Working in a video game industry must be a dream job of many people. What could be better than getting paid to play, test or create video games? Sadly, life is not a bed of roses. Reality is far worse than it. Below I present five personal reasons, backed by both rational and empirical evidence, on why I am not a video game developer or a video gamer.
How many real life problem do majority of video games solve? Zero. While some might argue that video games are source of entertainment and happiness, I would like to clarify that video games aren't the only source of entertainment and certainly not the "best" one.
Happiness can be obtained from productive things like learning new skills, physical activities, self improvement and many more. These activities not only provide entertainment, but they also have a productive outcome. It's like the best of the both world.
There is a genre of video games called Sandbox Simulation, whose titles, such as The Powder Toy, claim to be educational video games, but I find that claim to be a marketing tactic for many reasons: science is more than just alchemy; the experiments in them are not isolated; there is no way to get the value of and control variables such as time, temperature, density, atomic mass, volume, mass and more; oversimplification of scientific concepts; promoting a brute force approach to knowledge gain.
It should be noted that I'm criticizing video games, not educational softwares like CAD, physics simulators etc. They are neither video games, nor marketed as such.
Not surprising that it's almost impossible to find a single person who is proficient in all aspects of game development. A team of multiple professionals is required for game development. Not just programmers, but writers, animators, artists, actors and more.
Such diverse and unusual requirements make it expensive, and hard to produce a video game. Not to mention that maintaining coordination and unity among such diverse set of skills is almost impossible. A programmer may not knowledgable about art. An artist may not be knowledgeable about programming. Yet they are still expected to coordinate and deliver the product within a strict deadline.
As video games don't solve any real life problem, require diverse set of skills, have a high capital requirement, its obvious that they aren't much profitable. According to VGInsights, 80% of video game developers have gross lifetime income of less than $5,000
Video games are addictive, aren't they? Why wouldn't they be when developers spend years in making them "better". To make them even more addictive, video game industries have started using various unethical means like:
The development side isn't very good either. Overtime, low pay, unreasonable demands, strict deadlines are a common thing there.
“It is not really an industry that treats people well. It’s not an industry that is stable or well-paid. It’s also an industry that has tons and tons of supply and not a lot of demand. So it’s not the most ideal place to work." - Wired
I am a "hedonist". I do what I enjoy the most. As I discussed in my previous post, one should choose the programming language that he enjoys working with the most. Same thing can be applied here. I don't like playing or making video games, so I don't do it. Being hedonist a doesn't mean that I have to derive pleasure from things I am not passionate ab
Edit 1: Today(2024-12-25), is the day of Christmas, and I had some free time. So I was going through my list of video games that I have played. I refactored the list and added few entries which I forgot earlier. One thing I observed that, I have played 30 PC games. Out of which, I deleted 28 within 30 minutes of installing. Rest 2, Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, and Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, I played for 2 hours at max. I also did bit "cheating" through saving game at short intervals. I also have experience doing in-game micro transactions for others, as I described in my financial autobiography. I am making this edit just to let readers know that I'm not hating on video games without even trying them.
out or things that do not have a productive outcome.I would once again like to remind that I'm not saying, "Don't be a game developer". I am just sharing my personal opinion.