The games industry is like the fashion industry. Young boys, girls respectively are super motivated to get a job in the industry, they think they're not interested in doing any other job. That desperation enables the industry to take great advantage of them at the lower levels: if they're not willing to work under those terms, there are a number of eager replacements.

I'm not morally judging the situation, I think of it as a natural effect of market forces. A rational person would just go to another industry. I'm a software developer who was never anywhere near the game industry, fwiw, though I have had an appreciation for computer games since childhood. But In these industries, there are enough enthusiastic, perhaps not quite rational people, to keep that workforce unusually pressurized, metaphorically speaking.

I agree except for one thing: I am morally judging the situation. Just because market forces have given you the power to ruin the lives of people who trusted you, doesn't make it morally okay to do so.

I guess you can judge the people, but I'm at a loss what you mean by judging the situation. I mean, if the incentives align a certain way to make a thing very likely to happen that thing is going to happen. The people responding to the incentives might be assholes, but you can't really judge the situation on the whole, any more than you can judge a seed for growing, once planted.

The thing is, it seems that the incentives don't actually line up in the first place. According to this data, the most successful games companies will be the ones where the developers work reasonable hours and are treated with respect. So what's going on?

> I'm sure I could put out a better product if I worked 80 hours instead of 40.

No you couldn't. People seem to often miss this point. It's not a choice between "work crazy hours or produce less". It's a choice between "work crazy hours and do shit work" or "work sane hours and do a decent job".

Well, maybe you're right, but that misses the point. Read "I'm sure I could" as "Even if".

> Why anyone would work 100 hour weeks in a sweatshop baffles me.

Because idealistic 20-somethings are easily riled up into a frenzy. Promise them a chance at glory and they will do anything no matter their personal cost.

And they're full of piss and vinegar to boot.

There's a significant part of the staff working on game production that is not engineering. There are far fewer job opportunities for the folks working in the Art, Design and Audio departments.

For engineers, there's a wide range of disciplines (graphics, networking, systems, gameplay, AI, audio, etc...), so in theory there's a ton to learn and it's easy to continually be challenged. In practice, at a large company, you'll most likely end up working on a very narrow specialty, on a very specific genre of games. Much like the film industry, people continue to join thinking they will make it big, i.e.: have a critically acclaimed title on their resume.

> There are far fewer job opportunities for the folks working in the Art, Design and Audio departments.

Looking at the app store shovelware using cookie cutter Unity engines, I'm not sure about this. I think scripting a level using an existing engine would qualify as game design, not as programming.

Basically because because people(especially programmers) take jobs in the game industry because they want to, not because they have to. Usually because either they are really into gaming/graphics or some related field, or there is a perception(at-least before you get in) that it's less boring and more artistic and less like working for "the man" than normal software development.

My experience is similar to yours, except it starts "I work at a game company...".