Sounds like he’s saying that when game companies go public (or voluntarily put money before fun), the enshittification sets in.
Small studios with heart still make fun games.
So… shareholders are the assholes yet again.
Some studio should sell shares only to true gamers who put fun before money
Video game jobs, when I was in the industry at least, draw in young idealistic game developers, pay them less than other tech counterparts, burn them out as fast as possible and then lay them off.
It is definitely hard to enjoy that and come out the other side still as excited about games.
Yup, I highly doubt it’s the “working on games” part that does it.
I loved software development as a kid (taught myself to make a webpage, did lots of personal FOSS projects, etc), so I decided to do it for work, and I still love working on personal FOSS projects after 15-ish years in the industry. So I highly doubt it’s the work itself that does it, but the working conditions. If I had to do extended crunch time, I would also hate software development, regardless of what I’m building. Likewise for other roles, like art, testing, etc. My brother did game QA for a couple years in college, and he spent most of his extra money on more games…
So yeah, fix your working conditions and people won’t lose their love for games and the work they do.
It will get better. I needed some years, and I never got as deep into games as before, but I’m a big boy now, that might be the reason. The game industry is a vampire and it’ll suck you dry. To be honest, that’s for bigger studios. I have no clue how indie studios are.
You will not enjoy videogames anymore, if you play big game studio games.
Go indie. Stay indie. Indie 4 Lyfe.
