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[RedC]

Key Points Summary:

• Hiring in the modern games industry has become increasingly difficult due to widespread low productivity.
• Many candidates from major studios look good on paper but, in practice, haven't accomplished much over multi-year periods.
• This problem has become especially noticeable post-2020.
• A small fraction of workers (often the square root of total staff) still does most of the actual work—but this imbalance is worse than ever.
• Many developers believe they're working hard, but by older industry standards, they're not contributing nearly enough.
• Studios massively overcorrected after crunch controversies in the 2010s, leading to overly cushy work environments.
• This overcorrection worked during boom times—but collapses when money dries up.
• The industry entered hard times in late 2023, triggering mass layoffs.
• Decisions made in easy times are now crippling studios in hard times.
• Institutional knowledge and real production skills are being lost.
• If this trend continues, the best games of the industry may already be behind us.
• This isn't about demanding >8-hour days—most people don't even seem to be doing 4–5 hours of real work.
• Productivity is low due to both reduced working time and inefficiency.
• Companies don't know how productive people should be—they calibrate expectations based on current staff.
• If productivity declines, expectations also decline, leading to slow organizational collapse.
• Many managers and employees have no incentive to diagnose this problem honestly.
• A broader cultural issue: people no longer believe their work has meaning or purpose.
• Without purpose, people disengage and just "pretend to work."
• Good developers still exist—but they're increasingly rare.
• The speaker's team is small, highly productive, and considered "insane" by industry standards.
• They're building:
  
  • One of the largest puzzle games ever made
  • In a custom engine
  • With a custom programming language
  • With a compiler built alongside it
  • Shipping on multiple platforms
• Google would probably assign hundreds or thousands of engineers to this.
• Their team has three programmers (and that includes the CEO).
• Past hires were cut because unproductive members became a liability during hard times.
• The company nearly collapsed because of this.
• Standards are high because survival depends on real contribution.
• The goal isn't just to ship a game—it's to make something meaningful and important.
• The CEO is still debugging rocks falling in-game 30 years into his career due to lack of manpower.
• This is not how it should be—but it's the current reality.

 

[winjer]

A guy that only made 2 games since 2008, complaining about other people having low productivity.
I mean, he is probably right. But he should look at himself in the mirror.

 

[simpatico]

I work in automation and thing are equally grim. Companies hire in all this cheap international labor and then spend months if not years training it. They're locked into the visa process, so cutting their losses and trying something else doesn't come easily or cheaply. There's a real problem of when you get certain people in positions to make hiring decisions, ethnicity becomes the most important factor and by the time the company realizes what has been going on they no longer have any of their key engineers, but rather a small ethnic enclave.

 

[analog_future]

• They're building:
  • One of the largest puzzle games ever made
  • In a custom engine
  • With a custom programming language
  • With a compiler built alongside it
  • Shipping on multiple platforms
• Google would probably assign hundreds or thousands of engineers to this.
• Their team has three programmers (and that includes the CEO).

What a fucking chode lol. Yes your team of 3 building your little puzzle game would require hundreds or thousands of engineers from Google to create. Sniff your own farts some more.

 

[Gaiff]

A guy that only made 2 games since 2008, complaining about other people having low productivity.
I mean, he is probably right. But he should look at himself in the mirror.

Takes one to know one. I always complain about my colleagues being lazy because I already am. The lazy guy job is taken. We don't need more of them. Go work.

 

[Bark]

Lol, Blow.

 

[Loomy]

I also like taking anecdotal evidence from a tiny ass sample and apply it to an entire industry.

 

[uncreativename]

i feel like Jonathan Blow runs his mouth too much. on the other hand, i agree with pretty much everything i've ever seen him say, especially his reasons for not liking C++.

 

[geary]

I also like taking anecdotal evidence from a tiny ass sample and apply it to an entire industry.

That guy may be an ass or drama seeker, but look at the game's quality released in the last years. Outside the graphics/animation department, the AAA industry is in shambles.
You dont need to be a industry man to see the lame games the big publishers released in the last 5 years (sequels, remasters and remakes with shallow mechanics)

 

[JimmyRustler]

To be honest, I think this applies to almost all industries. Globalization and smartphones did a huge blow on our productivity. Just imagine for a minute what kind of output a developer could have if no one would have smartphones to waste time on.

I mean, no wonder people used to clock so many hours in pre-internet. There was nothing else to do.

 

[Loomy]

That guy may be an ass or drama seeker, but look at the game's quality released in the last years. Outside the graphics/animation department, the AAA industry is in shambles.
You dont need to be a industry man to see the lame games the big publishers released in the last 5 years (sequels, remasters and remakes with shallow mechanics)

Here's another way to look at it. He says he interviews people who worked at a company for 2-3 years on a project and when he talks to them he realizes that they "didn't do very much" on the project.

Someone working on Battlefront 2 at EA - a combined ~600 person team - will generally have less on their plate than someone working on a 20 person team.

Blow is likely evaluating people through the lens he operates in as opposed to the lens AAA operates in. Which is fine, but it's not exactly an indictment of the entire industry.

 

[funking giblet]

Sounds like a whole lot of conjecture on his part. Yes there are people in companies who suck, but games are more and more complex. Small teams can get a lot done, but generally the scope is tiny.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I 'member around Braid's release when the Kotaku-types (Rock Paper Shotgun, etc.) all blew Blow. Then when he revealed his politics, they turned on him and started saying (paraphrasing), "Ya know, Braid and The Witness weren't actually that good."

 

[HRK69]

I mean, no wonder people used to clock so many hours in pre-internet. There was nothing else to do.

What are you even talking about

You couldn't be more wrong

 

[JimmyRustler]

What are you even talking about

You couldn't be more wrong

Boredom is something almost unknown today. When I was growing up it used to be super common. Something like burnout was quite unheard of as people could deal with overtime much better.

Just imagine for a minute you have no internet and no smartphone. What are you going to do all day long?

 

[Loomy]

To be honest, I think this applies to almost all industries. Globalization and smartphones did a huge blow on our productivity. Just imagine for a minute what kind of output a developer could have if no one would have smartphones to waste time on.

I mean, no wonder people used to clock so many hours in pre-internet. There was nothing else to do.

If I assign a bunch of tickets to you and you don't complete them during the sprint. And you do that again and again, you'll probably lose your job.

No one is casually wasting time on IG when they have tickets they need to finish and test. And when their tickets are either being tested or in production, they don't sit around and wait. Every project has a backlog. And if you put your last ticket in done 75% of the way through a sprint, and you don't pick anything else from the backlog until the start of the next sprint, your lead/managers will have questions for you.

 

[analog_future]

That guy may be an ass or drama seeker, but look at the game's quality released in the last years. Outside the graphics/animation department, the AAA industry is in shambles.
You dont need to be a industry man to see the lame games the big publishers released in the last 5 years (sequels, remasters and remakes with shallow mechanics)

We just had a 2025 year that will go down as one of the best years in gaming history. These ridiculous fucking comments are absurd.

 

[Killer8]

Just imagine for a minute you have no internet and no smartphone. What are you going to do all day long?

 

[BennyBlanco]

i feel like Jonathan Blow runs his mouth too much. on the other hand, i agree with pretty much everything i've ever seen him say, especially his reasons for not liking C++.

He's a douche but he's a smart guy. I know nothing about game dev but I could 100% see this all being accurate.

Like think about the time in between Concord getting shut down and the studio getting shut down. What were they doing for like 3 months? Not patching Concord. Not working on a new game. So what the fuck were those 100+ employees doing?

 

[Dr. Samuel Hayden]

He's right

 

[pachura]

If I assign a bunch of tickets to you and you don't complete them during the sprint. And you do that again and again, you'll probably lose your job.

No one is casually wasting time on IG when they have tickets they need to finish and test. And when their tickets are either being tested or in production, they don't sit around and wait. Every project has a backlog. And if you put your last ticket in done 75% of the way through a sprint, and you don't pick anything else from the backlog until the start of the next sprint, your lead/managers will have questions for you.

Yes, it used to work like this pre-Covid. Not any more.

Nowadays, if you don't complete you tickets within the sprint, it means you were overloaded, and your manager will apologize to you
Everyone is wasting their time on IG, Tiktok, Facebook, whatever, doing grocery shopping and taking care of kids during teleworking hours
Projects and deadlines get postponed all the time
And lead/managers have NO IDEA what are their employees doing

Most of my friends in IT (not gamedev) work 4h per day THE MOST, but charge for 8h, of course

 

[JimmyRustler]

If I assign a bunch of tickets to you and you don't complete them during the sprint. And you do that again and again, you'll probably lose your job.

No one is casually wasting time on IG when they have tickets they need to finish and test. And when their tickets are either being tested or in production, they don't sit around and wait. Every project has a backlog. And if you put your last ticket in done 75% of the way through a sprint, and you don't pick anything else from the backlog until the start of the next sprint, your lead/managers will have questions for you.

You evade my question. Let me rephrase. Do you think overall productivity would or wouldn't increase if we didn't have internet and smartphones?

 

[Orbital2060]

Smart guy. He would make a great gaming ceo for Xbox, whenever they decide to change guards.

 

[PeteBull]

We just had a 2025 year that will go down as one of the best years in gaming history. These ridiculous fucking comments are absurd.

It was mid at best, bro.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

My brother used to be a corpo making lots of money. Then he realised his job did not mean shit and was not making him happy. Now he works 3 days a week and still makes enough money to pay the mortgage.

Basically the entire industry has gone Europe.

 

[RedC]

We just had a 2025 year that will go down as one of the best years in gaming history. These ridiculous fucking comments are absurd.

Out of curiosity, in what ways are you measuring this?

 

[Puscifer]

You evade my question. Let me rephrase. Do you think overall productivity would or wouldn't increase if we didn't have internet and smartphones?

Not really, no.

People who are addicted to phones show themselves in work output and get handled accordingly.

Secondly the internet pre smartphones the internet increased productivity and it's not like we weren't playing solitaire and minesweeper back in the 90s.

 

[PlayStaytion]

Looking back at your back catalogue is safer, rewarding, to stay away from modern shit. With more than a 100,000 games on steam, we no longer micro looking at each individual content release, until we beat all better older games, this issue will remain.

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

While he is not that much of a great example, there is a skill issue in the modern game development. Too many karens and DEI hires.

 

[Loomy]

Like think about the time in between Concord getting shut down and the studio getting shut down. What were they doing for like 3 months? Not patching Concord. Not working on a new game. So what the fuck were those 100+ employees doing?

There were about 2 months between closure and shutdown. I imagine part of that was people waiting to hear what Sony was going to do with the studio, and the rest was Sony and the studio heads giving people time to collect work and update their portfolio so they could find jobs after the studio shut down.

Yes, it used to work like this pre-Covid. Not any more.

Nowadays, if you don't complete you tickets within the sprint, it means you were overloaded, and your manager will apologize to you
Everyone is wasting their time on IG, Tiktok, Facebook, whatever, doing grocery shopping and taking care of kids during teleworking hours
Projects and deadlines get postponed all the time
And lead/managers have NO IDEA what are their employees doing

Very far removed from reality. If your lead/manager has no visibility into what you're doing or what your team's velocity is, that's them not doing their job or not set up to do their job properly. They can easily see how often you're making commits and exactly what those commits are.

After a ticket is pointed, the whole team knows approximately how much work/how long a ticket will take to finish(how long a junior or a senior would take is taken into account). Leads communicate with their team at stand up every day to find out what progress they're making on work, or if they need help. If there's a problem, it's addressed.

In my experience, projects get delayed not because developers are not doing work, but because PMs and people above them set unreasonable deadlines, and release dates that do not factor in the real possibility that something may go wrong.

You evade my question. Let me rephrase. Do you think overall productivity would or wouldn't increase if we didn't have internet and smartphones?

You do know that there has been studies done thats shows internet has overall increased labour productivity, right?

And like Puscifer said, if someone is spending all day on their phone instead of working, they would be unemployed. If their employer is fine with it, then it doesn't impact their work.

 

[HRK69]

Just imagine for a minute you have no internet and no smartphone. What are you going to do all day long?

You are a moron.

 

[BennyBlanco]

There were about 2 months between closure and shutdown. I imagine part of that was people waiting to hear what Sony was going to do with the studio, and the rest was Sony and the studio heads giving people time to collect work and update their portfolio so they could find jobs after the studio shut down.

So 172 people (according to google) sitting around for 8 weeks waiting to get fired?

If they averaged 150k salary (US coastal tech jobs) that would mean nearly 4 MILLION dollars spent on people sitting there with their dicks in their hands for 2 months.

 

[poppabk]

What a fucking chode lol. Yes your team of 3 building your little puzzle game would require hundreds of thousands of engineers from Google to create. Sniff your own farts some more.

Yeah I was nodding along thinking this all sounds possible but got to this point and realized the whole thing was just a massive ego massage disguised as a critique of the industry.

 

[Miles708]

Come on dude it's videogames, nobody is saving the planet or curing cancer, quite the opposite actually. Why the hell would you be 220% productive in such an industry, it's entertainment.

 

[Loomy]

So 172 people (according to google) sitting around for 8 weeks waiting to get fired?

If they averaged 150k salary (US coastal tech jobs) that would mean nearly 4 MILLION dollars spent on people sitting there with their dicks in their hands for 2 months.

Majority of employees in a studio make under $100k/year.

But yeah. They likely sat around waiting to hear what kind of exit package they'd get while they applied for and interviewed for new jobs. And they likely got at least 3 months pay worth of severance when the studio finally closed.

 

[geary]

We just had a 2025 year that will go down as one of the best years in gaming history. These ridiculous fucking comments are absurd.

What AAA killed this year? GoY? AC? Avowed? OW2? MH:W? DS?

 

[icecold1983]

Hes right. Its a culture problem. Ive been around some tech companies and the manner in which they can spend their work hours accomplishing absolutely nothing is wild. Its particularly egregious with gen z. Their meetings often border on hilarity.

 

[Fess]

Scary to hear the studio nearly closed. But cool that they're building a puzzle game using his new programming language, I remember him talking about that.
I've heard similar stories before regarding decreased productivity, it's a serious problem and AAA studios are inflated (or closed) because of it. How is it fixed though? Can't just fire people and expect those who are still there to do their previous job plus their fired colleges.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

To be honest, I think this applies to almost all industries. Globalization and smartphones did a huge blow on our productivity. Just imagine for a minute what kind of output a developer could have if no one would have smartphones to waste time on.

I mean, no wonder people used to clock so many hours in pre-internet. There was nothing else to do.

This. You can pretty much copypaste this for any other industry context at this point. It's a cultural phenomenon. Funny how these things happen just when someone wants to sell us a solution for it (AI).

 

[icecold1983]

WFH needs to be eliminated. People need to go back to the office where they can be better monitored. This was a failed experiment.

 

[Harlock]

Similar to what Thimoty Cain talka here.

 

[evanft]

This sounds like boomer bullshit from someone who can't get his game finished and is trying to blame anyone but himself.

People working in corporate America have learned that putting in tons of effort and sacrificing work/life balance is not worth it. Greatly increasing your productivity does not result in more money or benefits. You just end up getting more work. Most people in management are fucking morons who got there cause they kissed the right asses and said the right things, not cause they knew what they were doing.

Do the minimum to get fired. Don't spend a single second caring about the company. Extract as much value as you can for the least amount of effort. Leave the second someone offers you a better deal.

 

[Hookshot]

This isn't new, 20 years ago offices were full of people who clock in, chat, get a coffee, read emails, chat, go for breakfast, eat the breakfast, go for a cig, then get another drink and maybe start working an hour or so after they should have.

 

[JayK47]

This really just affirms what I have been saying for a while. Most of the people are just standing around being activists while small amount do most of the work and rework after one of the activists complain. And when you are the one of the few guys doing all the work, you get tired of being that guy and quit. Some places probably have hardly anybody doing the work. We have seen so many games in development for 4+ years and they have nothing to show for it.

 

[StereoVsn]

Boredom is something almost unknown today. When I was growing up it used to be super common. Something like burnout was quite unheard of as people could deal with overtime much better.

Just imagine for a minute you have no internet and no smartphone. What are you going to do all day long?

Go outside, study for work or take a college course, read books, hang out with friends, work on my hobbies, play board games, play video games (don't need internet for that), Watch TV, finally learn to properly cook and much more?

Internet and doom scrolling didn't suddenly make people feel not bored. They did kill a lot of attention span, productivity and social activities.

 

[damidu]

honestly last person to speak about productivity,
dude you are going at a rate of 1puzzle game per decade.
nobody cares about your custom engines or languages, when end product looks like a weekend unity project.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Probably should be noted that this is in reference to Western studios and it shows. It's very obvious that Japanese companies still put in real work.

 

[Tg89]

such insight here.

yeah man, most people just work to make money, they don't give a fuck about the overall vision of the company lol. im here to find a way to make the money i need with the least friction possible so i can take that money and do shit that actually matters.

 

[SpongeMonster30]

With AI now here, developers will be less inclined to actually work and give passion in their games. We are likely to get more games like concord or Redfall instead of classics like Nier Automata and Persona 5. Oh well.

 

[Garibaldi]

WFH needs to be eliminated. People need to go back to the office where they can be better monitored. This was a failed experiment.

Get fucked with that bollocks. I worked 70 hour weeks from home during the COVID year. Spent a fortune getting a home office set up. I don't have to deal with all the office cooler chat bollocks, I can just put music on and get what needs doing done.

Why travel to a hot desk shit office with terrible ergonomics to work on a shared connection that's inferior to the one I have at home, punting commits to a server located hundred of miles from the office to run on build servers hundreds of miles away?

The reality of big corpo style development is it's full of talking heads and red tape. It takes far too long to get anything finalised before it's handed off to dev and when it is, we have basically no time to do it properly. It's been slowly going this way for the last 20 years.

Most of the Devs I've worked with in fintech are talented, driven and will break their back to get the work done just as much as those not in dev work. It's the frankly useless twats sitting going on like a figma design is all you need to do and the rest should fall into place that's the problem.