Full time employment and incentives in the Game Biz

[svero]

I'm curious to hear from people who've worked in the game business as employees in the past for big companies.

Were there, or are there any standard incentives given to people working in game development say as developers or artists that are tied to the game's success. For instance say you're working on the sims3. Is there typically any correlation between how much you make and how well the game sells? (aside from ownership in the company or stock options)

- S

[luggage]

I've not worked for any major developers but incentives tied to a games success? Nothing. Been offered bonuses to get a game finished on time - but it's mainly a way to ensure we did hundreds of hours of unpaid overtime. That's from about 5 developers and only 9 years.

Things may be different for larger developers though. The one's I've worked for have typically had around 40 employees but I'd guess that the days where the developers get tied into a royalty deal or similar are drifting - if not drifted - away. Maybe it's just not that practical with the larger teams now. Or companies need every penny they can get away with.

[svero]

Strange... I mean.. without any incentive to create a good game what's to motivate developers to do more than the bare minimum. Seems kind of short sighted if this is indeed the norm.

[Itsme]

Strange... I mean.. without any incentive to create a good game what's to motivate developers to do more than the bare minimum. Seems kind of short sighted if this is indeed the norm.

Money is not a very good motivator when it comes to getting things done. Look at recent history, especially the dot com bust - companies spend hundreds of thousands on a salary of MBA graduate fresh out of Harvard. What did they get in return? Nothing. Portals and publishers got tons of money. They'll be happy to through them at you, IF you can deliver results. So far, there are more talks about developing studios going out of business (like Interplay almost going out of business and shutting down Black Isle Studios).
Take any creative industry - book publishing, screenplay, movies, marketing, etc. You can tell a writer "I'll double your advance", but you won't get a book that's twice as good. Same with Hollywood - doubling the budget has never been a way to get better ticket sales.
The only reason to pay top bucks is to attract top talent. But when it comes to an average game developer - that's somebody that's not very difficult to replace.

[digriz]

The standard incentives that i've experienced are bonuses on game completion. This is if it's finished on time, or close to it. It's also the norm for companies to go back on these agreements too. I never take a promised bonus for granted.

It's rare these days to find a developer or publisher to give royalties from game sales. At least in my experience anyway.

A lot of companies do have the standard things like medical, dental, gym membership etc. Which i think is better. As an employee, it's better to have benefits for working there, not just for completing a game.

Remember. A happy worker is a productive worker.

[Robert Cummings]

No offense but some of you talk as though there's a choice in the matter. The real truth is you have a demanding project manager who will tell you what sucks and give you time to fix it.

If it's not fixed in time, you go down a notch. Every time you go down, you get less responsibility and eventually they have to come to a decision about if they should "let you go" from the company as you are not really doing any work for them...

You see?

It's more of a battle to hold onto your job than some luxury development environment! The simple fact is, it's a results driven industry. You deliver the results and the PERK is you keep your job, with a bonus to smooth the waters after it ships (if you are lucky).

As for the manager, his incentive is how well the game does. If it bombs he could find himself out of a job, or moved into a different position.

That is what gets results.

[digriz]

Sadly, he's not wrong.

[Savant]

Strange... I mean.. without any incentive to create a good game what's to motivate developers to do more than the bare minimum. Seems kind of short sighted if this is indeed the norm.
Sadly, the motivation is generally that there are 20 kids graduating from college this year that want your job and will work for half of what you make. Get back to work...

[svero]

Ok. So basically what we're saying here is that to be competitive I'd have to offer next to nothing to employees I hire. Like.. if I was to offer some kind of royalty incentive I'd be 1000x better than the average game company? Is that really what's being said?

[-gf-]

One company I worked for, which was by no means a big company but it was a AAA-game, gave employes a percentage of the royalty. I beleive 3DRealms for example also shares profits.

That is likely not the norm though, and the bigger the company the less of a chance of it happening. On the EA-side of the scale you're probably expected to pay them for the "privelege" to work on their games, then again your soul is maybe just enough for them ;)

[ManuelFLara]

One company I worked for, which was by no means a big company but it was a AAA-game, gave employes a percentage of the royalty. I beleive 3DRealms for example also shares profits.
I believe id Software also shares profits between all employes, that being very few (last I heard they were 17 people) and very high profits, makes employes very happy :) Although the catch is to be on id Software you must be the best among the best ones in your discipline.

[Savant]

Some companies do promise profit sharing but it's sort of rare. It's even more rare when they actually deliver on it.

Some companies have awesome profit sharing plans ... Epic Games for example. They pay out large bonuses on a fairly regular basis.

Other companies, eh, they figure you should be happy just to have a job.

Promising people bonuses/profit sharing is great, but remember that every mod group/engine company that comes along says the same line: "Work for free now and when we get paid, you will too!" It sort of bounces off deaf ears these days so it may be tough to get people to believe you.

[digriz]

Ok. So basically what we're saying here is that to be competitive I'd have to offer next to nothing to employees I hire. Like.. if I was to offer some kind of royalty incentive I'd be 1000x better than the average game company? Is that really what's being said?

Not quite. You'd have to offer a good wage too. :)

From Roberts reply, it is kind of true but it's not as bad as he makes out. Some people work in the games industry for different reasons. Some it's purely for a wage, others it's for the credit on a AAA game.

But it doesn't pay to be slow or incompetent in this industry. Unless of course your a producer, they get rewarded for being like this. At least thats the way it seems. ;)

[dogbert]

Were there, or are there any standard incentives given to people working in game development say as developers or artists that are tied to the game's success.

Contrary to some of the replies in this thread, monetary incentives are quite common, either in the form of a completion bonus, profit sharing, or yearly bonus. Direct royalities aren't as common these days, though there's often the promise of profit sharing "if" the game makes a profit after advances are paid.

The company I work for gives a yearly Christmas bonus & extra 401k payments based on the company's yearly profit. I've worked for other companies that give nothing for finishing a project. I've worked for other companies that offered a small bonus for each quarterly milestone met.

On the EA-side of the scale you're probably expected to pay them for the "privelege" to work on their games, then again your soul is maybe just enough for them

For all the complaints about EA, they offer one of the strongest benefit packages & financial incentive packages in the industry.

[svero]

Hmm.. some conflicting views here. Ok. Everyone who's actually worked for a standard game studio and knows what they're talking about raise your hands.

[kerchen]

When I was at Maxis/EA, we received a yearly bonus based on whether or not the studio met their yearly financial target. It was somewhat proportional to how well (or poorly) the target was met (i.e., if the studio exceeded their target by 30%, everyone received 120% of the base bonus; if the studio missed their target by 30%, everyone received 70% of the base bonus. Note: I don't remember the actual numbers; these are just made up to demonstrate the general idea.) The idea was to make it so that people working on a long dev cycle would still receive bonuses every year even though their product was still in development. Nothing like a royalty really.

Ok. So basically what we're saying here is that to be competitive I'd have to offer next to nothing to employees I hire. Like.. if I was to offer some kind of royalty incentive I'd be 1000x better than the average game company? Is that really what's being said?


Personally, given the choice between working for EA at $100K per year and working for Studio X at $30K per year but with a cut of the profits, I'd probably take the latter. Working for "next to nothing" and a reasonable cut of the profits might also be tempting given the right combination of people and game idea, but it would have to be a very good combination. In this case, "reasonable" means "roughly in proportion to the amount of work put in."

[digriz]

Everyone who's actually worked for a standard game studio and knows what they're talking about raise your hands.

Yay.... still working for a development studio.

[Escotia]

I've not got quite as many years in as Luggage (being a good few years younger) but I can confirm the gist of what he and others say. Certainly for the UK anyway.

- Lots of kids desperate to get into the industry. Pay them enough so they can just about eat, then offer them bonus for 'working hard' (aka unpaid overtime). The promise of money will motivate them because they're on the breadline. When the project is finished pay a bonus to the ones you like (personality wise) and sack the ones you don't. You can easily replace them with more eager kids and the ones that are left should feel like they're lucky to still have a job and maybe even get them to work a little harder. When the new kids arrive the office will be full of stories of jimbob who practically wrote the last game single handed and still got sacked, which helps get them in line right off the bat. Note: Do not base the bonuses/sackings on skill or effort otherwise the ones that are left will think that they are worth something.

As itsme points out, money can be an incredibly poor motivator. Once people have enough that is.

[Sparks]

Hmm.. some conflicting views here. Ok. Everyone who's actually worked for a standard game studio and knows what they're talking about raise your hands.

Here.
I got no boni or anything special. We did some whole-company-day-out trips, and in germany its a standard to get a health insurance and retirement stuff.
Apart from that, it sure wasnt the greatest place on earth.
To me, the creativity part sucked big time, since we were just worker bees and had no real influence on what game we would like to work on next, since the company did mostly contracted work.
I am not talking about doing the next doom, but a little more enthousiasm and vision would have taken us forward, since we had a great team with an exceptional spirit and working morale.

[digriz]

My biggest demotivator is office politics. I think this is why i enjoyed being a Freelance contractor for a long time.

[dogbert]

Everyone who's actually worked for a standard game studio and knows what they're talking about raise your hands.

/raises hand. Worked on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Teeth]

Where I work(-ed), there were different bonus systems, but any sales-dependent royalty bonus was at the discretion of the publisher and was a pie in the sky. However, the company was not a big one, so it's not so relevant to your question.

I can, however, give you an example of a friend who works at SCEE and received no sales bonus for Getaway 2 despite it shipping a million units on its first day. Something along the lines of the numbers having been moved around by marketing ("well, the bonus was dependent on actual sales, and not preorders, so nyeh" or some such) and the bonus was not paid out. Others' mileage may vary :)

[Ratboy]

I did it for 12 years, at four different companies, although the second and fourth actually bought the first and third ones outright.

Incentives were performance-based raises, some promised profit sharing, free soft drinks and one pretty good stock deal (I made out okay when 4 bought 3). Profit sharing never really happened, and for most of my career, my stock options were worthless. For the first six years or so, I barely made enough to cover my rent and bills.

It sure beat getting a regular job, though :cool:

[Applewood]

I had plenty in the past. The best deal I ever got was the usual bonuses for milestone completion, plus a slice of a royalty pot kicked back to the developers.

There's always been good bonuses to be had too. I usually made half my salary again in extras. Smaller companies do this more than the bigger ones as a way to keep good staff.

That's all a bit old news though. The last few years of my life in the mainstream was basically, "Forget the bonuses, be thankful you still got a job you damned ingrate" That's pretty much why I left. Fuck em.

I wouldn't recommend a career in mainstream game dev now at all. If a guys option is that or street-cleaning, I'd recommend he get a good broom. The publishers have reduced the whole thing to a steaming pile of poo, blaming crap money on having to carry failures rather than admit that this is just bad decision making and get their act together.

More games are sold now than ever before. Developers make less money now than ever before. Do yourself a favour and get a job where you'll be appreciated. Or at least still employed six months later.

[Coyote]

I worked at two different studios, but only until 2000. Things may have changed a bit.

I encountered three different kinds of bonus programs:

A pure royalty-based system
A portion of the royalties goes to the team, divied up among team members by some scheme.

This system can provide high motivation for people to make the game as good as possible. There is the potential for LOTS of money.
The downside is that it's demotivating if you aren't on a project which you feel there's a good chance of success. You end up with a lot of senior people who get a say in the matter working on the sequels, because it's more of a sure thing, while your new properties are being staffed by juniors and people who feel like they drew the short stick.

This system was phased out by many larger companies because - well, mainly because they were greedy and decided they were giving too much money to employees.

A Capped Bonus Structure
Probably more common these days, this is a traditional bonus structure - employees have a maximum bonus they can receive based on their salary and other factors (CEO's get millions while everyone that does real work gets squat). The bonus is usually based on both personal performance and the meeting of company profits.

It has the advantage of rewarding performance more directly, but it's VERY clear to employees that their potential rewards are very limited and not directly tied to the company (or their project) - so you get more politics and butt-kissing than game development.


Uncapped Royalty-Sharing Pool
This is my favorite for a smaller company. Each employee had a weighted percentage (initially based on their base salary) of a bonus pool they were eligable for. A portion of the profits of the company (royalties from game sales, basically) went into this bonus pool, which was to be divied up by weights to all employees. The theory was that while the office manager may not have been directly involved in game development, she's nevertheless helping everyone else getting their job done.

This has a little bit of the advantages of both previous systems, and less of the disadvantages - but I think it only works well for smaller companies where each employee can feel like they can contribute a significant factor to the success of the company as a whole. The company can still throttle how much goes to the bonus pool, but in theory (until they prove too greedy) it appears as unlimited potential for all employees.

Of course, all of these go down the tubes when employees realize there ARE no royalties or bonuses coming through at all (unless you are a publisher).

[Itsme]

If a guys option is that or street-cleaning, I'd recommend he get a good broom.

I worked as a janitor for Sierra College, while studying there. Believe it or not, I loved the job.


More games are sold now than ever before. Developers make less money now than ever before. Do yourself a favour and get a job where you'll be appreciated. Or at least still employed six months later.

No, don't get a job. Hire yourself. Find something you are good at start your own business. Look, if somebody is paying you 50-100K a year, it means that you are probably worth 3 times that. At least. Corporate workplace is a deadend road. Read John Carlton's latest blog, it'll lift your spirits

http://www.john-carlton.com/

[etali]

The picture painted here is very bleak. Kinda worrying considering I'm hoping in a few years to be working for a big games company.

Is it really that bad everywhere?

We've had a couple of medium size developers come out to speak to us at uni and they all claim that they AREN'T as bad as a lot of people make out about the industry.

How many people have had positive experiences in terms of pay, job security, bonuses?

Money isn't everything, but working under threat of keeping your job is something I've done in other parts of the IT industry. If I wanted that kind of stress I wouldn't have quit and went to uni to re-train for the privilege of it.

[WreckerOne]

In my experience, if wages are low and there is zero additional comp offered to regular employees (outside of worthless options):

1. The execs are not owners of the company, or the company is a public corporation

2. The execs are/have been bleeding the company into their pockets.

Of course, in this same case, benefits can be good, as long as exec benefits are better. One company I worked for gave all execs an "honorarium" bonus after laying off half the company. Make sure the leadership has a stake in the company's _future_ success.

[Applewood]

No, don't get a job. Hire yourself
Hehe. I just did exactly that. Moving into some proper premises and opening a 'real' company as we speak :)

[Applewood]

Is it really that bad everywhere?
Yes!
We've had a couple of medium size developers come out to speak to us at uni and they all claim that they AREN'T as bad as a lot of people make out about the industry.
What exactly do you expect them to say ?

Seriously, do not do this. You'll be fine as a new intake post-grad with lots of hopefulness and potential. Two years later you'll be on similar money wondering why the boss drives a ferrari and you work 60 hours a week and still buy the store-brand baked beans.

If your boss doesn't drive a ferrari, thats even worse - he's skint as well and you'll be losing your job real soon because yet another contract just got cancelled for a made up reason.

Honestly, I used to love my job in gamedev but I'm now coming across as bitter and twisted basically because me and all my colleagues at various companies have been fucked into submission.

I now exist in the mobile sector which is no way near as glamorous at face value but is damn rewarding because the big boys haven't totally knackered it yet. You can still make a lot of money AND have some fun, at least for a while longer anyways.

Mainstream console development is dead, though, and the next range of consoles are going to finish it off for everyone not directly owned and controlled be either MS, Sony or EA.

[etali]

Yes!

What exactly do you expect them to say ?

Seriously, do not do this. You'll be fine as a new intake post-grad with lots of hopefulness and potential. Two years later you'll be on similar money wondering why the boss drives a ferrari and you work 60 hours a week and still buy the store-brand baked beans.



I was hoping that because they aren't Sony or EA or whoever else from the AAA games list they might actually be nicer employeers.

They did talk about the insecurity, and about the increasing budgets required to make games, and how that was going to get worse with the next gen consoles, but they were very careful to stress no long hours.

Of course it could be because they're fairly local and want to trap us all for work placements in two years time :)

By the time I graduate the mobile market will probably be as commercial as everything else. What would you recommend? I did business related programming for a while, but that wasn't my thing. I'm loving games coding as it is to me a) more challenging, and b)more satisfying, but going it alone seems like a huge risk when you don't have experience of actually running a business.

[Ricardo C]

I worked as a janitor for Sierra College, while studying there. Believe it or not, I loved the job.



No, don't get a job. Hire yourself. Find something you are good at start your own business. Look, if somebody is paying you 50-100K a year, it means that you are probably worth 3 times that. At least. Corporate workplace is a deadend road. Read John Carlton's latest blog, it'll lift your spirits

http://www.john-carlton.com/

That was a very good read, thanks for the link :)

I especially liked this:

"Reminds me of the time I pulled up behind some cars at a traffic light that was obviously on the fritz, stuck on red. We waited, and waited... and then I pulled around, bumped up briefly on the curb, and went on my way. The red light, so obviously broken, no longer represented authority.

It was BROKEN.

And defying the taboo of running it doesn't automatically qualify as anarchy. You take turns, you go slow, you watch out for the other guy and show a little common courtesy.

But you get on with it.

Yet, as I motored away, I could see those other cars still sitting there, waiting for permission to proceed from a light that wasn't gonna change.

And you know what? It wouldn't surprise me if one of those drivers had hopped on their cell phone to "turn me in" for running the light.

How DARE I defy the rules?"

[Coyote]

It's funny how many of us leave the mainstream game development business *BITTER*. And the fact that the game industry experiences such a HUGE turnover (a startistically insignificant number of people actually stay in the business for longer than six years), that's a lot of bitterness.

There are a lot of horror stories of people being screwed by these "mid-size" studios. And yet more that were shared with me in confidence, so I won't share them here. You pretty much gotta figure that these companies are almost always teetering on the brink of extinction, living contract-to-contract without a whole lot left over. Back-end-royalties, which studios STILL believe will provide them with their margin, are largely mythical.

It sucks all over, but I still recommend going into the mainstream industry. Why? Consider it an apprenticeship. The lessons you learn from going through the process of shipping a couple of titles, working with people who can teach you the ropes and learning processes that work and don't work -- all that is invaluable.

But don't do it for the money. It's become a joke these days.

[kerchen]

How many people have had positive experiences in terms of pay, job security, bonuses?


For the most part, my time at Maxis was quite positive. The pay and bonuses were very good (not "a percentage of The Sims profit" good, but still nothing to sneeze at) and job security was never an issue (EA did lay off a lot of people after they bought Maxis but at the time I was pretty sure I'd be spared the chop--most of the cuts were in QA). Also, many of my friends at Maxis have been there for many years, quite happily as far as I know.

And, though I've only been at my current game dev job (www.stardock.com) for less than six months, I'd say my position there is pretty secure too. Many of my co-workers have been with the company for years and turnover is pretty low. I guess it's possible that these companies (Maxis and Stardock) are the exceptions to the industry, but I suspect there are other great places to work in the industry too.

And even if all the other development houses in the world are the sweatshops that some people claim them to be, I don't have any sympathy for the people that work in them because working for other people will always suck (to a greater or lesser degree) no matter what the job. I've never understood why some people think that working at a game company has to be fair and fun when that's not the case for any other job on Earth. As jobs go, game development jobs are pretty damn good if developing games is what you want to do.

[Itsme]

That was a very good read, thanks for the link :)

I especially liked this:

I love John Carlton. He doubled my income with his brain-dead simple Operation MoneySuck ideas. You can read some of his newsletters here

http://www.marketingrebelrant.com/freeissues.html

[Savant]

Itsme

Thanks for the John Carlton link. That WAS very inspiring.

[Ratboy]

I love John Carlton. He doubled my income with his brain-dead simple Operation MoneySuck ideas. You can read some of his newsletters here

http://www.marketingrebelrant.com/freeissues.htmlThanks much for this. I just came across my favorite piece of wisdom ever written in issue 3:

Smart business men have a saying: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Just jump into the damn pool already -- quite bothering the swimmers with endless questions about how cold the water is, how much chlorine is in there, how deep it is. Jump in and find out.

[Applewood]

By the time I graduate the mobile market will probably be as commercial as everything else. What would you recommend?I'm tempted to say street cleaning tbh.

If you want to do this to find our for yourself, working at a smaller dev thats not far from home probably isn't a bad start. Just don't believe anything they tell you about the future, especially if its related to future pay, royalties or continued employment. They may even mean it, but its still not gonna happen!

[Jim Buck]

I work for SCEA, and they pay royalties. PS1 days saw excellent royalties ("can buy a new car" type of money). That was when the teams were very small and generally costs per unit sold were very low. Now that the teams are pretty huge, royalties aren't as much as before.

Having said that, SCEA is probably pretty rare as far as paying royalties goes - I generally hear that most studios do not. (EA is another that definitely does pay royalties.)

[Mark Currie]

Havas (now Vivendi, owns Sierra, Blizzard, etc) shared royalties with the developers. 2% of the profits was divided up among the developers. I heard the Blizzard folks went out and bought things like Corvettes with their royalty bonus. They also gave a nice completion bonus, up to 20% of your base salary.

Microsoft does not share royalties directly or have competition bonuses, but they pay really well and have tons of benefits. They do have merit bonuses.

[sparkyboy]

I've never understood why some people think that working at a game company has to be fair and fun when that's not the case for any other job on Earth. As jobs go, game development jobs are pretty damn good if developing games is what you want to do.

Very true.I'm just a hobbyist programmer and my job used to be in the building industry.Not anymore,since my accident!The few employers I worked for here in France would squeeze as much as they fucking could out of you.
What every employer needs to know is that its the workers that got them where they are but they dont give a fucking shit.
Take a look at the portals now.They started off small looking for developers,so they gave a good deal and everyone was happy.Now they have a nice catalogue of games,great customer base and developers falling over themselves to get their games on show that they too are screwing the developers now.
Unless you are Will Wright,John Carmack or Popcap,then somewhere down the line someones gonna screw you over.Unfortunately that seems to be human nature,be as fair as you can till your big enough then just fucking screw everyone and his dog!!

[John Rush]

sparkyboy,
While your point of view is appreciated, the tone and language you used does not fit in with the professional focus of these forums.

Having said that, I suspect that if you talked to any one of the parties you mentioned, they will report having been taken advantage of at one time or another. The issue is to try to avoid it if you can and to move past it if you encounter it.

[KNau]

Yeah, my experience wasn't so much that it was a sweatshop. I mean, if you love games then screw it - work for 12 hours a day if you believe in what you're doing. Most of us indies work hours that would make studio personel curl into the fetal position and cry.

My problem with the studio system is that the people in charge don't even really like games, and it shows in the products they develop. The game really is just a widget that needs to be shipped by x date - nothing more.

[Spaceman Spiff]

Itsme – thank you for the John Carlton links. Several things really hit home.


Coyote's post struck me enough to chip in my worthless comments.


Coyote is essentially right in that there is ton a person could learn about making games by going to work for an existing studio. It's not a civil-service career, but then I don't think most of use could stand such an existence. Many indies have *no* idea how established developers go about doing things, and could benefit in many ways if they did.

I'd separate existing studios into three rough categories:

1) Studios owned outright by major companies such as EA, Sony, Microsoft, Activision, etc, or their in-house development teams.

Working for one of these can be seen as the most secure route (well, as secure as anything is these days), as you don't have to worry about the company going down if the latest game tanks.

Upsides include defined career paths and benefits, and access to a lot of resources.

The biggest downside is that you are usually nothing more than a cog in the machine. If the parent company doesn't give non-managers bonuses, then your team ain't going to be the exception, no matter how good the game sold. Basically, you can wind up in Dilbert land, slave to the big corporation.

The usual experience is that how well you conform to the company culture, kiss ass, look good and stab backs has a much greater bearing on your future, financial and otherwise, than your trade skills. The path to riches lies on your ability to climb high up the ladder, and out-duel the other ambitious dogs along the way. Money for those up the management chain comes in the forms of salary "levels", raises, bonuses of various sorts, and stock options or grants. Less filters down to the grunt level.

I would venture that these studios produce some of the most bitter ex-industry people.

How good is it at the top? Check this out: VP Contract at EA (http://contracts.onecle.com/ea/jenson.emp.2002.06.21.shtml). It's gotta be one hell of a rat-race there.

2) Established mid-sized independent studios. These are the 30 to 100+ person companies that are often next in line to be acquired by the big boys or publishers.

These studios have usually shipped successful games, but are for the most part not the in the position to survive if their next game is a total bomb. A few can, but a second bomb will take of most of that group.

Rewards among this group are all over the place. (See below for more about ownership). Some share nothing with the employees, whom they often underpay and overwork. Some are exceptionally generous. I know of one right now where everyone, without exception, who worked their latest game (top-10, AAA) from the start is getting a 6-figure bonus check (before tax) at the end of this quarter. Most fall somewhere in-between.

Salaries at these studios are generally less than the group #1 studios, and benefits not quite as comprehensive. Instead of being run by formally trained business people, these companies are often run by the founding entrepreneurs. Raises and bonuses are less formal and regular (less established HR policies). Playing the games still counts for a lot, as politics are fact of life, but your talent and performance counts for a lot more as these companies literally can't afford to keep useless people around*

Ethical and account weirdness start to show up among this group of companies. Forums like The Chaos Engine have great stories of such.

* = unless they have a specific "in", like being the owner's brother-in-law.


3) The smaller studios. Essentially the entry-level to the business. You wont find many of these studios working on AAA titles with 3-year development cycles. These are the companies that live hand-to-mouth. If a publisher yanks a deal on them, or a title bombs, it could be layoff time. Often, their situation is of their own doing – they don’t know how to negotiate a contract with a publisher properly or they cave in because they are hungry. They can be a great place to learn a lot in a hurry. And if you are in a hurry, expect to work a lot.

Salaries here aren’t the greatest, and this group seems to have the greatest amount of promises made to its employees… which usually depend son the next game selling unrealistically well. With smaller projects and less continuity, they can tolerate a greater level of employee turnover. I wish I could say good things about bonuses and royalties, but I don’t know enough to do so. With very small companies, benefits like health insurance tend to suffer due to lack of leverage and management bandwidth.

The upside is that if something does hit, and the owners and management are of the right mindset, unexpected wealth can be shared liberally.

I do want to note that in this group, there seems to be more variance in how employees are treated, and a good number seem to really value and treat well their people.

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Ok, with that out of the way what I really wanted to say is that it's often all about ownership and control (not so incidentally one of the big benefits of being an indie.)

The people who start game companies usually put forth a huge effort and take a tremendous amount of risk on (not to mention debt) with absolutely zero guarantee of anything in return. They sacrifice a lot to make something out of nothing. Then... Then, they offer a job to another person. A person who doesn't have to make that level of sacrifices and is guaranteed a salary and some benefits. Think about your own indie company, and for those who are one-man shops, think about being successful enough to be in the position of hiring people to work *for you*.

Now, with things finally going right and rewards coming in... Why should someone who didn't make the effort and take the risk you did feel that they own a piece of that? So it's up to you to decide just what extra compensation their efforts are worth. Wait! I'm the boss. I have power. Who says I have to be a nice guy. I can keep it all for myself!

Ok, so I'm being a bit over the top. My point is that the person with the power (usually from ownership) gets to make the decisions. They can be good for the company as a whole and forward thinking, they can be selfish and short-sighted, or anything else that you can dream of...

But no matter which, someone gets to make decisions about what someone else gets. And that someone is often just a person, fallible and human, subject to conflicting goals and imperfect judgment.

ManuelFLara mentioned that id Software shares profits between all employees. Not so. id gives out bonuses at the discretion of its owners. The size of the bonus depends on their judgment. There have been employees who were completely *unaware* that a round of bonuses were just given out... because, of course, they didn't get one that time.

Is it right? Is it wrong? Who really is to say?

Kerchen hit it on the nose in a way:
because working for other people will always suck (to a greater or lesser degree) no matter what the job. I've never understood why some people think that working at a game company has to be fair and fun when that's not the case for any other job on Earth

Either you are working for someone else and letting them make the decisions, or working for yourself and taking on all that is brings, good and bad.

Ok, that's enough senseless rambling for now.

[sparkyboy]

sparkyboy,
While your point of view is appreciated, the tone and language you used does not fit in with the professional focus of these forums.

I apologise to everyone for my use of language.Had a bad day yesterday
plus a few beers and when I read this thread,it just brought back bad memories.I have a crippled left hand(minus a finger :mad: )due to the actions of an employee of the head company(we were sub contractors).This happened due to the fact that the big Boss was pushing everyone too far and hard to finish a job.. :mad:


Having said that, I suspect that if you talked to any one of the parties you mentioned, they will report having been taken advantage of at one time or another.

True,but what I mean is that today that would not happen to them.Until someone gets a good reputation they will get shafted.

Of course the only way is to work for oneself,whereby you control all aspects i.e. marketing,distribution etc.

Anyway thats my 2 cents,and once again apologies to anyone offended.
Oh yeah,nearly forgot,may I take this opportunity to say what a privilege it is to be involved in a forum with so many pro developers. :)
Kudos and good luck to you all (including Svero) :)

[-gf-]

I would venture that these studios produce some of the most bitter ex-industry people.

I just wanted to point out that I think there are two types of bitterness. I think I saw some previous post also in this thread where I got the feeling that all the bitter ex-industry people get thrown into one pot (then again I probably just got it wrong). Some people are bitter about publishers in general and want to escape their control, not necessarily about the companies they worked for.

[Coyote]

No matter who you are, no matter what situation you are in, you are going to be shafted at some point. You may be screwed by an employee who dissapears during a project where he's the critical path, only heard from again to ask where his last check was. You may be screwed by an employer by any number of means. You may be screwed by a business partner who was once your best friend, who suddenly turns around and tires to steal all your clients for his own 'new' competing company. You may be screwed by the company you outsourced art to, and you may be screwed by the company that is outsourcing work to you.

I think all of us here who have sold games have been screwed by "customers" with stolen credit cards, or pirates, or portals / publishers that dock you with surprise charges or don't pay you on time, or don't pay you the royalties you believe you have earned, or whatever else.

So don't think for a second that going indie or owning your own business is going to protect you from being screwed. It happens. Deal. Cover your bases as best you can, try to limit your liability as much as possible, but otherwise just learn to roll with it. Don't give away trust for free, but don't be afraid to give it.

I don't know if that's the most sound business advice in the world, but it seems to be the way to deal with life.

[sparkyboy]

No matter who you are, no matter what situation you are in, you are going to be shafted at some point.

On reflection this is possibly very true.It used to be the old addage 'there are only 2 guarantees in life,death and taxes'.
I think we can add 'being shafted' to that equation. :D

[Jim Buck]

Isn't that already accounted for in taxes? ;)

[gpetersz]

I worked for http://www.appaloosacorp.com/
In 1996 and 1997. I participated 3 projects (Sesame Street on Sega Genesis/Pico, Disney's Hercules (stopped developement on that platform), and Grossology (PC).

How I felt myself depended really on the "management". We had a director who was more leisure (when I got there). It meant: we might play Descent instead of lunch, and nobody argued about it. We got salary and nothing else really (see later). In my second year the management decided that this director was ineffective (in their point of view it might had been true) and replaced it with a tough one. All hard work stayed but no more gaming was allowed...

As I mentioned the work was hard (long days, many weekends to finish milestones), and the compensation was SALARY (no royalties or anything). We was promised BONUS (as many said here before) but I never saw a cent of it. (though I finished 2 projects in nearly 2 years there). To be totally correct I left them just before we finished Grossology because I got an offer from my former class-mate of an ORACLE developer position and I was really fed up with nights spent at the studio. On the other side I met people there who stated that they GOT bonus from time to time. Unexpectedly. It was better when the studio was younger (and less crowded) they said.

So actually, I was there when we finished Sesame Street but I wasn't when Grossology was finished (though I worked nearly a year in that project).
Probably a month was back until the release of the title, but I should decide in days about the ORACLE developer job. And I decided...
I even got one free piece of the software and t-shirts and all, yep this was an other way of compensation... (doh).

So I got one software, 2 t-shirts, and /month salary when I worked there.
Nothing extra.
It worked until I was single. I got married some months before I left them for the other work, so this model works best for youngsters without any responsibility (there might be exceptions) and without any serious family (only girlfriends, parents (maybe living with them) and so).
You can do what you like (as your work) and make money out of it. I do not complain about the salary what was fair. Not great or anything but my new one as a "man-in-suit" oracle developer I only earned 10% more (that time)!
(though I worked only from 8-17, so the /hour rate was a way better)

SUM:
It paid well, but no extras (I wasn't interested in how the game sold, I wasn't promised or contracted on royalties). I felt good until the conditions were more leisure and friendly, but I were demoralized when a more "falanster" like behavior got around. I worked from 10-20 (sometimes it was 10->10 next day... then got home slept a bit, and got back at the afternoon). It took at least one weekend each month, sometimes more.

So any better construction might help you to have the best developers around. Maybe you are not as known as EA, but it is not hard to surpass these conditions... :)

Oh. I worked as a programmer-graphic artist hybrid there.
I started as an artist then when my boss saw my own game making system (assembly-pascal frame) he at once got me to program as well. It was my fault, I developed/tested it at work while I was waiting for new key animation frames from the lead-artist :).

[zoombapup]

Very similar experience. My 8 years at Team17 saw a few things.

1) Royalties died... JUST before me :)
2) No overtime... stupid hours
3) Larger companies got worse at paying
4) Small companies died

Benefits are rare and usually paid by high end indie devs

"normal" benefits are 40k and whatnot.

Pay royalties... you'll just need to be honest and actually pay it!

I love royalties.. I get em for books.

[zoombapup]

Fantastic review by spiff, I pretty much agree 100% with his take on things.

I finally got bored of being someone else's puppet a few years ago and changed industries a bit. I'm still a game developer, but also an educator.

At least with a "day job" you can pick how much of yourself you put into your day to day worklife. I found with games I couldnt exist outside of my work (at least initially, things got a bit less so later when I knew I was going).

Working at a good studio with lots of money and backing is great experience, I would advise everyone to do that for at least a couple of years.

But eventually you may choose to be your own man and go indie. Neither is "right" or "wrong".

Svero! sorry for the thread hijack. So youre finally going to hire someone? is this a native thai or a remote worker?

[Spaceman Spiff]

Zoombapup - I loved Worms; tip of the hat to you, if you had anything to do with it.

Looking back at the post, I only said about half of what I hoped to say in describing the tiers of companies. Oh well. I had best not share all my cynicism here, or people will tire of me.