[f430]

What is it about game development field that makes it so labor intensive with consistent overtimes?

I tried to make a simple FPS game and it was astounding how much work was involved. Took 6 month of learning Unreal and Unity and gave up with a functioning prototype. Took 4 months of back and forth with Steam to list my game. Even harder trying to make money off it. I'm just in awe of Roblox, Minecraft, Fall Guy and all these other successes.

We all love games but not everybody gets to make em. It's insane how much detail and granted we take for all the flood of games we have out now.

It did make me change my stance on piracy. Somebody spent their sweat and blood bringing that game. We should pay for it what we can but won't be against emulation of retro ROMs.

[emtel]

> What is it about game development field that makes it so labor intensive with consistent overtimes?

I helped lead a team that built and shipped a 3D multiplayer game from scratch with a custom engine. I went into it expecting it to be harder than I thought it would be, and it was harder still.

I think the thing that makes game dev fundamentally harder than other types of software is that most software products solve a problem or take away pain. So they only have to be good enough that the user is better off using the product than not using it. And there are still many problems out there that people face for which there is no solution. So even an imperfect solution might be quite good.

Games on the other hand have to be so good that playing them is more fun/appealing/rewarding than the next best thing the player might do with those hours.

While the technical challenges in some types of games are daunting, I suspect that even technically simpler games like 2d platformers are probably much harder to develop now than they were a few decades ago, due to necessity of competing against every other activity the player has to choose from.

[mattbrewsbytes]

I think this hits the nail on the head.

There is a low barrier to solving someone's pain in creating a typical CRUD app. Its easy to pick an industry, find an application that could use some newer features and create something. Copying feature parity involves little creative work.

There is no ceiling on making a game fun to play. Creative, fun ways to do crafting, leveling, fighting, puzzles, etc. can engage players to come back and replay content infinitely if that is the goal.

[JabavuAdams]

This is a good observation. You can have a feature list for a game and complete every one (hah, who am I kidding!), but if the end product isn't fun, so what? It's not going to be successful, and all your effort is wasted.

There's the in-principle estimatable work to implement all of the game systems and then there's all the other unpredictable work to actually make the damn thing fun.

Feature-creep is endemic because creative directors/stake-holders can just move the goalposts or insist on their pet features / vision.

[johnnyanmac]

good post, but to be pedantic:

>I suspect that even technically simpler games like 2d platformers are probably much harder to develop now than they were a few decades ago, due to necessity of competing against every other activity the player has to choose

I'd say they are harder to *succeed* than a few decades back. Especially for indies. Development is easier than ever with tools and assets available for no cost (during development at least).

e.g. If you make a platformer in 2008 and get it on a store for $20, you would probably get a decent following just because you managed to get it on the store.

If you make the same game in 2020, even if it was a really good game, it's harder to be noticed and gamers will always have "but is it as good as Hollow Knight/Celeste" in the back of their heads. Games that each spent years refining their mechanics and ultimately sold for $20 each. Games that right now sell for $10. It indirectly buries and caps your market to try and compete there.

[jayd16]

Making a game is a deeply interdisciplinary exercise. Sound, visual art, storytelling, game theory, acting (voice or full body acting if motion capture) and of course many fields of technology, ai, graphics, core performance tuning, esoteric OS and hardware knowledge...and much more.

We're also exposed to AAA works that easily took 500 highly skilled artisans several years to build. Expectations are sky high.

[JKCalhoun]

I would add: there is also no "happy path" for gamers. Users will do everything they can within the game and you will spend a great deal of time handling those "edge cases" in code.

[duxup]

I'm amazed any independent games get made considering all the skills needed, but that scene seems very rich in content... I always wonder how that is considering the breadth of knowledge required.

[junon]

And even if you're not doing those things directly, you absolutely need to know how they all tie together and how they work at some level of proficiency in order to make a cohesive game.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Modern AAA games involve an absolute ton of work, but the reason for the consistent overtime is that abusive labor practices have become institutionalized within the industry in the US. The EA lawsuit is a famous example, but truly is just the tip of the iceberg. Most gamedevs become personally invested in what they're doing enough that the studios/publishers know they can underpay and overwork their staff. I was briefly in the industry at the end of the 90s, and still talk with people in the biz today occasionally. From what they tell me things just keep getting worse on this point.

[rhexs]

The easy fix to this is to not exempt “IT Professionals” from overtime in a bullshit rider on a completely unrelated law. Pay overtime, make it expensive to drive employees over 40 hours, and the problem disappears overnight.

[SeanBoocock]

That’s exactly what EA did in response to the “EA Spouse” episode. New grad employees are hired as hourly, non-exempt workers and paid overtime for their first couple years. The financial incentive alone doesn’t eliminate crunch, but it is one of many factors that has improved the culture at EA over the last 15 years.

[bpodgursky]

I know it sounds trite, but it really is supply and demand.

So so so many developers want to build games. The market for developers making things that _aren't_ games is red-hot. But because they REALLY want to develop games, game companies can use them to their limit for low pay.

[foobarian]

The game industry has the unique advantage that entry level developers spend their preceding 10-15 years playing games and building up a desire to make them. Imagine if kids had Enterprise Software consoles and played with Jira tickets on them. The rest of the industry would be swimming in applicants :-)

[adammunich]

Attention is competitive and you always have to churn out new stuff when running a game company.

[munk-a]

OT in the gaming field is insidious and mostly comes from the fact that the majority of your employees are salaried and working in fields where OT pay is not required. Overtime is an inefficient use of employee stress when compared to working regular hours - you'll burn people out and cause health issues in your workforce (a friend of mine had tension headaches when they worked too much OT - I turned to sugary drinks to keep myself going and put on weight). However, if the cost of those extra hours to the company is nothing then just see how quickly shops like EA are willing to force you into 20 hour days while you see nothing extra in your take home.

Overtime laws need real overhauls and nobody should be able to bargain away standard working hours or it hurts all of us.

[mbesto]

> with consistent overtimes?

One thing I've noticed about businesses that operate in the arts & entertainment space - people who do a lot of the labor have personal passions for their industry and are subsequently are willing to deal with employer abuses.

[amelius]

> It did make me change my stance on piracy. Somebody spent their sweat and blood bringing that game. We should pay for it what we can but won't be against emulation of retro ROMs.

I don't know about games, but in movies I don't care about the detail that CGI offers. Just give me a good story.

[johnnyanmac]

1. it's a multidisplinary effort that involves interfacing not just with engineers, managers, and maybe clients, but with artist, writers, sound designers, and sometimes voice actors. Very, very few people will have the full scope of a large game in their mind makling a game. It also means one of these pieces can vastly slow down the entire pipeline if they get slowed down/behind schedule.

2. many traditional games operate on movie schedules; i.e. timing is everything. missing a launch at November vs. January can cost millions, and most sales are recuped in the first few months. So the pressure to hit deadlines is heavier than some continual service brining in a steady revenue stream. Granted, the rise of Games as a Service through the free-to-play model is starting to change this, for better or worse.

3. even within programming, there are so many topics that games delve into. Graphics programming, netcode, UI/UX design, (basic) AI, etc. you need some very specialized people to make these games, up there with a FAANG despite most studios making nowhere near that much.

4. you can't schedule "fun". Game design is almost a black box. If you flesh out this system and it just doesn't feel good, what do you do? delay the game and overspend on the budget? release it anyway and take the critical panning (spoilers, most games do this option)? this mixed with #1 means it's harder than usual to schedule, even with the widsom of "double the time needed".

5. more of a personal take here, but based on #4: games are much more "in tune" with the consumer audience than other media. core gamers watch games like hawks and it seems like everything being worked on is covered in NDA's. some onlooker would think these studios are hiding governemt secrets with how tight lipped industry keeps devs.

This leads to many psychological factors, but as a TL;DR it means a) devs may have internal pressure to impress the audience compared to other sectors and b) consumers, being blacked boxed out of the process, underestimate how much work it is to make a game. A consumer base more internet saavy than any other medium before it, since gaming basically grew up with the internet side by side.

It's many factors and I'm sure I haven't even covered half of them in that wall above.

>I'm just in awe of Roblox, Minecraft, Fall Guy and all these other successes.

I'm sure minecraft and roblox are impressed too. they took years to get to where they are, so they are some of the counterexamples to the traditional model I listed.

Fall guys truly proves point #2. it came out at the perfect time (a time no one could predict far out enough to take advantadge of) and blew up for it.