IGDA QoL White paper: Does it scare you?

It's scared me for a while... You really have to love what you do to quit a 80k/year job with benefits and job security to go into video games... I still haven't made the leap of faith completely.

[edited by - mbrown211 on May 3, 2004 10:38:32 AM]

After reading various things (not just that paper, but it definitely contributed), I think I have determined that I won''t be getting into the industry any time soon. My life could take too many different paths for me to commit myself that much just yet. Even if I did get into the industry, I''d try to make it clear that I''m going to be the guy that works 40-45 hours a week almost all weeks of the year. If an employer doesn''t like the amount/quality of work I do, then tough cookies for him, I can move on. If employers don''t respect my life, then I don''t feel very inclined to respect their project. Obviously, this makes it a bit more difficult to get into the industry. I''ll see what the future brings, though.

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Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

-Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, "Ideas That Have Harmed Mankind"

If they don''t like the quality, they''ll can you, possibly. If they don''t like the time you put in... As long as you haven''t signed away for the maximum allowable time by law (if such exists in your area; here in Ontario it''s 66 hours (max. 11h/day, max 6d/wk), they can''t make you work more than the max. to overtime (usually 40 to 44 hours).

Or at least, I hope you Americans get treated that way. If not, call a general strike and move up here. We actually treat people fairly and have whistleblower protection that isn''t a farce.

I didn''t read the whole 90 page paper, but I did skim over the important facts that they pulled out of it. It turned me off to making games a bit. People that put that much work into a project should get compensated equally for it, and it doesn''t sound like most are. I''ve changed my direction on what I want to do, leaning towards robotics or other embedded systems programming now. This isn''t to say though that I won''t make games, the shareware route looks like it can payoff rather well if you know what you''re doing.

Keep in mind that the white paper is merely a snapshot of the industry as it is. If the survey and white paper become an annual tradition for IGDA members, it''s possible that alone might cause a move towards a better industry for all of us.

Remember, running away doesn''t solve the problem. Facing it down might not, either, but at least it makes an effort to do so. Don''t avoid commercial game development, get involved and make for changes!

I believe that the industry will grow saner in time. Allot of people are passionate for anything imagionable, but once the needs of the industry grows, passionate people alone can''t support it. I''d give examples from other industries but I''m too lazy to research. Just take my word for it!

Why not link us?

http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php

There, I won't provide a clickable link (but if you have firefox you can just double click it anyway).

Anyway, from what I've read so far, this paper has ENCOURAGED me. It sounds to me like a hardworking, intelligent fanatic such as myself won't have any trouble finding or keeping a job.

I don't care if I work 80 hours a week during crunch time and crunch time lasts 6 months as long as I'm not a tester anyway (in particular a bottom of the barrel tester).

What matters to me is that I'm not working on some stupid database application all day.

[edited by - DavidST on May 4, 2004 4:47:40 AM]

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DavidST
What matters to me is that I''m not working on some stupid database application all day.

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I agree.

The QoL is not awesome, however it will probably get better

In any case, I''d rather be pushed to the limit, than to be dulled-out at no where near the limit.

Well, I´m not in the Industry and I just don´t get how is it possible that big companies earn lots of money selling videogames and the people who actually developed them got a minimum part of the money.

It seems like game developing world is a very sad one :''(

thanks for nothing, jerkoffs.

I am really not surprised by most of what I read. I did know a bit of what the QoL was like, but many of the statistics they use are not that surprising. For example the low amount of employees who have been in the industry for more then 10+ years, or way the industry still revolves around the hit-and-miss 5% approach.

After all, while technically you could say the industry is as old as the early arcade boom I would say my opinion is the industry really didn''t start up until the mid to early 90''s. Prior to this the majority of projects were helmed by extremely small teams of perhaps 5-15 people, the investments were relatively low, and the cycles were much shorter.

The games industry is a very new industry, and has gone through huge dynamic changes over the last 10 years. Enough changes that it has not been able to really adjust it''s methods fast enough to keep up with the damands. I think we are currently at a sort of breaking point where companies in the industry will either adapt their ways (perhaps following many of the suggestions in the white paper) or will go out of buisness.

At anyrate I am optomistic about the future. I have no doubt that the QoL will steadly improve as the companies that adjust live and the companies that fail to adjust die out.

I don''t really care about QoL...working doing what you want to do is priceles...

-=Lohrno

I would pay to work in the game development industry. I would even program for John Romaro.

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Original post by Cibressus
I would pay to work in the game development industry. I would even program for John Romaro.

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Shhh...don''t let HR people hear that one!

-=Lohrno

mabye theese guys will get out of the industry and make room for us guys who have been studying for game development sense they were 9. Maybye one day the game dev industry can be like mensa.

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Original post by DavidST
Why not link us?

http://www.igda.org/qol/whitepaper.php

There, I won''t provide a clickable link (but if you have firefox you can just double click it anyway).

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Not by default you can''t [Windows, most recent official release], and I don''t see any options to enable it. Is it really that hard to type an extra 13 characters? Hell, there are programs available to do it for you.

CM

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Original post by Cibressus
I would pay to work in the game development industry. I would even program for John Romaro.

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And therein lies the problem.

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Original post by mbrown211
It's scared me for a while... You really have to love what you do to quit a 80k/year job with benefits and job security to go into video games... I still haven't made the leap of faith completely.

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If you do, please mention my name for your 80K a year job

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Original post by DavidST
What matters to me is that I'm not working on some stupid database application all day.

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For 80K a year, I'll do SQL (still).

Although at current exchange rates thats 'only' £40'000 a year.....hmmm.

Jay

Edit: needed a slash


[edited by - Jason Zelos on May 4, 2004 7:08:57 PM]

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Original post by royk
I believe that the industry will grow saner in time. Allot of people are passionate for anything imagionable, but once the needs of the industry grows, passionate people alone can''t support it. I''d give examples from other industries but I''m too lazy to research. Just take my word for it!

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Good point. The car industry is still full of nutjob gearheads, but it''s slowly moving toward a measure of "sanity" (if you can call it that) and corporatization.

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