I take less money to work in games. I love it. I've worked in different fields. I prefer game development. I am an artist and I love playing the games I've made with friends and strangers.
It's great. Most game companies are very comfortable. Nice offices with free food, good pay, flexible hours, remote friendly, full benefits. Crunch is rare these days. This is all true of Blizzard, btw.
The vocal minority on twitter are trading in outrage; the currency of social media. And there's a distinct lack of perspective. Have they ever worked on a farm? A restaurant kitchen? A construction site? A warehouse? Or anywhere outside of an Aeron chair? Mostly no. This doesn't mean it's perfect or can't be improved, but it's really nice compared to most and this gets lost in the noise. I often visit poor neighborhoods and poor countries and read history and thank my lucky stars.
And yes, you can get even better pay in the financial services industry. If that's what you want, please, go work there. No one's stopping you.
I think therein may lie the difference.
Rephrased (accurately for intent) I thought it would be:
> Just to clarify, when you say "I am an artist and I love playing the games I've made with friends and strangers", do you mean artist as in the game-asset creator type of artist, or artist as in a romanticized version of a software engineer?
I could be wrong. Maybe he is just being a dick. But I primarily saw a somewhat more charitable interpretation.
The usage of quotation marks in journalism to say things using other people's words or to imply doubt on if those words are correct has been growing looser and looser. I generally take such usage as an indicator of bad and lazy writing.