Sounds like he’s saying that when game companies go public (or voluntarily put money before fun), the enshittification sets in.
Small studios with heart still make fun games.
There’s a few divisions in companies that can still have fun, but it’s pretty far and few between (and they generally get overpaid regardless).
I heard stories of Nintendo’s Breath of the Wild having great leadership and a sense that everyone contribute (which lead to success, not sure about the sequel); also Monster Hunter Rise had fun and that lead to a few easter eggs getting into the game. Incidentally, at the same time REs devs complained and Capcom as a whole has been a crapshoot.
Heart leads to great games, though, and a handful of directors recognize that (and have the rep to do what they want without corporate killing it.)
Nintendo has a shit attitude towards consumers, but their internal structure allows for a lot of designers to have plenty of freedom to experiment, reiterate and try new things, and ultimately make a lot of fun mechanics. A concern of mine is that, when the historical big names of the company (Miyamoto, Aonuma, Sakurai; Iwata is no longer there) begin retiring, the internal balance of power will shift in a different direction, and the one saving grace of theirs will begin to slowly fade away.
Yup. Maybe it’ll get better, maybe not. SquareEnix (Square soft at the time) had a similar problem when they lost Sakaguchi around the time of Final Fantasy X, (which was probably more a symptom of corporate interests taking lead around that time).
Around that time, XII had struggles midway in production that caused a change of hands and made the game disjointed; XIII which went over budget and didn’t live up to the title, etc., XIV 1.0 shortly after that, and so forth. But after a series of black eyes (and a near bankruptcy) I hold out some hope, seeing interviews with XIV producer Yoshida, though, and even Sakaguchi admires the guy despite having his falling out with SE.
Of course then their CEO embraced NFTs and dashed said hope… but still, if they keep failing on sooooo many of their cashgrab projects, surely they’ll get the hint? In any case, point is I think some people at these AAA companies get it and their projects are often lauded as huge successes. Nintendo hopefully had a few people still with that spirit.
Video game jobs, when I was in the industry at least, draw in young idealistic game developers, pay them less than other tech counterparts, burn them out as fast as possible and then lay them off.
It is definitely hard to enjoy that and come out the other side still as excited about games.
I saw this happening (and was told about it by my professors who still worked in the industry) 14 years ago in college and decided that I’d rather work at the fish market I worked at as a summer job throughout high school rather than go through a 4 year degree program just to make the same amount of money I was already making.
The brain drain is real, and the companies don’t care because there’s always fresh college kids right out of Digipen, Full Sail, or wherever else, ready to work for peanuts because they’re passionate about making games.
We see this a lot in engineering as well. The flashy and defense companies have undergrads lined up and frothing at the mouth to try and work for them.
Then the utility companies pay better, better benefits, and at 4pm you are done. Meanwhile the high profile companies have new hires doing bitch work and working 60 hours a week.
That doesn’t surprise me at all. I’ve heard that companies like Raytheon have direct connections to some of the big colleges so that kids basically already have a job working for them by the time they graduate. The games industry occasionally has something similar. Portal, for example, was originally the senior project of a couple of kids from Digipen, and Valve hired them right out of college to turn it into a AAA game.
Thankfully I started in tech before video games were really a thing but I have had coworkers from gaming industries and they were the most jaded people I had ever met when they started out. They were also universally shocked how little work they had to do for the money they got.
Hey that happened to me! And now many years later I’m looking to get back into the industry because I’m a slut for corporate abuse…
Every time I’ve been tempted (I’ve a few mates working for Ubisoft), I look at the salaries and compare to what I make working for banks and, well, I’m a an mercenary kind of guy.
We all have our kinks.
I am currently being pounded by big corporate tech, but they pay me much better than the games industry could.
Yeah I’m currently making about twice what I could find in the game industry… I feel so hollow at my current job though I really need a change and making games is the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. At least this time when I go back I’ll know more things to look out for
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I kinda feel like this, too, but unlike when I first began working in games, I now have a family to take care of.
Also I like the 2x pay, relatively higher job stability, and overall work-life balance with basically zero crunch… so assuming nothing changes in the games industry, it looks like my stepping away from making games starting 11 years ago is still a permanent move.
It sounds like you need better hobbies, my man.
I felt like that at my boring engineering job doing turbine/motor design. I made more than my buddies working for Boeing (joke is REALLY on them now) and had much better benefits, but they made planes.
I picked up a bunch of hobbies that work well with WFH and that ended up filling the void.
I mean I already paint minis, read, write, draw, play ukulele, and take care of a colony of rolie polies in the bin of dirt I keep in my living room like a normal person. I don’t think adding more hobbies is the solution for me
And…you listed off all the same hobbies I picked up, only substitute guitar.
Do you write by hand? My writing is divergent between fountain pens with journals for my kids and the stories I write on a PC.
You also take care of a colony of rolie polies in the bin of dirt you keep in your living room like a normal person?
And yeah I write by hand initially. Afterwards though everything gets typed up in Obsidian, sent off to source control, and then a build server picks it up to turn it into a website. I’ve tried a few times to get fountain pens to work for me but either I’m doing it wrong or I’m buying garbage because they always seem to jam on me after just a couple days of use
You could do Game Jams and the like. All the fun of making games without the horrible pay and working conditions!
That does sound fun. Work used to have internal game jams but we don’t do that anymore (to hell with morale, or learning the tools we’re building, profits only!). I should look into some, do you have any particular recommendations?
Yup, I highly doubt it’s the “working on games” part that does it.
I loved software development as a kid (taught myself to make a webpage, did lots of personal FOSS projects, etc), so I decided to do it for work, and I still love working on personal FOSS projects after 15-ish years in the industry. So I highly doubt it’s the work itself that does it, but the working conditions. If I had to do extended crunch time, I would also hate software development, regardless of what I’m building. Likewise for other roles, like art, testing, etc. My brother did game QA for a couple years in college, and he spent most of his extra money on more games…
So yeah, fix your working conditions and people won’t lose their love for games and the work they do.
That sounds expensive. How about we do more layoffs instead?
Thinking outside the box, I love it! Here’s a massive bonus don’t forget to grab your golden parachute on the way out.
You will not enjoy videogames anymore, if you play big game studio games.
Go indie. Stay indie. Indie 4 Lyfe.
Biggest shame? Those in the industry get free copies of the games-- accountants, HR, etc. It’s wasted on so many people who gave up on the fun of gaming (except video game trophy husbands like myself! Bwauahaha)
Most people that work for game studios don’t like video game in the first place.
This is too true…
