Comments on: The Game Industry

By: Careers in Computing « heythosearemypizzarolls

Careers in Computing « heythosearemypizzarolls — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 23:41:09 +0000

[...] “‘few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom.’” – “The Game Industry” (http://push.cx/2009/the-game-industry) [...]

By: Teri

Teri — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:36:00 +0000

This post, plus reading up on what you want of your project made me think of this. And personally, I'd love to play your game. Hell, I LOVED Nation States.

By: shea

shea — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 02:51:24 +0000

Having worked in the industry for about 10 years now, I can add that, in my experience, the quality of life and culture varies *tremendously* between companies and individual studios. Games are high-risk, difficult to create, and failure is more common than success. Like any industry with those characteristics, the game industry features many bad places, a few good places, and a small number of truly great places to work. Everyone should do their research about any given studio before diving in.

By: James

James — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:36:43 +0000

Even successfully being sued doesn't seem to have changed the industry.

By: Peter Harkins

Peter Harkins — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:27:44 +0000

I didn’t mean to imply that the game industry was unaware, quite the opposite. I guess it got lost in an edit.

I’ve changed the “current surveys confirm that working environments are poor and failure rates are high” to “current surveys confirm the widespread perception that…” to put it back. I think it’s important, because I’m perhaps most frustrated by everyone knowing it’s broken and not acting to fix it.

Thanks for the link. It’s telling that “a lot of Sundays this studio was empty, which I thought was great.”

By: Eric J

Eric J — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:15:14 +0000

Not everyone is unaware of this cultural dysfunctionality. Just last week I read an interview with Peter Molyneaux (Populous --- Fable 2), wherein he admitted that the development of Fable "destroyed families," and that his proudest achievement was fixing this aspect of his company.

By: Infovore » Bookmarks for April 5th through April 6th

Infovore » Bookmarks for April 5th through April 6th — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 12:02:20 +0000

[...] The Game Industry – Push cx "Looking in, it’s clear that the game industry is broken and not getting fixed anytime soon. I will not be joining the game industry. I’m interested in building a profitable business making fun games in a good working environment, and that’s simply not what it does. Maybe I could hoist one more flag in the indie games parade, but I think of myself as building a Micro-ISV in the web software business. It’s a much nicer community." As usual: anyone with a degree of sanity looking in from the outside comes to the same conclusions. (tags: games industry management work overtime crunch lunacy ) [...]