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Making video games is not a dream job

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Working in a video game company seems like a perfect job, but it’s a Bloomberg News reporter Jason Schreier he says that reality is far from ideal.

“It’s not really an industry that treats people well,” Schreier says in section 466 Guide to the Geek Galaxy podcast. “It’s not a stable or well-paid industry. It is also an industry with a lot of supply and demand. So it’s not the best place to work. “

For his new book Resetting the Press: Destruction and Recovery in the Video Game Industry, Schreier spoke to eleven game developers who have turned their lives upside down as a result of frequent releases from the industry. “The gaming industry sells career excitement,” he says. “It sells the excitement that you will be in the same company for 10 years, 15 years, but in practice that never happens. This is a world where people are constantly bouncing between jobs. “

Poor working conditions are particularly striking if you consider that the video game industry is a highly profitable global juggernaut. “This is a worthwhile industry $ 180 billion“Schreier says,” so you’d think employees would be able to keep working, but they’ll have to see that amount of revenue go up, please, those shareholders. “

The situation may seem dire, but Schreier is optimistic that unionization and remote work can greatly improve the lives of game developers. “[Press Reset] it is built on the basis of changing things — and changing them, and changing them, ”he says. “I didn’t want to have a book that looked at and pointed out all of these problems without at least offering some solutions.”

Listen to the full 466 interview with Jason Schreier Guide to the Geek Galaxy (above). And see some notable points in the discussion below.

Jason Schreier in remote work:

“One of the problems with volatility is that you can be stuck in a city where there are no other gaming jobs, as I said before, because the gaming industry is very decentralized. It’s not an area to get all your jobs. So if you lose your job and stay in Boston or something like that, it’s 3,000 miles You should go and get a job in the next game, so that’s not realistic for a lot of people, they have to rip out their lives and get their kids out of school and that’s not going to happen, so that’s one of the reasons people smoke, and they can work remotely. if they could get a job anywhere without having to move, that would change things, and the gaming industry would be more suitable for a lot of people. ”

Jason Schreier in the 1980s:

“I haven’t talked to people who have worked in every company in the history of gaming, so I’m not sure which has been worse than the others. I’ve certainly heard all sorts of horror stories about working conditions throughout the video game industry since the 1980s. It was mostly people in frat houses who developed games – all a dozen guys ate pizza and drank a refreshing diet and slept all night playing games.Although it might be fun for some people, it’s the kind of thing you can only do in thirty years. it has been somewhat professionalized ever since, but overall it still has a lot of pain to grow. “

Jason Schreier 38 study:

“Rhode Island was in trouble at the time; they were still feeling the effects of the 2008 recession. [The governor] He had this view of “Eastern Silicon Valley,” located in Providence, Rhode Island. He thought there would be 38 studios at the core, and it would bring hundreds of jobs to Rhode Island and bring in all those people who would spend money on nearby bars and restaurants and cafes, but he thought of other game developers or tech companies. would continue. … I’m not a politician, so I would have a hard time saying whether [$75 million] “It’s a good amount of money to spend in a case like this, but the logic made sense, and you can see why the desperate government wanted to return the jobs it made to all its promises to its state from such a crazy move.”

Jason Schreier on release dates:

“If I were doing word processing software, I would know.” Okay, I need this to make documents and if I write the words I need to print it on the screen, and I would know “Okay, if this works that way.” With a game, you need to work and not be buggy. And this vague concept of “fun” adds a lot of clues to the whole situation, how do I know this game is going to be fun? How do I know exactly how long it will take for this game to be fun? “Whether it will be four weeks in advance or eight weeks in the future? It’s impossible. So the whole organization of the games is basically based on educated inventions.”


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