Post by Morreion on Jul 25, 2017 10:19:07 GMT -5
Tales of a Retired Game Dev (Reddit Kotaku In Action sub-board)
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Hey guys, this is obviously a throwaway account so I would understand if you do not believe what I'll be saying, but for those who are interested, here goes.
I previously worked in the Montreal gaming industry for approx. 10 years. A bit over two years ago, I gave up on the gaming industry to work in other software development fields, and couldn't have been happier. Why? Well Here is a tale of the last few years of my career.
1: The gaming industry is a meat grinder. If you are new, young, and full of passion, you definitely will find someone willing to exploit that. I was warned by friends and family; do not go into gaming, lots of people burn out. I didn't care, I was willing to work out. The reality is, you will work for 80-100h hours a week during crunch periods. depending where you work, this can be a few weeks a year, to a few months a year, to pretty much the whole year.
2: You have no job security. Your game tanked? Oops we need to find a culprit, might be you. And boom you are fired. Studio failed to secure that contract? Hmmmm we need to downsize, you are out. Someone said you refused to be a team player and do the 40h unpaid overtime the others are doing? You are gone.
3: I doesn't pay; especially for programmers For game designers and artists, it can be hard to find better opportunities. For programmer though, I can tell you will easily see a 60%+ raise just by switching domains. My current job is by no means boring, even though I don't make games anymore, and I make 70% more, and my overtime is paid when I have to do some. Considering the gaming industry got me used to 50h "normal" work weeks, this was a huge boost in quality of life and income.
I previously worked in the Montreal gaming industry for approx. 10 years. A bit over two years ago, I gave up on the gaming industry to work in other software development fields, and couldn't have been happier. Why? Well Here is a tale of the last few years of my career.
1: The gaming industry is a meat grinder. If you are new, young, and full of passion, you definitely will find someone willing to exploit that. I was warned by friends and family; do not go into gaming, lots of people burn out. I didn't care, I was willing to work out. The reality is, you will work for 80-100h hours a week during crunch periods. depending where you work, this can be a few weeks a year, to a few months a year, to pretty much the whole year.
2: You have no job security. Your game tanked? Oops we need to find a culprit, might be you. And boom you are fired. Studio failed to secure that contract? Hmmmm we need to downsize, you are out. Someone said you refused to be a team player and do the 40h unpaid overtime the others are doing? You are gone.
3: I doesn't pay; especially for programmers For game designers and artists, it can be hard to find better opportunities. For programmer though, I can tell you will easily see a 60%+ raise just by switching domains. My current job is by no means boring, even though I don't make games anymore, and I make 70% more, and my overtime is paid when I have to do some. Considering the gaming industry got me used to 50h "normal" work weeks, this was a huge boost in quality of life and income.
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6:The management is horrible. How horrible? Well I told you about the non-existent job security already. I also witnessed a co-worker get threatened by HR because one of their friends posted something negative about the studio on their facebook wall. Managers are just as cutthroat as the others have to be to keep their job, except in their case, getting ahead often means abusing their staff, sometimes in illegal ways. Of course you can go to HR, but all they will do is make sure you don't sue. Of course you can sue, but then you get blacklisted, because HR talk among themselves, it's a small world. I dated an HR and I learned a lot about how they operate. I also sued an employer because I felt getting back at them for what they did was worth more to me, than being able to be hired in another studio. It got settled out of court, and I did get black listed. No studio would even have me for an interview, and I had over 5 years of experience at the time. I ended up working in small indie studios who had no HR department, and would pay me very little, but money had never been my priority.
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Conclusion: In my opinion, the gaming industry is rotten so deeply that it is not worth saving anymore. We need to purge it, burn it down, and get back to a time where game artisans were passionate people earning an honest living, rather than a bunch of opportunistic sycophants. I don't want to work with incompetent people who got in because they have the right genitals, or because they know a guy in HR. I went from a world where I could give 200% and get 0 support from my managers, to a world where I feel valued every day, without fear of losing my job. I went through depression once, after losing my job, I went through a lot, tried to kill myself, and most of it, due to working ridiculous hours and being treated like garbage. The worst part is, I went back. It's what I knew, it's what I did, I had to keep going. And now that I left, I can only feel silly for working so hard, for people who respected me so little.
