Comment on Astro Boy: Omega Factor Artist Tomoharu Saito Lost A Leg Due To Working On The Game | Time Extension
finkrat@lemmy.world 4 days ago
“The sacrifices made by Tomoharu Saito highlight the often-overlooked human side of game development”
That’s such a toxicly positive spin on saying “Japanese game industry work-life balance was so bad that it literally killed people”
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 days ago
Is. Continues to be. And it isn’t just Japan. Worldwide, the games industry has always had horrible work-life balance (some cases being better or worse than others, of course).
I went to college to go into the industry 10 years ago and never did because of the things our professors (who were all industry veterans, some still actively working in the industry and some having been in the industry since the 80s) told us. “Nobody makes video games because they want to get rich.” Upon graduation with a 4 year degree (and a hundred thousand in debt probably), I was expected to make the same annually as I did if I worked year-round at my summer job. Everybody today talks about crunch time as a problem in industries. Video games are crunch time. We were told to expect to work on a project for 4 years, with the last few months being spent in the office 7 days a week, no holidays, and orobably eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the office. Maybe even sleeping there as well. Clocking out after 8 hours would be seen as being a traitor to the company. And after a project ships? Dust off your resume, because unless you’re senior level, you’re gonna be fired as the company downsizes until the next project.
The mass layoffs the past 3 years have been worse each year than in the 2008 recession. There are people working at the Blizzard main office who live out of their cars because they can’t afford an apartment within commuting distance of the office. The list goes on and on. And they can get away with it because they’re exploiting the passion of people who just want to make something that people will enjoy and there’s an endless stream of starry-eyed college kids ready to throw themselves into the grinder.