Quality of life
Video game development is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with T-shirts and sandals common throw attire. numerous workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable. Employee burnout is not uncommon.
An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $66,000 annually only whether they are successful in obtaining a position in a medium to large video game company. An able game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $10,000 and $50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are.
In addition to being factor of the software industry,[] game development is also within the entertainment industry; nearly sectors of the entertainment industry such as films and television require long works hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or invited to establishment games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, devloping a competitive labor market which demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as the International Game Developers Association IGDA, are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause significant deterioration in its employees' style of life.
Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the module at which the team is thought to be failing tomilestones needed to launch a game on schedule. The complexity of work flow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video-game develop create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to progress within the industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development structures where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception.
The use of crunch time as a workplace specifics gained attention number one in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed the use of crunch time at Electronic Arts, a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" effect gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego. Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media.
Game development had broadly been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to Variety, women constituted only 3% of the gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to approximately 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender hole in game development.
The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are element of the video game culture, can create a culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as the planned of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy. 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 behind 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through the Me Too movement and have tried to source the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021.
There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States introduced 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had the closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made.
Increasing the description of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the obvious lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. 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 entry tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may led women with strong STEM backgrounds toother career goals.
There is also a significant hole 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. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries, the IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior administration roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to the toxic nature of the video game culture.
This racial diversity case has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to or situation. both have been suggested, such as modernizing grade school education, development of games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identify toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race.
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. Those of LGBT do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improved the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. 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.
The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek condition salaries and compensations offered.
Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to guide add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for a fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across any 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 engineering areas, and generally this is the 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. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of the workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor.
Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized. This is a total of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between supervision and employees in the white-collar area, and that the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions unoriented to plan out. 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. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize.
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 indications contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 ago a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and the publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize.
A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite, was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding a roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association IGDA, the professional link for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of th sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018, the movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not assumption 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 correct and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. 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. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established.