The Harsh Reality Of Being A Game Developer

Follow your passion and money will come

Thanks, I was going to waste my time going into game dev which I'm not that passionate about.

I think working in a japanese game studios can lift these problems. Even though they have a routine of working more than the average work time, you gotta work the same too but they can have a pay which is satisfying....

It's sad that some game developers is getting that much money even when the game is making so much money and great video man :]

Now I have to reconsider my plan to apply a master program on game development

See I am 14 and I am looking into game dev but then looking at the pit falls and the salary compared to that then it would be more beneficial to actually work as a software engineer at companies like google or facebook (Meta) because the stocks that you get with this and shares really would bring the positive things of these faang companies

This is why I want to be a successful indie dev instead

I guess the best thing to do is study business along with the gaming development degree. Fund and create your own company and sell your own game on those shelves.

Hy guys..i have one question
.what about chinese companies in china...anybody have experience..please share

lol he equates stockprice to wages. that's meaningless. most of these devs/pubs with IPO's have joined giant degrowth derivatives, they just creaming bagholder daytraders on inflated values. that's why every single aaa is complete shit.

Well your video sure hit my pain point. Actually, depending on what you do, modern game development has plenty of overlap with traditional software engineering, I design databases, i handle software security, I do my contiguous integration and delivery pipelines, and sometimes we use aws, azure and other cloud services. You are right in the sense though that the more senior you get the harder it is to escape because while I dabbles in all of the above, they are only auxiliary functions I need to build to deliver my game. I don't really innovate on those processes nor do I improve them beyond industry standards as long as it satisfies users expectation for the most part. Due to increasing awareness on the subject for the most part we get paid a somewhat living wage at least, but boy is the passion tax real, and game development is HARD, it's different, but not any easier. I get questions like why don't you just quit the industry all the time. The truth is, i probably could, and I get a fat increment if I do, the sinister part of the passion trap is that you know this and you hang on for your passion as long as work condition and compensation is not literally living hell.

Very informative video, thanks!

the whole video is just a big political correctness that lead to bias in people's mind about game industry.

I think your point about the passionate jobs being in such high demand that they can pay less is spot on. It's just an unfortunate feature of capitalism, when the market is able to freely adapt to supply and demand, the highly demanded jobs end up being the worst. I went to school for mathematics because it's a passion, but I decided against grad school and especially the PhD route because it's not even close to being worth it. You're going to sacrifice an ungodly amount of time and endure so much difficulty to not make near enough at the end of the journey. Yet there are still hundreds of people who do it because they love it. On the flip side, I could be an actuary and make even more than a lot of PhD level math professors, but I'd be completely bored out of my skull and entirely unfulfilled. With the advent of the gig economy, I think freelancing and entrepreneurship has skyrocketed, but it's still a very small defense against the corporate-dominated tech/software industry. I'm afraid it will only get worse. For many of us, following the money means not following happiness and fulfillment. And to us, those are worth more than money.

But as a result, we haven't turned our work into the thing we love, we've turned the thing we love into work. And I think working under such poor conditions and for so little salary, we can end up spoiling that passion.

Gender discrimination isn't real

In lots of cases you can make more off of selling an indie game by yourself than working at a big company but it depends sometimes

And also Japanese animator 😢

I’m currently a third year game dev student. Honestly the program sucks so I’m probably just going to seek higher education in the software dev field

so maybe Niantic can pay better. But will it be the backend folks, which means, not so different from the Google folks

Great video

The amount of propaganda in this video...

Comparing Google with the gaming industry might not be a good idea.

Google has a lot of business, when it comes to gaming, the customers are very narrowed. Many don't want to buy a high spec CPU or GPU.


From a business perspective, you cannot market a game to every kind of audience.

What I feel indie game dev and game dev by hobby is best rather than getting stuck with corporate who suck out passion and take most of the revenue.

Sometimes hard work has no value. If you need money it all depends on how carefully you do the business.

I know game devs work so hard, literally they do all the work. Google devs not work that much comparing game devs.

Thats why u should start ur own video game company. Or start with ur friends.

Just because there aren't any women doesn't mean discrimination played a role in it. I don't know why that's so hard for people to understand. Not talking about Riot Games, just in general.

Who wants to Collab and make a game?

To be fair comparing Ubisofts a UK company's salary to Google isn't exactly fair. Software engineers in the UK typically get paid less than those in America. Although it's still true game software engineers at big companies in America get paid less than non game engineers they still typically bring home more than the Ubisoft number.

So, one things that needs to be taken into account is where you work. Salaries will be higher in California for sure, but then your rent can be 2-3 times more expensive than somewhere else as well.
Right now there is a worker shortage so companies started to actually try to improve their working conditions / studio culture (not all of them of course ) , at least in big video games hubs like Montreal (probably elsewhere as well with the work from home option).
In any case, everybody knows software will always pay more than video games in general, but when you get a good studio ( not necessarily a giant one either ) , video games can be super fun.

I'm starting up an indie game as I felt like it was the best choice rather than join something existing. I'm a rather slow but hard-working perfectionist dev and if I would be given a short deadline by one of these massive companies I might fail or just end up rushing it. The pay doesn't even seem worth it, so I wanted to work with something I can more personally have a passion in without having to think about money. Like yes a game needs money, but I'm not gonna be greedy about it. I believe passion is the best ingredient for a good game!

instead of directly writing games u should focus the on the business software that enables these studios to make their game in that way i helped to games to come into existence and i get paid alot LOL

woo not all companies does that ,, the best companies pay well , infact some ceo of top gaming studios make 30M+ , blizzard ceo salary doesnt shy from any tech ceo

If you don't put women in the leadership, you are a criminal, what a joke!

Call of duty made 5.6 billion dollars. GTA made 7 billion dollars. you can make lot of money if you new idea of game. don't make recycle games that already exists on the market for example. NBA, WWE, NASCAR, etc these are recycle game. you make million dollar not billion dollars. you can make money change date and scheme which make boring for game developers. Tetris is new idea, flappy birds, endless runner. you have to create new game that doesn't exist before. Avoid re-inventing wheel video game. many have played re-inventing wheel video game. they find boring. Make brand new game that don't exist on stores? make LAWN MOW GAME in Zombie Apocalypse.... Governor pay you to lawn mow and avoid zombies. that's new idea of video game.

About the relation between passion and salary, well said!

Honestly at this point I wonder why they hire women at all, they're just going to get sued, do they have forced diversity quotas?

Yes because comparing them to a trillion dollar company makes sense

This is why indie game development has gotten much better for game developers.

Even I’m planning to make one myself once my training game is finished on roblox :)

Game Developers probably applied on that job cause they just love some aspect of a Game. Except maybe some Game Directors, Game Publishers, and these Executives who only cares about the results.

Support your indie game devs

do people even realize that most muslims or "arabs" murder women men and children and also rape women and children and are still forces marriages by the age of 8-12 but sure they are just misunderstood right? its not like they kill and rape 24/7 no no of course not

SWE II is not entry level, FAANG entry level is 10-12K

Riot game technically isn't a game company. They are a music and film company so....i could understand why thier employees happy

My wish is that someday I would have 30k per year

> 95% of employees are happy to work at Riot
> but hurr durr muh gender diversity, no female leadership

Ahm, can we stop looking at gender and race as qualifying attributes? Can we go back to meritocracy?

A lot of these developers work these insane hours because they love their job. But they're not being looked after both in terms of their health and the money they get.

Are pointing out that Amazon workers are treated badly is a know fact or that you are disturbed that game devs are unreasonably treated as bad?

Lets be honest, Game Devs are paid well but are not THE best paid developers... Anyone heard of Cloud Engineers?

Lastly, even with these cons, I still want to go into the industry... I just have a passion for game dev and would rather do it professionally.

Another thing to note: you will not get credited for making/helping make a game unless you're on the credits screen of the game. This means that if you spent one year on a game, then you decided to switch companies and that game would be developed for 2 more years, you won't get credited for your work, and you can't claim that you've worked on the said game either. Another way for game companies to abuse your passion.