I'm a middle ground kind of guy.
I understand what your saying, and I don't doubt that it's true for some of those in the gaming industry.
However on the other hand, the opinion a lot of people have about the gaming industry and the code monkeys and such is not unfounded. Over the years there have been a lot of people writing articles "shedding the light" on how the game industry works. Pretty much every serious gaming news site, or paper periodical as run a bunch of these. A common issue is of course producers vs. developers and pointing out the tug of war that exists between them. When looking at some of the things producers have commented on about why they are wary about giving developers a free reign is specifically because they goof off and tend to pitter away the money while doing very little in the way of actual work. One thing I do remember going back years ago for example is how it was mentioned that game developers tend to do things like order out for three meals a day out of the development budget. Compared to more efficient companies which will either provide a free employee cafeteria (like the casinos where I worked) or some kind of catering/lunch cart arrangement. This leading to a lot of money being spent on doing things like feeding the employees that could be invested in the game. When you consider that the majority of people who work wind up having to pay for their own food out of pocket this kind of thing can be seen as being even more decadent.
On the other hand you also have guys who acted like rock stars, like the old "Ion Storm Entertainment", or cases like "Duke Nukem Forever" where the developers kept managing to get more and more production money which they lived on while doing absolutly nothing (from the way it appears). Then you have Valve which seems to be dedicated to goofing off, taking the time to engage in elaborate practical jokes (like responding to bogus mail orders for Team Fortress 2 weapons) while they games sit in a development limbo. Or perhaps more relevently the famous "Rock Star Wives" incident where according to many reports it seems like the guys working on "Red Dead Redemption" spent so much time goofing off that they needed to enter a "super crunch time" to actually finish doing what the money they were spending was supposed to be used for, and when the employees actually started to look/act/live like you describe it worried their families.
No need to debunk these point by point, since my point isn't really about the truth of any specific allegations, but how things like this lead to the perception your argueing against. What's more, despite any arguements that can be made I'm sure there is more than a single grain of truth in any of those stories and incidents as I conveyed them, and more like them.
While many people hate this, especially on big "political" type issues where everyone feels they are already talking from a middle ground or whatever, I feel that in cases of great contridiction and hardbitten positions the truth is indeed going to be found between the extremes.
The bottom line is that I am sure a lot of hard work is being done, and it isn't a complete utopia. I mean in the end these projects are being completed. But at the same time I am also pretty sure a lot of goofing off and time wasting takes place, the industry hardly seeming all that professional and focused from what I've seen (including office tours and the like). I'm sure many days go by where nothing productive at all is done, and people pretty much just sit back, suck up the money, order out, and goof off in comparison to those days where people put their nose to the grindstone. Your talking a very "hair down" kind of enviroment which is enviable compared to where most people work. Understand, everyone feels they work hard, but America is becoming the "Medication Nation" because most people exist in a state of abject unfulfilled misery, and take tons of drugs to try and counteract this and cope (a lot has been written about that).
While I understand the "fan friendly" point of some of the virtual office tours we've seen of places like "Blizzard", I will mention that if a video like that wound up on the internet for pretty much anywhere I worked, with how a lot of those guys comported themselves even while sitting at their desks, heads would be rolling. A lot of the professional world is all about uncluttered, well organized, professional work spaces, crisp ironed shirts and pants with military creases, non existant or neatly trimmed facial hair, combed and clean hair at all times which is to go no further than the collar for men, or the very top of the shoulders for women... etc... there are people who would have taken a flame thrower to an information services department that looked anything like this, even going beyond the point of the video, just by how people's hair was, how they carried themselves, and what was on their desks above and beyond anything likely to be shown off for the video.
I guess what I'm saying is that tired and stressed people at meetings is pretty much a "given" for any workplace enviroment for the vast majority of people, and I think a lot of it is that going by some of the people I've seen in those videos, they probably haven't worked in many other enviroments to know exactly how good they have it. I doubt any of them working for these companies have had the experience of watching a co-worker escorted off property because his hair was too long, docked pay, and told that if it wasn't fixed by the next day they were on the street (and as someone who worked security, I have been the one sent to walk such people out). Simply not having to worry much about that kind of thing is a major perk that isn't being considered in comparitive terms.
