Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

I really wish more people would appreciate the human cost of building things by themselves instead of just chalking it all up to 'the creative journey' or some shit. It could potentially open up some really interesting service business models.

If I start just about any other kind of business other than a creative one, I can buy products or services that will help me get to market 10x easier than if I try to go it without. But if I try to venture outside of established biz modes and start to wander into the creative, I don't have to go far before I'm in an awkward no man's land of ugly, no one cares kind of having to burn the candle at both ends in order to push through to some kind of stability, and this article shows that that stability is a mirage.

The historical answer has always been to collect your efforts into an industry. And yeah, that option is there. You can go work for EA.

But it would be so much better if the games industry didn't have to eat its young. Or at least, not all of its young.

Hollywood's answer to the problem has been to double down on the community. If you want to be a screenwriter, first you need to realize that it's a hard hard thing to break into, there are always going to be more people looking to break in than there will be jobs, but you can still at least find a little bit of glory in the industry through YouTube or temping or whatever while you figure out what your plan B is. And everyone around you is going to help you figure these hard things out.

But you want to break into gaming? Haha fuck you buddy. Nobody gives a shit, go work for EA and get shit out when you finally stop making them quite as much $$$ as you did when you were young and stupid. Sure, go make your own games, I don't give a shit, don't expect any kudos from me, better hope you didn't dare spend any company resources on it because yes, we will sue the shit out of you for daring to get bigger than your britches.

I guess this is just my fervent hope that every industry can figure out how to be like craft beer.

>Hollywood's answer to the problem has been to double down on the community.

Hollywood's answer to the problem is unions. Screenwriters have unions. Actors have unions. Directors have unions. Even the people who provide food on the sets of movies have a union. Hollywood doesn't care about "community" any more than the video game industry. They just realized that there are more people who want to work in the entertainment industry than there are available jobs and a union was the best way to protect themselves from being taken advantage of because of that fact.

I think it's worthwhile pointing out that it isn't like game developers don't have unions. Maybe if you're talking about the US exclusively sure, but there are parts of the world where employees in the game development industry do have active union representation (which as one such employee is very much appreciated).

Curious to know where you are based. I've not heard of game developer unions in Europe either.

I'm in Sweden, where most people are in a union. It doesn't have to be a union specific to game development (although I think one may exist, I'm not sure). I'm in a general union called Unionen. Even though it's not a union specific to the game development industry, they have a lot of power and work with the government, companies, and employees to monitor and improve work conditions and employee protections. For example, last year a series of meetings was held at our workplace between interested employees and union representatives, resulting in a new collective bargain agreement which formalised a flex hours policy and gave us an extra paid week off per year (partly to address the overtime we tend to do). I've heard of cases where employees called in their union representative to help them work through issues with the employer, negotiate better termination agreements, etc. Basically it's a normal union that does union-y things :)

In Finland at least game devs fall under some general IT collective bargaining agreement, so they have union presentation but it's more general software/IT. Works decently. From my experience the games industry is a bit too... wild(?) to really think about things like unions by itself.

The problem in Sweden is of a different nature. We do have union representation in the game industry, but it's more or less a yellow union (that is, it's so passive that it's to the benefit of the employers) imo. This means that many of the core issues related to employee health are never adressed or fought over, for example:

* Overtime pay (very rare of in the game industry).

* The allowed amount of hours overtime (a.k.a. crunch, there's alooot of hours overtime allowed in the collective bargaining agreement).

* The detrimental effect of open offices.

So understand me right, I'm a union man without a doubt, but just having the union box checked does nothing. The union has to be a fighting union, otherwise it will wither away.

Things are definitely not perfect, but I've not had the same experience or impression just yet. The union has had direct impact on my contract and hours. Of course there is always room for improvement, however.

I'm happy to hear that. I hope it continues.

Hollywood's answer to a part of the problem, that of how to take care of the people that are already in the system, is unions. How to take care of the people that aren't in the system yet but really really want to be, that's the problem I'm talking about.

I live in Atlanta, huge movie and TV presence here, I rub shoulders with actors and all kinds of workers. The people who are in the system are extremely quick to lend a helpful ear or advice or stopgap job here and there. The whole system is set up to gently shake the talent pool so that people eventually find the part of the industry that they can find a foothold in that won't kill them. The people who do wind up as grips or whatever can still nurture their creative side and there's still quite a bit of glory in working on that side of it.

Hollywood, somehow, has figured out how to stop eating its young and start nurturing them.

I would argue that unions are a direct cause of some of that behavior. Union members generally don't have to fear new competition the way non-union workers do. They don't have to fear someone doing their job at 90% of the quality for 50% of the salary. Non-union workers have a disincentive to mentor people who immediately become their competition for jobs. Unions help remove that disincentive and allows members to function as a single cooperative group instead of as individual people competing against each other for the same opportunities.

> But you want to break into gaming? Haha fuck you buddy

I'm not sure I agree with this - there is a huge game development community. A game can be an artistic success without being a commercial one just like an indie movie. And you bet there are plenty of other game developers out there who participate in the community, help mentor newcomers, etc.

The industry options out there aren't bad at all anymore, AAA companies have largely gotten their crap together and at this point mostly know what they're doing (they'd have to to stay afloat with the budgets they're throwing around). The indie companies tend to be more head-on-fire-this-may-all-crash-and-burn-at-any-moment-we're-on-a-shoestring-budget. The AAA-ish companies (smaller shops with small publisher deals) are somewhere in the middle. I'm not saying there are zero problems, but there are quite a few options for employment in video games at whatever level of risk and startup-culture-ness you're comfortable with nowadays, and a supportive community to help. That's not to mention the huge hobbyist community who are happy just making games for fun without stressing about financial viability.

I know it's standard nomenclature but I find the label "creative" for only a subset of creative endeavors very grating.

I think it helps to remember that gamedev is supposed to be fun.

I've been working on ShittyEmu https://imgur.com/xgEMj5z (Basically an emulator that randomizes textures, sounds, and art assets of n64 games, and flips some of the bytecode ops deterministically.)

Tonight it was pretty cool to see the result. But there's not some pie in the sky goal, except a vague idea that I'd like to make something entertaining. It's just iteration and incremental improvements.

But that mindset ends up being far less stressful than trying to develop an epic game from first principles over the course of years.

Just have fun coding. Try out crazy ideas. And yes, the industry as a whole is pretty dysfunctional. So why join it? It's never been easier to go from a blank vi screen to a shipped product on Steam. We're in the golden age of gamedev.

Well games are a trendy area and more fun and challenging to work on than most other software...as long as there is more demand for game development jobs than there are open positions, it will be this way.

Unlike screenwriters, whose alternative is making lattes, game developers who get tired of the chase can go work for a traditional tech company.

Majority of people who work on games are not programmers. They are various artists.

How many former game devs are working in your shop?

The "gaming industry" has been around for 30 years max. Hollywood has been around for over 100. Maybe it's just a matter of time.

so what is your point exactly?

That it really doesn't have to be this way? That we can help each other?

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