Is confession emerging as a modern synonym for complaint?
It used to be that confession referred strictly to a revelation of one's wrongdoing. Then, ironically, of some less-than-perfect doing, or unorthodox ways.
Confessions of ... titles have to apply to something that contains confessions: disclosures of one's deeds or attitudes that not everyone might agree with, or that are hypocritical, or against the prevailing social order (whether just or not), and the like, which one keeps hidden.
E.g. if someone known to be an outspoken liberal revealed that they voted for a far right candidate, that would qualify as a confession.
>For the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for candor, Digiday spoke to a gaming industry worker who lost their job during January’s wave of layoffs.
It seems the newsletter's use of the term is related to letting verified sources talk about their experiences with honesty, lest they get doxxed or blackballed from an industry.
It's not like the history of working for game companies is unknown, major studios have always done this. Imagining it won't happen to you is wishful thinking. I worked for a small, poor game company once with a FPS MMO and it was probably my funnest job ever, but it paid very little, and I eventually had to leave and make real money again. The best thing was that the player base appreciated every one of us, and constantly thanked us for making things better. You can have that dream job building games, but it's probably not at a big company with big salaries.
I had a similar experience in the mid-90s. Worked for a small studio with a successful franchise (IndyCar and NASCAR Racing). Shipped a Playstation title and contributed to some of the Mac and PC titles and the nextgen codebase that became Grand Prix Legends. (Much of the founding team of iRacing came from this studio.)
Ultimately, that place was enormously engaging, but I was never going to buy a house and retire on what I was making there, so I left for a better paying gig. Our users really loved the product and eagerly engaged with us. I got several trips to races, including pit and garage access passes, several drivers visited our studio while in town for the NH race, and I learned a ton about both coding and racing.
I'm really glad I did it, but I'm also glad I quit it.
It can be fine to do something you enjoy doing for a period even if you know you could be making more. But you also need to periodically checkpoint whether something makes sense for the long term.
Hey, this will be random but I have happy childhood memories of sitting in my dad's lap as a little one and causing absolute mayhem in first IndyCar and later NASCAR racing. Usually by turning around and playing destruction derby going the wrong way. So, thanks for that!
The common wisdom around here has long been to take the RSUs at MAMAA or whatever liquid compensation at actually profitable businesses until you are financially independent.
I think the gaming industry in general has use the passion that devs have for games as a good excuse to not pay more, which obviously has worked.
> The best thing was that the player base appreciated every one of us, and constantly thanked us for making things better.
I work in games and this is honestly one of my biggest drivers. I of course love the game as well and want to make it better, but community praise is just next level energy for me.
Over the last few years many of us at our studio have been doxxed, threatened, called on our personal phones, etc. and that can really take the wind out of my sails. But when you get some positive or constructive feedback about trying to make the game better it really helps.
Working in games has the opportunity to be such a collaborative process with coworkers and community and it is awesome when it works well.
> I think the gaming industry in general has use[d] the passion that devs have for games as a good excuse to not pay more, which obviously has worked.
It's a simple supply/demand calculation. "Game dev" is high on the dream-job list -- "internal framework developer for MegaCo" is not. Game engines have made game dev more accessible than ever, the raw talent pool is bigger than its ever been.
It's a lot like being a professional musician. The hours suck, the environment is usually crap, it spills into your home life all the time... and the pay sucks unless you're the 0.1% (or a business person in the field instead of a performer) but lots and lots of people want to do it and will grind away at being a pro musician, because they're passionate about it.
If there's any set of devs that needs a union or is most like other fields where unionization is beneficial, it's game devs.
A lot of people look for jobs that seem like jobs their friends are going to go "Wow, cool!" In practice those are mostly orthogonal with fairly reliable jobs that pay fairly well and reliably.
It's a simple supply/demand calculation. "Game dev" is high on the dream-job list -- "internal framework developer for MegaCo" is not. Game engines have made game dev more accessible than ever, the raw talent pool is bigger than its ever been.
I know someone who works at a big studio and they constantly tell me they get threats and hate messages all the time from die hard fans of the franchise the game is based on.
> It's not like the history of working for game companies is unknown, major studios have always done this. Imagining it won't happen to you is wishful thinking.
Yep. The computer games industry has had a well-deserved reputation for being awful to work in for decades.
> It's not like the history of working for game companies is unknown, major studios have always done this. Imagining it won't happen to you is wishful thinking.
I understand this rationally and yet at every job I've worked at I've still felt pretty secure until the moment I've been laid off (which for the record has happened to me 4 times in the last 8 years).
If you're a hard worker and you're providing a lot of value you learn the risk is never that anyone would want to lay you off individually, but that some higher up who has very little care or understanding for who is providing value will decide that you're no longer needed.
It's something that I've only really came to terms with over the last few years – that no amount of effort will save you from layoffs. The only thing that will save you is luck. When I was in my twenties I honestly thought that if I just provide enough value my job would always be safe.
I guess I'm just saying that I understand it from an emotional perspective. Rationally I understand you can go from feeling like the most valuable person in your department to unemployed in 24 hours. But emotionally the fact that this can happen still messes with me.
You can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If a company decides to cancel a project or reorganize business units, they're probably not going to waste a lot of energy figuring out whether they're laying off (or keeping) exactly the optimal people for the reorganized company or not.
Sounds like the solution is to work in a small enough company that such a "higher up" doesn't exist. But then the risk for the company to go bankrupt (or grow so much they start existing) is also higher. It also seems to be "priced in" by lower pay too ? (The extreme being a 1-2 devs company.)
I guess the company has to be really small. In my <200 company the CEO changed and the new one (despite being here for a year and change) I bet he cannot name 6 engineers in the company. He doesn't care.
Ok? What percentage of workers similar to you have been laid off like you have? Is your experience the minority or the majority? Your personal experience really doesn't mean anything. It absolutely certainly doesn't allow you to make absolutist sweeping statements like "no amount of effort will save you from layoffs. The only thing that will save you is luck".
You've been laid off on average once every 2 years. I've been laid off once in 19 years. Did I just get lucky? Does it really just all come down to luck like you claim? Or is there more that goes into it? Maybe someone could do the math - if everyone had the same "luck" as you, what are the odds that I made it 19 years with only 1 layoff?
I wasn't very clear – I wasn't suggesting my experience is typical at all, I was simply stating that I was commenting from the perspective of someone who's experienced a lot of layoffs, and that in my experience you generally don't expect them.
I think there is this idea that under-performers are the ones that lose their jobs in layoffs – or at least that's what I used to think. Yet, despite always being one of the most valuable people in my team, this has never protected me, or the majority of people I've seen who have lost their jobs. That's really my point.
That said, if you are an under-performer you probably will increase your odds of being laid off. I have seen a number of downsizings before where people are cut because they were performing as well as others. So maybe I should have clarified that a bit more, but I would still stand by my overall point that assuming you're not under-performing you're probably not at any increased risk of layoffs vs someone who's outperforming.
And perhaps one final caveat here is that if you are an out-performer and you are laid off you will probably find it easier to find work in the future because at the very least the people you've worked with in the past will want to work with you again.
Is it still the same as circa 2010? Back then games had such a lot of
churn due to disaffection. I feel sorry for kids that get into games
industry with high expectations. There's the 20/20 rule - only 20% of
games make it through production, and only 20% of those ever get
marketed and are "successful". So that's another way to say that 96%
of games "fail". Because of the long development time it means many
entrants are in their 5th or 6th year of a career and have never seen
a title they work on be a "hit".
Hot take: I'm not very sympathetic about the game industry implosion we're seeing. AAA games have been rote, formulaic money milking machines for some time. Game devs are lined up out the door and around the corner, yet refuse to take that as a warning sign that this might not be a good industry to work in. Growth stalled and the more money giant publishers poured in, the less sales seemed to budge. Hordes of indie games are doing the same boring genre-mashup slop thing, while the awards-bait critical darlings appeal to virtually nobody and their sales reflect that.
Anyone with any sense would have bailed a few years ago.
There are a bunch of jobs that people (may) like being in but are widely recognized as not paying very well--at least unless you get very lucky.
I was in a role for quite a few years that I mostly enjoyed, but even if the company hadn't had a downward turn, compensation was probably half that of my next job (at best).
>A part of me wishes that (my coworkers) had done a walkout, or a strike, or that they had done or said something... I know it’s unreasonable to want that.
Yes. It is absolutely wild to think that your coworkers should risk their livelihoods to keep around people that, at least in theory, the company cannot afford to keep.
>Anyone with any sense would have bailed a few years ago.
The sheer lack of human understanding on display.
It isn't easy for many people to switch jobs. Moreso when the job is somewhat enjoyable, familiar and pays decent. Moreso when you're supporting others. If your skillet is entirely in the game industry, where does one easily jump?
I spit on the idea that anyone who is left in the game industry "has no sense".
Where does this active scorn for game developers come from? This isn't the first comment from you to express disinterest in those workers.
Depends on the exact role of course, but I assume there are many roles in the software games industry that are pretty transferrable to other areas of software development/design/marketing/etc.
>Where does this active scorn for game developers come from?
Many devs grew up with the dream of working for the next big title and instead ended up as a web dev who creates a button in React every few weeks. Now they are trying to justify their life choices.
I'm not sure it's so much scorn as a recognition that there are fields and sub-fields where it's just hard to rearn a good living unless you have some combination of being really really good, lucky, astute, willing to do pretty pedestrian stuff for the most part, etc.--and still probably not make a lot of money. Hardly limited to game development. See also photographers, journalists, musicians, film-makers, et.
There's a lot of crossover between games, and film, tv, construction, architecture, advertising, entertainment, media production, and just general development and graphical design in general. The video game industry is not as unique as you think.
People have warned about the volatility and negatives of the video game industry for decades. They're well known. But there are unique and cool aspects of those projects that still draw people to them despite the known downsides.
It's a bit like hearing someone with a beach house complain about hurricanes. We can have empathy for them while acknowledging that they agreed to that risk voluntarily, and that it was a well known and well documented risk.
There's definitely noise, but we also get some "fine wine" products that wouldn't exist otherwise. Examples include Bioshock, Arkham series (at least the first two), Prey, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, etc. I think it's the same for movies, most blockbusters are dreck, but without the dreck, we wouldn't get any funding whatsoever for the gold.
Ah yes, wokeism. The reason games have loot boxes, battlepasses, and NG+ locked behind buying the "deluxe edition".
I'm forever baffled how gaming consumers are able to muster such anger at changes in representation and character design while continuing to get nickel and dimed by monetization experts at these companies. I don't think this is intentional misdirection on the part of gaming publishers, but if they did want to channel anger away from the core ways they're exploiting their audience they would be hard pressed to find a better distraction.
I am talking about career of a game developer, not customers. Indie games also have loot boxes, it is a great way to monetize..
It is really bad move to work for "woke" companies as cis hetero white guy with some experience. You have to work much harder. And promotions to senior positions are limited...
Seems to be affecting the US more than anywhere else so clearly there is a wider issue than the game industry itself. In fact, Nintendo and Atlus even increased its employee salary last year.
That's not a hot take, that's just being an asshole for the sake of being one.
"I don't like the games of the last few years, so let's dunk on people who have been part of a mass layoff with some thoughtful 'hurti durti, if you had any sense you would have bailed a few years ago'."
Gee, thanks for your 20/20 hindsight advice, presented in this nice way. I'm sure people will appreciate it.
I'd read a baker's or nurse's job eulogy. It's a way to see into their world at its absolute nadir. (Also, a journalist interviewed this person, wrote it as an article, and a bunch of people upvoted it here. So clearly there's a market.)
Given how extensive the latest wave of gamedev layoffs was, I'm worried that this is gonna impact game development going forwards. Many devs will just... not work on games anymore and find a more stable career, and those people will be out of this market forever.
That is exactly what people should do so that studios need to take salaries and workplace conditions seriously. If making games is not a profitable thing when it's a real job like any other then it should change or die, we shouldn't be burning people out for the sake of "fun".
The games industry has always lost its best talent because it doesn’t pay well enough. It’s a shame, because it’s a fun creative industry to be a part of (well, it was 20 years ago when I left)!
There's still far more people working in games than got laid off. It's a really bad time, much as it is in the rest of the tech landscape (with largely the same fundamental root cause) but the industry itself is going nowhere.
Gaming has become more of a show biz industry than ever. Lots of winner-take-all and lots of potential for worker abuse in companies that don't quite make it.
On the other hand, the industry is also filled with a ton of "barely above mediocre" games that just copy the latest hype trend on twitch, so it's not so good for gamers that don't like to slog through a bunch of drivel while browsing Steam for new things to play.
Basically, the chances of making it big in gaming are pretty slim, and most devs would be better off doing something else for a bigger and steadier paycheck. I don't see this changing in the next 10 years.
The fact of the matter is there will always be lay offs and just because you have your dream job doesn't make you immune and in a lot of case the same wave that brought you in is the same wave that will bring you out.
I've wanted for a while to create a laided off movie playlist. Of course at the time I wasn't laid off so I didn't have the time and now that I'm laid off I also don't have the time. Nowadays finding a new job is in itself a full-time job.
But off the top of my head I would say that the movies Broadcast News and In Good Company are descent picks.
Older now I look back at how many layoff cycles have been in my life. If you make it through without getting hit, you're a very lucky person, though after my last layoff I chose stability over risk and that was just as terrible as being laid off.
I learned to program because of games and honed a lot of it in the Games industry. Developing games, in house game engines, but also R&D work to push new accessories and other hardware to their limits in all kinds of ways.
It is an amazing industry to work at with people full of passion. I left that industry however about 7 years ago and never looked back. The pay as a developer there is really low, and crunching was at least then still a really “normal” thing. A shame though as developers in the game industry are often really highly skilled in their craft and know machines and all their layers very well.
Since I left I basically quadrupled my salary in these last years, and frankly my day to day work is easier and a lot less pressure…
I’m sure there are good games companies out there and I can imagine that work life balance is a lot better in 2024 then it used to be. Still, pretty sure the pay still sucks… if not I wouldn’t mind going back one day. Then again, don’t mind either way. I found that my true passion and drive is a lot more meta than games themselves.
I’m concerned (good and bad) over China’s new legal changes over micro transactions
Much of the non-Asian market are pivoting to (and have been) FTP microtransactions.
If even a handful of the laws against loot crates, digital sales, etc come to Europe and the US, the gaming industry will have a reckoning unlike anything we’ve seen. Billions were lost (I think around 80) overnight in China’s game market.
I’m torn because some studios are responsible with this business model, and enables a large swath of content for us gamers.
But obviously it’s abused by many other companies, and is detrimental to many kid’s development with variable rewards at play (however, this is a moot point if the game is rated M. It’s on the parents not to give their kids access to such games if there exists that risk)
I think this is just the start of large layoffs in gaming. EA has barely produced a multiplayer game without needing years post-release to get it stable. Meanwhile small indie studios are blowing AAA games out of the water in depth and quality.
There was a moment slightly after mobile F2P took off where the games and tech industries started making out with each other. investors started confusing the two. Money was spent.
Truth is that games will always be guesswork and investing in games should be a portfolio business, not a VC driven exit style thing. Games got too bloated and reality has returned. Now we are back to where we were, almost. Many jobs came and went in this process.
63 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadIt used to be that confession referred strictly to a revelation of one's wrongdoing. Then, ironically, of some less-than-perfect doing, or unorthodox ways.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_English_Opiu...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Mask
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Confessions_of_a_Fr...
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Confessions_of_a_Drunka...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_a_Book_Reviewer
etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_(Augustine)
E.g. if someone known to be an outspoken liberal revealed that they voted for a far right candidate, that would qualify as a confession.
>For the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we trade anonymity for candor, Digiday spoke to a gaming industry worker who lost their job during January’s wave of layoffs.
It seems the newsletter's use of the term is related to letting verified sources talk about their experiences with honesty, lest they get doxxed or blackballed from an industry.
Ultimately, that place was enormously engaging, but I was never going to buy a house and retire on what I was making there, so I left for a better paying gig. Our users really loved the product and eagerly engaged with us. I got several trips to races, including pit and garage access passes, several drivers visited our studio while in town for the NH race, and I learned a ton about both coding and racing.
I'm really glad I did it, but I'm also glad I quit it.
> The best thing was that the player base appreciated every one of us, and constantly thanked us for making things better.
I work in games and this is honestly one of my biggest drivers. I of course love the game as well and want to make it better, but community praise is just next level energy for me.
Over the last few years many of us at our studio have been doxxed, threatened, called on our personal phones, etc. and that can really take the wind out of my sails. But when you get some positive or constructive feedback about trying to make the game better it really helps.
Working in games has the opportunity to be such a collaborative process with coworkers and community and it is awesome when it works well.
It's a simple supply/demand calculation. "Game dev" is high on the dream-job list -- "internal framework developer for MegaCo" is not. Game engines have made game dev more accessible than ever, the raw talent pool is bigger than its ever been.
It's a lot like being a professional musician. The hours suck, the environment is usually crap, it spills into your home life all the time... and the pay sucks unless you're the 0.1% (or a business person in the field instead of a performer) but lots and lots of people want to do it and will grind away at being a pro musician, because they're passionate about it.
If there's any set of devs that needs a union or is most like other fields where unionization is beneficial, it's game devs.
NGL, because this is actually my dream job.
Indeed. There's even a term for this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensating_differential
Yep. The computer games industry has had a well-deserved reputation for being awful to work in for decades.
I understand this rationally and yet at every job I've worked at I've still felt pretty secure until the moment I've been laid off (which for the record has happened to me 4 times in the last 8 years).
If you're a hard worker and you're providing a lot of value you learn the risk is never that anyone would want to lay you off individually, but that some higher up who has very little care or understanding for who is providing value will decide that you're no longer needed.
It's something that I've only really came to terms with over the last few years – that no amount of effort will save you from layoffs. The only thing that will save you is luck. When I was in my twenties I honestly thought that if I just provide enough value my job would always be safe.
I guess I'm just saying that I understand it from an emotional perspective. Rationally I understand you can go from feeling like the most valuable person in your department to unemployed in 24 hours. But emotionally the fact that this can happen still messes with me.
You've been laid off on average once every 2 years. I've been laid off once in 19 years. Did I just get lucky? Does it really just all come down to luck like you claim? Or is there more that goes into it? Maybe someone could do the math - if everyone had the same "luck" as you, what are the odds that I made it 19 years with only 1 layoff?
I think there is this idea that under-performers are the ones that lose their jobs in layoffs – or at least that's what I used to think. Yet, despite always being one of the most valuable people in my team, this has never protected me, or the majority of people I've seen who have lost their jobs. That's really my point.
That said, if you are an under-performer you probably will increase your odds of being laid off. I have seen a number of downsizings before where people are cut because they were performing as well as others. So maybe I should have clarified that a bit more, but I would still stand by my overall point that assuming you're not under-performing you're probably not at any increased risk of layoffs vs someone who's outperforming.
And perhaps one final caveat here is that if you are an out-performer and you are laid off you will probably find it easier to find work in the future because at the very least the people you've worked with in the past will want to work with you again.
Anyone with any sense would have bailed a few years ago.
I was in a role for quite a few years that I mostly enjoyed, but even if the company hadn't had a downward turn, compensation was probably half that of my next job (at best).
Yes. It is absolutely wild to think that your coworkers should risk their livelihoods to keep around people that, at least in theory, the company cannot afford to keep.
The sheer lack of human understanding on display.
It isn't easy for many people to switch jobs. Moreso when the job is somewhat enjoyable, familiar and pays decent. Moreso when you're supporting others. If your skillet is entirely in the game industry, where does one easily jump?
I spit on the idea that anyone who is left in the game industry "has no sense".
Where does this active scorn for game developers come from? This isn't the first comment from you to express disinterest in those workers.
Many devs grew up with the dream of working for the next big title and instead ended up as a web dev who creates a button in React every few weeks. Now they are trying to justify their life choices.
People have warned about the volatility and negatives of the video game industry for decades. They're well known. But there are unique and cool aspects of those projects that still draw people to them despite the known downsides.
It's a bit like hearing someone with a beach house complain about hurricanes. We can have empathy for them while acknowledging that they agreed to that risk voluntarily, and that it was a well known and well documented risk.
But working for a big company is a bad career. Too much overhead, garbage leadership and vision, wokeism...
I'm forever baffled how gaming consumers are able to muster such anger at changes in representation and character design while continuing to get nickel and dimed by monetization experts at these companies. I don't think this is intentional misdirection on the part of gaming publishers, but if they did want to channel anger away from the core ways they're exploiting their audience they would be hard pressed to find a better distraction.
It is really bad move to work for "woke" companies as cis hetero white guy with some experience. You have to work much harder. And promotions to senior positions are limited...
"I don't like the games of the last few years, so let's dunk on people who have been part of a mass layoff with some thoughtful 'hurti durti, if you had any sense you would have bailed a few years ago'."
Gee, thanks for your 20/20 hindsight advice, presented in this nice way. I'm sure people will appreciate it.
This industry is filled with ego centric people that really think they are special.
Yeah, but that market needs empathy. Seems to be in rather short supply for some HN commenters these days.
On the other hand, the industry is also filled with a ton of "barely above mediocre" games that just copy the latest hype trend on twitch, so it's not so good for gamers that don't like to slog through a bunch of drivel while browsing Steam for new things to play.
Basically, the chances of making it big in gaming are pretty slim, and most devs would be better off doing something else for a bigger and steadier paycheck. I don't see this changing in the next 10 years.
I've wanted for a while to create a laided off movie playlist. Of course at the time I wasn't laid off so I didn't have the time and now that I'm laid off I also don't have the time. Nowadays finding a new job is in itself a full-time job.
But off the top of my head I would say that the movies Broadcast News and In Good Company are descent picks.
Older now I look back at how many layoff cycles have been in my life. If you make it through without getting hit, you're a very lucky person, though after my last layoff I chose stability over risk and that was just as terrible as being laid off.
It is an amazing industry to work at with people full of passion. I left that industry however about 7 years ago and never looked back. The pay as a developer there is really low, and crunching was at least then still a really “normal” thing. A shame though as developers in the game industry are often really highly skilled in their craft and know machines and all their layers very well.
Since I left I basically quadrupled my salary in these last years, and frankly my day to day work is easier and a lot less pressure…
I’m sure there are good games companies out there and I can imagine that work life balance is a lot better in 2024 then it used to be. Still, pretty sure the pay still sucks… if not I wouldn’t mind going back one day. Then again, don’t mind either way. I found that my true passion and drive is a lot more meta than games themselves.
Much of the non-Asian market are pivoting to (and have been) FTP microtransactions.
If even a handful of the laws against loot crates, digital sales, etc come to Europe and the US, the gaming industry will have a reckoning unlike anything we’ve seen. Billions were lost (I think around 80) overnight in China’s game market.
I’m torn because some studios are responsible with this business model, and enables a large swath of content for us gamers.
But obviously it’s abused by many other companies, and is detrimental to many kid’s development with variable rewards at play (however, this is a moot point if the game is rated M. It’s on the parents not to give their kids access to such games if there exists that risk)
I think this is just the start of large layoffs in gaming. EA has barely produced a multiplayer game without needing years post-release to get it stable. Meanwhile small indie studios are blowing AAA games out of the water in depth and quality.
Profits, perhaps, but not value.
Truth is that games will always be guesswork and investing in games should be a portfolio business, not a VC driven exit style thing. Games got too bloated and reality has returned. Now we are back to where we were, almost. Many jobs came and went in this process.