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Comment by UnpossibleJim | Hacker News Reader

If you, as a player, only care about the couple of indie games that are great and don't care what's going on behind the scenes with the thousand of indie developers that are struggling, that's fine

Can't this be said of any art form, really? If you look at people who tried to make indie comics in the '90's or 'zines I guess... whatever the title you wanted to give them. Painters, failed and prominent, from the 1200's to the present who had to trudge along and get jobs in coffee shops. Art is hard and people line up to take advantage of them (I say this as an art school graduate who now sits at a computer desk because, quite frankly, it's easier to make a living with code than art and I have a family who I love more than art). To be quite blunt, the gaming industry is a multiBILLION (with a B) dollar industry built on passion and artistry (and yes, coders can be artists, as well) which is being fed upon like any art industry gets fed upon.

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Yes! The hard realization, which pulled me into more normal programming despite a passion for games, was that game development is a passion career. I already had enough dealings with that with considering being an orchestral performer. Anything in entertainment is always highly boom or bust, and highly intense and stressful even for those who make it.

Edit: of course that doesn't justify the terrible conditions or the way people leverage the situation because they know these people would do this kind of work for free if they had to. I think the answer, as musicians always bring up, is friends don't let friends work for free. It's not okay to work for less than your talent is worth just because you love it.

> 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.)

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.

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.

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.

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?

> Art is hard and people line up to take advantage of them

Correction, Art is a lifelong dream, and people line up to be taken advantage of.

The video game industry CAN go on like this. Easily. For every 100 that burn out of an abusive industry, there will be 200 more waiting in line.

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