Actually to put things into a different perspective: From a lot of what I've heard and run into over the years things aren't QUITE what Shamus paints or haven't been. Game developers tend to be seriously overpaid for relatively safe, easy, white collar work. The value of a degree in a world where nearly everyone has one isn't much, sure it takes a lot of money to go to school to learn this stuff, but that's true for just about everything. I spent a fortune taking Criminal Justice classes (specializing in Forensics) for example, and wound up working Casino Security, never had many serious problems, but the dangers were present, and I made a fraction of what the white collar brigade did.
At the end of the day like a lot of white collar professions, management, travel and tourism, various artistic professions, etc..., tend to get it into their head that they aren't going to have to work at all and are going to enter into some kind of individualistic position where they are going to spend less time working and more time socializing as they do things at their own pace. In reality someone who say goes into Resteraunt and Hotel Management usually winds up being a gofer for the owners rather than being someone who runs the place and tells other people what to do. Someone going into IT fields is expected to actually run around and fix things, and do it at a rapid pace since things are always going to need work, not to hang out and smoke and joke in a workshop, doing a bit of work here and there, while raking in the money.
Some game developer needing to go out and actually work constantly, pounding out lines of code, allegedly surprises people who aren't expecting to have to work that way on the job. Having a pile of debt as Shamus puts it is simply being a modern of American, that's what everyone who goes to school winds up with, and as far as how much you get paid it's never as much as you hope for in school. You take a look at what a game developer actually makes and compare it to oh say a Casino Security Officer, all without every having to wonder if he'll get his neck sliced with a beer bottle while responding to an incident in a night club, and it's a pretty sweet racket.
Of course then again there is the whole other point to the game development racket that a lot of people overlook which is how the cost of computers and materials are minimal compared to these massive budgets, the big cost is of course going towards human resources which gives you some idea how much game developers are making. The game development costs constantly rising as these people demand more and more money even with the layoffs and such. What's more one of the big reasons why a lot of games go over budget and such is because apparently a lot of game developers DO have rather bohemian policies which means that the developers get paid out of the game budget without doing all that much in the way of actual game creation. Occasionally leading to these infamous "Crunch times" where it turns out all the time goofing off needs to be made up to get a game out before the release date and the publisher comes hunting for heads. Such last minute rushes are also apparently why a lot of games are released in such a craptastic stake. Developers might have spent 3.5 years of a game development cycle ordering pizza and playing Magic The Gathering, and then had to do the meat of actual game creation towards the end.
Now you might be saying "Hey Theru, what's your source on this?" well, while it's not popular there have been some exposes of sorts over the years. While it was blasted by those with "friends in the industry" I still remember an old Maxim article about "Why Game Developers Drive Ferraris" which gave a list of job titles and the actual pay scale expected at each one (albeit years ago). In addition I've actually paid attention to some of this "behind the scenes" stuff over the years where they do tours of game development studios and the like, going past the cubicles where people work, and so on. To say that they aren't professional looking workplaces, full of toys, people goofing off, and so on is an understatement. If I did a walk through of a cubicle farm at the casinos (IT, accounting, human resources, etc...) and it looked anything like that I'd probably be called upon to make a report while upper management went on a bloody warpath. While again it was years ago, I remember seeing some behind the scenes stuff for Alan Wake that had me thinking "you know, I'm not surprised these guys started out with plans for this open world horror game, and then created a linear shooter that wasn't even close to what was originally suggested". When Relic (I think it was) went out of business I read some articles about their abandoned offices, and one thing that got left behind was a broken statue of a 40k Space Marine. Now granted that is one of their IPs, but I do have to ask what that is doing in their work space, and furthermore who exactly commissioned a one of a kind plastic (presumably) statue, and who paid for it?
Now yeah, this does kind of make me a jerk, but the bottom line is that I think Game Development is a fine field for those who want to go into it, I just think a lot of people that do get involved tend to be drama queens, like a lot of the white collar brigade, not bothering to look at how everyone else is doing. Of course then again I have a fair amount of disrespect for most white collar professions. Respond to a rowdy hotel room party, fight at a gaming table, alcohol shut off, disturbance in a bar or night club, or try and help handle a drug overdose at a concert, or any one of dozens of other things I've done (albeit not constantly, mostly security is very quiet) and then QQ about how underpaid and stressful your job is. Piles of student debt? Welcome to America. A work commute that might take an hour, again, welcome to the real world. No time for a social life? Yep, that's the real world. Toughen up buttercup, and be glad you've never had to hold up a sheet to give the EMTs privacy while they try and save someone's life and fail (which has happened to me incidently) then tell me about how crappy your job can be. Worried about getting fired constantly? All employees are disposable, I did 6 years at one casino 4 at the other, in today's world that means I saw people come and go through the job, all people are disposable to employers, it sucks, but that's life. It's not something unique to "game development" it's simply normal. In any job you need to find ways to make yourself indispensable (in my case I went in for every bit of special training and every special qualification I could get).
