profession or hobby?

General Discussions
#1

slashdot has a post on the game industry starting to see some outsourcing now as well.

i’m beginning to wonder if my goal of learning to program 3d games professionally is an unwise choice. i’ve heard game development software shops described as sweatshops with 60-70 hour weeks. if game development is outsourced causing rates to slide downward (in the u.s.) and you have to put in 60-70 hour weeks in this industry for a paycheck, i’m wondering if maybe i should lean towards the pursuit of this topic purely as a hobby and avoid the headache of poor working conditions for poor pay.

can anyone with a pulse on the industry chime in on the state of employment in the u.s. game industry?

#2

Your best bet would be to get a degree in Software Engineering. Then in your spare time, learn game related programming. Then if you go into the industry and don’t like it, you can change industries fairly easily.

#3

If it’s anything like it is here in the UK, then yes, it sucks. You have to do it because you really love it, the pay is low (for I.T.) and the hours are very long, 60-70 isn’t unusual, and wages are not much more than a grad software engineer (at least thats what I’ve heard from the two people I know of on the inside in the UK). Alot of what you take home money wise will come from bonuses, which means as a designer you have to come up with a fantastic design, or as a coder, you have to be John Carmack :). Either that, or run the company and get a good game done. The money is filtered off at the top, so if you are just joe average (and most of us are, hence average) then it has to be for the love of it.

HTH

Endolf

#4

I’m not sure this phenomenon is specific to the game industry. Working conditions generally have to do with the maturity of the company and I would guess that the working conditions in the game industry may just be poorer than elsewhere because of the relative lack of established companies in the industry.

Economic theory states that established companies in all industries will generally use their reptutation as well as better pay and benefits to attract more qualified personnel compared to upstarts who will have to settle for more ‘average’ workers. Established firms also tend to have more experienced managers that can plan their projects better and won’t need to use so much overtime. Extended overtime does tend to reduce the quality of the products and the productivity of the workers.

I’ve seen this in Sweden too. While job ads from game industry upstarts sometimes look for people who can “program C++”, the established firms are active at the university and seem to realize that they will compete with other industries and companies for the best people.

William

#5

i am already an established software engineer and have worked in the manufacturing, healthcare, and bioinformatics domains.

i’m sure the answer is one i do not want to hear. mainly that programmers within the gaming industry are no better off than any other domain, or even potentially worse off. and, that programmers within the gaming industry are becoming so specialized that the things that made writing a game fun (realization through creative process of a game concept) only happens at the hobbyist, one man shop, or very small company level.

sounds like what i want to do is keep learning the technology as yet another expressive hobby.

#6

There may be a couple of thoughts I could add to this:

The vast majority (I have seen stats ranging from 80-90%) of programmers out there get paid to maintain code.

The other 20% that write new code usually do it in-house.(Like banks writing a new jdbc app so cutomers can access their data online) Only a fraction of those that write new code are writing it for a product that will be marketed.

Now enter the game larket, where for every 5 million dollar production that is successful, there are several (if not more) 5 million dollar productions that bomb. Investors lose their money. Programmer gets laid off.

But who really loses? Not the programmer. Until that programmer got laid off, he/she got paid every other week. If paychecks were sporadic, the programmer had better jump ship.

So who puts up the money for the blockbuster game?
The investor.
Who is placing more on the line for the game?
The investor.
Who gets the big bucks if it pays off?
The investor.
Who is going to pay less and demand more in order to mitigate the risks?
The investor.

Unless the investor (be it a company owner, stock holder, or venture capitalist) can gurantee a 100% chance of making their investment back, the employees, including programmers, are going to get the short end of the stick.

The pay and conditions of the game market will never equal the stability and average pay range of those that work in the “established” markets because you can never gurantee your backers that your game will make them money.

#7

I’m one of that 90% of code maintainers; while I spend weeks waiting for the client to approve my enhancement project I research gamedev topics and code a little on the weekends. I could never make this salary at a game studio therefor gamedev will always be a hobby for me.

Besides; it seems we are fast reaching the point were games will use licensed engines so even the end-user gamedev house’s engine programmers will merely be code maintainers as well.

#8

Good point!

#9

That games are risky multi-million dollar projects does in no way justify increasing the risk of failure by not paying enough to get proper personnel. All investor perspectives on business plans that I’ve ever read consider the team that will perform the work to be the most important factor in the investment decision.

#10

[quote]Programmer gets laid off.

But who really loses? Not the programmer. Until that programmer got laid off, he/she got paid every other week. If paychecks were sporadic, the programmer had better jump ship.
[/quote]
Soprry to disappoint, but the reality is that if a company is going to go bust the programmers are often owed 1-3 months pay by the time it happens. So, the programmers do lose out.

Even worse is if you’re only on your 1st, 2nd, 3rd AAA game - if the game doesn’t get published, you’re still going to have to really fight the agencies to put you forwards for jobs that stipulate “minimum of 2/3/4 [delete as appropriate -I’ve seen many many examples of each of these numbers!] credits on AAA games”.

Shrug. Badly run companies are the same no matter what the industry; many argue that the games industry has a much higher than average share of the badly run companies (and I would tend to agree). I like the comment about it’s the maturity that to a certain extent dictates the company’s quality - and the games industry has VERY short average lifetimes for companies before they’re either bankrupted, bought, merged, or split.

Although then again…look at investment banking, and all these large established companies that apparently still don’t have a single board member who understands basic HR. “We’re losing money - let’s fire 90% of the staff!”. “We’re making money - quick, pay a golden hello and get another 900% staff!”. The productivity and knowledge loss in the massive layoffs/layons is staggering (although I suppose you could argue that actually there’s precious little productivity in those companies in the first place :P)

#11

/me switches his major to nursing :’(

#12

a hobby for me which I would one day like to make a profession but until then it’s application code maintenence :wink:

on the plus side I get paid fairly well, and have time to read this forum and create games in my spare time.

Will.

#13

Of late I get paid bugger all, and I’ve worked 20 days straight without a day off, and have no time to write my next game which if I entered it in the compo would blow everyone else’s games into the weeds :stuck_out_tongue: :wink:

Hm, I might as well be working in the games industry… doesn’t seem too different from where I’m sitting…

Cas :slight_smile:

#14

Does puppy games make any money? I would think you’d be able to earn a living off of what you’ve got.

If you’re not, then it’s most likely a matter of marketing; it looks like you’ve got some quality games.

#15

Nah, we’ve never made a bean. In fact all in all we’ve lost a few thousand bucks. We just don’t have the money or time to pursue any agressive marketing deals.

Cas :slight_smile:

#16

[quote]Nah, we’ve never made a bean. In fact all in all we’ve lost a few thousand bucks. We just don’t have the money or time to pursue any agressive marketing deals.

Cas :slight_smile:
[/quote]
By the standards of the industry, that’s a good achievement: not only did you complete AND publish the game, but you “only” lost a few thousand (100k loss is more typical). :wink:

#17

[quote]Nah, we’ve never made a bean. In fact all in all we’ve lost a few thousand bucks. We just don’t have the money or time to pursue any agressive marketing deals.
[/quote]
There’s a lot of free marketing out there. I’ve been told that statistically shareware applications sell at about %2 of exposure. I see plenty of games on the top download sites with 20k + downloads.

#18

We sell at a varying rate between about 0.5% and 1%, which I’m told is perfectly good for a strange shooter.

Cas :slight_smile: