Does gamedev worth it?

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    • Does gamedev worth it?

      Hi guys,

      In this post I want to share my current thoughts and ask for your advice. This post is about gamedev in general, and role and perspectives of a programmer inside gamedev.

      I'll start with saying that I'm currently 28 and have been doing gamedev projects (or non-gamedev, but using game engines) basically for my entire professional life. During student years I was preparing myself for this industry reading and learning numerous game development tools and knowledge. It was f***in hard, I had nobody to ask and the Internet and books were my only tutors. But I had a dream of making games someday..

      Skipping some ranting and whining about how hard it was to find the job, I want to jump to nowadays and say that my dream has partially came true, however am I happy now? Hell, no...

      First, most of the jobs I was working were either unprofessional or dull, management was always awful, only some percent of the products actually seen the release light, even lesser percent of the projects can be put on the resume without being ashamed... That's the first fact, the industry is chaotic and unstable, lack of professional education leads to self-prepared workers who often simply bad specialists but it's very hard to find good ones!

      Next, I was researching life conditions and salaries of game developers in the Google. One thing I'm sure now is that majority of the programmers are working like a dogs 60-100 hours per week (I found this information from completely different unrelated sources). They can't see their families and have bad health due to this overwhelming schedule. Constant crunching also don't make it better.

      Moving to the salaries, seems like average game programmer (non programmers earn even less) is $90k a year (ranging $60k to $100k depenging on the experience). My research has shown to me that other areas although being not that funny can be more profitable in terms of pure money. And moving to indie development is not an option at all as it's complete money fail (just search the Google to find out that most of the indies don't earn even $10k on their games, averaging only couple of thousand bucks... that's simply ridiculous given how much time you should spend even on a small game).

      Another things that bothers me is carrier growth. As I understand game programmer can be:
      - usual programmer
      - senior programmer
      - maybe technical director
      And that's it. First you work 5-6 years to become senior, then another 5-10 to become head of the team if you're lucky and smart. This will give you probably another $10k-$30k depending on the company/project/luck/your brains.

      So what do we have here? You must work days and nights without seeing your relatives for the moderate salary and hot having really good carrier growth... Is that what I was dreaming and spend whole my life to get into? I feel so wasted right now to be honest. What's the point of developing games if you can't even really have time to PLAY them?

      p.s. Lately I wanted to learn Unreal Engine 4 as it came out couple of weeks ago, but stumbled upon these thoughts which only led me to the conclusion that I should run from the gamedev as fast as I can while it's not very late instead of learning more of the gamedev tech...
      Looking for a job!
      My LinkedIn Profile
    • RE: Does gamedev worth it?

      Originally posted by devast3d
      I'll start with saying that I'm currently 28 and have been doing gamedev projects (or non-gamedev, but using game engines) basically for my entire professional life. During student years I was preparing myself for this industry reading and learning numerous game development tools and knowledge. It was f***in hard, I had nobody to ask and the Internet and books were my only tutors. But I had a dream of making games someday..

      I had the same dream and did much the same thing, although back in my day there wasn't much of a internet. ;) I feel where you're coming from here.


      First, most of the jobs I was working were either unprofessional or dull, management was always awful, only some percent of the products actually seen the release light, even lesser percent of the projects can be put on the resume without being ashamed... That's the first fact, the industry is chaotic and unstable, lack of professional education leads to self-prepared workers who often simply bad specialists but it's very hard to find good ones!

      Welcome to working life. There's a reason why comics like Dilbert exist. For games, I'd say most don't see the light of day. I've been lucky and have only worked on two or three projects that never shipped, but it's still hard. One of my co-workers worked on various things for seven years without shipping anything. I spent two years of my life working on a project that never shipped, which was pretty hard.

      As for not being proud, well, I guess it depends. I have projects on my resume I'd never play. Go to my profile and look at my game credits. I've worked on edutainment and games for little girls as well as more sexy games like The Sims. Most people work on games that aren't their first choice, it's simply the way of things. Furthermore, most of the really popular games are developed in the US or the UK, so your location is going to sour that quite a bit.

      I give lots of talks on what it's like in the industry. Your assessment that it's chaotic and volatile is correct. The longest job I've ever had is the one I have now, where I've been for about three years. Average time at a company is 2 - 3 years.

      As for it being unprofessional, it depends on the team. Most teams I've worked on have a "we work hard so we play hard" mentality. The same goes for architecture and other software engineering principles. It all depends on the team. Again, I think your location is skewing those numbers. As far as I know, there aren't any triple-A dev studios out there so those developers never had to learn how to make a game with millions of lines of code and dozens of engineers. That's when you no longer have the luxury of poor architecture.


      Next, I was researching life conditions and salaries of game developers in the Google. One thing I'm sure now is that majority of the programmers are working like a dogs 60-100 hours per week (I found this information from completely different unrelated sources). They can't see their families and have bad health due to this overwhelming schedule. Constant crunching also don't make it better.

      Again, it depends on the company. Crunch at Maxis is very focused. We work 60 - 100 per week towards a specific goal, usually a milestone or demo. We also do it when we're pushing to ship the game. What we DON'T do is plan for crunch. I would say that most of the time I work 40 - 45 hours per week, and those extra hours are really just me choosing to stay late and finish something up. I'm also a lead, so that adds to it. Our junior engineers are rarely here after the 8 hour mark.

      Then again, when I remember my time at PlayFirst, I was ALWAYS in crunch. Every project was an emergency and I had to work 60 - 100 hours every week for months. There's a reason I don't work there anymore.


      Moving to the salaries, seems like average game programmer (non programmers earn even less) is $90k a year (ranging $60k to $100k depenging on the experience). My research has shown to me that other areas although being not that funny can be more profitable in terms of pure money. And moving to indie development is not an option at all as it's complete money fail (just search the Google to find out that most of the indies don't earn even $10k on their games, averaging only couple of thousand bucks... that's simply ridiculous given how much time you should spend even on a small game).

      It all depends on where you live, but that's about right. You will generally make about 25% less than the same job at a non-game company. Mike would have more accurate numbers here since his wife did game recruiting for a long time. Still, that's more than enough to get by so it never bothered me. When I first joined the games industry, I took a 40% pay cut and it was the best decision I ever made.


      Another things that bothers me is carrier growth. As I understand game programmer can be:
      - usual programmer
      - senior programmer
      - maybe technical director
      And that's it. First you work 5-6 years to become senior, then another 5-10 to become head of the team if you're lucky and smart. This will give you probably another $10k-$30k depending on the company/project/luck/your brains.

      This isn't quite right. Most companies have the following ranks:
      - Junior Engineer
      - Mid-Level Engineer
      - Senior Engineer
      - Lead Engineer / Principle Engineer
      - Tech Director
      - Chief of Technology

      EA/Maxis has the following ranks:
      - Software Engineer I
      - Software Engineer II
      - Software Engineer III
      - Senior Software Engineer I / Tech Director I
      - Senior Software Engineer II / Tech Director II
      - Senior Software Engineer III / Tech Director III
      - Chief of Technology

      Mobile / casual game companies tend to promote really fast; much faster than anyone else. I'm not sure why, but your mobile rank will usually be your normal rank + 1.

      You'll spend 1 - 2 years as a junior engineer, another 5 - 7 or so as a mid-level, then another 5 or so as a senior. A lead engineer leads a project, so after about 10 - 15 years, you might be the lead engineer of a project. A principle engineer is like a lead engineer but without the lead responsibilities. A tech director is above a lead and is not usually attached to a project. Most of the time, they're in charge of overall technology and rarely do any engineer work. A CTO is much more focused on the future and business decisions.

      At Maxis, it's a bit more complicated. We have a huge project on The Sims 4, so we actually have two dedicated technical directors. We also have multiple people who would be at the "lead engineer" level. Our gameplay lead is one of them (his official rank is Senior Software Engineer II).

      At each of these levels, there can be a decent bump in salary. When I joined Super-Ego Games as a junior engineer, I made $60k. I went to $70k when I was promoted to mid-level about a year later. My current salary is well above that (six figures).


      So what do we have here? You must work days and nights without seeing your relatives for the moderate salary and hot having really good carrier growth... Is that what I was dreaming and spend whole my life to get into? I feel so wasted right now to be honest. What's the point of developing games if you can't even really have time to PLAY them?

      If salary and job title are extremely important to you, then I would agree. Professional game development is not for you. That's perfectly okay, it's not for a lot of people. The average stint in the games industry is about 5 - 7 years. After the seven year mark, people get sick of it and bail out. One of my friends worked on the same canceled project as I did for two years, then went to Planet Moon with me. When Planet Moon shut down, he got out of the industry and started his own non-game company.

      I love making games. If I didn't work in the industry, I would be making games in my spare time. I want to make games that are bigger than me. I want to spend most of my day working on really hard AI problems. I had to pay my dues to working on Barbie Diaries: High School Mystery and Brainquest, but I did. And I loved every minute of it. In Barbie, if you wander around the world, you'll see the high school kids behaving like high school kids. They'll form little clicks where the jocks will hang out with the jocks, the nerds with the nerds, and so on. It was awesome and I'm really proud of that. Brainquest was an edutainment game that had some horrendous crunch. I made the sticker book and the sudoku game. That sudoku game was really solid and it played really well. I'm proud of that too.

      In my office at home I have the game box for every single game I've ever shipped professionally. The big pink box of Barbie Diaries is right next to my "cool" games like The Sims Medieval and Drawn to Life. I'm REALLY proud of those games. They were better because I worked on them.

      Game development has a lot of problems. Your observations are largely true; it can be grueling and demoralizing. Events like GDC help energize me, but it can still be a challenge. Long hours, low pay, making games we wouldn't play.... is this really worth it?

      Fuck yes it is.

      Two years after working on Brainquest, I was at an interview for some other company and the HR person who was speaking to me looked at my resume. "Oh, you worked on brainquest? My son LOVES that game!" One of my good friends has a niece who always gushes to him. He's the cool uncle because he knows the guy who created one of her favorite games: Barbie Diaries.

      At the end of the day, I make people happy. Besides, what else would I do, make bank software? Create some website? Work at google on youtube? Nope.

      I'm a lifer.

      -Rez
    • Wow, that's a big answer! :)

      It's both nice and sad that my observations/assumptions are correct. I wish we all had more stability, but that's probably won't happen (at least in nearest future).

      And you're right about the location. Local products are weak comparing to word-wide production and there's nothing I can do about it. All the projects I've worked on didn't have any architecture. I mean at all! It was like bunch of random code sticked together and somehow worked (not always!).

      I remember reworking major part of one project trying to introduce some structure, but at the end it was too late - the project got cancelled... Producers mostly interested in imminent feature addition rather than 'fancy architecture'. Also refactoring was practically non-existent, which made codebase even worse..

      That's actually why I turned my attention to US/UK jobs only to find out about long work weeks and average salaries (and I'm not even taking into account here that moving to US/UK for me will be almost impossible due to geopolitical reasons). If I had been living there since the start, by now I've probably passed that starting period and moved onto something more stable and interesting, but moving now will place me only in the start in some company (I've even tried to get a job in UK, but so far nobody was interested).

      It all depends on where you live, but that's about right. You will generally make about 25% less than the same job at a non-game company. Mike would have more accurate numbers here since his wife did game recruiting for a long time. Still, that's more than enough to get by so it never bothered me. When I first joined the games industry, I took a 40% pay cut and it was the best decision I ever made.


      If salary and job title are extremely important to you, then I would agree. Professional game development is not for you. That's perfectly okay, it's not for a lot of people. The average stint in the games industry is about 5 - 7 years. After the seven year mark, people get sick of it and bail out. One of my friends worked on the same canceled project as I did for two years, then went to Planet Moon with me. When Planet Moon shut down, he got out of the industry and started his own non-game company.


      Well, that's not very easy. If it was only me I'd probably be OK, but if I plan to get a family and children then I have to think differently... and here salary and time schedule already really matters. 3 years ago I would be sick only of hearing about a job in some bank but as time goes on and I understand I need to care about my future wife, boring bank jobs already do not sound that horrible (although to be honest I still hate them with whole my soul... hehe).

      It is interesting to see the structure of the large company, obviously I wouldn't see that in small companies. Guess it's the size that matters here.

      Two years after working on Brainquest, I was at an interview for some other company and the HR person who was speaking to me looked at my resume. "Oh, you worked on brainquest? My son LOVES that game!" One of my good friends has a niece who always gushes to him. He's the cool uncle because he knows the guy who created one of her favorite games: Barbie Diaries.


      Well, it's super when you see the results of your work, it's like wings at your back, sad that some people can't have it (like your colleague who haven't released anything in 7 years).

      Overall, thanks for cheering me up! I will think further and hope I will come up with the right solution for my life.
      Looking for a job!
      My LinkedIn Profile
    • I've been somewhat discouraged as well. Its so damn competitive. I'm applying for "Associate Software Engineer" positions and haven't heard anything. Any other job basically wants 3 years experience and a shipped title. I am completely willing to take a pay cut but I don't even have an opportunity. I realize the line is long and I don't get special treatment, but it makes me wonder if it's realistic that I'll ever get in.

      It may just be a rough patch for ya man. The grass is always greener sometimes.
    • Well.... here's the thing. The games industry has always been a bit of a "members only" club. The paradox is that you need experience to break in but can't get experience until you do. I have a artist friend that moved out here to California to try and break into games. It took her over a year, but she finally made it.

      As for me, I got the first job I applied to, which I wasn't expecting to get. Why? Because I had experience with automation, which is what they needed. They were also a small startup and really liked me.

      What you really need is for someone to be willing to take a chance on you. Once you're in and have been here for a year or so with one or two shipped titles, you have your membership card. Finding jobs after that is much easier. If you're a lifer like me and you make it into the double-digits, it gets MUCH easier (I turned down two recruiters today). There are very few people with a lot of games experience and TONS of people with little-to-no games experience. If I were to post a position for a junior engineer right now, I'd get 100+ resumes. We get our pick of the litter. I tell my students that we don't hire C students or even B students. We don't have to. There are more than enough A's to go around.

      It's even worse today. There are tons of schools that are churning out people with game dev degrees, which is flooding the market even more. That makes it harder than ever to land an entry-level job.

      Remember, it's about what you can do. Do you have a compelling game demo? If not, you have very little chance of making it in. You NEED something that separates you from all the other resumes that look exactly the same.

      -Rez
    • I posted something similar to this just a bit ago. I recently got hired at a company where I work on their company systems (budgeting, accounting, time sheets, etc). I plan to stay there for about a year to get some experience, a paycheck (which is nice), and the hours are pretty good.

      At the moment I struggle to find time to work on game programming, but that will probably get sorted out in a few months (wife currently 6 months pregnant, a 20 month old son, looking to move in the next 2 - 3 months, and leader of a youth group)...at least I hope it will. The point is, while I enjoy the perks of the job, I don't always enjoy the core programming part (though I will admit some of it, like learning new things, is enjoyable) as much as I do when I'm working on something game related.
    • Old guy here.

      I've been extremely lucky in my career to work on some amazing titles - like Ultima, Thief, Ghostbusters, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II, and others.

      The hours and stress sometimes seemed unbearable, but that really is only in comparison to other kinds of stress that thankfully I've been lucky to escape (violence, sickness, poverty, etc.).

      I've watched my friends in other industries enjoy what I would call ridiculous levels of compensation. Lucky for me I get to play with their toys from time to time.

      Does this give me worries from time to time that my retirement will be a lot harder and slimmer due to choosing an interesting job over a well paying job? Sure it does. Will my wife and I find a way to be happy anyway? Very likely so.

      So where does this all end up? Would I choose the game job over a better paying but likely one that isn't as fun? Yes I would, but perhaps for a reason that you might not expect.

      In games, I am surrounded by artists of every kind, and I might even say that in doing so I've gotten the bug and become a budding artist myself. Artists not only in the sense of modelers and animators, but sound designers, game designers, and of course other programmers.

      The wonderful and creative people that ply this craft are worth being around, and what they give you is worth something great indeed.

      You only have so many days to spend in this life - try as best you can to spend it living.
      Mr.Mike
      Author, Programmer, Brewer, Patriot