What you really think about working in the game industry

As part of Game Developer magazine's recent quality-of-Life survey, which aimed to discover how satisfied game developers are with their working conditions, participants were offered space to leave an open comment about the state of the video game industry. A huge number of thoughts and feelings about topics ranging from working as a self-employed indie developer, to being bought out by a publisher, were offered by those surveyed. Here are over a dozen of the responses received, spanning a wide range of the issues and criticisms brought up, as well as comments from people who are happy exactly where they are in our industry. "Console game development has always been great. But the social/web space I now work in sucks -- I only do it for the money :-(" "I've basically stepped out of mainstream game production into indie games and education. I've taken a pay cut but I work at home and really enjoy the people that I choose to work with. The projects are rewarding and I'm learning new things. I believe that education is a great way to stay in touch with the new generation of people entering the industry and a perfect way to keep in touch with the wonder of working within an incredible industry." "I'm not sure this survey fits self-employed indie devs. I'm not sure I'll make it as an indie dev but after half-a-dozen work-induced mental breakdowns at a triple-A developer before being made redundant and left unfit for full-time/proper work I don't have much choice anymore. I'll probably be dead in 18 months. Thanks industry. Thanks a bunch." "Been wanting to get into the industry since early high school and it did not disappoint. I love this industry." "I co-own and manage production for a studio that does not have ongoing forced overtime. We successfully deliver projects on time and on budget, so it can absolutely be done without the workplace hostility, harassment by management, and lack of basic project management skills I've seen at previous studios." "My current title is game designer. I got into this after years of art and animation work. I'm a pretty creative person. Recently I've been tasked with gathering data, analyzing the data, creating graphs, reports, scheduling tasks, and tracking work. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing. Somehow my job description and task are not in sync, and the work I'm doing is well outside of my skill set. Yay for my job." "When I look around the office and notice that there are no older people working at the company, it's easy to understand why. The pace at which we work is going to burn you out until you either have a heart attack or leave." "Let's stop the crunch and the abuses." "My company hasn't had a real crunch in two years, a testament to better working conditions through good management." "I would attribute unreasonably long work hours, over many years, to the recent onset of multiple, serious health problems for me. This includes incredibly painful repetitive-stress injury to both my hands, as well as back and neck problems that will require surgery." "Got bought by a large publisher. The Eye of Sauron has moved and now we have producers everywhere making us quantify everything. I'm very concerned that this will stifle creativity and push 'polish' out so far it gets cut." "While my work demands aren't high, the product is served to a very base audience who doesn't expect anything. A large part of my office's work is in free online gambling. It's very frustrating providing a product to a user who is solely interested in winning money, and has no interest in the content you're trying to provide." "I would like to see improved maternity benefits for women in the game industry. It would be a good way to reach out to the female minority." "It would have been nice to have an industry mentor growing up." "This is a hard job."