future of gaming

[NikolasFarrel]

Hi all, last week a friend and I were discussing the topic of game development. He's studying to become a developer and is wondering where he wants to work in the future. Now the future of games is behind the indie studios, I think so anyway, a friend is more eager to get into a major company. But let's face it, big companies take developers with experience, so you can always start a personal project and develop it positively. Also, one of the key advantages of indie studios is that the games they are developing have more atmosphere and a better focus on gameplay. Big companies, on the other hand, focus on money. What do you think? Which are better Idie studios or big companies?

[Wormjaw]

as someone who has been in the ii games industry for the past several years and most of my friends are in triple aaa places, both suck and needs to unionize.

indies and triple A have horrible crunch culture and neither are free from sexual assault allegations. ageism is rampant and people get burnt out a lot faster than in other industries. at least in triple a you can have health benefits but its a toss up with who you work with, and indies usually barely scrape by. also a lot of indies and large aaa have been bought out recently/been acquired and the games industry is slowly becoming more and more a monopoly. the future of gaming is super bleak, especially with the weird hang-ups of NFT gaming thats been toted around by cryptobros who don't understand how game development works. it's not the best outlook at the moment in it's current state.

[NikolasFarrel]

as someone who has been in the ii games industry for the past several years and most of my friends are in triple aaa places, both suck and needs to unionize.

indies and triple A have horrible crunch culture and neither are free from sexual assault allegations. ageism is rampant and people get burnt out a lot faster than in other industries. at least in triple a you can have health benefits but its a toss up with who you work with, and indies usually barely scrape by. also a lot of indies and large aaa have been bought out recently/been acquired and the games industry is slowly becoming more and more a monopoly. the future of gaming is super bleak, especially with the weird hang-ups of NFT gaming thats been toted around by cryptobros who don't understand how game development works. it's not the best outlook at the moment in it's current state.

Is it that bad? I always thought the game industry was boiling with work and everything was as great as they say it is. A friend of mine believes it too. Thanks for sharing an honest insight. I always knew that big companies buy smaller ones and thus get their know-how and good specialists, or simply take out competitors. Crypto games? Can you be a little more specific? It's honestly the first I've heard of it. I know about mining and NFT but that's a first in games.

[Mama Bear]

Hi all, last week a friend and I were discussing the topic of game development. He's studying to become a developer and is wondering where he wants to work in the future. Now the future of games is behind the indie studios, I think so anyway, a friend is more eager to get into a major company. But let's face it, big companies take developers with experience, so you can always start a personal project and develop it positively. Also, one of the key advantages of indie studios is that the games they are developing have more atmosphere and a better focus on gameplay. Big companies, on the other hand, focus on money. What do you think? Which are better Idie studios or big companies?

If you're successful enough, the promise of money, resources, support, etc. can lead to not being indie anymore. There will always be both. There will always be hits and misses in both. Some indie games are great with gameplay and atmosphere, as you said, but have other flaws. Or suck at gameplay and/or atmosphere. To generalise so much feels short-sighted and over-simplified.

[Abyss]

Right now a big red flag in the industry is NFTs invading the space. This is especially a concern because smaller devs are likely to fall for this for fund support. Triple A games are also not far off in looking at NFTs. So that's one thing to watch out for primarily.
Crunch is another big problem your friend will have to face. It's less so in the indie scene, but it will probably still be there. I suggest start small, and work your way up if you want to join the big dogs at some point. Also a bit of a heads up, there has been an acquisition race happening, Microsoft trying to buy up a lot of studios, etc. This is something to keep in mind as well.

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[Aero]

I used to work on a team at a non-gaming tech company where everyone came from gaming. Most of them had done both AAA and indie. I'm not going to mince words, but the industry sounds terrible. There seemed to be a tonne of crunch time (and they brought this crunch mentality to my team, but in a less dramatic fashion where they didn't have to work 2 weeks straight barely going home to sleep) for artists and devs. There's plenty of new, bright-eyed programmers who are eager to work on games to use and abuse, which made it easy for companies to do just that.

It's my understanding that in an indie studio one might have more input in the game and work across disciplines, whereas in a AAA company if you are a dev you probably work on something very specific, e.g. rendering, the ai. To enter a AAA, you often have to go to a school nearby their offices to maximize your chances at even getting your application seen. I'm not sure the reason for this, but one reason might be that you can co-op during the school year more easily since your school is nearby. For example, assuming you are in the USA, it would be better to study CS at UC Irvine versus MIT (despite the latter probably being top 3 and obviously famous) if you wanted to work at Activision-Blizzard. Riot may have been an exception to this at the time I was in school. Alternatively, I think there are game programs at some schools that might feed into these firms, but I don't know anything about them.

With that said, my coworkers, despite their super problematic stories about the industry, all definitely were passionate about making games and enjoyed their time in that industry. The only reason they weren't in it anymore is because they had families to care for now so it's definitely something to try when you're young.

[Wormjaw]

Is it that bad? I always thought the game industry was boiling with work and everything was as great as they say it is. A friend of mine believes it too. Thanks for sharing an honest insight. I always knew that big companies buy smaller ones and thus get their know-how and good specialists, or simply take out competitors. Crypto games? Can you be a little more specific? It's honestly the first I've heard of it. I know about mining and NFT but that's a first in games.

Yeah.. Games industry is.. not that great right now. I understand being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed by the prospect of a games career, but I suggest diving a bit deeper if you or your friend want to get into games to be prepared on what foot you want to start on. People get burnt out and people leave games for more stable industries all the time. In a lot of cases "seniors" are made in five years, which is ridiculous applied to any other industry. There's mass lay-offs on a semi-frequent basis with companies simply just going under. Microsoft just bought Activision/Blizzard.. Meta/Facebook bought Ready at Dawn.. Taletell just yeeted everyone... Netflix is gobbling up indie studios to make previously established IPs into game... etc.. It's a whirlwind right now. And this is just off the top of my head.

And yes crypto games. Play to earn has been a phrase thats being tossed around right now, along with people making up wild claims that NFTs/tokens can be used across games for cosmetics/unlockables.. which is pretty unfeasible and frankly a money sink on the dev side. I also know Gamestop is ramping up their own NFT market, but I'm unclear on how thats being implemented. When NFTs (the tokens themselves/not shitty jpegs) were first introduced, I thought it might be feasible in a way to make a digital market for reselling games/cosmetics, but I don't think it's going in that direction. If you go and search for game jobs, you'll see a lot of roles hiring for NFTs as well.. it's...... not a great sign.