There''s more to life than money. For those of us who have significant others also involved in game development its the best and only ''job'' there is.

quote:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Original post by coldacid

"But some of the new kids out there might get spooked off by it."
-----------------------------------------------------------------

I think you''re missing the point, what the whitepaper suggests is not that talented individuals are not getting into the industry but rather that they are not staying long enough. At the end of the day the games that we''re all supposedly so passionate about are probably not as good as they could be because some of our best people leave. Why? Because we put unreasonable demands on the people that make them. What the paper argues (convincingly, I think) is that these demands are not only unreasonable but largely unnecessary.

I got into the industry with my eyes open so I knew what to expect, but it doesn''t mean that I don''t want it to change for the better, because that would just be dumb.

quote: Original post by maachlar
I think you''re missing the point, what the whitepaper suggests is not that talented individuals are not getting into the industry but rather that they are not staying long enough. At the end of the day the games that we''re all supposedly so passionate about are probably not as good as they could be because some of our best people leave. Why? Because we put unreasonable demands on the people that make them. What the paper argues (convincingly, I think) is that these demands are not only unreasonable but largely unnecessary.

I believe this is what happened to Yann L.

I didn''t read through the whitepapers, but what''s so different about the game industry and other software development? Why does it have such a high turnover rate? Is it just because of the long hours and low pay? If that''s all, why can''t they just decrease the hours a developer works and increase pay? Is it because they can''t afford to? Why not? The game industry pulls in more money than the movie industry, so where does all that money go?

Why is the game development industry doing all these things that everyone else isn''t?

Hearing about long hours has always scared me. I dunno about everyone else, but I''m unable to produce code after I''ve been awake a certain number of hours, or been working a certain number of hours. I get MUCH more work done working a few hours a day on some programming project rather than spending all day and night working.

quote: Original post by BradDaBug
I didn''t read through the whitepapers, but what''s so different about the game industry and other software development? Why does it have such a high turnover rate? Is it just because of the long hours and low pay? If that''s all, why can''t they just decrease the hours a developer works and increase pay? Is it because they can''t afford to? Why not? The game industry pulls in more money than the movie industry, so where does all that money go?

Why is the game development industry doing all these things that everyone else isn''t?

If you really want to know the answers to all those questions you should read the whitepaper

I personally sympathize most with developers who have significant others (who aren''t game developers) or that have kids. Such a worklife has got to be tough on the family dynamic. I''ve kept myself largly unnattached, which frees me up to do a lot more and not have to worry about coming home to a lonely partner. Still, that leaves me rather lonely myself even tho I love doing what I do.

This is why I think the paper is so important, because we definetly need a better balance of lifestyles in the industry, so that those that aren''t single don''t become more stressed out than those who are, and those that are single can find partners without having to worry about getting as stressed out as those that have one

_________________________________________________________________

Drew Sikora
President, Lead Programmer - Blade Edge Software
Staff Writer, Newsletter Editor - GameDev.net
Community Relations - Game Institute

A slight necro (from yesterday this morning!) but I'd just like to quote Rod Humble, a big wig in the development of Everquest, as was in Game Developer Magazine:

quote: "... our experience has been that a solid professional eight hours a day delivers you far greater productivity than someone who works 14 hours a day every day. ... [everyone has to be at work by 10 AM] ... If you know you have to be back at work by 10AM, you are less likely to work till 4AM everyday. This keeps team members fresher and increases the quality of work dramatically, for programmers in particular. It's our experience that late night crunch introduces so many bugs as to make the worth also worthless in the long run.

These guys don't release a game every few years, they are constantly working on a game that's live and has updates twice a year, and look at what they're able to do!

[edited by - BradDaBug on May 5, 2004 9:27:50 PM]

I think the problem with the game industry is that they will hire anyone that will work for cheap. I worked for a game development company for five years and there were programmers being hired for less than 30k a year. They would know a few things about programming but they didn''t know anything about completing a full game. So they would end up writing bad code that would have to be re-written. Also alot of the people I worked with were really immature. If a decision was made about the game that they didn''t like or they didn''t like the project they were assigned to they wouldn''t do any work or they would work an hour a day. That''s why you have 80 hour weeks for 6 monthes. Another problem is management. There would be people in charge that didn''t know anything about programming or even making art. So when a project started falling behind they would throw more programmers on it. Of course that didn''t help at all it just made the code a bigger mess and slowed things down even more. I think alot of companies could fire half the people they have and hire on a few people that know what they are doing for twice as much and get much better results.

quote: Original post by monkey8751
I think alot of companies could fire half the people they have and hire on a few people that know what they are doing for twice as much and get much better results.

Well that''s mostly where the problem lies thanks to these insane work ethics. We''re losing a lot of our more experienced people to other industries, according to the white paper. So the scenarios you''re describing are the direct cause of rather poor QoL

I have known that the game industry was rough for a long time but I had no idea how insane it was. 80 to 100 hours a week! I am passionate enough to do that for at least a little while but at some point I want to start a family. You just can''t have a family with those kind of hours.

I think that I represent most programmers when I say this. The statistics match my position perfectly. Programmers do games for a few years because they love it then leave because they''re forced to. This is dumb because it means that the best, most experianced people are leaving the industry constantly.

Also, I agree that normal 8 or 9 hour days are more productive than 14 hour days. I''ve seen this in my school work and in programming in general.

I think that the game industry needs to accomadate for the fact that they''re working with human beings. As passionate as I am, I just can''t give up having a family. What would I do when I retired? I would be so alone.