Truth! He Nailed It!
Just read this. Can’t comment, too busy laughing and forwarding to everyone I know.
Okay, one little comment.
Do you know how depressing it is to listen to a bunch of guys in their mid-thirties talking about how they’re pretty sure they’re next on the layoff merry go round, because they simply can’t sleep at the office and still function the next day? You don’t? Go work at a game company.
There’s one main difference: You have very little to no desire to see a game developer naked. Ever.
Hey! There might be an attractive developer out there Mystery…it can happen! Maybe…
In a moment of “sort-of “serendipity, immediately after reading this I checked my email and spam mail had gotten through talking about “A vacancy in the game industry.” If it wouldn’t be doing exactly what the spammer wanted anyway I’d reply back with that link “Sorry, I just have too much self-respect for that kind of work…”
I often think about how neat it’d be to work for a games studio, then reading Tweety’s stories (and many others, of course) makes me realize that the ideal is much cooler than the reality.
God I wish I made pornstar money.
You know my coworker and I calculated it out, and the first 6 months we were game designers we would have made more money working for minimum wage and being paid overtime than we made as full time salaried overtime except employees. And yes, we made more than the minimum required by the state to be overtime exempt, I checked.
I’ll never understand why anyone would ever want to work in the game industry. Really. I mean, when you -work- on games, you’re not going to be -playing- any games.
I think too many of those sweet young things actually think that their workdays will be full of office LAN Halo 3 sessions, team-based WoW raids, and meetings where the agenda discussions focus on the newest strategy for beating Civ 4.
It’s much more fun being an interested outsider. Even if you donate time and “work” for free as a volunteer/guide/teamlead/tester, you’re still probably going to have a better quality of gaming pleasure than someone who’s livelyhood depends on a specific entertainment product.
YMMV
Of course, finding a 40 hour with overtime minimum wage job is pretty tough, most places paying minimum wage don’t want to let you get close to where they have to pay overtime.
Of course, no one is going to pay me 60 hours of overtime in a week, but still, it was disheartening.
I realize that post comes across bitter, but honestly I’m not. I worked all those hours primarily because I wanted to, not because anyone made me. In fact, I was sent home by managers to get some rest on at least one occasion, and repeatedly encouraged to work less hours. Now management did have a hand in my crazy work schedule, they gave me patently impossible tasks without bothering to tell me they were impossible. I was excited about being a game designer, I loved what I was doing (I still love work like that), and I happily worked myself to the bone jousting windmills. In the process I totally burned myself out, and certainly the work I produced was not all of the best quality.
At a certain point that became unsustainable, and I migrated myself to a normal work schedule. Now I mostly work 40 hours a week. Sometimes there’s a crisis or a deadline and a put in a little overtime but that’s the exception, not the rule, and when it happens I know why it happens, and I know what the company is or isn’t doing to prevent it from happening again.
And that’s what it really comes down to. Is the company I work for going to treat me well in the future? If not, what are my options? There are always options.
“There’s one main difference: You have very little to no desire to see a game developer naked. Ever.”
I don’t know, a Game Designers Swimsuit Calendar could be a lot of fun!
I can just about imagine Scott Jennings in a speedo, and Sanya Weathers in a bikini. Sexy and thought provoking, all at once!
I hate you.
Haha, now where did I put those old pictures and my copy of photoshop…
There were a few game designer hotties out there. I wouldn’t ask if they did porn though… pretty sure I’d get beaten.
I’m really surprised nobody’s brought up the IGDA discussion about game companies and OT…
http://www.dariusforigda.org/2009/03/videos-from-the-igda-annual-general-meeting/
Fuck, I’m graduating my university, and I’ve always wanted to develop games. Now I’m reconsidering.
Stupid: I didn’t worked on commercial game, but I did on my hobby projects. That feeling when you’ve constructed world that “lives”. It’s very addicting.
Well, that IDGA & QoL thing looks to be a mess. I’m not in the industry, but from a general business standpoint I can see some of the problems here.
Any maturing industry has to address QoL issues. Failure to do so will result in little to no long-term talent pool for the industry to draw from as people will eventually leave for other industries where they can get a better QoL. This leads to a lack of growth of leadership in the industry, and tends to inhibite the industry’s maturization processes. It’s a cycle that’s hard to break, and bad news for anyone looking for companies to mature and stabalize in the field.
The IDGA appears to be more concerned about the development houses than the developers, and are very entrenched in the business practices that are holding the industry back from maturing. I also see a lot of “if you don’t like it join the IDGA and do something about it.” But that’s the problem, the people in the industry don’t have enough free time to do things like campaign for the IDGA, they’re busy crunching non-stop.
It’s a mess. It’s also nothing new; every industry goes through these growing pains. The truth is that companies that address QoL issues generally perform better than those that don’t because they are able to establish and maintain a better pool of talent. Eventually some of the development houses will address QoL issues, will have success from this strategy, and it’ll spread to be the industry standard.
Unless you are the purse string holding exec, you are never going to make a fortune in the games industry. Personally, the main thing I enjoy is telling people I work in games, watch/listen to their reaction, smile, then sob a little deeper in my heart for the torment I endure just to see that smile/reaction.
I want to work in a college or university. Again.