This is probably an odd question, but I've recently seen devs advising against joining the industry a lot on Twitter. What's your take on this? Would you recommend working in games or is it "do something else if you know can have a career in a different field"?
Many people have a lot of reasons to choose a specific career path. Depending on the person, they can value different career qualities like stability, pay, benefits, hours, perks, dress code, enjoying doing the day to day tasks, prestige, career advancement, and so on. Somebody with children, for example, might value stability, hours, and benefits more highly than career advancement or pay. Somebody who’s ambitious would probably care about career advancement, pay, and perks over things like hours and stability. As people progress through life, their priorities will shift and they may find themselves with different deal breakers as time passes.
Game development as a career is not for everyone. You’re not going to get rich in game dev (though you can live reasonably comfortably if you are financially literate) compared to other careers. You’re not going to find a lot of stability in game dev unless you are one of the lucky ones - if you pay attention to gaming news, we have layoffs happening all the time. You’re probably going to have to deal with really long hours at times and possibly for months at a time. These sorts of instabilities can really take a toll on us - physically, mentally, and emotionally. I know they’ve certainly affected my health, my relationships, and my own sense of myself. If these issues are deal breakers for you, you would do well to stay away from game development as a career.
But - if you really like crafting fun experiences and thinking about all these things - your job satisfaction will be high. We have nice perks - snacks, toys, etc. You get some amount of prestige from the career choice - kids, teens, and many adults will think your job is the coolest thing ever. If you stick with it long enough, you will probably get to work on your dream project in some form or other. At the end of the day, for me it’s the job satisfaction. I love the feeling I get knowing that this cool thing that I came up with, built, and released is being enjoyed by thousands, even millions of players out there. It’s tremendously satisfying for me, and what keeps me going.
The most important takeaway here is that anyone who is considering game development as a career needs to know what they’re signing on for. If their priorities align, then great! I will be the first to welcome them into the career track. If the priorities don’t, then maybe this isn’t the right career for them and I hope that they recognize this before spending years doing it and getting burned out. That’s why those developers on social media seem like they’re advising against joining the industry - it isn’t all launch parties and rainbows, there’s some very real elements of this industry that are downright terrifying and will take a toll on people physically, mentally, and emotionally. They want the hopefuls out there to know about these issues, because they’ve lived those bad experiences and wanted to warn others and bring awareness to these issues in hopes that they can be fixed.
The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.
[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]
Got a burning question you want answered?
Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter
Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr
Frequent Questions: The FAQ
andulkaphoto
jbbartram-illu
gummygunk
baratheonpilled
