got friends who are currently producing a high-quality Aussie indie game and one of them is nearing "pull hair out of head" as the game reaches its final cycle. The stress is ridiculously high in video game development, and on top of that you have a want to push yourself that you almost feel like development burn is a must. Shit is crazy.

 

[thomasmahler]

We're actually sort of reaping the benefits from that situation at Moon since we're picking up quite a few super senior folks that are just done with AAA productions cause we can offer working conditions that are way more fair than what the 'factories' out there can afford or are willing to offer.

AAA for a lot of talented developers just becomes a dead end at some point and most of the big games out there also aren't something you really end up being proud of, most of them aren't like huge artistic achievements and most devs could get better paid and more stable jobs in big companies in other industries, so why stick with it?

It sounds weird, but if you bank on talent and are willing to put your money where your mouth is, everyone wins...