this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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Video game jobs, when I was in the industry at least, draw in young idealistic game developers, pay them less than other tech counterparts, burn them out as fast as possible and then lay them off.
It is definitely hard to enjoy that and come out the other side still as excited about games.
I saw this happening (and was told about it by my professors who still worked in the industry) 14 years ago in college and decided that I'd rather work at the fish market I worked at as a summer job throughout high school rather than go through a 4 year degree program just to make the same amount of money I was already making.
The brain drain is real, and the companies don't care because there's always fresh college kids right out of Digipen, Full Sail, or wherever else, ready to work for peanuts because they're passionate about making games.
We see this a lot in engineering as well. The flashy and defense companies have undergrads lined up and frothing at the mouth to try and work for them.
Then the utility companies pay better, better benefits, and at 4pm you are done. Meanwhile the high profile companies have new hires doing bitch work and working 60 hours a week.
That doesn't surprise me at all. I've heard that companies like Raytheon have direct connections to some of the big colleges so that kids basically already have a job working for them by the time they graduate. The games industry occasionally has something similar. Portal, for example, was originally the senior project of a couple of kids from Digipen, and Valve hired them right out of college to turn it into a AAA game.
Thankfully I started in tech before video games were really a thing but I have had coworkers from gaming industries and they were the most jaded people I had ever met when they started out. They were also universally shocked how little work they had to do for the money they got.
Hey that happened to me! And now many years later I'm looking to get back into the industry because I'm a slut for corporate abuse...
Every time I've been tempted (I've a few mates working for Ubisoft), I look at the salaries and compare to what I make working for banks and, well, I'm a an mercenary kind of guy.
We all have our kinks.
I am currently being pounded by big corporate tech, but they pay me much better than the games industry could.
Yeah I'm currently making about twice what I could find in the game industry... I feel so hollow at my current job though I really need a change and making games is the only thing I've ever wanted to do. At least this time when I go back I'll know more things to look out for
I halved my pay and never regretted it.
But I'm not working for big studios that would probably not have the same benefit
I kinda feel like this, too, but unlike when I first began working in games, I now have a family to take care of.
Also I like the 2x pay, relatively higher job stability, and overall work-life balance with basically zero crunch… so assuming nothing changes in the games industry, it looks like my stepping away from making games starting 11 years ago is still a permanent move.
It sounds like you need better hobbies, my man.
I felt like that at my boring engineering job doing turbine/motor design. I made more than my buddies working for Boeing (joke is REALLY on them now) and had much better benefits, but they made planes.
I picked up a bunch of hobbies that work well with WFH and that ended up filling the void.
I mean I already paint minis, read, write, draw, play ukulele, and take care of a colony of rolie polies in the bin of dirt I keep in my living room like a normal person. I don't think adding more hobbies is the solution for me
And…you listed off all the same hobbies I picked up, only substitute guitar.
Do you write by hand? My writing is divergent between fountain pens with journals for my kids and the stories I write on a PC.
You also take care of a colony of rolie polies in the bin of dirt you keep in your living room like a normal person?
And yeah I write by hand initially. Afterwards though everything gets typed up in Obsidian, sent off to source control, and then a build server picks it up to turn it into a website. I've tried a few times to get fountain pens to work for me but either I'm doing it wrong or I'm buying garbage because they always seem to jam on me after just a couple days of use
Ants.
And the fountain pen issue is likely bad pens. Are you try to do flex writing?
That's delightful! I want to care for ants too but haven't gotten around to that one yet
I don't know what flex writing is but the nibs didn't seem to have much give to them so I'm guess no? Years ago, the last fountain pen I tried was some plastic Sheaffer pen I had heard was good for beginners. Not sure what model it was
Flex writing is more like calligraphy, but a pen doesn’t need to have a full on spring nib for it. I like a medium flex nib for slight line variation while taking notes, but use a very flexible nib for the journals.
What is nice about a flex nib is it lets you go into a world of fancier inks and papers that can really make writing enjoyable and fun to look at. I have too many inks right now, but use them all. They are fun to write and draw with as well.
The Noodler Ahab was my first flex pen. I would still have it but my kid broke it. Was my fault for letting them try it, dropped it right on the nib like a torpedo.
You could do Game Jams and the like. All the fun of making games without the horrible pay and working conditions!
That does sound fun. Work used to have internal game jams but we don't do that anymore (to hell with morale, or learning the tools we're building, profits only!). I should look into some, do you have any particular recommendations?
Unfortunately, it's not something I ever got into myself. I wanna say itch.io has them fairly frequently? But I haven't looked into it myself.
My first thought would be looking into communities of like-minded people (local if you're lucky enough). I don't know if you've ever heard of the Bloodborne PSX demake or Bloodborne Kart (which was supposed to release a few months ago before it got DMCA'd, RIP), but the lady behind those is a former industry dev who streams her work on Twitch and has a Discord that has multiple channels dedicated to game dev stuff. I feel like that would be the kind of place to hop into. Her name on Twitch is b0tster if you wanna check her out.
Yup, I highly doubt it's the "working on games" part that does it.
I loved software development as a kid (taught myself to make a webpage, did lots of personal FOSS projects, etc), so I decided to do it for work, and I still love working on personal FOSS projects after 15-ish years in the industry. So I highly doubt it's the work itself that does it, but the working conditions. If I had to do extended crunch time, I would also hate software development, regardless of what I'm building. Likewise for other roles, like art, testing, etc. My brother did game QA for a couple years in college, and he spent most of his extra money on more games...
So yeah, fix your working conditions and people won't lose their love for games and the work they do.
That sounds expensive. How about we do more layoffs instead?
Thinking outside the box, I love it! Here's a massive bonus don't forget to grab your golden parachute on the way out.