Same could be said about almost all of the "technology" field most of us work in. I mean think of how many people dream of being a game developer... what a shock that must be.
I can see how someone working on tech might think that. But game dev is kind of a big exception inside tech. I recommend you do some googling about working conditions, salaries, stability etc.
Game Development is an example of what can happen when there are too many people passionate about their work. I'm not saying that everyone in that industry is taken advantage of but it's a lot more than the broader tech industry even though there's a lot of overlap between skill sets.
For tech workers, I think that making video games is "not a dream job" is an understatement. Except maybe for a select few.
That's what I wanted to do. A short look at what the reality looks like was enough to make me run away really fast.
I suppose the industry manages to lure in new talent who don't know any better, that's how they still manage to get people to work for them despite the terrible conditions. They project an image of an industry that is young (no shit, "old guys" jumped ship long ago) and fun to people who grew up playing video games and want to see the other side.
That's not just the big studios. On the indie side, the good thing is that you are not exploited, the bad thing is that it is even harder, with low chances of success. The only team that I've seen personally and was somewhat successful are the guys who made Crosscode (I highly recommend the game BTW), and the process looked like hard and stressful work. The others ended up doing gigs completely unrelated to game dev in order to eat.
Yeah I think that seems to be a pretty common scenario. It's pretty unfortunate that there are people who only think of programming in relation to game development rather than the rest of the spectrum.
Game development is exceptionally fun and engaging as far as software goes, so the supply/demand ratio is much more skewed. I would agree people are likely aware of the worse working conditions and pay etc, but are just passionate about it enough to do it anyway. I was an amateur game developer that always imagined a career in game dev but after learning about the economics of it went with more general commercial software as a career, but I still envy game devs for the work they get to do and their overall satisfaction with that work.
--EDIT: It's also worth noting that if you are on the digital content side of game dev like modeling and mapping there's not a ton of alternative options for practicing those skillsets professionally, unlike programming.
As time goes on and more people enter the industry, I wonder if tech as a whole will come to mirror the video game industry more closely. In video games, it does seem like the oversupply of programmers & their desire to work in the industry no matter what causes lower wages and longer hours for employees relative to the rest of the tech world. And in the independent video game development scene (which might be more analogous to startups), the number of financially unsuccessful games is growing massively as more and more people try to get involved. It seems to be at the point where you need to go into that space assuming it will be unprofitable.
I guess it depends on the talent distribution of the influx of new aspiring engineers -- after all, in some contexts it doesn't matter if 2-3x more people are lining up to willingly do your job if they don't have the skillset to actually replace you. But it could be unfortunate for the jobs that don't have the luxury of being protected by high barriers to entry.
Since you have to assume every executive funding or managing a gamedev studio knows that developers grow up dreaming of working on games, it seems like this is a pretty good example of a sector of tech ripe for collective bargaining. Unchecked supply and demand ensures abusive working conditions for entire generations of game developers, unless they can find a way to in some way link the fates of veteran developers with newcomers and allow engineering teams to bargain for some control over and sanity for their shipping schedules.
Until that happens, though, the classic tech career advice remains true: don't go into gamedev. There is comparably interesting, creative work elsewhere in tech that is also lucrative and relatively secure.
There are quite a few people who want to work on games, true. But I am not so sure the pool of talented engineers that are very good at the tasks game development poses is much larger than anywhere else in industry.
On the other hand, I don't think a very large portion of game development teams are engineers anymore. Not only are the tools much better, there is much more focus on other things like art, sound, marketing, design, etc...
I'm a front-end developer and I sometimes wish I was a game developer instead. App development seems just not technical enough compared to video games, 3D graphics - I'm not much of a gamer but this is the most impressive use of the technology to me. I know this is a passion driven industry and because of it the salaries are worse and so are the working conditions, but I'm talking more about the perspective of working on my own product (game). I have been working on a smaller product that I did not release yet, I love the craft, but I just see how much more I would enjoy building games. But it feels like it's kinda too late to switch and making a great game requires far more resources than making a great app. I stumbled upon this path sort of by accident, by random ideas and I just kinda wish that way back then I had a random idea to make a simple game instead.
I used to think so. My career has been of the type many dream about: started a game company in high school, in the early 80's, C-64 & Vic-20 games. Then I was a beta tester and original 3rd party developer for the Mac. Then I worked in 3D Graphics research, right when ray tracing started. I worked for Mandelbrot. I was an OS developer for the 3DO and then the first PlayStation. Worked in games for years, then switch to VFX and feature film production. My specialty is creating production systems / process task pipelines. Then I wrote "the" global patent on automated actor replacements (called Deep Fakes now). Tried and went bankrupt creating a technology company around digital actors and personalized media. Now I'm in facial recognition as a lead developer at a global FR leader.
I used to think my work was important. It is not. Ultimately it just pays the bills. I like my work, clearly, but I don't idealize it. Perhaps if it was not ultimately put to capturing and controlling society like a stupid herd, I'd feel different. I love entertainment, and our current entertainment industries are producing stunning human achievements. Switching to the security industry after 30 years in entertainment technologies has been enlightening, but continued a vein I was aware in entertainment.
I've spent my career in the United States, grown up here, and from my experience in all these "great jobs", the "metoo" movement is barely tapping the employee abuses and interpersonal abuses everyday people exhibit constantly. The anti-intellectualism of the US is a serious problem, perhaps the root cause of our worse problems.
If people really want meaningful lives, respect of everyone around you, up and down your social/power hierarchy is the path. Then it will not matter if you are the janitor, because within a respectful collection, everyone's needs are recognized and then this shitty disrespectful place that is the current United States will not be so crappy.
I'm an engineer and in general if I want to work in the game industry I will end up taking a salary that is significantly less than I would if I joined any non-game tech company.
Case in point, I've worked with someone at a game company that compared to the rest of the industry treats its employees very well. He was making at most $110k a year as a lead senior engineer (not including bonuses). He left the game industry and joined a well known soon-to-IPO startup as a senior engineer. He is now making $175k base with additional bonuses and stock options.
I'm not complaining, but trust me, the game industry is a different beast. It's much worse if you aren't an engineer -- artists, designers and QA are often treated as disposable.
This same story is playing out in the Videogame Industry.
That industry is arguably booming too, making more than it ever has in the past and growing wildly year over year.
And yet game programmers make some of the lowest salaries among all devs, last I checked. Especially at entry level.
To me, that entire industry seems geared towards grabbing fresh faced grads who are loaded up on dreams of making games, putting them in infinite crunch, and discarding them later when they are burned out.
I think it's any industry which is a very common childhood dream that doesn't have a high barrier to entry. I wanted to be a game developer - I was briefly too - but I'm not anymore. It's the perfect environment to get 20 year olds to work 80 hour weeks for close to no pay - because it's so cool we're making video games!.
Game development seems to be one of the most competitive and least forgiving corners of the larger software development industry.
A long time ago, games are what originally motivated me to learn to program. But some point along the way, I came to believe (whether true or false) that game development was really not a very enticing career path, both in terms of compensation and technical & creative challenges open to solve.
I wonder how many others came into software along the same path.
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