Ask YC: Has anyone else here worked in the video game industry?
Just curious...
Overworked? Underpaid? Yes, even if you're not making the games. My guess is that they get away with it because so many people want to work in gaming at any cost.
Yeah, I still think about hacking a game together from time to time. The emerging casual gaming market is pretty fascinating. One of the alternate ideas on my YC app was a game.
I wanted to reply to the overworked/underpaid thing, because you read it a lot on non-gaming hacking sites...it's like parents tell their baby hackers to behave, or they'll have to go work in the game industry.
If you're talented and not willing to accept shitty working conditions, you won't end up in a sweatshop. Lots of good companies treat their employees very well, both in terms of work conditions and compensation. Game houses on the West Coast are abundant, but there are some very good ones in the East (Epic being one of the brighter lights there), and middle (Raven and Human Head in Wisconsin, id in Texas, many many others), so don't feel like you have to readjust to a Californian way of life or living expenses.
The rough equivalent of sweatshops _do_ exist, but these aren't as rampant as you would think, even at places that have been (in)famous for them, like Electronic Arts.
Aim for smaller, privately-held game companies. They tend to be most satisfying to work for. If they get bought by EA or Microsoft (or Activision, or 2K, or, or, or...), jump ship when your options vest. Very few people seem to be as happy after the acquisition, but there are always exceptions.
If you are a generic coder with no identity within your company or project, jump ship immediately. Before the interview, if you can. :) Most places won't have you in the spotlight at all, but are very good about making everyone feel like an important contributor to a team. If you don't feel like that, you should get out, because the work is always challenging, but it doesn't suck unless you feel like a cog in a machine.
This agrees with the obvious economics at work: games are sexy, so programmers are in greater supply, so their value goes down.
Overworking---well, you can't avoid occasional crunch time, and because of the nature of game development, you sometimes have to face the design being overturned and have to rework development. But how far it goes largely depends on the team and/or the culture of the company. I know some who were deep in crunch time for over 9 months to meet the deadlines of monthly milestones; but also I know some who were able to leave office 6-7pm most of the time.
If you're interested in game development, the single best thing you could do is hang out in the IRC channel #gamedev on the server irc.afternet.org and learn from them. There are a surprising number of excellent developers in that channel, so even if you're not interested in game development you'd probably find it worthwhile anyway. Just wait for an interesting conversation.
I left the industry because the idea of spending 2+ years on something that may-or-may-not pan out, with no way to tell before release, was beginning to get me down.
I realize startups are sort of the same thing, but I think they actually offer earlier feedback and greater opportunities for recovery than games.