The Business Side of Video (Space) Games EXCLUSIVELY ON IDLE THUMBS

[Justin Leego]

Kneejerk reaction from a quick read of the reddit link:

 

We are not journalists and we do not provide reviews or opinions on games

 

My bolding and harrumphing.

 

Otherwise, I am pleased about the apparent level of transparency. The rest I will have to dwell on.

[JonCole]

Also problematic - some major YT podcast channels are automatically placing mid-roll ads into their content producer's videos without any kind of consent. I saw NorthernLion complaining about it on Twitter, he's partnered with Machinima. Some of his longer videos have like 7 or 8 ads just randomly placed through LPs.

[Merus]

From what I understand, TotalBiscuit does this too, except he puts his payola disclosure in the About text, which is still illegal under FCC rules because it has to be presented with the paid content at the same priority as the paid content.

[Dewar]

I think the difference is that TB gets a lump sum, after which he could theoretically completely pan the game and he still has his cash, while Yogscast are getting a revenue share, which would maybe influence them to say a game is better than it is to increase sales, which they would get a chunk of.

 

Frankly, I don't really give a damn. I don't watch Youtube for reviews and the moment one of the outlets I do watch stops being frank in their discussions of games, I'll stop watching them.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Quote

We are not journalists and we do not provide reviews or opinions on games

I wish people realised how little this matters. The actual score or label of being a review don't make people want to buy a game, a general atmosphere of positivity about the game and an absence of criticism does. Reviews probably sell less games because they usually make some note of a flaw with the game so they don't come off as totally gushing but a let's play doesn't need to care about that.

[tegan]

Seriously. Flappy Bird didn't gain any momentum at all until PewDiePie put out a video where he explicitly called it terrible, and look where that ended up.

[SecretAsianMan]

Bungie and Marty O'Donnell have settled.  Marty will be paid a little over $95,000.

[Dinosaursssssss]

The Gamasutra industry salary survey results are now out : http://www.gamasutra.com/salarysurvey2014.pdf

The results are sort of interesting (I didn't realize audio work paid so well!) but they also only had a total sample size of ~2000 ("The total sample reflected in the data presented for U.S. is 1,246; for canada 292; and for Europe 573.") so I would suggest taking all these numbers with a large grain of salt. That said, I donno where you'd get better data.

 

A few tidbits I found interesting:

"The most popular ways to find a job in 2013 were via referral (28 percent), job postings (18 percent), being recruited directly by the company (12 percent), and sending in a resume (12 percent)."

 

The highest average salary for programmers by education level was those who listed 'Some College.' The average for those with a doctorate with 102k, 'Some College' was 103.

 

Average salary for men was higher than women in every department except QA, where women earned an average of $0.04 more.

 

"Solo indie developers earned an average income of $11,812 in 2013, down 49 percent from 2012’s $23,130 average [...] Fifty-seven percent of indie game developers (including both solo indies and members of indie teams) made under $500 in game sales."

[Dewar]

Bungie and Marty O'Donnell have settled.  Marty will be paid a little over $95,000.

 

So bizarre that Bungie decided to aire such dirty laundry rather than just pay him the 100k initally.

[Dewar]

The Gamasutra industry salary survey results are now out : http://www.gamasutra.com/salarysurvey2014.pdf

The results are sort of interesting (I didn't realize audio work paid so well!) but they also only had a total sample size of ~2000 ("The total sample reflected in the data presented for U.S. is 1,246; for canada 292; and for Europe 573.") so I would suggest taking all these numbers with a large grain of salt. That said, I donno where you'd get better data.

 

A few tidbits I found interesting:

"The most popular ways to find a job in 2013 were via referral (28 percent), job postings (18 percent), being recruited directly by the company (12 percent), and sending in a resume (12 percent)."

 

The highest average salary for programmers by education level was those who listed 'Some College.' The average for those with a doctorate with 102k, 'Some College' was 103.

 

Average salary for men was higher than women in every department except QA, where women earned an average of $0.04 more.

 

"Solo indie developers earned an average income of $11,812 in 2013, down 49 percent from 2012’s $23,130 average [...] Fifty-seven percent of indie game developers (including both solo indies and members of indie teams) made under $500 in game sales."

 

Hmm, it seems like salaried wages are pretty reasonable, if it weren't for the lousy working hours and such. The indie information is depressing, if not exactly surprising.

[SecretAsianMan]

So bizarre that Bungie decided to aire such dirty laundry rather than just pay him the 100k initally.

 

I thought it was strange too.  I would have expected a big stink if he asked for a couple million dollars, but that's not even six figures, and that includes double damages and legal fees.  Not to say that it's not a significant sum, but especially in light of the Gamasutra survey, it's basically the average salary for someone in his position.  From what O'Donnell said about the way he was fired, it seems like Bungie fighting it the way that they did caused them more trouble than it was worth.

[SuperBiasedMan]

I suspect the indie amount is being pulled down by having a much larger number of people try being indie developers but still having a relatively low amount of indie games being big successes.

[Spenny]

The Gamasutra industry salary survey results are now out : http://www.gamasutra.com/salarysurvey2014.pdf

The results are sort of interesting (I didn't realize audio work paid so well!) but they also only had a total sample size of ~2000 ("The total sample reflected in the data presented for U.S. is 1,246; for canada 292; and for Europe 573.") so I would suggest taking all these numbers with a large grain of salt. That said, I donno where you'd get better data.

 

According to this I make less than average 

 

The highest average salary for programmers by education level was those who listed 'Some College.' The average for those with a doctorate with 102k, 'Some College' was 103.

 

That's real strange, and I would have to guess is some error / bias of the survey sample. Or maybe these are just the code savants who never needed no education and were born ready to code.

 

"Solo indie developers earned an average income of $11,812 in 2013, down 49 percent from 2012’s $23,130 average [...] Fifty-seven percent of indie game developers (including both solo indies and members of indie teams) made under $500 in game sales."

 

Not surprised by this at all. When we listen to podcasts and read our websites, I think they have a bias towards developers already somewhat successful, even if that just means dudes who got their game on steam. I've met a lot of indies who haven't made it to steam, who don't know how to market a game, and frankly don't have a clue how to make a cent.

[Dewar]

 

According to this I make less than average 

 

 

That's real strange, and I would have to guess is some error / bias of the survey sample. Or maybe these are just the code savants who never needed no education and were born ready to code.

 

 

Given that a doctorates (or any college degrees) in video game production are fairly recent, it's reasonable to assume that most of the college graduates are newer to the industry while the folks with "some college" might be veterans?

[Spenny]

My assumption would be a doctorate in computer science as that is a statistic for programmers, but I would buy your theory on "some college" being veterans.

[SecretAsianMan]

I think that's a reasonable view.  It used to be acceptable to substitute sufficient experience for a degree but that's becoming less common these days.  I've worked with people before who did not have a college degree and yet are in senior positions above me.  According to Wikipedia, John Carmack went to college for 2 semesters before withdrawing to work as a freelance programmer.  I imagine this is not an entirely unique case within the games industry.

[elmuerte]

Great programmers are great with or without a college education. A college education is just a foot in the door. College doesn't make great programmers, they might enable it in people who did not start on their own yet.

 

A doctorate is very rare in any field which is not pure R&D, or just R. People associated with video games who have a PhD are most likely employed by a technology company (Intel, nVidia, middleware vendors), and rarely considered game devs.

[prettyunsmart]

So here's a question that relates to the business side of video games. Does anyone know where to find information on studio/team sizes either now or historically? It's sort of an accepted fact among people who talk about games on the internet that team sizes have been growing over the last 10 years or so, but I'm working on a thing where I'd need to be able to point to some actual data. 

 

It seems like somewhere like Gamasutra or the ESA might have charts of that kind of thing sitting around somewhere, but my Googling has left me with nothing so far.

[Nachimir]

The Develop 100 contains a lot of that information for the UK. I'm not sure how to get hold of old editions though.

 

Welcome to researching big game studios though! About six years ago this used to be a part of my job, and there are (were?) no good, unified, comprehensive sources of data. It involved a lot of phoning people up and usually getting fobbed off, and the only good way of getting data was having friends fairly high up in a given studio. Maybe things have changed, but it used to be that all studios above a certain size had incredibly paranoid and defensive HR departments and/or directors. Except Crytek; I ended up on the phone to Avni Yerli once and he was lovely.

[prettyunsmart]

The Develop 100 contains a lot of that information for the UK. I'm not sure how to get hold of old editions though.

 

Welcome to researching big game studios though! About six years ago this used to be a part of my job, and there are (were?) no good, unified, comprehensive sources of data. It involved a lot of phoning people up and usually getting fobbed off, and the only good way of getting data was having friends fairly high up in a given studio. Maybe things have changed, but it used to be that all studios above a certain size had incredibly paranoid and defensive HR departments and/or directors. Except Crytek; I ended up on the phone to Avni Yerli once and he was lovely.

 

Thanks for the reply. I figured that getting in touch with some studios directly might be necessary, but I was hoping I wouldn't have to be social or navigate phone tree. Just out of curiosity, what was your job?

[Bjorn]

I really despise class action settlements that result in you having to use the company's service in order to receive any compensation.  If you lose enough faith in a company to never want to do business with them again, then you get nothing.  But if you remain a customer to the company that fucked you, you get rewarded.  Everything about it is backwards.

[Nachimir]

Just out of curiosity, what was your job?

 

I worked at a "consultancy" specialising in the video games industry, but it was basically a vehicle designed to milk as much public funding into a limited company as possible. Most of the consultancy activity revolved around "desk research", which is a euphemism for "we'll charge you a full company day rate but spend hardly any of it on doing this job". Thankfully I didn't have to do research for the consultancy side full time, and got to do more interesting and worthy stuff like running massive game jams and other events. I had no job description and eventually left after the MD bollocked me for not doing things he'd never hired or trained me for*. The company withered and died not long after that when the current government shut down all of the regional development agencies. I learned a lot while there, but every year I put between me and that job is a blessing.

 

* and quite a long list of other reasons. People really despised my boss, and of those who didn't feel that strongly, one said to me "I want to like him, but ninety percent of everything he says is obvious bullshit" and another, when I was worried about him bad mouthing me "Don't worry, no one likes [NAME], not even his friends". I did not expect this post to turn into therapy, but typing this out felt good.

[Merus]

This is a very provocative series of essays (this is the last one, and the other two are linked within) on the game industry as it stands today, ostensibly triggered by the game Problem Attic, but mostly not. Among the ideas in here is that Twitter has a vested interest in Anita Sarkeesian being attacked, that Apple and Steam benefit from their stores not being discoverable, and how The Design of Everyday Things is used to train players to avoid exploring a system.

[osmosisch]

This is a very provocative series of essays (this is the last one, and the other two are linked within) on the game industry as it stands today, ostensibly triggered by the game Problem Attic, but mostly not. Among the ideas in here is that Twitter has a vested interest in Anita Sarkeesian being attacked, that Apple and Steam benefit from their stores not being discoverable, and how The Design of Everyday Things is used to train players to avoid exploring a system.

Gosh, that's a fascinating read. It resonates with a lot of stuff I've been thinking lately. Thanks!

[Bjorn]

This is a very provocative series of essays (this is the last one, and the other two are linked within) on the game industry as it stands today, ostensibly triggered by the game Problem Attic, but mostly not. Among the ideas in here is that Twitter has a vested interest in Anita Sarkeesian being attacked, that Apple and Steam benefit from their stores not being discoverable, and how The Design of Everyday Things is used to train players to avoid exploring a system.

 

I'm captivated by this piece, but I really need to get back to work and stop reading it.  Going to have to finish it this evening.