Hacker News Reader

Comment by minimaxir | Hacker News Reader

The video game industry is especially bad as it combines the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the bad aspects of software development.

A good story of the combination of overwork and technical mismanagement is the Mass Effect: Andromeda debacle (written by the same author as the NYT article): https://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mass-effect-andromedas-t...

View on HN

    > The video game industry is especially bad as it combines 
    > the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the 
    > bad aspects of software development.

Another corner of the world where those two collide is the visual effects side of film production. What you see there mirrors the game industry to a tee: tons of overtime, high stress, low pay, studios constantly folding, and a never-ending stream of young hungry creative people waiting for their turn.

Same with Manga artists in Japan.

Same with advertising industry in Japan.

Sounds like working in Michelin starred restaurants.

The problems extend to beyond the confines of game developers and publishers. It also doesn't help to have to contend with a deeply critical and particularly cheap audience and overly influential terrible game 'journalists'. Many of the customers, if you've ever played online, are downright abusive actually. The customers, many of whom are young and immature want everything for free. If publishers try to charge for anything at all, it's 'a rip off'. Even though game prices have remained the same for a couple of decades while games become vastly more complex (and hence more expensive to make).

Basically games are not valued. The only reason they even get made is because there's enough people who love making them without sweating about not having the best salary, and enough young people who keep coming in to replace the people who've finally decided they've had enough.

The problem of people wanting software for free is such a hard thing to combat. There's something psychological about software that people don't realize what it takes to make it. Most people would never expect to obtain a physical item for free, and then get mad when they are charged for it, yet they do this with software.

> and overly influential terrible game 'journalists'

I would argue that you're pointing that finger in the severe wrong direction. The young generation of young males who buy video games do not visit the web pages of the enthusiast game press (IGN, Gamespot, Kotaku). Instead, they consume all of their game "reviews" and "criticism" via YouTube - figures like PewDiePie, TotalBiscuit, etc (not exactly a great crowd).

The gaming press is actually having a really fascinating resurgence IMO. Websites like GiantBomb and Vice's Waypoint have both found success through cultivating personalities with distinct critical viewpoints. Recently, games criticism has developed into something very unique and enjoyable if you're passionate enough to go looking for it.

In this way I disagree with your final point. Games are still immensely valued by [old / women / minority / enthusiast] gamers, but the majority of the market (especially the big $$$ from micro-transations) is thanks to the demographic you describe and (IMO) the media they consume. As a result, large block-buster games will increasingly market themselves to this incredibly lucrative (but not always large) segment of the market and you'll continually see behavior like in the OP as companies like EA try to cut costs and maximize their revenues.

> Even though game prices have remained the same for a couple of decades while games become vastly more complex (and hence more expensive to make).

A decade ago I paid 40€ for a game, and maybe 20€ for an addon.

Nowadays I pay 60€ for a game, plus about 60€ for DLCs, plus another 40€ addon, and I'll also have to pay for microtransactions to circumvent the blockades the game constantly throws at me.

How have proces remained the same?

And this is in a field of the industry where games just got easier to make, because, instead of building custom engines they're now all using Unity or Unreal, and delivering cookie-cutter content.

They are not all using Unity or Unreal and even the ones who are - it doesn’t necessarily make games easier to make when expectations are constantly rising. You still need to recruit and pay large numbers of the most talented people from a wide range of disciplines for several years to get out one game.

I don’t like the dlc / add-on approach either btw but it’s all done to get better margins while attempting to avoid the ‘sticker shock’ that would result if they charged one time to get the margins they actually want.

Everything would be able to change if naiive young people didn’t put up with bad conditions in the industry but I think this isn’t a problem just for games, this is how many industries keep ticking along. It’s a cycle, the young don’t believe the old, they think they’re cynical and this time they’ll do things different. I hope there is change.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com