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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

> Can't this be said of any art form, really?

Most art forms don't require skills that could be commanding 6-figure salaries in an easy 9-5 job. (I am, of course, speaking for the programmers here.)

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So it sounds like we can be less sympathetic toward game developers because they have lots of other career options

This is correct. You can apply your highly-valued skills to something you don't find as interesting and make a lot of money, or you can apply them to something you're passionate about and make less money.

But if it's a multibillion dollar industry similar to other multibillion dollar tech industries outside of gaming, why are game developers making so little in comparison to the rest of us? Something is not making sense here, and I don't think passion has anything to do with it.

The part that doesn't make sense to me is how people find this hard to understand. It's purely supply and demand. Game developers are willing to work for less than their peers in other industries, and game companies will do everything they can do minimise input costs, as all companies do.

You don't need a conspiracy to explain this effect.

It's very simple: because the companies don't need to pay high salaries to their developers. Why should they? There's countless developers lining up for these jobs, so if one person gets burnt out and quits, there's 5 more ready to take his place. This is simple supply-and-demand.

Tell me, why should companies pay top dollar for that talent when people are so happy to work their asses off for less? It doesn't make any business sense.

And no, we shouldn't have any sympathy for these developers (not the ones who have easily transferable skills). They're choosing this career path out of their own free will, at a time when there's tons of very boring software jobs out there practically begging them to come to work there, and offering huge salaries and good work hours too. These people just don't want those jobs because they aren't "fun", and don't involve games.

It's really simple: you have highly-sought-after software development skills, so you can either be abused and work in a game sweatshop, or you can go to work making boring CRUD apps in a nice company where the pay is high and the stress is low. If you choose the former, I have zero sympathy for you.

But that means they choose to be there, doesn't it?

So because of that, we should just blindly accept that the work conditions are extremely shitty, because "well it was their fault for trying to follow their dreams!"

I wish people didn't think like this

We should accept that people have agency and are in charge of their own well-being unless they have diminished capacities. If they accept unfavorable working conditions because they like the stuff they work on, that's their business. I think a lot of people get exploited when they try to make a career out of their interests (it's harder to get into vet school than medical school for instance and vets are paid less than doctors), but I have to believe that it's worth it. It does bother me when people act as though they expect me to subsidize their hobbies, doubly so when they could pay for their own hobbies by making the small sacrifice of doing work that's compensated better but less appealing.

Every video game dev who's unsatisfied with being a game dev is welcome to explore other opportunities.

We should accept it in cases where the employees are easily able to leave (e.g. software developers). For people who have less mobility (e.g. minimum-wage factory workers), we have more of a responsibility as a society to ensure that they're protected. But if you choose to work in an environment that sucks even though you have the ability to leave, why should anyone worry about you suffering because of your own choice to stay?

From the article:

> Artists who work on gory cinematics integral to games like Mortal Kombat suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Is it really someone else's fault if someone chooses to work on a game like Mortal Kombat and then complains about having to create graphics like this?

Can we please introduce some agency into people's lives and stop constantly blaming society for issues?

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