
Is The Game Industry A Happy Place? - chaostheory
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29292/Analysis_Is_The_Game_Industry_A_Happy_Place.php#comment58886
======
chipsy
I've gradually got to thinking that gaming is a field that is extremely poorly
understood(even by enthusiastic practitioners like myself), and that it is why
it can so easily turn into an destructive tarpit.

The problems start at some extremely base assumptions of concept and focus -
stakeholders will often treat a game as a branding exercise akin to a toy,
just on a larger scale. Or they might conceive of it like a movie, with a
Hollywood-style marketing push. Or it might be treated as "entertainment
software," with a focus on having the best technology and the most features.
All of these are not really correct, but we can fool ourselves into thinking
they're correct because entities outside of the industry(namely, IP owners and
other hardware/software manufacturers) will bring their money and their world-
view/assumptions to the table, and through sheer trial and error game devs
have found a few ways to satisfy these stakeholders and make something that
can potentially turn a profit, even though the historical record indicates
that the "value" the stakeholders brought to the table usually wasn't a
contributing factor in the biggest hits.

But once you start down that path, the top-down directive forces the
development team to start doing unnatural things that work against product
viability and realistic ship dates. Soon, everyone's dissatisfied and it just
becomes a hellhole where the team works as individuals, takes their paychecks,
and "looks out for number one." But a lot of people want to work in the
industry, and they'll take bad money over no money.

It's the same problem as in startups as a whole - find an original, scalable
game concept. Work on making it marketable. Then you can start spending big to
make a refined, feature-heavy implementation.

------
SoftwareMaven
My two experiences in the gaming industry taught me to stay away. The first
was as I finished up my college degree, building the PC version of "Space
Jam", the game (oh, boy, was that a fun one). The second was last year working
on League of Legends (awesome game if you like PVP!).

In both cases, it was very apparent that the industry is built around taking
advantage of peoples' passions and love of gaming. Pay is low, hours are
ridiculous, and respect is sadly missing. People put their heart and soul into
what they are building and get tossed with little to no thought whatsoever.

If you are absolutely passionate about working in the game industry, I say go
for it. But go in with eyes wide open: it is a tough place to be.

It is more entertainment industry than software industry, and, just like most
other entertainment industry groups have guilds/unions to protect their
interests (screen actors guild, screen writers guild, etc), there probably
ought to be a computer programmers guild as well.

~~~
Leon
League of Legends is a fun game - it's the only reason I still have a windows
install. Good job on making the game awesome.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I wish I could take credit (I wasn't on the game engine but rather the
matchmaking/store/chatting part), but I was working with some real geniuses
there (technical and creative).

Still, by far and away the most interesting Java project I've ever worked on.
I'd never heard of so many enterprisey technologies around a game before
(unfortunately, I don't know what would be covered under my NDA, so I probably
can't say much more than that :).

~~~
tomh-
So you are the one to blame if I get matched up with noobs and leavers in a
game ;)?

PS. I loved the space jam game when I was kid!

~~~
SoftwareMaven
That bit of code was, umm, complex. The foundation was written before I
started on the project and left to the original writers to maintain. I can
promise you this: there were more conversations about (and really, more time
spent on) how to handle match making than any other topic. The whole company
was absolutely passionate about trying to make sure people got matched well
(how well they succeeded, I can't answer :).

I'm glad you liked Space Jam. I was really disappointed that the game turned
out so basic. Some of the original ideas were much more interesting, but I
guess they figured they wouldn't market as well to the target demographic
(don't ask me what they _were_ ; it was a _long_ time ago).

------
_delirium
This was an interesting, albeit admittedly anecdotal, comparison from the
comments:

    
    
      I've had several jobs in game companies, and several non-game jobs too. The 
      biggest difference I've noticed is that outside the game industry it feels like
      co-workers, managers, etc. are actually happy to see you at work. Outside the 
      games industry there seems to be a strong sense of networking, a sense that 
      people want to find good workers they can build a team with so they can all 
      move up the company ladder. In the game industry, everyone else in the
      industry is like a competitor, someone who might steal that job you want.

~~~
seekely
This observation is just not true, or maybe it varies depending on your
position. As a developer in the industry, you will rarely be without a job or
in a position where you can not jump to another studio. Once you are in the
industry, you will end up with friends at studios all over the place. The
turnover and 'grass is greener' syndrome in the industry is just too high for
networking not to naturally happen. You do not even have to try.

As for the friendless of the people, while I like working in games for the
games, the culture that develops around the people working on games is the
bigger draw.

~~~
dkersten
_As a developer in the industry, you will rarely be without a job_

This is true for any competent software developer with half reasonable
contacts or experience (at least here in Ireland - a week ago I had a
conversation with a recruitment company and they confirmed that there are more
jobs than good programmers here).

------
nethergoat
Much of the problem is a result of the publishing model - deadlines are
inherently more stressful when they're inflexible and you're expected to
deliver a 100% finalized product.

My studio (EA2D, a new division of EA) is developing web-based games. We get
to have all the fun of building badass games without the stress of delivering
a hard-media product. In response to the post title: yes, for us, it is a very
happy place.

Incidentally, we're aggressively hiring the best and brightest:
<http://www.ea2d.com/jobs/>

Contact me directly: mikeb@ea2d.com

~~~
LaPingvino
I got the feeling the flash rockstar and flash game engineer descriptions are
swapped...

------
rdtsc
I would say the observation is accurate. I think the owners / employers see it
as a supply and demand problem. There are a lot of enthusiastic, gung-ho
novice programmers would give an arm and a leg to be in the gaming industry.

Many enjoyed playing games, so naturally they decided to into the this field.
These individuals will compensate their lack of experience and theoretical
understanding of many CS subjects with sheer enthusiasm, they will work 12
hour days, weekends, for relatively low pay, putting up with lots of crap,
until ... they burn out. When they burn out, there is another battalion of
enthusiastic kids waiting at the door and, then the cycle continues.

It is not that this doesn't happen with other programming jobs, but there are
just not that many people who are as excited about database scalability or
say, machine learning as there are individuals excited about games. Exploiting
someone like that and having them burn out, would mean having to look long and
hard to replace them. Therefore pay is better, hours are better and the
environment is healthier.

------
seekely
There are unhappy people in every industry and in every position. But the game
industry has surpassed the tipping point for popularity and 'glam' to make the
detractors have enough social incentive/attention to be very vocal.

There are legitimate gripes, complaints and out right abuses in the game
industry. But much of the brokenness in process or hours or management or etc
also exists everywhere else. It is the unfortunate nature of a work
environment. You do not read/hear about everywhere else as much fewer people
are passionately following their output or dreaming of breaking in.

~~~
robotron
I kind of see the truth to that comment but you're missing the larger picture.
There really is an entirely different world in the games industry. I haven't
worked in it myself but have had friends in the industry since the late 90's
and my fiance has been in that industry since the mid-2000's. Everyone in the
industry loves it, but you're constantly going through the
layoff/buildup/crunch/layoff cycle with long, long, long hours. Did I not
mention long hours?

------
robryan
I'm not sure how many they have working on it but Starcraft 2 strikes me as
something that the developers have been given a load of time to do justice to
a Starcraft follow up.

In contrast though it seems like the WoW devs have a pretty brutal schedule in
order to pump out expansions and updates fast enough to keep giving the
millions of players enough to do that they won't stop paying the subscription.

------
jpcx01
Great comment to link to! He should have been the one writing the article.

------
gigafemtonano
I had pretty popular podcast and a relatively popular free game on the app
store, and I can agree that the gamers are a tougher audience than the general
public. There are bad podcasts but you usually don't see reviews ripping them
apart for trying. Likewise there are free games which obviously took more work
than some of the one button apps I've seen on the app store, yet everyone who
plays it feels the need to leave a snide remark. I personally wish the app
store had the option of turning the comments off like YouTube. Maybe Apple
wasn't ready for the cynicism of the gaming public. I know I wasn't.

~~~
electromagnetic
Take it this way, you got gamers to pay enough attention to your game long
enough that they would take the effort to leave a bad comment.

I worked as a game reviewer and I could actively avoid bad games, so there's
obviously an element in the game you made that was drawing people's attention
and keeping it. Find that element, redevelop and release anew.

From what I could tell a new-franchise in games had as good odds as a movie of
hitting big - IE purely random. Simply try again.

I'd be happy to help if you have any questions.

~~~
gigafemtonano
I'm in the midst of doing more or less what you're suggesting. In addition to
new content I'm going to try to strip out some of what people seem to have
disliked. The idea that you're supposed to listen to feedback and make changes
accordingly doesn't seem so easy when the feedback is hostile or totally
unhelpful.

