You seem like the exception rather than the rule.. I don't think anyone is suggesting people not follow their passions, its more about people not knowing what they're getting themselves into most of the time.
He did that when he was young, dumb, and full of dreams...
He couldn't sustain that lifestyle. We do sort of glorify the past and lionize struggle as if there were some nobility to it.
There's not. There's no inherent nobility in struggling or being ignorant. Being a dumb kid willing to work awful hours for worse pay to get out a demo in time is not an ideal to strive towards.
Just to be perfectly clear though: I'm glad I did it, have zero regrets, do find nobility in working a crunch period to ship [a demo] on-time as you promised you would [I was tech lead; that we weren't in a position to ship on-time without a crunch time was at least 50% on my shoulders], and would hope that I'd chase that same job/dream/experience if I had a chance to live my life all over again. (There are other things that I might wish to change, but that's not one of them.)
[0] - Technically, I surely could have sustained that lifestyle, but chose not to. Your overall point there remains valid, of course.
And succeeding in the face of adversity is something to be proud of. There are many things I wouldn't change in my life even though they were difficult or caused me to struggle.
That's not the point.
If I could have learned all I learned, got to where I am, etc _without_ having to struggle, that would have been preferable. The struggle itself imparts no value.
I mean, would you rather have not had to crunch to get the demo out on time? Would you rather have hit all of your targets on time without working ridiculous hours?
I don't know. Would I have rather run a 15 minute 2-mile instead of a 13:30 2-mile on my APFT in college and been less sweaty? Would I have rather gotten a B instead of an A on that digital design project while getting more sleep? (Obviously, no one but me could possibly really "care" about either of those scores at this point.)
Taking it specifically to that work topic, would I rather have worked sane hours and shipped an acceptable demo on time or worked ridiculous hours and shipped a stronger demo on time? Even though I know that nothing about my life changed as a result of the latter (because we didn't exceed our minimum units sold for the "monkey points" to pay anything), I'm happy I spent those nights in a sleeping bag at my cube and shipped the best demo and product we could.
For things that I care about at the time, I feel happier and more proud in doing more than the minimum (perhaps even my best), even at the expense of extra time and effort for which incremental compensation isn't tightly/directly linked.
I think this is eminently possible within games, and the growing interest in unions is reflective of agreement of that fact, of a desire to professionalize and negotiate towards work arrangements that follow what our current science tells us is best practice. If most game workers believed in linear effort to reward they would see the status quo as OK: not staying late would simply mean you lack "passion". And indeed, that was very much the case throughout the early history of the industry - passionate people who became bosses and focused in Panglossian fashion only on the particular metrics they prized, resulting in exploitative, fanboy-heavy, butt-in-chair workplaces.
Union contracts are typically public, unambiguous and well enforced; certainly better than relying on "company policy" to judge what work conditions will be like.