
The great video game exodus - smacktoward
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/318588/The_great_video_game_exodus.php
======
kraig911
I think the video game industry is literally run like the movie industry
except there is no union to help the people who make the actual magic happen
unlike say the entertainment industry. I realize that some hate unions but
some things on this world literally could not happen unless we respect people,
their time, and their families. Some things are worth more than money and I"m
grateful for the games I get to play. I wish there was a way to say give
people in the gaming industry money, say grants, and artistic investment - I
bet there are some great ideas out there that some burned out artist or
developer will never get to realize because he got burned by a company who
wants super solder 17...

I see these games coming out of other countries that are amazing and these
studios seemed to have got grants and investment from the government i.e.
HellBlade, , . Do we not do that here stateside? It's also unfortunate some of
the most talented dev's I've met even quit CS field entirely after doing game
development. Do video game creators get the same mental health services those
in the entertainment unions get?

~~~
brownbat
> I realize that some hate unions but some things on this world literally
> could not happen unless we respect people, their time, and their families.

The cornerstone of the case against unions isn't that we should stop
respecting people, it's that unions are often no longer the best way to
accomplish that goal.

Not to detract from early labor movements, the fights for basic workplace
safety and overtime in the twentieth century and those people standing up to
violence and harassment for basic human rights were heroic.

I'm glad we had unions, but they also have a dark side, where they can
function more like a corrupt cartel over time.

Even without Hoffa-style criminality, they can become unintentionally,
institutionally abusive. I've worked blue collar jobs in the rural US and had
coworkers rant about their family getting eaten alive by the system. They'd
explain how the unions would abuse their new probationary employees by making
them work triple shifts in order to drive them away from the profession. I've
known career extras desperate for a SAG card basically excluded from doing
what they love because the slots are capped, and they're aging out of their
passion while they wait their turn. Paying your dues can have a few meanings
for people in those jobs. That's even setting aside how it creates steep power
differentials that become a magnet for predatory gatekeepers like Weinstein.

I don't feel like typical pro or anti union positions do justice to the
complexity here.

I think you have to acknowledge that unions have put a spotlight on massive
social failings. But I think we also need to recognize their pathologies as
well. Generally we need to move those solutions into less partial laws and
courts, instead of creating another unchecked center of power over workers.

~~~
astronautjones
> I'm glad we had unions, but they also have a dark side, where they can
> function more like a corrupt cartel over time.

someone standing up for your rights and asking for compensation to do it is a
lot more than any kind of ridiculous disruption mode you can imagine.

so much of the next generation is being told coding is the only job skill
they'll need, what do you think will happen when they've flooded the market?
we live in a plutocracy waging a war on workers rights, we are gonna need
unions and we're gonna need them immediately.

~~~
ggg9990
Eventually, whether through unions, politics, or guns, the people who can’t
code are going to demand more than zero-wage Uber driving.

~~~
rainbowmverse
And the guillotines this time around will be aesthetically flawless
engineering marvels made by people who graduated into a saturated job market.

------
bsenftner
"The Games Industry" is a shit hole of illegal corporate exploitation. I am
one of those rare "long term game developers" \- but not, because I left after
15 years of trying to develop some/any collaboration against the exploitation.
I was one of the OS developers for the 3DO and the first PlayStation, a lead
tech at both E.A. and Sony, lead engineer of games I know you played, and I
can state first hand the illegal employment behavior is rampant to the degree
those in the industry are 100% blind to actual ethical working conditions.

Life is too short to spend time in an industry of assholes. I love my friends,
but collectively the games industry is a hate machine, exploiting the
enthusiasm of impressionable youth to create mindless crap - just like the
Abe's Oddysee world of corporate slave drivers.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
God bless you. I was the only person I ever met with a R.E.A.L 3DO, but I
loved it even though everyone else had a Playstation.

Gex, Way of the Warrior, Alone in the Dark, Another World and Fifa 95 were my
life after school etc...

~~~
bsenftner
I wrote the video subsystem as well as the video playback for RoadRash 3DO

------
justinhj
My first job was bagging groceries in Safeway, and I remember vividly watching
the minute hand on a big clock slowly tick around to the end of my shift. I
was thinking, when I graduate university I don't want a job where I am always
so bored I'm just wishing my life away so I can go home. I can honestly say
after 25 years working on video games I have never once been bored. There is a
vibrant industry out there which has never had so many different platforms and
delivery mechanisms. In the next 10 years we will only see more. My advice for
those that want to make games is try it out; don't be shy to move around
different companies and work on different types of technology until you find
something you enjoy and team you like to work with. Do the same every few
years and you'll have a long career ahead of you. And most importantly, do not
crunch. A few extra hours of work here and there is fine, but any extended
death march is bad for your health, bad for the product and ultimately bad for
the company.

~~~
vvanders
Easy to say, hard/impossible to do.

When you're paycheck to paycheck(which I was in gamedev, yay high col) "not
crunching" isn't really a choice when you risk getting labeled "not a team
player" and slow-rolled towards the door.

~~~
shawn
This is partly because most gamedevs lack confidence. There's nothing stopping
you from walking out from abuse -- the door is right there.

It's harder to admit to yourself when your job is abusive. Harder still:
admitting you don't really like your job, and you're ok with finding a new
one.

Finding a new job can be difficult for gamedevs, but transitioning out of
gamedev is surprisingly easy. At the end of the day, it's our collective
willingness to put up with abuse that allows crunch to happen.

~~~
mrguyorama
>There's nothing stopping you from walking out from abuse

What magic world do you live in that doesn't have rent and grocery expenses?

------
Fej
I believe that part of the problem is the attitude of major publishers towards
game development. There is absolutely no consideration for the artistic value
of their works - they will manipulate the end product, and the developers, in
any way to maximize short-term profit at the cost of everything else.

Take as an example - the current loot box (gambling) controversy. Publishers
have pushed this mechanic to an extreme. They are only relenting now
(somewhat) due to the _scrutiny of various governments._ That's how far
they'll go to earn an extra buck, even if it compromises the rest of the work.

Of the point of the article: publishers will continue to hire almost
exclusively temp workers, since it is more profitable in the short term. They
will do this until they cannot; they know that day will come eventually, but
not in the short term, so they are unconcerned with the problem, and will
continue milking their various resources for every last dollar.

Sony, Paramount, Disney, etc. all respect the motion picture as an art form,
despite being for-profit, since they know that defiling their products will
end poorly in the long term. EA, Activision, Bethesda, and the like have no
such respect for the art of video games.

Perhaps it is because the medium is in such an early stage of its life.

~~~
stevenwoo
Almost every worker/contributor in the movie/TV industry in North America is
represented by a union/guild or is trying to get into one, there are non union
projects/studios but those are in the minority.

------
georgeecollins
I grew up in a time when no one thought there was a chance to have a job
making video games. I remember before I finished college, someone from EA
called me about a shareware game I made (distributed on a floppy! imagine). In
those days EA was a small company. The guy was trying to see if I wanted a job
and I didn't even think to ask. Later, in grad school, another small company,
Activision put a poster advertising jobs. I'm glad I replied.

What I have learned after twenty plus years in games is that you can make
enough money to retire, but nothing guarantees a chance to keep working. At
the top level the pressure is intense and new talent is always cycling in. No
one writes an article about how uncertain a career is in film, or music, or
theater, because everyone knows it is nothing you bet on. I was super lucky to
be in the write place at the right time, like someone who got a job at a
record label in the 70's or a movie studio in the 80's. I got to do something
exciting that I didn't know could be a career. There is probably something
else I have never heard of happening right now which is what a young person
ought to be doing.

~~~
apatters
Great comment, as a slight tangent this line stood out to me:

> There is probably something else I have never heard of happening right now
> which is what a young person ought to be doing.

The way you point out these special opportunities that existed every decade is
very interesting. The common theme is an exciting new industry with a talent
shortage. I guess mine was getting into programming at the dawn of the
Internet.

But I have a lot of friends in their 20s, and no one seems to have found that
thing--it _might not exist_ for this generation which would be very
concerning.

(The obvious answer would be that it's blockchain but I don't agree with that
answer...)

~~~
Guest9812398
Social media, YouTube, Twitch influencer? I was one of those kids born in the
mid 80s that grew up wanting to be a video game developer, while spending time
online during the early stages of the internet. The idea of being an online
influencer wasn't a thing that existed back then.

Now, I hear that a lot of kids want to be YouTube stars when they get older,
and there's obviously an endless stream of people trying to be Instagram
celebrities.

So, that's a ship that came after video games for the next generation, and it
has likely already sailed for most since the market is flooded.

\---

Another one is mobile app development. 15-20 years ago I played around with a
Palm Pilot, but no one considered app development as a career at that time.
Now look at that industry. That was a big opportunity for people growing up in
the early 90s to get in while it was taking off.

~~~
jonhendry18
"Another one is mobile app development. 15-20 years ago I played around with a
Palm Pilot, but no one considered app development as a career at that time.
Now look at that industry."

Consumer expectations of software prices driven to zero by app stores, hard to
make a living without being sleazy...

------
oppositelock
Sadly, most of the video game industry is a crappy place to work. I speak from
experience here, having been the lead game engine developer in a studio owned
by one of the largest publishers. I don't want to out them, so I'm being vague
on purpose.

There is little work life balance. No matter what happens, no matter how many
people you destroy, you will do whatever it takes to ship in time for the
Christmas season. If you miss Christmas, your ROI plummets. Huge franchise
games are an exception, but those of us not writing FIFA Soccer, Madden NFL,
or HALO really care about Christmas. Why do people accept this kind of
employer abuse? It's because there is this attitude of having your name in the
credits of a game being some huge honor, for which you will sacrifice life,
pay, and health. People who work on games are passionate about gaming, they
love to play them, work on them, and the rewarding feeling of shipping your
game is intoxicating. When you sacrifice everything to make Christmas, you
sacrifice code quality, maintainability, even reproducibility, leading to a
very slow start on your next iteration, and the cycle of crunch/crash repeats
itself.

If you are into games, you put up with this for a while, but over time, you
see your friends and colleagues get jobs in other industries, and they make
more and are happier working on non-game stuff you consider boring. You
celebrate with them as they buy their first home, or a nice car, and start to
think that maybe the fun work (when it is fun), isn't worth being paid a lot
less. It's not like game companies give stock options, and whatever profits
are made don't trickle down.

Eventually, you get older, you start a family, and you want to spend time with
them, and a game company isn't going to be friendly to that. The benefits
aren't as good, the crunches are still there, the pay isn't great, so you
decide to move on.

You hire some young developer, who is gushing with excitement about working on
games, as you were once upon a time, and you do your best to train them
without letting your disappointment in the industry show, and you move one,
the cycle repeats.

I honestly have no idea why it is this way. Naturally, not all studios are
like this, and there are exceptions, but the majority of the less successful
studios are stuck in this seemingly unbreakable cycle.

I have since worked in many software companies, some of the making exciting
things, others doing dull enterprise things, and I've been a far happier
person in all of them. The passion for games is still there, ever since I
bought my Atari 2600 with paper route money, but as an engineer, I'm done,
never again.

~~~
asfasgasg
> I honestly have no idea why it is this way.

An endless supply of passionate, naive, and young talent. I guess at least 50%
of my graduating CS class at one point or another wished to create a game. Far
fewer wished to create a database engine, an operating system, or a B2B web
service.

When you have that many people who want to make a particular type of software,
getting a chance to do so acts as something economists call a compensating
differential. Working on games is actually part of a game developer's
compensation, and thus the companies can afford to pay them less in other
ways.

~~~
oppositelock
The supply is not endless for good software engineers, I had a very difficult
time hiring junior folks, since the Facebooks, Googles, and Apples of the
world pay so well, and yet, some people are delusional enough to accept.

Artists are easier to hire, and I think that your explanation holds nicely.

The easiest to hire are playtesters, who think playing games for a living is
awesome, until they realize that making Kirby jump over that cloud 800 times
to reproduce bug is hell. Playtesters have the biggest swing from excitement
to disillusionment.

------
bdefore
The article dabbles, but ultimately misses an opportunity to present the piece
I want to read: that the ideal shape of a game development team is not unlike
an early stage software startup. Remain small, take your time, stay healthy,
and put some love into it. Recent years have birthed some real gems from teams
of one, three, or single digits. In this category I'd vouch for Hollow Knight,
Celeste, Ghost of a Tale, and Crawl. Whether these games make enough money to
warrant the investment of their creators versus being at a large company is a
worthy debate, but to me it's apparent that we're in a golden age of games
made by small groups of visionary creators.

Put another way, there's an exodus from unwieldy large teams that lack
responsibility and a sense of craft and ownership.

There's also the problem of 'backlog fatigue'. There's only so much time in
life for playing any game, which makes you purchase them much more carefully
and for different reasons than you did even five years ago. For me it's much
more in the spirit of thanks and support than as a transaction.

~~~
jayd16
>Put another way, there's an exodus from unwieldy large teams that lack
responsibility and a sense of craft and ownership.

Is there data for this? EA, Activision, Blizzard, Ubisoft etc seem to be doing
fine with massive teams.

The game industry seems to be moving with the rest of the entertainment
industry. As technology progresses, the barrier to entry lowers and its easier
for small teams to make things.

Sure there are some great independent films but we continue to see Disney
behemoth blockbusters breaking records every year or so. I assume there will
continue to be room for all types.

~~~
backpropaganda
Not all projects at EA, Activision, and so on, succeed. The success of these
companies are dominated by a few successes, which also tend to be milking
existing IPs without much innovation. Even so, the average developer at these
companies is still stressed out, because of the Zipf's law nature of project
success. That is, it's very likely the project they're working on is not doing
so well and will not succeed, and thus, they're overworked, etc.

I'd say there's an exodus much like the web tech industry, a shift from
behemoths like Microsoft and IBM to smaller startups like Uber, etc.

------
crazybit
Supply and demand.

Game developers: very sexy, easy to show off, has a (very) large supply of
talent. Pay not bad, not good, work schedule very demanding.

COBOL developer: extremely unsexy, almost don't want to admit it publicly.
Tiny supply, relatively much larger demand. Pay very good. Work schedule very
predictable, not demanding. Almost a vacation.

Supply and demand. Ignore at your own peril.

~~~
backpropaganda
Which areas do you think have large demand and low supply at the moment?

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Maintenance, everybody wants to work on greenfield but there is a ton of
maintenance work out there.

~~~
humanrebar
It's easy to slide into a maintenance role. I wouldn't say the pay is
especially better. There aren't "maintenance engineers" making substantially
more than "development engineers".

------
walru
Extraordinarily long hours, toxic open office work environments
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6vCBQKN0F8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6vCBQKN0F8)),
poor management guided by auteurs with nothing to back up their plight and a
culture of being outed when you're too old, or overpaid, is why I'm no longer
there.

I think the best answer to this is the fact you can very easily still create
outside of these environments on your own. The trouble is finding the other
like-minded folks who still want to work in the industry but are outside of
it.

~~~
balt_s
Created this account to echo your comment; I strongly encourage everyone who
is curious about entering the industry (especially youth/students) to view
this brief and cogent video.

Seeing it brought back many fond memories of auld.

------
debacle
> Only seventeen percent of the 30,000 attendees to this year’s Game
> Developers Conference worked in the industry for seven to ten years, and
> just thirteen percent for between eleven and fifteen years.

So 30% of attendees have 7+ years experience? Strange way to slice statistics.

------
Paul_S
It's been the same story for the last 20 years (or longer but that's when I
started). There's an infinite supply of young naive people who will work for
poor pay and under terrible conditions because "games". There's nothing you
can do to help. Young people are physically incapable of learning from someone
else's experience. Companies are happy with that situation because they don't
mind not having experienced devs. Those demand higher salaries or sane working
hours - can't allow those. I mean what's next? Pension funds?!

------
throwaway59928
Several people in these comments are comparing the video game industry to the
movie industry. I think the key difference is that the movie industry tends to
value experience with everyone but the actors, with the exception of big name
stars. I know lots of people in the movie industry, from set builders to
producers, and they’ve all been working in the industry for years except for
the actors and actresses. The video game industry doesn’t seem to value
experience with the exception of a few big names and some developers with rare
talents. Not a single one of the game devs I worked with 15 years ago are
still in the game industry.

------
OliverJones
The talent pool for game designers and developers is very broad and, sorry to
say, very shallow in places. It's like the talent pool for screen actors.

There are ten thousand hopefuls for one hundred decent jobs. Many of them are
motivated by good things: respect for the games they've played, a hope for
success, and the motive of the Blues Brothers ("We're on a mission from God!")

This means the executives in the game business can get away with exploiting
people, in the ways this article describes.

I know a young female aspiring game designer who's been laid off a few times,
dissed,, blamed for silly stuff, and generally mistreated. One exec even tried
(without success) the casting-couch schtick on her.

Her diligent work to learn her craft (rigorous BFA, internships, lots of
practice) hasn't helped as much as it would have were she an aspiring software
engineer, accountant, plumber, or truck driver. It's a problem with the
blockbuster approach to game sales.

Many people are trying to solve this problem. Unity and Unreal lower the
barrier for indie game developers. Humble Bundle did a good job getting
exposure for indies, and still do even after the Steam buyout. The free-to-
play model (with small ongoing transactions) has potential to stabilize game-
publisher finances.

But the big win will come when games of various sizes can all succeed.
Standing in the way of that is the superstar / blockbuster business model.

In the meantime, I hope my young friend gets an executive position.

------
duwease
I don't think this is new. 20 years ago, I loved game programming.. I even
chose a game dev library in C++ as my senior (college) project. But my
obsession also led me to read all I could about the industry, and the stories
were the same. I got nervous about the 14-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week eternal
crunch time, the pay, the job security, the lack of prospects without moving
around. I chickened out.

I still _like_ my job, but it's nothing like the passion I felt when I built
games. Still, I don't think that passion is enough to justify the strain it
would put on my family through financial risk, not to mention my work/life
balance (or in this case, work/slightly less work balance).

Since it was the same then as now, I suspect it may continue to be. After all,
it's a job with inherent joy for people who want it, and those tend to have
the luxury of materially rewarding workers less. Much as bars can basically
pay bands little to nothing in order to have live music, because there's no
shortage of people wanting it just for the inherent joy, I imagine game
companies will continue to have a pool of creative technicians willing to work
for less. Maybe the higher barrier of entry to learn tech work will change
something one day, but it doesn't appear to have done so, so far.

------
acou_nPlusOne_t
Even if you got experience, you will never get leverage in thise industry. The
reason is the mythos of the gamedeveloper, drawing in new people (mostly young
"I-want-to-make-a-game" idealists) with Stars in theire eyes. Its the same-
thing, that allows Hollywood to abuse young actresses- who will not resist,
because there "are millions more where you came from". Supply and demand.

Idealists make for excellent rocket fuel, and if they are burned out, you dump
the husk and make another run for it with new material.

You cant unionize this, because this cycle is the default operation mode and
students joining up dont have unions or reasons to join one.

You cant either unionize the actors or fashion-model industry. What can be
done - is destroying the glamorous image in the head of the youth.

Which has partially happened allready, and is why everybody wants to go indy.

~~~
abraae
"dump the husk"

Great, I can see it written in the spine of an evil management book!

------
AndrewKemendo
_When he was ten years old he would write letters to his favorite game
developers and publishers describing his love for their games and seeking
advice on how to become a game maker._

Yea I did that too.

I fondly remember one such response from Seth Robinson, the creator of the
Dink Smallwood PC RPG. I was asking him how to get into making RPGs and if I
could help him on some project in the future maybe. I believe I was 14 at the
time and had done some mods to MCM, Carmageddon and was working on a space
shooter with the 3DRAD and the just unveiled Unreal engine.

His curt response was that he wouldn't start talking with me for less than
$100,000.

Always a great way to interact with kids who are trying to get into your
industry.

------
ymck
The truth is that in "gig" based economies guilds and unions are
essential(portability of seniority, benefits, etc). If done right it benefits
both the employer and the low and high end of workers. Also, the truth is that
in tech this hasn't caught on because, we just like to think we are special.

------
ryanmarsh
Building games and being over worked can’t possibly be worse than a soul
sucking 40 hours as an equally underpaid enterprise dev. I’d rather be over
worked but making something interesting rather than sitting in meetings all
day barely writing any code and going home with no mental energy left and
nothing to show for it.

~~~
gordaco
In my experience, enterprise devs are not really underpaid (this could vary a
lot depending on your geographical area, of course). I also don't find
corporate jobs to be exhausting at all, but YMMV and it probably varies from
person to person. I don't care sitting in meeting if I know that they will end
in time; I'd rather be coding but I'm getting paid anyway.

Some years ago I had a hip, theoretically non-soul sucking, job (not video
games, but still, a hip software company from my country). The hours were
horrible and the pay wasn't that awesome. I now have a 8-to-4 corporate job
and I love it. There is little stress; the technical side is a little outdated
but still acceptable, and comfortable to work with; the pay is nice; the hours
are sane; the managers are reasonable and planning works; and so on. Sleeping
as much as I want every day, and not being overworked or stressed over my job,
are awesome, underrated things.

The projects might not be super-awesome, but I learned a lot of time ago that
if you want something fun to work on, your best bet is to look for it outside
your job. That way, you stay in control: you work at your pace, you decide
when to start or stop a new project, and in the case of software, you can
spend time gold-plating projects to your liking.

------
scottlegrand2
So basically, EA Spouse rules still apply? So glad I chose tech over the game
industry.

[https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/ea-
spouse-14-ye...](https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/ea-
spouse-14-years-later-w517096)

------
psyc
I’ve been a game developer for decades. Companies that are categorically in
the game industry tend to be full of shitheads and oversized egos. I have
mostly solved the problem by working in game organizations within BigCos.

------
CalRobert
Very, very related - "Don't do for money what others do for love"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792942)

~~~
thedailymail
But isn't this the exact rule that Bill Gates violated when he moved to build
a software business at a time when software development (for personal
computers) was mainly a hobby?

~~~
abraae
Except he also loved it himself.

------
nottorp
Just for completeness, the situation in 2004 for those who have forgotten or
were too young back then:

[https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com](https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com)

------
banku_brougham
I read the whole article and I didn’t get a sense of exodus at all — its just
a steady and high rate of churn in an industry with surplus new talent willing
to burn it all in order to ship on time.

------
holografix
I think the comparison with actors is a valid one and we can draw parallels
with the YouTube “creator movement” basically actors/performers who are too
smart to fight the herd and went out on their own.

If you’re being asked to work more than 50-60 hour weeks consistently and not
paid for it you must do what you can to change jobs/industry/city/country.

------
ogennadi
tl;dr: why people who value stable employment are leaving the game industry.

------
Kenji
_“The day that I joined I had to sign a contract that basically said anything
I created during or outside of company time is owned by ZeniMax. Even on my
own hardware, or at a game jam.” Kelly wavered for a few moments – signing the
contract would limit any chance to work on side projects -- then decided to
sign regardless. “To be clear, many people worked on personal projects and for
the most part ZeniMax didn’t care,” he says. “I think it was more on principle
[that] I had a problem.”_

No, this is a legitimate concern. Clauses like this should be illegal. What
you do in your spare time is yours. What the hell, what are you, a slave?
These clauses are there to disincentivize you doing things beside your work,
so that your employer can take up even more room in your life. I would never
sign such a contract.

