I meant to post this as a comment in a post earlier but it ran a bit long so I'm posting it separately!
As someone very deep in the gamedev sphere, to me the most insidious shit is how terrible the CDPR company culture must be for this sort of thing to happen. I have so many fucked up stories about the gamedev world I don't know where to begin.
I have friends that work at triple-As like Ubisoft and seeing them cope coming home to their distraught partner by 9PM every night on a normal, non-crunch schedule by saying "oh well, the team is energized so I just HaVe to WoRK" is heartbreaking. Like, I have the extreme chance of working at a super cozy place where I can start the day by congratulating the MAS, we all dogpile eachother when we push past 5PM and hell, I love gamedev so much that after closing my work Unity window I just open my hobby Unity window but damn, even I think no one should keep working on some B-List Ubisoft game DLC until it's dark out just because "the team is energized". And that's not even mentioning the absolutely rachitic paychecks that you get if you're an "intern", a man - or both. And can I mention the fact that at a bunch of triple-A studios, dating inside the office is encouraged since it keeps you in longer?
You know that when you arrive at Ubisoft there's an "arrival camp experience" where they make you sit down, hand you a branded backpack filled with junk and fry your brain with a sizzle reel welcoming you to the "Ubisoft FamilyTM"? It's ridiculous. It's not because the office has a cafeteria with free breakfast and you have reduced prices on the massage place downstairs that any of this shit is worth it. It's fucking games; it's some random sweaty grizzled character knocking heads in some wasteland or another. It's revolting how worker indoctrination starts from the minute you enter university and then it's just a big "I want to work at a triple A" downward spiral from there. They take all the scrappy young adults burning the candle from both ends, squeeze out all the juice out of them and then wave them farewell when they inevitably leave from the triple-A to someplace smaller, like all boomers reccomend "working at McDonalds as a first job to build character".
What's sad as hell is that I guarantee that if you were to enter the CDPR office right now you would probably run into a majority of sweaty, delirious people telling both you and themselves that "we're making something awesome and we're all in this together, I just feel lucky to be a part of this" and that any suggestion that the way things are done are unsustainable would be instantly rebuffed. That's not to say that you wouldn't find people silently crying or hating it, but you know as well as me that it's like anti-union efforts; if you build up a small part of the workforce into patrolmen, any discourse that is not "yes, please, more" is quelled instantly.
I'm exhausted that the myth of "good 3DCG art/artisanship is always best created under duress" perdures to this day - I have worked regular hours, long hours, I have slacked off and I have crunched and I can tell you that it's NEVER worth it... But inevitably, just like you'll find someone to tell you Bezos only owns Amazon stocks, you'll find someone to tell you that "Hey, I wanted to work here and I like it" as their skin sags, they lose hair and their relationships dissolves or as they turn into high-arterial-tension, bloated upper management cockroaches. Fucking triple A shit, who cares that your epic tattoo robot punk has extra bright red dot sights or whatever, in the large scope of it it doesn't fucking matter.
Working for a video game company is like working for disney: sounds good at first but then you realize it's just like working anywhere else but you are exploited out the ass
Fuck that all sounds hellish.
If you or your friends want to get your stories out there you should try reaching out to Jim Sterling. He's been really hammering down on crunch as his biggest issue of the year and is more than happy to (anonymously) share these kinds of stories.
Hah, I actually reached out to him some years ago and had a bit of a chat. I ought to send him another email now that I've graduated and spent some time in the machine.
good 3DCG art/artisanship is always best created under duress
Actual humans have said that? I can maybe understand that thought process as far as highly emotional art or music or something, but absolutely not a corporate technical craft. I'd hope that with the increasing transparency and open discontent that more aspirants are eyeing small or indie work instead of the AAA meatgrinder.
Also, grats on the comfy gamedev, that shit's basically my dream career.
honestly the shit you hear from tenured teachers (usually industry seniors) or lecturers still working day jobs in studios is absolutely wild.
I personally see gamedev work as mostly artisanship - a technical trade with a lot of art and design elements. unfortunately, many peddle the myth that anyone who works in games is a renaissance era oil painter and reinforce the already inflated egos of many unfortunately gullible students; I guess it's easier to see yourself as a creative genius with the financial force of Ubisoft as your muse instead of an exploited worker grinding out 3D wrinkled men for a living.
What kind of money does your average AAA grinding-in-the-trenches dev make? Just ballpark.
This is all in CAD so adjust to your local currency (or use my USD estimates), but:
- entry level 3D generalist is around 30k yearly (give or take 22k USD)
- "glamour" entry level (so for stuff like character art or rarer stuff like technical artists) is 41k yearly (give or take 30k usd)
- As you become intermediate/senior you can make your way to like 70k to 80k (50-60USD) if you're still in in-the-trenches positions
- 80-110k (60-90k USD) is mostly for art directiors and other bigwigs.
For what it's worth, I am technical artist (which are increasingly in demand as game engines complexify) and I started at 20 hourly, then 25 hourly, I am now 70k salaried (so 38 hourly). It sucks that most of the hiring is often done in a "quick, we gotta hire someone" sort of way so pasty white boys with the privilege to nerd around for years often get hired much faster. At least a bunch of initiatives like the Pixelles Game Incubator and Game Devs of Color Expo are helping a bunch.
That seems like fucking peanuts in the richest industry next to like Pharma and Defense. Ya'll make what public school teachers make. What would happen in response to a mass unionization, does Todd Howard just start trawling Fiverr for devs?
