So You Think You Want to Make Games for a Living?

[darkjak]

I've had experience with working at a game studio, and there wasn't really any crunch time there.

This summer I was however supposed to work at a different company. There was a lot of fuss about the contract, as my employer at first didn't specify my work hours as much as the union required, so it took months and months to get a good contract. When I showed up to sign the contract, the same day I was supposed to start, my boss wanted to postpone my work period until I was needed. Apparently due to Nintendo being unable to give a date when they can send their game in for approval. The boss told me that he was pissed too, as this meant that they would have to cancel their vacation.

 

I've got a teacher whom worked at Dice when they developed BF 1942, and there was a lot of people, including himself who were burned out. The main problem I see is that game companies don't hire as much people as they need. Instead, they have very steep requirements for the people whom want jobs. EVERYONE wants people who have several years of experience or even worse: people whom have worked on at least three AAA titles.

The biggest shame is however when companies start becoming buddy-recruiters. A person told me (I cannot actually confirm this is true) that when Grin needed a Creative Director, they just took a guy who was a friend on someone on the company and was unemployed. A person with no degree of any kind and who embodied everything a Designer wasn't supposed to be. Noone barely ever saw him, he'd just come in once in a while and come with ideas, and complain on how certain things aren't how he imagined. This source also told me that during the development of Terminator: Salvation, this guy came in three weeks before the game was supposed to be sent in to Sony and Microsoft, and said that half the games content had to go.

 

However, I've heard that this crunch-culture is going away. Crunch is becoming crunch (extra work in the final stages of development, rather than constant work under slave conditions). Apparently, DICE aren't killing their employees anymore and Massive Entertainment are apparently one of the best work places in all of Sweden.

 

A big problem for young, fresh developers is however the difficulty to get their first job. You pretty much have to start your own company to get in!