[bananaboy]

Exactly. There is a lot of ignorance in this thread. As if the only two roles are engine programmer and gameplay programmer where gameplay is just scripting. Nope. We have engineering teams dedicated to: UI, physics, rendering, streaming, automation, gameplay (people who write gameplay features that the game designers will access via script), build infra, pipeline (and pipeline is split up into people doing lighting/geometry tools vs tools that package up data for efficient runtime use), level editing tools, asset editing tools. I’m sure I’ve forgotten plenty. Then there are the QA teams, automation (not engineers but write test scripts etc), production, level designers, vfx artists, tech artists (almost programmers), character artists, 2d artists, prop artists, gameplay scripters. This is Activision but I know EA are similar and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that most AAA companies are also similar.

There’s a wide range of pay levels there.

[maccard]

And none of those people are “low skill”.

[jhatemyjob]

I never said they are low skill. They just don't have their priorities straight.

Those QA teams, automation people, production, level designers, vfx artists, tech artists, character artists, 2d artists, prop artists, gameplay scripters, etc are doing all that work just to put some pretty pixels on a 14 year old's screen. There's very little value there.

[Auracle]

Jesus Christ dude.

First off, adults play video games too. I think they’re actually the leading consumers, though I don’t care to look that up. Second, people like entertainment. Videogames are certainly no less important than movies, TV, or most novels. Entertainment can be important. Personally I find really hard videogames to be meditative and it’s bad for my mental health when I can’t get some time now and again to play some. I also made most of my adult friend group as a teen playing Halo together in a cabin multiple times per week.

I’m guessing you at least consume some sort of entertainment, so to say something like that is incredibly hypocritical.

[jhatemyjob]

I touched a nerve huh? You wanna know another leading consumer? Recreational drug users. Lot of money in that industry.

[maccard]

Sorry - you said it’s “grunt work”, not low skill.

> There's very little value there.

As opposed to the 373rd X-as-a-service crud app with AI features?

[jhatemyjob]

Ok so now you're lying. I never said that.

[jhatemyjob]

Okay, sorry. I retract that. I responded to the original comment saying "this", which implies that I would have said that myself. So... you got me there.

As for the second part of your comment, well... yeah, I don't disagree with you there. That doesn't have any value either. Those people are probably not making that much money.