If I were their parents I’d want them to find a job in software that wasn’t gaming related.
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I don’t have time to watch 40 minutes of this, however, I saw that Alex has a video about this as well. So it seems something could be happening?
It’s uhhh misleading to say at best. There is an Ubisoft shareholder who said the company was in talks to sell off some IP and Xbox was one of the interested parties.
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https://x.com/ign/status/1899943758923227342?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
All the reason to watch this day one.
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Darn it why O why couldn’t it be tomorrow? ;_;
I read an article where laid off designers found work in places such as architecture and earning 3x as much as in gaming.
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I once worked for MS in Enterprise software. I wasn’t a coder - but the coders I worked with were treated like rockstars (because they could fix your problems) and were paid well with a clear upward path of salary, benefits and promotions.
Gaming is a ponzi scheme - if you aren’t at the top you are at the bottom and you aren’t going anywhere until you are a spent husk - to be cast aside. Minus the well wishes and “oh jeez this is hard please hire these talented, super-nice people I just tossed in the street in the dead of winter” on X. In the west. It seems like the Japanese recognize grunt developers are the path to millions and billions of monies and are treated like capable human beings.
On topic - that doesn’t sound like this game. They did everything they could and it just didn’t work out. It is a shame only in that watching dreams go poof! is tough.
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If they actually recognized the work game devs are doing they would pay them as much as their western counter parts. But over all even after the raises that some companies have given recently they’re still paid less and are still subjected to all the shitty work culture.
I was nodding till you said the Japanese companies treated grunt employees well.
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I mean I don’t hear about mass percentage layoffs after a game succeeds or full studio shutdowns after one game in a pipeline bombs. Certainly not as often.
As far as crunch - every single software company has soul crushing crunch. That isn’t a gaming only thing. I was a part of 80+ hour weeks on the regular. There isn’t any escaping it and I doubt there ever will be a time until humans are replaced in the industry.
Can’t say much about Japan as don’t know much about development there, but you’re right about Western devs for the most part.
Game development seems to have the worst of all worlds - rubbish pay and working all the hours you’re awake without additional compensation for overtime, and you can be let go even after your game sells gangbusters.
I’ve seen why they get away with this while recruiting in my roles - basically everyone wants to do the “fun” coding creating games (having played games all their lives) and not the “boring” coding creating websites or apps (I’ve done both to some extent - any coding can get boring if it’s not challenging!), and even the university system has pivoted to accommodate this.
For example, most of the software devs who went to one of our local universities have degrees in Game Technology - which is basically a Computer Science degree but with too much of the necessary stuff ripped out and replaced with modules aimed at the games industry, an area that already has 20 applications minimum for every job they advertise and still not in-depth enough to actually hit the ground running in a studio (considering they’re underpaid, game development is often one of the toughest coding gigs).
Once they graduate from courses like this (which are heavily oversubscribed compared to Computer Science) they then discover you nearly always need previous experience to get a job in gaming (Catch 22), there’s way too many applicants and the pay is terrible until you’ve progressed enough to be noticed by someone senior.
They also then struggle to get other jobs as the gaming degree doesn’t adapt as well to other areas of coding - if they’re lucky they’ll get someone running it who can see they’ve got a logical brain and is willing to teach them the rest (actually how some of our best seniors have come up).
We still have developers who swear they’re going to move into game development at some point, but in reality once they see how much of a pay cut they’d have to take for the same role they generally stick around.
Considering the alternatives - a good middle-of-the-road but not too hard job in web dev / app dev or a seriously well paid but difficult job in safety-critical or assembly coding - game development is a bastard of an industry that preys on young developers and their love of gaming (as does the university / college system, knowing teenagers will opt for a game dev course over a “science” one).
I love gaming, but fuck me do I hate the industry practices…
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https://x.com/wario64/status/1900195812501541338?s=46&t=O_AGT9SEnlptKOF_2SxtqQ
Most anticipated sequel is coming.
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Not quite true - unless maybe you’re in the US where there’s no working time rules?
I’ve worked in development companies and in companies where development is just a department, and in the UK at least crunch isn’t too bad.
There might be overtime during a go live, but nothing that takes the mick and it’s paid well - for example I’m paid double for weekend or bank holiday work - and generally if I’ve worked really late it’s been because my autism won’t let me rest until I solve a problem, I’m normally being told to log off and give up till tomorrow!
Think it very much depends where you are and what the company culture is like - game devs for example seem to crunch a lot even in the UK and Europe, but not many others do as far as I’ve found, and if they do without paying overtime they’ll quickly lose staff as for example in my current industry there’s a website that solicits employee feedback anonymously and details company culture including work/life balance so you can avoid bad employers…
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Day 1 for me, I love this game - I’ve got every achievement (which is hard for someone with no coordination like me on the time-based challenges!) and bought and completed every DLC, free and paid (thank you Microsoft Rewards, which I think has bought all of them!).
Unsure whether it’s the ADHD or autism, or whether it’s the OCD-like behaviours, but something in this game is like it’s scratching an itch deep in my brain and it feels too damn good…
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US. When I was enterprise the crunch came during testing and live rollouts. There were inevitable bugs and we would stay up at all hours fixing those bugs and having conference calls about the rollout. We weren’t crunching to get a game gold for retail just to get our clients right. Live weeks were brutal. We were a 3rd party vendor on top of MS so maybe (likely) it was much different for the big company.
GOTY 2025.
Tiny developers eating the big dog’s bone in 2025. Kingdom Come and this are such a big, welcome surprise for gaming.
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