> The strange part of this story is the way how it's set to snipe at certain companies - CDProjekt and Rockstar were target of these stories, but other development studios for some reason weren't.

It seems to be cyclical that the company in the cross-hairs has a bad PR year and people talk about only the one company as if it isn't a systemic problem until memory gets blurry and people forget the last time it came up, and few people connect the dots to the systemic problem. (Almost every major publisher has been in the spotlight at some point in time or another. EA very famously had the "EA Spouse" cycle of bad press. Activision had one a few years later.)

If there is something interestingly strange here it's that CD Projekt Red tried to buck the system and do the right thing and its getting smeared so badly that it tried and failed. The takeaway for a lot of people is going to be subconsciously "it's better not to try at all to do better and stick with the status quo", which is hard not to assume is intentional this cycle from some of the members of the status quo. (It resembles other anti-union bullying tactics.)

I remember when the (then) anonymous EA Spouse posting went up bringing wider attention to the routine practices of the game industry. Long story short, game companies can abuse the enthusiasm of young people of the medium and burn them out, over and over, for little pay. There is always someone behind you to happily take your seat. It's one of the reasons I left that field early in my career.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Hoffman#%22EA_Spouse%22_b...

Yeah, the targeting is the most interesting part of this story for me. All of the best AAA games are the best because a lot of people put a tremendous amount of effort into them. If you want to make a new game that's a serious contender for one of the best games of all time, and you want an ambitious, deep world and story in a realistic setting, you're going to have to match or exceed previous efforts. If you find enough people who are as interested in the concept and want to make it happen, it's possible and it will probably never be a walk in the park.

There's always a market for indie-scale games, 2D platformers, simple but innovative 3D games, etc, where good, simple ideas are more important than huge amounts of effort. But there's also a market for complex games, and if they're well done, people will happily pay for them.

source: over a decade in the modding and gamedev community, never done it professionally (yet) but have made some popular mods/minigames, and a decent grasp of how much work goes into large-scale games and how much you have to want to make it happen for it to happen, and sometimes, you're willing to spend these long days, and sometimes it's even enjoyable before the money and fame start rolling in, or at least enjoyable enough to stick with it.

I hope, and suspect, nobody who is working on AAA games has zero interest or joy in making big, complicated games.

You get the job because you have skills at it. You have skills at it because you were interested enough to learn them. Those skills are worth money. All of the articles criticizing gamedev seem to miss this.

I think that gaming is such a competitive industry that in order to stay relevant, you need to either essentially rip your customers off or overwork your employees. I hear that jobs at EA and King these days are relatively chill, and both are hated for their monetization strategies. While investor pressure certainly doesn't help, I think the same dynamic would exist even if all video game companies were bootstrapped.

I think you are partially right with the cynisism. And those companies are chill now because of scandals and making more money. But it is also a creative industry, many of those are hard to begin with. How do you compete with people/companies enjoying working seven days and sleeping in the office, and possibly at higher skill. Creating games can be extremely fun, and it can burn you out in the process. And people take paycuts to join the industry because it is fun. Every new game project is also like a startup because of all these factors.

I still have memories of writing code in my car with the heater on full blast because the building shut off all heat at midnight (middle of snowy winter) and by 1am you could see your breath in the office.