About the Games industry...

[Meowster]

I finished up my contract at a games company recently. I got paid a salary and overtime was therefore not paid... I worked it out and basically, including overtime etc, what I earned per hour was...


Slightly less that £3 per hour....


...However, because I had no life and spent my entire life doing overtime, I actually have more money than if I got paid less than that... but that's not the point...

I guess my hard work was paid off because I got offered a junior design position. But still, less than £3 an hour is pretty shocking...

...Anybody else here work in the Games industry? Any tales of woe to share?

[scotch]

They gave an otherwise unqualified tester a design position? I thought that was just a myth to encourage people work for £3 an hour...

I have no stories about being exploited by the industry, kind of hope I'll never have to be part of it, but the forumites that work in it seem to enjoy it.

[SSH]

Work smarter, not harder... 

In the software industry generally, you are expected to put in extra hours when a project requires it with no direct remuneration for that. It shoudl pay off at "perforamnce review" or "contract renewal" time. But if you are doing extra hours all the time it can mean various things:

1. You're easily bullied
2. Your project is badly managed (e.g. making an underestimate of the resources required)
3. You're is a startup that needs to push really hard to get its toe in the door
4. You love your work more than the rest of your life
5. You want to get promoted (e.g. to a Junior Design post)
6. All the above

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

7.  You are an employee of Electronic Arts.

[Meowster]

They gave an otherwise unqualified tester a design position? I thought that was just a myth to encourage people work for £3 an hour...

I have no stories about being exploited by the industry, kind of hope I'll never have to be part of it, but the forumites that work in it seem to enjoy it.

They didn't give the other testers there a design position... so perhaps I am unbelievably lucky (although there is always the chance that I am just unbelievably awesome... ¬¬)

Actually, most of the other testers working there, worked with the assumption that everybody knew they wanted to get into design. But nobody actually knew that. The only reason I got offered the job was because, at the 'wrap party' for our game, I had the following conversation with my boss:


"It's gonna be sad to see you go, you know."

"Yes. look. Give me a job. I want to be a designer."

"Oh, you do? I didn't know. There's a junior design position coming up soon. Alright then."




You gotta fight for what you want and all that

I think to be honest, i'm also helped by the fact I'm female. When QA were leaving that company, I got loads of emails wishing me well and giving me contact details, etc. Nobody else in QA (all guys) got the same treatment! In fact, nobody even knew who they were... whereas everybody in the company seemed to know who I was. It was a bit weird, really.

When I was new there, people would come talk to me while I was in the kitchen, ask me questions, get to know me, invite me to the pub... none of the male QA staff got the same attention. It was easy for me to get to know everybody in that company... being female was/is definitely an advantage in the games industry right now...

Hmm, Prog... EA pay overtime now I'm pretty sure.

[Miez]

Prog... EA pay overtime now I'm pretty sure.

Well, not last time that I was an LT tester there...

[Meowster]

I thought they started after the whole 'EA Spouse' uproar, no?

The company I worked for was a smaller company and I forgive them for not having paid overtime... I had a lot of fun while I was there. I did it because, even though I wasn't getting extra money... it was like a big family all surviving crunch mode together. I don't know, it was just a really good atmosphere.

[Miez]

Well - they probably do thing nicely by the rules for "proper EA personnel", yes. But as a freelance tester you're expected to get the job done in the time they allocate. They never allocate enough time though...

[Nikolas]

Well ok.

I am partly in the game industry. Mainly the indie one, since I'm doing individual games, but I am getting paid from it and I am hugely advertising my name through it.

Depends on what you want, and what you are.

I mean I never went to anyone, asking to get a tester post. I'm a composer/sound designer, and that's what I do. And nobody came to me and asked me to beta test his game. So there.

I don't see how a guy who has studied in the Vancouver blah blah would go for a tester position. Animation, 3-d modeling and so on. :-/

On the other hand apart from my freelancing jobs (which I hop to remain freelancer as things are quite different in the music buisnes) I know stories from Lemmy and Binky, who actually are years in the gaming industry. Binky is a graphic designer of great talent (2-d, 3-d, pixel, just name it), and Lemmy is a hardcore programmer who can do wonders!

Hope they will come to share some experiences here, as my experience are limited to being nice, with decent people who respect me and what I do. All over the world (Canada, Greece, Sweden, Japan and UK of course. All through the internet)

[Meowster]

You know, I think people underestimate how useful Testing experience is in the games industry. You may be a qualified artist or programmer, you may want to get into design, but man... that doesn't make QA experience less useful.

I wish people wouldn't just pass it off as 'useless' experience so often...

[CaptainBinky]

...Anybody else here work in the Games industry? Any tales of woe to share?

Ahh... Well it's not so bad really. Things have changed in recent years though. Projects take longer, art takes longer, pressure to make artwork more and more realistic, and pressure on the coders to render it so.

So much so, that it comes as an absolute pleasure to work on a GBA project where you can just sit there and make sprites in DPaint.

Overtime is generally not an issue if the project's been managed well. Of course, there's always a bit of a crunch at milestones but mostly you get in for 9 and go over the pub at 6

Of course, when I first got into the games industry I worked really long hours, weekends and all sorts. Guess I was trying to prove myself or something. It took me a while to gain confidence in myself. I still do work the odd weekend and the odd late night but generally this is because either I love the project and want to make it as good as I possibly can, or I'm lead of the project and feel like I really ought to be there. This commitment can be taken advantage of to some extent - people rely on the fact that you WILL work late and practically factor this into the milestones. This is why I like being lead, because then I write the art tasks

Testers though, get it a bit rougher. And it's not something I would really recommend unless there is a good chance of breaking through into the art team or design team. Although, at the place I work this very very rarely happens. Mostly this is because testers don't get any spare time to build a showreel, and we already have a massive stack of experienced artists' CVs sat on our desks.

[lemmy101]

Yea, well there's plenty of woe to be had working in games, but plenty of fun to be had too. I guess it depends on where you work and what project you're on. Obviously your pay has an impact on this, but I'd take some of the better times I've had in the industry over a fat pay-check any day, likewise no amount of pay would make me any happier putting up with the crapper times.

I think anyone who gets a job in the industry expects to have to do some silly hours toward the end of projects. When I was young into the industry I kind of considered it par for the course, ‘comes with the territory' and that. Ironically then it was when I was doing the most silly hours, frequent overnights and most weekends for no overtime pay (even not getting paid at all for several months) but I stuck with it because I always wanted to make games, and there I was making games.

But then I began to realize that a lot of companies take advantage of this attitude, and it factors into their project planning. This annoys me greatly, seeing this happen in big companies and small, the fact that they would factor in large amounts of unpaid overtime by pretty much scheduling it to be late to keep the pressure on, this largely annoys me because it's counter-productive, as everyone is working burnt out and what is done is rarely their 100%, not to mention me finding it a bit out of order morally.

So to sum up, it can be great if you're on the right project, and working with the right people (I've worked with a lot of cool people) in my opinion irrespective of money, as if this is all right then work is for the most part enjoyable and even if you've not quite got the cash to splash around in your spare time, or the spare time to splash it around, life feels pretty fulfilling.

That all said I've recently made an exit from working 9-5 (ha!) for a games company, opting to go freelance. Not saying I wouldn't do it again, but for the moment I'd personally rather be working on something of my own choosing (and by “my” I really mean ours, of course) I think anyone who expects to personally make any waves by joining a company are going to be disappointed, and after so long it becomes as much a “job” as anything else. This is why the amateur/indie scene is a much more exciting thing to me, the chance to express myself, and not someone else's vision of a commercial success.

Also, as Binky says, it may be a route to other things, but the crap poor testers generally go through cannot be taken lightly I'd consider the best route in to offer to work for free for a month in the role you're looking to get into, personally. It shows enthusiasm and gets you in showing your worth in what you want to do. I've personally seen many more people getting in that way than through testing.

[Nikolas]

You know, I think people underestimate how useful Testing experience is in the games industry. You may be a qualified artist or programmer, you may want to get into design, but man... that doesn't make QA experience less useful.

I wish people wouldn't just pass it off as 'useless' experience so often...

Could be.

Indeed I don't personally think extremely high of the testers. noth that they're not useful or that without them there would be any game/software out really. I value that. But somehow while all the team is being creative the tester is not. So... That's mainly my reason.

But yes you are right, and I do apologise for that...

[Kweepa]

In 11 years I've seen less than a handful of QA peeps move over into production. The bigger the company, the less it happens it seems. It's certainly not something that's going on on a regular basis, so well done there.

As for tales of woe, not really. Certainly tales of management incompetence. I left one company because I didn't agree with the way things were going. Games journalists were being hired as design directors, for example. But the working hours were good: no-one was being forced to work overtime. Of course it happened anyway. Those were some of the most entertaining hours: ordering take away food, recording ridiculous temporary dialogue, squeezing in cool features that weren't on the schedule.

At another company, the entire team was put on forced unpaid overtime for nine months in the buildup to a game release. Working until 9pm, working Saturday and Sunday, the whole shebang. About three months before release, a spreadsheet was accidentally sent to the everyone detailing royalty payments, and suffice it to say they were somewhat unfair (not to me, but that's beside the point).

I sat down with the company director and asked him about the royalties and he was unrepentant. I also asked him if he'd read the Mythical Man Month or any of the many reports that show productivity decreasing as work hours pass 70-80 hours a week. He said he didn't believe that.

I quit when the game came out. He was fired a couple of months later. I'm now back there, and the new management team is excellent.

[Meowster]

You know, I think people underestimate how useful Testing experience is in the games industry. You may be a qualified artist or programmer, you may want to get into design, but man... that doesn't make QA experience less useful.

I wish people wouldn't just pass it off as 'useless' experience so often...

Could be.

Indeed I don't personally think extremely high of the testers. noth that they're not useful or that without them there would be any game/software out really. I value that. But somehow while all the team is being creative the tester is not. So... That's mainly my reason.

But yes you are right, and I do apologise for that...

Hehehe, no, I realise testers aren't the ones being creative...!

But it's still really useful experience to have if you want to do other things. Not essential, but useful.



SteveMcCrea... it was a small company, yeap

I agree though, it's terrible when games companies seem to think that hiring people say, from the movie industry, is a good idea. For the game I worked on, a professional 'movie scriptwriter' was hired to do the script, and it was awful. The guy had no idea what he was doing. Some of the level designers were hired straight from the movie industry, and they were rubbish. Sure, they designed pretty 'sets' for the game... but the levels they designed were not fun. Problems such as having tight corners after 'jumps', so that all players would inevitably crash into the opposite walls after leaping the jump... ridiculous things that anybody who played games would immediately realise were bad ideas!

It's my biggest pet peeve. So many of those designers didn't understand or enjoy games. And what was worse, some of them DID... some of them tried to make themselves heard over the majority who would just ridicule them for being 'geeks'... ?!?? The games industry should NOT be like that