Well getting minimum wage at Wendy's is also a supply and demand issue, but that job isn't sold as "do it for the love of the fast food industry". Ultimately a large chunk of game developers do have the skillset to be able to get better pay and working conditions elsewhere. They like making games, sure, but the tiniest amount of collective action among workers in the industry could ensure that you get to do what you love and get paid for it.

> minimum wage at Wendy's is also a supply and demand issue, but that job isn't sold as "do it for the love of the fast food industry"

That's a fallacy, no one goes to work at Wendy for the love of it. Some people do really want to work in video game for the love of it, they know that their salary will be lower, and they still do it.

The whole thing is apples to oranges because Wendy's is a specific business whereas the game industry is an entire industry. Many people enjoy working in restaurants, maybe just not so many at Wendy's. I'm sure many people who work at abusive companies such as EA love the industry they're in, but maybe not as many love working at EA. Probably explains the high turnover rate.

> game industry is an entire industry.

And it's crazy to hold up the restaurant industry as some kind of model of reasonable work hours and fair compensation.

If anything, game developer war stories pale in comparison with fine dining kitchens.

Disagree. There’s a lot to love about a job at Wendy’s relative to the alternatives (alternatives that don’t realistically include a programming job at Google).

> That's a fallacy, no one goes to work at Wendy for the love of it.

I don't know, there are a lot of jobs that are worse than Wendy's out there. "Love" is a strong word, but the same forces are at play.

You seem to be having trouble grasping the core concept here.

There are some jobs people really want to do and would do to some degree anyways even if they weren’t employed to do them. This is not the same idea as ‘there are worse jobs out there’.

Making games is one of these things. Working at a fast-food joint is not.

I daresay I enjoyed my job at Wendy’s a great deal. Mostly I left because I found better paying jobs elsewhere, but Wendy’s was a lot more enjoyable than those jobs (cart wrangling at Costco, car detailing at a Ford dealership)… until I finally broke through into office work.

The problem then is that if the industry pays above market wages, then there will be too many prospective game developers for the roles. Then the question is how do you choose who gets to be in this industry where you can do what you love and get paid well for it? Things have a way of balancing out, and labor organizers will see this surplus and capture an ever increasing portion of it through fees or other means. This leads to nepotism or favoritism as you see in some jobs that pay above market wages.

Game companies lose a ton of great developers due to their atrocious salaries and this is (IMO) reflected in many ways, from ever-lengthening development cycles to quality issues at release to feature cuts and crunch. I believe this affects the bottom line pretty significantly, and game publishers would look at the problem more seriously if they weren't making profits hand over fist due to the expansion of the industry as a whole lifting pretty much all boats. Seriously, for every one dev I know who actually works in the industry I probably know 10 who would much rather work there than their current job if the salaries were even close to competitive.