When you die of a heart-attack brought on by too much Red Bull and sleep deprivation, they can put on your tombstone: "Died coding, but at least the trees in GTA V looked really nice."

To be fair, this is why I have no issue when GTA V for PC gets pushed back for the one-hundredth time. Maybe they didn't estimate it well, but hopefully they aren't buying in to the pro-crunch philosophy either. It seems like they're really trying to do it right and the end product will will probably reflect that.

I don't know, but I don't think Rockstar North and Rockstar San Diego usually operates under the same principles.

Thats more than what most people can expect on their epitaph, though.

It's really not. Most people would put "Great (father|mother)", "Wonderful Friend", but I suppose that's a value judgment and each has his or her own opinion.

"Great","Wonderful" is all relative. You don't usually benchmark your parents/friends with others, and in the case of parents there's a significant bias, because you know, you share half of your genes with them and stuff like that.

And what I meant is, rather, few people can claim to have touch millions of people through their work, but someone who worked on GTA V can, even if it's just a tiny part of it.

        Here Lies Jerf

     Probably in at least
          the 60th
         Percentile
         of Parents

      (Based on a Biased
        Self-Reporting
        Survey of his
          Children)

     THIS EPITAPH APPROVED
         BY EKIANJO

(No offense intended. The idea tickled me.)

haha :) I found that funny.

>"Great","Wonderful" is all relative

Whereas the impact you've made to "millions of people" because of the quality of graphics in a game where pimps shoot people in the streets and beat women up is a subjective accomplishment?

Well everything is part of the experience. If something stands out in the game some people are bound to notice it, and no matter the subject of the game (GTA V was brought to light here but it could be any other popular game) you will probably feel responsible for some of the good reviews the game got (and how successful it was market wise). Beyond what you did as a person you were part of a team working on something that many people enjoyed.

You don't seem to care that the game forces you to kill hundreds of men and even sadistically torture one. I don't think you're even forced once to kill a woman in GTA. And somehow this is a game about violence towards women?!?!

It's amazing how modern 'feminism' has taken the victorian idea of women and children first and somehow made it 'progressive'. The heroes of the first two waves are crying.

>You don't seem to care that the game forces you to kill hundreds of men

Seen that "shoot people in the streets", above? That was the first thing I wrote describing the game.

Also the whole rant re: feminism totally misses the point of my comment. I could not care less about modern feminism.

I just wanted to point out that it's a BS fast-food-like violent game, not some great cultural achievement.

Well technicially one woman dies in the storyline, offscreen.

GTA is a sandbox game. If violence against virtual women is all you do in it and that concerns you, I would highly recommend seeing a psychologist to find help.

>If violence against virtual women is all you do in it and that concerns you, I would highly recommend seeing a psychologist to find help.

Do people really think it's tactful and/or polite to suggest psychiatic treatment to others in a discussion?

Especially after mis-reading their whole point?

I don't do anything in GTA, have never played the game.

The parent comment presented it as a something to be proud about as compared to being a parent/friend/etc.

I just wanted to point out it's not some great achievement humanity wise.

Ah, that explains things. If you haven't played GTA yourself you are unaware how misleading and incisive your description of it was.

Please consider actually getting a first hand impression of things before you regurgitate some propaganda.

I wanted to point out that the things you mentioned are not what the game is about. The suggestion for psychological (not psychiatric) help arose from the fact that you sounded overly distraught from playing a game in your own way.

I don't know, while not immediately familiar with the game, I've read reviews, seen videos of people playing etc. Is this from Wikipedia not accurate, for example:

"The mission "By the Book" features graphic depictions of kneecapping, electrocution, dental extraction and waterboarding, and the player is required to perform the acts in order to progress in the game."

"nice trees" is relative too.

If people continue to work in the games industry despite the workload and pay they must be getting something out of it.

People continue to join the games industry - attrition rates are sky high and the vast majority do not last.

Perhaps the argument should be reframed as - why is it that despite high-profile and commonly known, and completely batshit insane working conditions, do people still sign up (and then quit the industry entirely)?

Are we doing a poor job publicizing these conditions, or are the stories just so horrifying that they become almost outlandishly unbelievable?

I'm armchair psychoanalyzing, but I think it's largely because the people entering the games industry are young and it's exceptionally difficult to grasp how terrible something like 80 hour work weeks are until you've been through a few. I mean, it's fairly common for university students to forgo sleep crunching for finals or spend ungodly amounts of time playing their favorite game. Add in "it's not work if you love what you do" and "I'm a special and unique," and you can see how someone might be persuaded to join the games industry in spite of the overwhelming evidence that this is a terrible idea.

For what it's worth, this also seems to be true of the legal and medical professions as well. And, more relevantly, startup founders.

Its probably relevant that games, the law, medicine and start ups are all perceived as being quite glamorous by many.

The games industry seems quite similar to the music and fashion industries in some ways. They are all glamour industries that attract a lot of young people with stars in their eyes who will put up with poor conditions and pay that can be as low as zero. All for the chance to "make it".

This isn't really a good comparison at all. Game developers make around 10-20k less than a typical software engineers salary. That's still far more than a lot of lines of work.

Maybe what you're saying is true if you're talking about self-employed indie devs, but that's not who the article, or your parent post is talking about. Also, very few of the tons of potential game developers go this route. Most just apply to every gamedev shop in their area.

There's also really not a concept of making it big. Without looking any up, can you name 5 game developers?

Everyone I knew who went into games knew what the conditions were before they joined. It's only bad if you don't have a backup plan.

My primary reason for learning to program was to create video games. Eventually that dream died because the juice was not worth the squeeze. Like I'm gonna spend 100 hours a week at work for some OTHER guy's idea? Give me a break.

If you really like programming games, you should take a regular corporate software job and write indie games on the side.

This is really the best way to do it.

Just doing it for the fun, not the profit of a publisher that only cares about ideas that sell.

Duping someone young and impressionable to think he's getting something out of a deal is not the same as actually offering something.

Especially if you drop them like dead-weight when they grow a little, and want to have a family et al and 80 hour per week doesn't seem that enticing anymore, and working on a game is not "the be all end all" a 15-year old thinks but just work.

> If people continue to work in the games industry despite the workload and pay they must be getting something out of it.

Most people are. They get to meet with cool folks, they get press coverage, there's a lot of feedback loop between users and creators (much more than in virtually any other industry), and you get to work with people who have the same passion as you - and you can actually USE and ENJOY what you create as well. That's worth something, even if not necessarily in monetary value.

Also it's very challenging and can be very satisfying. It can actually be quite fun working in games.

People commonly work against their own self interests. People commonly vote against their own self interests. People commonly do stupid things.

What if you really enjoy working on games that much?

As someone who has worked in startups, web shops, and now in games, I definitely feel like I fit in better here. A lot of my peers are talented but socially awkward. I don't even feel like there's any political maneuvering going on around me. That is partially due to the company at which I work, but having worked many events over the years, I would definitely say that game developers tend to be a very particular type of geek.

That certainly is one way to look at it.

But people still do lots of horrible jobs. People work waiting for crap pay and abuse by people as well.

Indeed, and bless their hearts.