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Comment by bennysonething | Hacker News Reader

Completely disagree. They aren't miners working in horrible conditions where that's the only job in town. Game developers are highly talented, skilled individuals. There is a high demand for such people outside the game industry they choose to stay there. I'm a developer in the finance industry. Worked in a few other sectors too. If games industry is harsh, jump ship. Abused? Get real, the working populations outside the western world are abused and with little choice (and a lot of people in the west lower down the food chain). I think it's insulting to to people with limited options no money to lump games devs in with them. Personally speaking, last thing I'd want in software industry is a Union. Graded pay scales that take no account of productivity variability is a sure fire way to kill an industry. We re a privileged bunch as developers.

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Unions don't require graded pay scales. You don't have to be a miner to be systemically taken advantage of. If one employer offers an unfair employment contract, you can try another company. If every employer offers an unfair employment contract, you don't have the option of another company. I can name a few clauses that favor only the company that are present at every software employment contract in almost every state.

There are more potential employees than potential employers, and most companies will survive understaffed longer than US laborers will survive unemployed. Inherently, the negotiations favor the employer. The more output the employer has stolen from its workers, the more of an advantage it will have. Unionizing and collective bargaining balances those scales.

> There are more potential employees than potential employers

This is exacerbated by employers either overtly colluding with each other (as in the lawsuit several years ago over tech companies having an agreement not to hire each other's employees) or simply setting compensation to "industry averages" and following "industry best practices".

To the extent that every big tech company behaves the same as every other big tech company, there's effectively only one big tech employer.

Could these unemployed employees start their own cooperatives that do not take advantage of employees? I want to focus on making this possible. I am, personally, concerned that trying to create some two sided balance of power will not end up representing me as both sides will have their own interest.

They need to get capital from somewhere, which has a habit of dicating terms.

"Stay in a bad employment situation" and "leave a bad employment situation" aren't the only options; workers can also collectively work to make the bad situation better. There can be a lot of good reason to do that, and I think we should be glad that people are working to make things better where they are.

>If games industry is harsh, jump ship.

If the industry you work in sucks, jump ship? That's not exactly great advice when you've spent decades honing your craft in a certain industry. Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps.

That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire industry is broken, you can't just tell people to suck it up and find a new industry.

While I mostly agree with your comment, I do want to mention for anyone who finds it useful: there's quite a bit of modeling and simulation work in the scientific computing and research industry, including the US government and contractors that lends itself well to certain game development skillsets.

There's typically more focus on analytics and the science skills over artistic skills (sorry graphic artists, environmental artists, etc.) obviously, but backend developers in gaming often have a lot of useful overlapping skills and knowledge in terms of systems design, design patterns, sets of problems, etc.

Pay is good, work/life balance is great, intellectually stimulating, it's challenging yet enjoyable (though arguably not as fun as game development). In many cases, industry borrows or leverages work from the gaming industry quite a bit.

A step further and the defense industry/military industrial complex would also love to have more game developers--though tech has a pretty anti-government pro-business vibe overall (not surprisingly).

> Even if someone did genuinely want to switch, game development skills aren't necessarily easily transferable to other kinds of development, even if it helps.

This needs a lot of qualification. Even someone doing scripting probably has picked up coding fluency at least. Programming game engines and networking code is definitely tackling complex problems and could at least get a mid-level dev role. I think 3d asset creation is probably the most game-specific role, and even that is something that is used by special effects companies and design firms.

> That advice makes sense if a company you works for sucks, but if an entire industry is broken, you can't just tell people to suck it up and find a new industry.

You absolutely can tell people to suck it up and find a new industry. This mentality is why the game industry can get away with bad work life balance and low job security. Because people keep working there. If the game industry was starved for talent, then they'd have to offer better work experiences.

I think 3d asset creation is probably the most game-specific role, and even that is something that is used by special effects companies and design firms.

Game industry working conditions are generally significantly better than VFX and can be better than design firms looking for similar skillsets.

I've worked with quite a few developers who be jumped ship from the games industry. From what I've read it's a common pattern for for older game devs looking for sane working hours.

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