Game Dev Working Conditions

For decades gaming has been the programmer equivalent of the waiter-actor/waitress-actress in Hollywood trying for their big break.The competitiveness and desire to work there is what drives these insane working conditions.The big difference is this: If you have the skills to work in the gaming industry, you also have the skills to work in another software industry that will compensate you appropriately.Nobody needs to work 100 hours a week on salary for at a AAA studio who will di

I'm not the person you're replying to, but I have a bit of insight here. I've been happily employed in the games industry for the past 10 years and don't have any plans to leave it, but while I have absolutely recommended programming/software dev as a career field to people before, I would hesitate to _suggest_ the games industry to someone who wasn't already excited about it.To your comment, making games is great and fun and I think it's great you want to d

Any data on this? In the very beginning of my dev career I made more than a game dev who had been in the industry for years. He was clearly a more experienced and wise developer than me but stubbornly only wanted to work in game dev. He described a lot of really bad work conditions, too.

What I've heard about game development (correct me if you disagree) is that it is typically higher demanding or lower paying than gigs in other fields. What I've heard is that it's only worth being in that industry if you're passionate about it. I think older engineers will trend towards less demanding or higher paying industries, and are less likely to have as serious of passions towards gaming

As far as I know, the big selling point is that you get to work on video games instead of CRUD apps or adtech or "Uber for X". I've seen several anecdotal reports of people tolerating a seriously sketchy work environment because as far as they know, the alternative is not working on video games.I'm reminded of allegations of the K-pop industry basically being a soulless meat grinder because it has no trouble finding kids who will do anything to be a K-pop idol.

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

You are on the cusp of major salary increases for your age and experience outside of the game industry. Time spent inside the game industry is generally viewed outside of the game industry negatively . Only gamers give the game industry respect, in a professional sense, as technical creatives tend to view the high levels of unpaid production overtime as mismanagement and abuse with the game industry's eternal crunch time schedules. Those less on the inside think making games is "playin

I got into programming because of my love of video games. Unfortunately/Luckily, I couldn't get a job in game industry immediately out of college. As I started reading online forum about game dev, I realized almost every corporate game developer complained about it. I was no longer thinking making video games as one of the best job in the world.I understand when you are sole developer or owner of the studio who is burning midnight oil. I have done that on some of my projects. But I

Yes. Many people new to the industry don't understand that the glamor of working for a game company almost always translates to bad working conditions and low-ball pay. Games are hard, but there are just so many people who want to be involved in making them, that there is a pretty excessive supply of prospective developers. Game companies take that as a license to burn people out, because they know once that crew finally tires of the beatings, there will be a fresh crop of bright-eye

Oh, I'm sure there are differences between companies. However, your measure of "people love working there" might be misleading. All of my ex-colleagues loved working on games, and almost all were pretty happy at the company, because, you know, the previous company they worked for had worse death marches - 7 days a week, not 6! and from the start of the project, not just the last year of development! - and wow, our company paid up to GBP 7.50 for takeaway dinners when you worked more than