Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

The games industry is on a whole different level.

My friends who've gone into 'normal' software development will work on things out-of-hours from time to time, especially if they're doing something interesting, and they're sometimes on call - but they're also making enough money that if they'd rather work a 4 day week, they can afford to.

My friends who've gone into game development report frequently working 10 hours a day Monday-Friday, and then going into work on both Saturday and Sunday. Or at least, they reported that the last time we saw them - you can imagine how hard it is to maintain friendships after a few years of such a work pattern.

View on HN

I'm a bit over a decade removed from that industry but that largely lined up with my experiences(and from the tabs I've kept on things it doesn't seem like much has changed).

There's a constant stream of developers who have a high degree of interest in games so not only is crunch incredibly common but also compensation is significantly less(was about 1/2-1/3 standard SWE rates when I was in the industry). Combine that with publishers who pull recording industry contract style shenanigans and it's just a brutal industry. Tons of really interesting technical problems but even as someone who knew what they we going into at the time I advise people to think very carefully if it's a career option they want to pursue.

100% this.

I'm about 15 years out. But I did the math on my hourly rate in the industry and it was about $25/hr. Some of the smartest, most fun people I've ever had the pleasure of working with, for sure. But while I was working the rest of my life was thrown by the wayside.

I quit after we shipped and rode my mountain bike for a year. It sucked because I didn't want to write code, a thing I'd previously loved. But it came back after a year of not working and a year of contracting part time.

There were opportunities to get back into games, but I turned them all down. I just don't want to get back into that environment.

I'm assuming stock grants or residual payments are never part of the deal either, right? That's just completely exploitative of their dev talent.

I got a $20 starbucks giftcard, once.

I've aware of royalties in some really, really rare cases(think north of 10M sales, in the < 1% of game sales category), but even in that case from what I heard the publisher had a cap on the upper limit per year in the contract.

> Employees said they were offered more stock to stay on based on their position and seniority, from around $5,000 in value for entry-level workers to upward of $50,000 for more senior employees.

Even $50k for a senior employee for years of working hard overtime is a joke compared to any other industry.

It's part of the deal where I worked. I think the whole bad framing of game development is a bit one dimensional. It is a dream job in a very tough saturated market, often with perks inside the office, awesome release parties, passionate coworkers etc. You are missing out on the huge paycheck and work-life balance, but you got many other things. Already it is a privilege to have a job working on games. Not forced to work there, not forced to have a fun job for average pay.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com