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A comment on 'Left high and dry': Confessions of a laid-off gaming industry worker. Parent comment

Re:'Left high and dry': Confessions of a laid-off gaming ind... by Domenic_S on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @01:00PM (#39277884)
> I think the gaming industry in general has use[d] the passion that devs have for games as a good excuse to not pay more, which obviously has worked.

It's a simple supply/demand calculation. "Game dev" is high on the dream-job list -- "internal framework developer for MegaCo" is not. Game engines have made game dev more accessible than ever, the raw talent pool is bigger than its ever been.

It's a lot like being a professional musician. The hours suck, the environment is usually crap, it spills into your home life all the time... and the pay sucks unless you're the 0.1% (or a business person in the field instead of a performer) but lots and lots of people want to do it and will grind away at being a pro musician, because they're passionate about it.

If there's any set of devs that needs a union or is most like other fields where unionization is beneficial, it's game devs.

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Re:'Left high and dry': Confessions of a laid-off gaming ind... by gruez on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @04:14PM (#39280694)
It's a simple supply/demand calculation. "Game dev" is high on the dream-job list -- "internal framework developer for MegaCo" is not. Game engines have made game dev more accessible than ever, the raw talent pool is bigger than its ever been.

Indeed. There's even a term for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential

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Re:'Left high and dry': Confessions of a laid-off gaming ind... by shaileshm on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @01:26PM (#39278295)
> "internal framework developer for MegaCo"

NGL, because this is actually my dream job.

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Re:'Left high and dry': Confessions of a laid-off gaming ind... by ghaff on Tuesday February 06, 2024 @01:59PM (#39278845)
A lot of people look for jobs that seem like jobs their friends are going to go "Wow, cool!" In practice those are mostly orthogonal with fairly reliable jobs that pay fairly well and reliably.
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