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Comment by netbioserror | Hacker News Reader

Hot take: I'm not very sympathetic about the game industry implosion we're seeing. AAA games have been rote, formulaic money milking machines for some time. Game devs are lined up out the door and around the corner, yet refuse to take that as a warning sign that this might not be a good industry to work in. Growth stalled and the more money giant publishers poured in, the less sales seemed to budge. Hordes of indie games are doing the same boring genre-mashup slop thing, while the awards-bait critical darlings appeal to virtually nobody and their sales reflect that.

Anyone with any sense would have bailed a few years ago.

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>Anyone with any sense would have bailed a few years ago.

The sheer lack of human understanding on display.

It isn't easy for many people to switch jobs. Moreso when the job is somewhat enjoyable, familiar and pays decent. Moreso when you're supporting others. If your skillet is entirely in the game industry, where does one easily jump?

I spit on the idea that anyone who is left in the game industry "has no sense".

Where does this active scorn for game developers come from? This isn't the first comment from you to express disinterest in those workers.

Depends on the exact role of course, but I assume there are many roles in the software games industry that are pretty transferrable to other areas of software development/design/marketing/etc.

>Where does this active scorn for game developers come from?

Many devs grew up with the dream of working for the next big title and instead ended up as a web dev who creates a button in React every few weeks. Now they are trying to justify their life choices.

I'm not sure it's so much scorn as a recognition that there are fields and sub-fields where it's just hard to rearn a good living unless you have some combination of being really really good, lucky, astute, willing to do pretty pedestrian stuff for the most part, etc.--and still probably not make a lot of money. Hardly limited to game development. See also photographers, journalists, musicians, film-makers, et.

There's a lot of crossover between games, and film, tv, construction, architecture, advertising, entertainment, media production, and just general development and graphical design in general. The video game industry is not as unique as you think.

People have warned about the volatility and negatives of the video game industry for decades. They're well known. But there are unique and cool aspects of those projects that still draw people to them despite the known downsides.

It's a bit like hearing someone with a beach house complain about hurricanes. We can have empathy for them while acknowledging that they agreed to that risk voluntarily, and that it was a well known and well documented risk.

There's definitely noise, but we also get some "fine wine" products that wouldn't exist otherwise. Examples include Bioshock, Arkham series (at least the first two), Prey, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. I think it's the same for movies, most blockbusters are dreck, but without the dreck, we wouldn't get any funding whatsoever for the gold.

Seems to be affecting the US more than anywhere else so clearly there is a wider issue than the game industry itself. In fact, Nintendo and Atlus even increased its employee salary last year.

Industry is ok, indie devs can make a good money. Now with AI it is even easier.

But working for a big company is a bad career. Too much overhead, garbage leadership and vision, wokeism...

Ah yes, wokeism. The reason games have loot boxes, battlepasses, and NG+ locked behind buying the "deluxe edition".

I'm forever baffled how gaming consumers are able to muster such anger at changes in representation and character design while continuing to get nickel and dimed by monetization experts at these companies. I don't think this is intentional misdirection on the part of gaming publishers, but if they did want to channel anger away from the core ways they're exploiting their audience they would be hard pressed to find a better distraction.

I am talking about career of a game developer, not customers. Indie games also have loot boxes, it is a great way to monetize..

It is really bad move to work for "woke" companies as cis hetero white guy with some experience. You have to work much harder. And promotions to senior positions are limited...

Time to don your programming socks, then

Bet that garbage management also likes to bitch about wokeism, go back to sleep already and shush.

That's not a hot take, that's just being an asshole for the sake of being one.

"I don't like the games of the last few years, so let's dunk on people who have been part of a mass layoff with some thoughtful 'hurti durti, if you had any sense you would have bailed a few years ago'."

Gee, thanks for your 20/20 hindsight advice, presented in this nice way. I'm sure people will appreciate it.

There are a bunch of jobs that people (may) like being in but are widely recognized as not paying very well--at least unless you get very lucky.

I was in a role for quite a few years that I mostly enjoyed, but even if the company hadn't had a downward turn, compensation was probably half that of my next job (at best).

>A part of me wishes that (my coworkers) had done a walkout, or a strike, or that they had done or said something... I know it’s unreasonable to want that.

Yes. It is absolutely wild to think that your coworkers should risk their livelihoods to keep around people that, at least in theory, the company cannot afford to keep.

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