Is there any part of the entertainment industry that isn't like this?
It seems that trying to be a writer, actor, game maker or a musician is incredible amounts of hard work and a small number of people do well and everyone else does badly.
It seems that trying to be a writer, actor, game maker or a musician is incredible amounts of hard work and a small number of people do well and everyone else does badly.
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...
> The video game industry is especially bad as it combines
> the bad aspects of the entertainment industry with the
> bad aspects of software development.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'd argue that over at Riot Games, we see crunch as antithetical to what we do. But then we're lucky enough to run a massive online game that needs to be up 24/7 year after year. So our engineering culture is much more like what you'd see at other traditional internet technologies such as Google, Netflix, Amazon, etc. It's just that in our case, our online service is a video game.
My girlfriend is at Disney and last year she worked 6 day weeks for much of the time as they led up to a film release. Change would require producers and executives to take a risk (while their competitors continue to crunch). It's going to be very hard to adjust.
I think service-based games aren't just popular because they're profitable, but also that they can be developed more akin to a typical software company.
The first is that supply exceeds demand: "everyone wants to be" an artist. This is basically unfixable.
The second is the very skewed distribution of revenue: a few big names get hundreds of millions of people's money, everyone else doesn't come close. This doesn't have to be that way at all (remember the 2000s when everyone was talking about the "long tail"?), but it would be a huge cultural shift and it involves a long discussion about commercialism and entrenched interests.
It was a at least a 12 hour day (but IIRC it was more like 18, but its been while now). As an extra, most of that was spent sitting around and waiting. The crew on the other hand were mostly on their feet the ENTIRE time and were still going even after all the extras were dismissed. Many of them were doing laborious tasks, others like the show runner, are running a million miles a minute the whole time.
And from what I gathered, this was basically the norm, while shooting the season which can last for months.
I'm not sure the picture is so bleak financially for game developers. I mean, there's a ton more revenues in the video games industry and it's a growing industry with more and more gamers (mobile, console and PC alike). Then, there's the fame aspect "I worked on X game with this Mr Y superstar game designer" even if they only worked on a very tiny aspect of the said game. And there's the advantage of being IN the industry, the networks, the fact that you are the forehead of what's happening and there's literally tons of ways one can innovate even in "boring" AAA titles.
Most recently, a game studio a friend works as was supposed to wrap in early October. That's now extended until the end of the year with a ship date around March. If they had any flexibility in the release date, who thought this was a good idea? Of course an October deadline is going to push and now you've ruined the holidays for everyone.
A lot of the big game studios put out a game every 4 years or so, but if you're hired for the project they hire you just for the crunch. Then you're on to the next project heading into crunch.
Also yes, anything that seems glamorous has too much supply and not enough demand, so you end up with these skewed power dynamics. Pick a job that maybe pays ok but is super unglamorous, and I doubt you'll see the same practices
Creative freedom is definitely nice and a goal of people in games. Both developers and designers go into it with the goal of making games and eventually making their games.
What you find out is, most game companies can only make a few people's games. It is the same in any creative industry.
This results in most developers, designers, artists going to work on their own games or at small to medium studios where they can have some input after 3-5+ years.
It is the same with entrepreneurs and any work/team really. You will get more shots at implementing things the way you want towards the market you want if you can control it, especially if it is your own or you control the funds.
Game studios and agencies are great to learn all the skills you need at a rapid pace and understand the amount of effort it takes, but eventually you will need to break off on your own or small teams to deliver the experience you want. Working at an agency or studio is a bit of an education or hardcore apprenticeship.
Most people that get to control creative and design decisions at large game companies had to do just that or make their own (or they put up the money) i.e. John Carmack, Tim Schafer, Tim Sweeney, nearly all mobile studios initially are small teams and either launch their own or subcontract for a label and on and on.
None of this exists in videogames.
Game dev and startup founder at least can pay a lot better than actor/writer/musician even before reaching unicorn status.
That's the opposite. It's exactly how a free market is supposed to work. When supply exceeds demand, you can fix any condition you want and you'll still get to fill your seats. If an industry loses attractiveness, they'll have to raise salaries, provide better working hours to retain employees.
Children are not considered in most countries to be able to make decisions regarding employment until they are 16 or more. That's why - a question of assumed maturity and ability to make judgments over longer term vs short term benefits.
> Why can I hire a adult for $3 per hour if we both consent to it?
Personally I don't see a problem with that - if for that adult that means 3 dollar additional benefit per hour versus nothing, it's really up to them. But in a proper marketplace companies compete for people and salaries tend to rise by themselves way about 3 dollars per hour. Look at Switzerland, a country that has no minimum wage Law, yet has the highest salaries in Europe, even for jobs requiring only low qualifications.