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It's quite possible it's improved, but it seems there's still a culture of: developing this game will be your life. Almost every single acceptance speech at this year's Game Developer's Choice awards involved the team thanking their family for their understanding / apologizing for not being around for the past 6 months / etc. After hearing that over and over from the acceptance speeches in succession, it gave a pretty strong impression of the industry still being a pretty oppressive place to work.

(The IGF segment, for indie-game awards, seemed to involve much happier devs, except that many thanked their families for indulging their unfunded, nonsalaried quest.)




And I don't think the apologizing to families and stupid hours will ever completely go away because working in games for many is a big part of their life/identify/pride for better or worse. Given 1 year or infinite years, some people will choose to make their current project their life. Just as many choose to make their startup/band/sport/passion their life.

The only problem comes when the studios, like EA Spouse, get abusive and ridiculous due to incompetent management. However, over the last 5 years of being tangentially and directly involved in games, I see this happening less and less.




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