
Ask HN: Why people continue working in video game industry? - shubhamjain
Its a common knowledge that being a video game developer for AAA titles means put up your soul to see it get done. Browsing for big companies on Glassdoor gives you a clear picture of what everyone goes through - Twelve hours workdays, six days a week with no paid overtime, terrible management, and intense work pressure [1].<p>If I am not wrong developing 3D games is insanely hard thing to do, for variety of reasons. So why would anyone want to continue working in this industry when he can (hopefully) get better job opportunities by quitting?<p>[1]: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.glassdoor.com&#x2F;Reviews&#x2F;Rockstar-Games-Reviews-E20887.htm
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jarcane
1) Many of them don't. The turnover of grunt level coders and QA staff is
huge, and the senior figures in the industry mostly made it through the days
before crunch-time was simply "all-the-time", and now have the seniority to
avoid it themselves.

2) An endless supply of True Believers. The games industry feeds on exploiting
the idealism of youth. Young guys who grow up with 'making games' as their
dream job, but no idea how the sausage is made, are hired up for QA jobs and
junior programming jobs with promises to do just that. And when they burn out
or realize they're just going to be doing bug testing for the rest of their
lives because they don't actually have the experience to be anything else, the
industry shrugs and hires one of the thousands of others lining up at the door
with the same dreams.

The whole reason the indie market in games has exploded is precisely because
of this, I think. The ones who burn out but still have the talent, or who're
smart enough to avoid the AAA system to begin with, just say fuck it and make
their own games like almost everyone once did in the 80s. Market standards
have shifted from necessarily expecting only the AAA experience, and while few
indie games are going to rival the sales of the next hoorah-FPS game, if
you're lucky, talented, and willing to spend a fuckload of time self-
promoting, you can eke out a living without the meatgrinder.

~~~
mjn
I agree with (1), but it's much beyond just low-level staff; even senior
people have considerable turnover. Since I'm an academic AI researcher, I've
tried to cultivate contacts with AI leads at AAA companies, because they often
have interesting problems and perspectives, especially on how AI and design
interact. A problem with this is that they keep leaving! For various reasons,
of the senior AI people I know pretty well (AI leads on games like _Sims 3_ ,
_Black & White_, _Halo_ , _F.E.A.R._ , etc.), all but one no longer work at
"AAA" game companies.

Some stayed in the industry but moved into a consulting role where they could
control their own hours and assignments better; some branched off and started
small indie-game studios; some moved to a non-game tech job; and some went to
grad school. People have different motivations, but there seems to be a
feeling that the job of AAA AI lead is getting more and more boring and
management-constrained, while the working conditions are getting worse. And on
the other hand, that the alternatives are better than they used to be (much
bigger indie-game scene, more relevant academic programs, etc.), so maybe it's
time to get out and do something else.

~~~
jarcane
I have suspected for some time that, at the present rate of churn, game dev is
increasingly moving to a movie-like model, where a given crew assembles for
one product, then scatters when it's over.

It's certainly the way I'd expect things to go if I were applying at most
studios these days.

~~~
pandaman
It makes sense in the movies to hire a crew of contractors just for the
shooting because shooting takes few weeks, months tops. A game production can
take anywhere from a year to several years, contractors usually don't want to
commit for such long terms so it will take a while just to staff your project.
Then, as you have shipped, you let go all your contractors and immediately
start hiring new ones for the next slated project? Makes very little sense.

The churn you are seeing now is the effect of the poor financial state of the
industry. A lot of studios are spending more money to make the games than the
games bring back. Such studios eventually have to get out of business either
through bankruptcy or through being shuttered by its holding company.

As a studio is nearing the inevitable end people employed there are leaving
and the studio starts hiring, sometimes this is amplified by the management
trying to "fix" the expensive production problem by expanding. Since the
stable and profitable studios do not hire much, especially among people
without industry experience, most of the new hires go into the studios that
are already circling the drain and will be laid off in a year if not a month.
This is what's creating the impression of the high churn IMO.

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jay_kyburz
I'm a long time lurker, but finally a topic I know a little about.

I can't speak for every company out there, but I worked at 2K / Irrational
Games through the Bioshock days. Things may have changed in the last few
years. I left several years ago to work twelve hour days, 7 days a week, for
no pay at all in my own company.

You have to ask yourself what you want in life. Do you want to spend years
working on B grade games nobody has heard about, or do you want to work on a
AAA game with a huge budget that everybody is talking about.

Do you want to be the best, or do you want to be some average joe.

If you want to be the best you have to work hard, and you have to fight, and
you have to put aside some other things in life. And if you're doing it, you
will expect it of the others around you.

If you don't mind being a member of an average team making average games, well
you can have a better work life balance.

It sounds a little harsh, but I honestly think it's as simple as that.

~~~
javert
Working on a AAA game does not make you "the best." And working on a B grade
game does not make you "some average joe."

The "best" person is the person who most enjoys their life.

~~~
MrScruff
I took "be the best" as meaning, be the best in your chosen field. Some people
like to see how far they can push themselves because they are competitive.
Working at the high end offers opportunities to do that.

Compare with being a designer working at Apple vs being a designer working at
Dell.

~~~
pjmlp
> Compare with being a designer working at Apple vs being a designer working
> at Dell.

I bet they would work similar amount of hours and payments.

~~~
MrScruff
I meant industrial design. I would think the (pretty small) industrial design
team at Apple work longer hours for more pay than their equivalents at Dell,
though that's just a guess.

~~~
pjmlp
Could be, my bet was based on the fact that corporations tend to be more
employee friendly than game studios, in terms of private life.

------
yzzxy
I think most people don't enter the games industry because they see it as a
subset of programming. They learned to program or create art to make games,
not vice versa. Many programmers began coding because they wanted to make
games, including myself. But I think most people don't find game code
interesting after they make some initial demos, outside of a few areas like
computer graphics, which is pretty centralized nowadays in engine vendors like
Unity and Unreal.

But there are those who believe in games, who live them day and night, who
idolize famous developers like rock stars. They would like nothing more than
to work at $GAMEDEV.

As a result, they might not be comparison shopping with other company types
like other programmers between financial, startup, BigCo, and others.

I myself considered entering games for a long time, but growing fear of
entering such a predatory industry, as well as a growing interest in PLT and
other CS topics, led me away from that path. I still would consider joining or
starting a small indie team, and participating in game jams or game
hackathons. But I personally don't see the appeal of AAA jobs - the artistry
isn't there the way it is with indie games, and the pay isn't either.

One note - the movement to F2P games like Dota2 and LoL seems to be improving
this trend. These games ship features when they're done, like a SaaS product,
and can avoid the crazy crunches and turnover that a release cycle
perpetuates. Riot and Valve also have some of the highest industry scores on
Glassdoor.

~~~
pjmlp
I am on the same boat, was a IGDA member for a few years and even attended
GDCE from my own pocket.

But as I discovered more and more what it would mean to work in the games
industry, I eventually gave up.

Life after work is just too precious to invest it into games.

Although consulting can be hard sometimes, it still is way better than any
game studio.

~~~
aubreykilian
Surely passion for games outweighs the other things? Perhaps the Indie Game
Dev movement is a better way to go...

AAA games companies should stop over-promising features and over-working their
staff, and go the Blizzard route of "It'll ship when it's ready", I'm sure
that will make for a much happier working environment for game developers.

~~~
jarcane
Passion doesn't pay the rent.

~~~
LBarret
yep, but it does feed the soul.

------
NateG
I've been programing games since I was 10 years old and games are the only
reason I went into Computer Science. I started off at a smaller studio out of
college and accepted a salary about 15% less than my friends who went into
Aerospace and Finance. I didn't care, because games is where I wanted to be
and I loved every moment. I found games interesting, intellectually
challenging and ultimately very rewarding. I moved from UI to game play to AI,
did some Audio programming, dabbled in graphics, helped with design, etc.
There was always something new to learn and do. Fast forward and many of my
non-game industry friends were bored with their jobs, not learning new skills
and maintaining legacy code. Some friends left the game industry to find
greener pastures and more money in other fields and eventually came back due
to the lack of creativity and monotony many non-game jobs entail. This is
obviously subjective and perhaps the kind of person that is not attracted to
making games would find those other jobs rewarding and that is not to say that
all game jobs are dynamic and wonderful.

Regarding long work hours and terrible pay, not all employers are created
equal. I eventually worked for a couple of different AAA companies before
going indie and I had a very good salary and benefits at both companies
surrounding by extremely talented developers. I have a few friends who I would
say have extraordinary salaries and perks, however, they are very good at what
they do. I have worked the crazy crunch times sure, but I think that is
becoming less common especially after the EA Spouse debacle and the industry
matures. It does still exist at some companies, however, there are many other
jobs and industries out there that are just as demanding. I eventually went
the indie route mainly just to see if I had the chops to run a small company
and be the captain of my own ship. It was a question I wanted to answer for my
own personal growth.

Working at a game company just so you can have a "job" is probably not a good
idea. Just like I wouldn't recommend starting or joining a startup unless your
heart is really into it and you love what you are doing because, yeah, there
are going to be some long hours sometimes and there is a good chance you could
be making more money elsewhere. If you like games, want to make games and are
passionate about it, there are good companies out there that will pay and
treat you well. Seek them out.

------
kyriakos
The same way people go on doing CRUD business apps 8 hours a day. It's
probably not a stressful but being someone who was doing that for 10 years it
really kills you. There is zero room for creativity, zero room for solving
programming puzzles, its donkey work.

------
jmnicolas
I think it's a common mistake for young people to aspire to be a game dev just
to make games.

The journey (programming) is the most important not the destination (the
game).

If you don't like coding you won't be happy making games (and there's a good
chance you won't make games at all).

If you like coding you don't need a job in the game industry. Apart from the
work environment, for a real programmer coding challenges in others industries
are as fun as in the game industry.

~~~
fluffheadsr
this 1000x's.. like everyone else here i taught myself to program when I was a
child in QBasic and Pascal so I could make games. I've never made a single
game beyond tic-tac-toe when I was a kid. I still love programming though!

------
pandaman
For a game designer there are no better opportunities that I am aware (I am
not a designer though).

For an artist - there is the VFX industry, which is much worse from what I've
heard (at least game artists don't go on protests). A concept artist could
probably do some illustration freelance, not quite as same as a FTE with
benefits and salary.

For a programmer, and I am one, I don't see anything that could be as fun.
Besides, programmers in the games are paid pretty well.

For a QA - beats me, QA are treated pretty badly, I guess they are there for
the chance to break into the industry.

Producers - it seems there is oversupply of middle management, they could
probably do the same job of sitting on meetings in a Fortune 500 company for a
much better salary but nobody is offering them such a position.

~~~
KaiserPro
VFX here.

For programmers its quite sweet, unless you insist on working long hours.

unless there is a real crisis (as in data missing, lack of power or stuff on
fire) I'm out the door at clocking off time. We are not curing cancer, no one
will die if I leave at the contracted time. But then perhaps being, Helpful,
talkative, friendly and having no qualms about telling people that seeing my
family is infinity more important than dealing with their lack of planning may
be why.

I really do feel pity for the people (normally artists) that feel like they
have to stay late. for example, people at the Moving Picture company were
having dailies at 10PM (a review of the work with crit and dishing out new
shots) They start at 9/10AM.

There are laws against this sort of thing, unions and other mechanisms to stop
employers taking the piss. However people just leave (the industry) without
actually doing anything (Apparently here in the UK middle class people don't
do unions.)

Seriously, everyone grumbles
([http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/](http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/)) but
little to nobody actually does anything. All it takes is 20-30% of the work
force saying "actually no, we're not going to work more than 40 hours, deal
with it or fire us"

No employer can replace 20-30% of a workforce and keep a project schedule.

~~~
pandaman
It's pretty similar in the games. Some companies forbid crunching, many are
just encouraging it and very few are actually forcing crunch. E.g. one big
publisher offered the studio were I worked at the time a contract that
demanded working on weekends. The studio walked away from the deal but other
studios had signed up with them and, I figure, they might had similar
contracts.

Most of the crunch, though, is voluntary.

------
LeicaLatte
This is my first year working with a gaming company. Working on Watch Dogs,
The Crew was quite intense at times but the people have so much passion they
make it worthwhile. Game dev are often younger than say enterprise software
dev. They have time that needs filling rather than old people who maintain a
completely different relationship with time.

------
LBarret
The game industry is quite dysfunctional. It had been proved that crunch is
counter-productive. But there is macho thing to it and it's reassuring to
managers. And as jay_kyburtz's comment shows, there is also a lot of
(misplaced IMHO) pride participating in a AAA project. It is the kind of
discourse managers tell their team to make them work harder, but in a team of
200+, everybody is just a (replaceable) cog in the machine.

Nevertheless, Gamedevs love what they do because a game is full of interesting
problems. As a friend told me : the best game is to build the game. On the
other end of the spectrum, working for a crud project in an enterprisey
environment can be soul crushing.

I've done a few years in the industry and it is a good place to work on hard
problems and becoming a very good coder. But except if you go to the indie (or
middleware) route, it is not sustainable : it has the same alluring seduction
as Hollywood and it is even harsher (due to its ties to the finance industry).

------
fredophile
There are a bunch of good comments here already but as someone that's worked
as a game developer for years here's my take on it. I do have a few comments
on the question itself before I get to my reasons for staying in the game
industry.

First, not all game companies are created equal. The example you cited is from
a company with a reputation for working long hours in and industry that
already has a reputation for working long hours.

Second, compare what you read there to typical start up culture. All of the
listed downsides are present to some degree in start ups. Are people more
forgiving of this for start ups because of the potential for financial reward?

As someone else mentioned, not everyone sticks around and turnover for junior
employees is pretty high.

Most people get into working in games because they love playing games. Making
games and playing games are very different activities. I'd call this a
necessary but insufficient reason for staying in games. If this is the only
reason someone is in the games industry they'll probably, but not necessarily,
leave relatively quickly.

Now that I've gotten generalities out of the way here's some reasons why I
stay in games.

For me money isn't an issue. I could probably make more doing something else
but I make enough to cover my expenses and have a pretty comfortable
lifestyle. I'd need a very significant pay raise to consider leaving the
industry if that was the main reason to go.

Making games is hard. I like working on challenging things. There's also a
very wide variety in the challenges. If you don't like working on one type of
challenges there are other challenging problems to work on.

Another big thing for me is the people I get to work with. Because of the wide
variety of roles you see people with very different backgrounds making games.
Personally, I prefer this and the impacts it has on company culture over the
more tech heavy companies. I'm also very fortunate to work with incredibly
talented people every day at my current job.

------
chipsy
For people who have gotten far enough into it(and I would count myself among
them) there is a "point of no return" where you're like any other devoted
artist - you see designs that have not been made and that you have to make. No
amount of money can buy them because they aren't realized in any form yet, and
only you can do the work. This is at the core of the artistry emerging from
the independent scene these days, although you have to go trawl sites like
itch.io and Warp Door and play a sampling of free games to actually see what's
out there - the commercial sector isn't going to reward all of that stuff, and
this group is drifting inexorably towards Patreon as a funding source.

But there is a dual vision here. The point of no return is not the thing
attracting people to the AAA sector, and it isn't even held by the majority of
independents, who feel a lot of pressure to think about the bottom line
constantly, pander to a perceived audience, and just put out something,
anything, that will keep their doors open. You only get past that thought
pattern if you've hung on long enough and attained a certain mindset(which I
attribute to chance factors, not all of which are necessarily good or
healthy). As you outline, a cold industrial-capitalist labor valuation
indicates that you get worse payment and conditions in games than equivalent
work elsewhere.

No, what gets everyone in there, including younger, more naive me, is some
combination of exceptionalism, short-term thinking, or status seeking. Framing
life in terms of "it'll be so cool to put these things on the screen" or "I'll
be recognized for this work later!" People who feel this way have trouble
keeping away from it - they are "working to live," even as the system makes
them "live to work." Like any workaholic, they may be escaping from personal
issues, and there is a combination of intrinsic empowerment in helping to
create a tangible virtual world, and a social power in working on big,
impressive geek shibboleths(amaze your friends who said you'd never amount to
anything: "I worked on this popular successful game"). The people who break
tend to reach a point where they need a more stable situation, they feel
disillusioned about the type of works they're making, or they're just burned
out from the repetitive aspects.

------
q3sniper
Because of the thrill of it.

My day-to-day is devops with a little frontend. It's drugery. I got into
programming because I wanted to do games programming. That's where I started.
It was thrilling, doing demos, entering competitions, pushing pixels. Fucking
thrilling. But then I needed to get a job. Nobody needs a games/graphics
programmer. So, I read a couple of database books, and now life sucks.

I'd love to go back to where the rubber hit the road.

~~~
inDigiNeous
So, what is preventing you from doing just that? Life is short. Computer
projects are big. Do the math.

I know this may sound harsh and stupid, but just reminding you to follow the
path of love, and not stick to any dayjob.

Left my dayjob in 2012 december. Been following my heart since then, a
difficult path, but so rewarding, I couldn't even dream about what has
happened since then before when I was still in the mindset that I have to have
a steady job.

It's not like that. Once you decide to go forwards, the Universe and the World
around you starts to adapt to that projection. Encouraging everyone here to
follow your hearts and not accept what is considered normal as your destiny.

------
MrScruff
You'll find this applies to any creative industry. The conditions will be
terrible compared to less creative jobs because the work is fun and everyone
wants to do it, creating intense competition.

However, people will find it tough to quit and get a regular job because...
the work is fun. It turns out enjoying what you do counts for a lot.

------
agersant
I can only speak for myself but my reasons are:

1\. I love making games more than making big money.

2\. I get to work with smart people who care about their work.

3\. I feel like I'm solving interesting technical challenges.

4\. Most studios I have worked at are managed reasonably well. Your "common
knowledge" is a broad generalization based on the most horrific examples
around.

------
napolux
Simple answer: 90% of us (including me) started programming because they want
to make videogames. Nobody wants to start programming because "I want to make
Drupal/WordPress/Whatever websites".

;-)

~~~
mahouse
Unless it is sarcasm, you are wrong. Just look at PHP and you'll see how wrong
you are.

~~~
pandaman
Any particular point on PHP you suggest to be looking at? I also went into
programming at the age of 6 wanting to make games, I also, despite looking at
PHP, cannot imagine any kid around that age doing the same because of the
Drupal/Wordpress/PHP/etc. So could you please expand your answer a little bit?

~~~
mahouse
What I mean is, there is a huge amount of people that started learning
programming just because they wanted to do some web related stuff, and
probably WordPress themes are king.

------
trentroot2275
what tricks can I use to not get denied on C.C.

