Video game developer
[1][2] A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks[3] to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc.
First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by the console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog).
The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time.
When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications, partially over the lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these.
While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices).
[14] Video game development is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with t-shirts and sandals as common work attire.
[17] An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining a position in a medium to large video game company.
[23] "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch a game on schedule.
The complexity of workflow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones.
[36] Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers.
Efforts have been made to provide a strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may lead women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals.
[38] There is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic.
[39][40][41] In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries, the IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers.
[33] This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, developing games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identifying toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race.
[44] In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations, the video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey.
[45] However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to the nature of the video game culture.
While discrimination by age in hiring practices is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction.
Contractors are brought on for a fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason.
The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract.
But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft's past use of "permatemp", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits.
[50] However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in the news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union.
[52] In 2016, voice actors in the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal.
The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs.
[56] The situation was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games.
[61] After this acquisition, the employees of Bethesda Game Studios, part of Zenimax under Microsoft, unionized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in July 2024.
[66] In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022.
[67] In January 2023, after not being credited in The Last of Us HBO adaptation, Bruce Straley called for unionization of the video game industry.
[68] He told the Los Angeles Times: "Someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn't getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it.
