6 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

I can only imagine how much worse people in SOME of the more infamous AAA studios *cough*everythingEA*cough* have it.

I've worked at EA and also worked as a business contractor for EA for nearly a decade.  

The first point is that EA is HUGE. There are dozens of studios, hundreds of project teams, thousands of small work teams and groups.  Every studio is different, every project is different, every team is different, every group within each team is different.

Some projects have horrible constraints, particularly those tied to movies or other external products where poorly-designed features (particularly from external requirements) cannot be cut, and where deadlines cannot be adjusted. Some managers are bad, having been promoted to the Peter Principle with no good management skills. Some teams and groups are bad, with toxic views or terrible work practices. 

On the flip side, some projects are amazing, particularly when the team has the ability to negotiate features and designers, producers, and leads can figure out excellent games where everything can fit in a good schedule. Some managers are amazing, knowing how to keep projects within scope and ensure that everyone on the team is thriving.  Some teams are amazing where producers and designers work with implementers and everyone knows their job, does it, schedules are kept realistic, and everything comes together well.  Some groups are thrilling to be around where everyone is filled with creativity and enjoys the work.
 

As mentioned above, it is always true that with a large enough group of people there will be some who don't love their daily job. That is not inherently a problem. There have been times I disliked the project but the people around me were so enthusiastic I couldn't help but enjoy something about it.  I may not have loved the tasks, but being surrounded by (sometimes disturbingly) exuberant artists and some cheerful leaders who helped lift everyone up, so it was still a pleasure to do the work. If enough people are positive and enthusiastic then a small number of people who aren't satisfied with the project can still enjoy the workplace, and can still contribute to make the place fun.

(When doing janitorial work we had tons of fun, we goofed off all the time.  Even though cleaning toilets and vacuuming floors is not particularly fun, the work was punctuated with floor-buffing races and other shenanigans made the work environment enjoyable.)

I found a way to do it - create my own game maker and play the games I make. I had this idea for a while because there were some concepts that I did not see in games so rather than making the games directly I decided to make a tool where I could develop games for myself. I call it Francois DIY. I switch between making games, then playing them, fixing bugs and adding features, and playing the games. Playing my own levels is fun but I also like to play levels created by others so I recruit a a few others to use Francois DIY as well. Works well!

1 hour ago, frob said:

I've worked at EA and also worked as a business contractor for EA for nearly a decade.  

The first point is that EA is HUGE. There are dozens of studios, hundreds of project teams, thousands of small work teams and groups.  Every studio is different, every project is different, every team is different, every group within each team is different.

Some projects have horrible constraints, particularly those tied to movies or other external products where poorly-designed features (particularly from external requirements) cannot be cut, and where deadlines cannot be adjusted. Some managers are bad, having been promoted to the Peter Principle with no good management skills. Some teams and groups are bad, with toxic views or terrible work practices. 

In this case, I take the "everything" part back. I still think EA is the embodiment of MOST things hat are wrong with the AAA industry (we could add Warner Bros to the list, and Ubisoft, but here I KNOW that Warner Bros is just the big boss driving awesome devs to overreach and underdeliver and Ubisoft... well... just delivers a lot of rushed products, don't really know about the working conditions).

But granted, on the stakeholder side I was only working with the big controversy EA was tied to some years back... good to know that not every studio EA runs is affected by the shady business practices that this controversy was exposing.

I think the AAA industry has to work on both ends to achieve more longterm sustainability, both deliver better products with less shady monetization to customers and improve working conditions in the studios that are currently affected by bad management and overaggressive deadlines. And maybe, just maybe, don't make stupid mistakes like it did with Andromeda... I would bet some insiders saw the disasters coming from a miles away and upper management would still push for a release. Now a big franchise might have been run into the ground. Longterm this was a bad move.

All IMO, of course.

1 hour ago, Gian-Reto said:

But granted, on the stakeholder side I was only working with the big controversy EA was tied to some years back... good to know that not every studio EA runs is affected by the shady business practices that this controversy was exposing.

The easpouse thing from 2004? That was a specific project team that was widely known both inside and outside of the company as being terribly mismanaged.  There are a smaller number of teams in specific studios that have problems, but usually they are fairly localized.  Good teams and bad teams, good managers and bad managers, good projects and bad projects.

I've found this to be true of every organization.  The smallest companies and startups have less variety, but only because they are small and have so few projects. 

It has very little to do with a person's ability to play games on their own, except perhaps how working at an abusive company --- which is universal to ALL companies in ALL industries --- a bad company will require you to work extensive overtime which eliminates your personal free time. In a good company you can go home at the end of the work day and do whatever you enjoy.  (Note that in many companies there are people who stay late and work long hours because of their own reasons, but that does not mean you are obligated to stay the same hours. I know people with no real life who work 12+ hours per day, there is no reason for that apart from not really living. Put in a full day's work and go home guilt-free when the time comes.)

I work on making games about 8-10 hours a day. Then I go home and spend about 4 hours playing games. If I have to choose between prioritizing making games vs playing games, I will choose to spend my time making them. I'm a professional. Making games makes me money. Playing games does not. That's really all there is to it. If I start spending 8-10 hours a day playing games instead of making them, then I need to quit my job and find something else to do. Therefore, playing games all day = lose your job.

8 hours ago, frob said:

I've found this to be true of every organization.  The smallest companies and startups have less variety, but only because they are small and have so few projects. 

I guess the trouble for a gamer is that he/she sees these companies often from the other end... and many of the big publishers have not really madea good impression on their customers in the last few years. Thus its really easy to misinterpret a maybe small scandal that happened in an isolated studio that worked for EA as "EA being rotten to the core"... after all we all crave for an explanation on WHY the big publishers sometimes seem to be so scummy to their customers. When probably its just the big wigs not caring an inch about gaming as a whole and seeing customers just as bags of money to be plundered, and it has nothing to do with the studios themselves. Or its even simpler mismanagment caused by overambition.

We'll, to be honest I should know better, and my resentment for EA as a customer most probably got me there.

7 hours ago, slayemin said:

I work on making games about 8-10 hours a day. Then I go home and spend about 4 hours playing games. If I have to choose between prioritizing making games vs playing games, I will choose to spend my time making them. I'm a professional. Making games makes me money. Playing games does not. That's really all there is to it. If I start spending 8-10 hours a day playing games instead of making them, then I need to quit my job and find something else to do. Therefore, playing games all day = lose your job.

Well, or you start thinking about a career as pro gamer. Yeah, I know, some people think its not a job, yadda yadda yadda...

At the same time some people win millions in tournaments.

Of course, as with sports, you have a very small chance to be at the top and win big... and a big chance to linger at the bottom of the food chain and get nothing. Not really a career unless you are really good.

Still, something to keep in mind. making games =/= playing games. Both can be a career if you are really into it an spend your time improving your skills... both probably are only half as glamorous as you think they are once you start treating it as a job.

I couldn't be a pro gamer. Enough games feel like a job already, I tend to drop them like hot potatos or just ignore the grindy parts. Side quests, open worlds and RPG elements have led to more and more games asking you to do menial side busy work most of the time just so you are well equipped and leveled for the main event. Maybe cool for people trying to get "their moneys worth" in time out of a 60$ game, but to me it feels like work often more than actually playing.

That is how I imaging pro gaming will feel oftentimes.

Everything has pretty much been said, but I'd like to share an idle observation.

I'm fairly active in the GDNet online chat, enough to know pretty much everyone who talks there, and I've noticed that all of the people there who are good at making games are making games. Like, all the time. I've never seen them do anything else (be it gaming or other forms of goofing off).

Those that are struggling with improving their coding skills and have been stuck in the same spot for years and seem to be asking the same questions over and over in the chat are those that also play a lot of games in their free time (or are only there for the lolz). It's really not enough to invest only 1-2 hours a day into coding and expect to improve beyond a basic Level.

For me: I will immensely enjoy playing the occasional rare game. Half Life 2, Portal, StarCraft 1+2, WarCraft 3, Banjo Kazooie, to Name a few.

But I'm not the person who can play games for longer periods of time. Even with the examples I mentioned, I had to turn them off after about an hour and go back to coding. My default mode on the computer is to write code. Everything else I do I consider to be "goofing off".

1 hour ago, TheComet said:

It's really not enough to invest only 1-2 hours a day into coding and expect to improve beyond a basic Level.

Have to disagree with that.  1-2 hours every day adds up quickly.  What you've said more or less amounts to "dedicate your life to this or give up" (even if that's not what you meant to say) which isn't really good or fair advice.

That may be a pattern that works for some of the people on a couple of forums/chats, but those forums are far from being representative of every reasonably successful workflow.  I only put a handful of hours every week into gaming projects (or other unrelated personal projects), and they definitely progress slowly- but it would be simply untrue to say that I'm not progressing or learning during this time.

10 hours ago, Gian-Reto said:

Well, or you start thinking about a career as pro gamer. Yeah, I know, some people think its not a job, yadda yadda yadda...

At the same time some people win millions in tournaments.

 

Of course, as with sports, you have a very small chance to be at the top and win big... and a big chance to linger at the bottom of the food chain and get nothing. Not really a career unless you are really good.

 

Still, something to keep in mind. making games =/= playing games. Both can be a career if you are really into it an spend your time improving your skills... both probably are only half as glamorous as you think they are once you start treating it as a job.

I couldn't be a pro gamer. Enough games feel like a job already, I tend to drop them like hot potatos or just ignore the grindy parts. Side quests, open worlds and RPG elements have led to more and more games asking you to do menial side busy work most of the time just so you are well equipped and leveled for the main event. Maybe cool for people trying to get "their moneys worth" in time out of a 60$ game, but to me it feels like work often more than actually playing.

That is how I imaging pro gaming will feel oftentimes.

The comparison to professional sports isn't very accurate to the discipline of game development. I think making games is a subset of software development. Playing games is really about 1% of making games, though understanding game mechanics and design is most important for the game designer. The rest of production is about creating art assets, placing them into a world, creating and implementing game rules, writing AI code, creating systems and coding them, finding bugs and fixing them, polishing, staying on schedule and budget, etc.

I would compare it to people who like to watch movies and TV shows and spend 4-6 hours a day watching TV. Okay, you're a fan. Does that make you qualified to create cinema now? No, not really. It takes work. You have someone shooting film. Someone acting out the scene. Someone doing audio. Someone doing set design. Someone being the director. Someone who has to edit the rough cuts. Someone writing the script, etc. Being an avid TV watcher is not a qualification for being a good editor, though good editors also probably watch a lot of film (and they see it all very differently from laymen). Making the product behind the scenes is hard work and very different from consuming the final end product.

For this reason, I hate to see the for-profit schools advertising their game development programs as if its the exact same thing as playing video games. It's false advertising. The schools are more than happy to charge a premium to young adults under the illusion that they're going to be making games by playing games, and when the students become disillusioned and see the reality and drop out, they gain nothing and lose the tuition money they spent. 

35 minutes ago, slayemin said:

I think making games is a subset of software development.

It is exactly that.  +1