Everyone assumes outsourcing is a major upcoming problem in the industry. It isn't IMO. No one I know uses any type of foreign company for outsourcing. If they use an outside studio that specializes it's generally in the same country or area that they are located. Example, Demiurge, Animation farm, etc. A lot of them are based in Europe, Canada, and the US. I rarely see an Indian or Pakistani firm getting a lot of work... just too many hurdles to overcome in the game industry. Heck even IT is moving away from outsourcing any major project. BTW, I apologize if the above insulted anyone.
You can't rush art ;-). Only reason my friend's company outsourced it was because it was cheaper and quality was just the same. As a matter of fact some of those artists were flown here on Visas to do some work.
I don't think the sweatshop concept fits in the image. For once, because crunch-time could be considered a sweatshop tactic by most labor organizations in the world, and its being used all over the US and other developed countries. Now, with that codemill I said before, the problem wasnt that the wages were THAT low, but that the high rank programmers wanted a LOT, almost as much as any senior programmer over here. For what I know a lot of japanese industries work together, so game developers doing the same thing should pretty natural for them. The problem is that over here most companies in every area of the economy engage in fierce battles for the market, most of the time at the expense of their employees, and in some cases even tax payers... About individuality, honestly most of the games out there are clones of other games, so there not a lot of individuality to loss. Anyway, I said "union" but we dont need one per se. I heard game developers and such are in some kind of union in the UK. For what I read things are a little better over there, specially the amount of hours per week. Even that, I heard several complaints with wages not being equal to the actual costs of living in that country.
You heard wrong. Crunch time is as bad in the UK as anywhere else in the world. Wages in the games industry are pretty high, generally. Only testers feel the pinch.
Crunch time happens in all project-based companies everywhere in the world. It's far from being a game industry exclusive. The main reason the game industry is highlighted is because the voice actors went on strike back in 2005 asking for more money, better pay structures for overtime, and back-end payments. That caused the publishers, and developers to get together and tell them how much hell crunch time is and how programmers work 80+ hrs a week, don't see increased pay for that time, and surely no back-end payments. They didn't say that salary has been increasing pretty rapidly for the last 5 years, or that benefits and crunch-time periods has been less frequent. Unionization will not happen in the game industry for a few reasons: a) The general size of the industry is still pretty small relative to others. b) The people working in this industry love what they are doing c) Unions suck and are useless d) No one is having a gun pointed to their head. If a studio is mis-managed and abuse their employees people will leave and the studio will die, simple as that. It's a very small industry and word spreads quickly. I'd like to think of the game industry as having the best of the best. I mean who'd want to go develop a new e-commerce billing system instead of working on a game. So it might be a lot of false hope on my part, but I'm pretty sure that mass outsourcing won't happen, and there's no way unionization happens.
You may not believe it but I now SEVERAL people who would ratter crunch meaningless algorithms in some stupid company than going into game studios. Yeah I think is crazy too, specially since most of them were top-notch programmers, and who knows what cool stuff they may have done if they were in the industry. About unions, yeah is not a great idea, but you cant compare a union made by Q-grade politicians wannabes and mafia thugs with one made by game developers. You just cant compare a programmer with a truch assembly line clerck.
Crunching meaningless algorithms might not seem like the stuff of dreams, but there is something very rewarding about producing software that has real world applications, even if it's just an office application. Game development might seem fun, and it often is, but don't delude yourself. Programming a game is a monotonous task and a huge amount of your time is spent ironing out bug after bug, constantly having people pull apart your code and pointing out your mistakes over and over again. You tend to work on the same kind of processes each time and it can be very frustrating. Add to this the stress of insane working hours and the possibility that your game might not get signed, might not end up getting a release or might flop at retail and you get an idea of what a developer faces. Your input is very small as a programmer, especially in a large scale team, and you'll probably have little to say about what makes up the game from a design point of view. You have almost zero social life for the majority of the year and the life you do have is very stressful. It's well paid, you're part of a creative process, but it's not all you might think it is.
never said meaningless algorithms, I said e-commerce sites I get your point, but I maintain that people in the game industry are generally very smart, more so than a lot of other computer-related fields...
Yeah I know, thats why I didnt get into the industry when I had the chance. I think my biggest fear wasnt the zero social life (i'm no clubber either:lol but working like a slave and not getting an oportunity to make the games I wanted to. I meet several people in the industry that retired because of that....
