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Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

If you ever get the urge to go into gaming, take a rock and thrust it into your eye. When games are canceled hundreds of people have wasted thousands of hours on: programming, ai, economy adjusting, art (raster + vector). Games are canceled all the time for frivolous reasons. Wasting your 20s at a game company re-writing madden football 19 with low pay and harsh hours isn't 'cool' -- it is just wasting your 20s'.

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> When games are canceled hundreds of people have wasted thousands of hours on: games, ai, art (raster + vector).

I don't think this is any different than the risk of working for a startup. I've worked for a number of companies in my career that no longer exist. It's really the same as far as I am seeing.

Yes. But you can prove "uber for cats" doesn't work with 5 people. Not 100 people, 3 years later. Canceling a game is more like a funeral.

This comes off as very dismissive of startups.

Do you honestly believe they are all 5 person companies doing frivolous things?

Hmm, so a game developer is like a startup factory?

I think the real reason he/she's hinting at is that men tend to be more passionate about games than startups. (I know several dozen young people who play board games regularly, and they include about 1.5 women).

In a start-up you usually get a significant payout on success. Do game developers also get up to a few million dollars bonus when the game is a success? I doubt that. And that is where the devs are cheated. You are paid like a normal job, but you do a start-up.

Not all games jobs are like this. I entered the games industry just as I was turning 30 and it has been rewarding both in terms of type of work and compensation. Maybe I'm not typical but I also don't think people should write off a whole industry based off of anecdotes.

Really I'd just generalize your advice and say that any job where you're not invested in the product, have unfavorable hours and aren't paid well is uncool and should be avoided.

Agreed. I'm not a game developer but looking in, it seems to resemble the tech industry. You have the AAA studios which are like the FANG companies in that they have relatively stable well paying jobs and then there are a bunch of indie studios which are like startups.

I disagree with this statement completely. I'm 27, been working in the industry for 4 years now, and I really love what I do. Literally all of my friends who finished CS degrees and now work for IT companies hate their jobs. I have had features and projects cancelled - so what? Do you think other IT industries don't? My partner works for a major IT company in UK and her 6-month project just got cancelled. How is that any different?

What hours do you work? I've had a 2-year project cancelled before (in non-games tech), but my job doesn't dominate my life the way I've seen it do for friends in the games industry; I put in my 40 hours and walk away.

7.5h a day(+30 minute mandatory lunch) - I very rarely work more than that. The only time when I had to work overtime was a week before lunch and even then I averaged 9h/day for that week. It probably helps that the company I work at is constantly trying to combat overtime as something that is a sign of things going wrong - so as soon as people start staying longer than 7.5h a day their workload is reevaluated and either scope is reduced or more people jump to help.

High rewards go hand in hand with high risks.

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