<story><title>Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/opinion/video-games-layoffs-union.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adrianhel</author><text>And the type of software people make for free is not the same software people get paid to create.&lt;p&gt;I bet few people would be eager to develop banking software on their free time for instance.</text></item><item><author>slg</author><text>&amp;gt;In this case, the demand is “the ability to express myself to a huge audience.” People are willing to pay to do that. Because of that, they see any job where they get to do it as a net positive, even if the job is horrible.&lt;p&gt;This is true for any job that is just an extension of a hobby.  People put on local community theater productions in their spare time because they find it fun and fulfilling.  You don&amp;#x27;t have to pay people to do that, so the pay for people to do it professionally would naturally be low in a free market system.&lt;p&gt;Do you know another profession like that?  Software development.  People spend countless hours working on open source software for free just because they like it.  The open source community saves businesses billions in labor costs every year.  Would anyone suggest we get rid of the open source community so developers could be better compensated?  We are just lucky enough that the global demand for general software development is much
higher than the demand for video game development or theater&amp;#x2F;TV&amp;#x2F;movies that it can offset these other factors.</text></item><item><author>derefr</author><text>&amp;gt; the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of &amp;#x27;passion&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;So the “practical” solution is to change human nature? That doesn’t sound right. It’d be like saying that the practical solution to human trafficking is for people to stop visiting prostitutes; or that the solution to gangs’ drug income is for people to stop buying drugs.&lt;p&gt;In all these cases, you can quash &lt;i&gt;supply&lt;/i&gt;; or you can &lt;i&gt;constrain&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;regulate&lt;/i&gt; the way that the supply supplies, so that it doesn’t hurt people in the process; but—even in the most totalitarian state you can imagine—you can’t quash demand. Humans gonna want what humans gonna want.&lt;p&gt;In this case, the demand is “the ability to express myself to a huge audience.” People are willing to &lt;i&gt;pay&lt;/i&gt; to do that. Because of that, they see any &lt;i&gt;job&lt;/i&gt; where they get to do it as a net positive, even if the job is horrible. Because, in essence, they’re taking the original trade they had in mind (paying to reach an audience) and then balancing out an increase in the troublesomeness of doing that, with a payment for dealing with that troublesomeness that moves the needle all the way from “paying for” to “being paid for.”</text></item><item><author>CM30</author><text>&amp;gt; For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand&lt;p&gt;This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few &amp;#x27;passion&amp;#x27; driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten more are lining up for the &amp;#x27;opportunity&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;You can see this in all manner of arts or entertainment based fields, since there are far more people wanting to become artists&amp;#x2F;musicians&amp;#x2F;writers&amp;#x2F;whatever than there is demand for their services. You can see it in journalism, where in many cases organisations will try and get work done for free, and will pay so little that living off said wages is virtually impossible in a major city if you don&amp;#x27;t have a trust fund (though admittedly the huge increase in competition from the internet puts pressure there). And I even recall people saying it&amp;#x27;s one reason teaching wages aren&amp;#x27;t too high either.&lt;p&gt;Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of &amp;#x27;passion&amp;#x27;, and to go where their skills are appreciated&amp;#x2F;where they&amp;#x27;re treated better&amp;#x2F;fairly compensated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>archgoon</author><text>People would not want to build banking software for a specific company; however, if banks were to describe their problems in a sufficiently well defined way, people would cheerfully build various &amp;#x27;bank frameworks&amp;#x27; for free. Some college student would happily have it on their resume.&lt;p&gt;This of course would have to have banks be more open about how they operate, so it probably won&amp;#x27;t happen.&lt;p&gt;This is to say, it&amp;#x27;s not really the type of software that is the issue, but rather lack of openness about the problem domain.</text></comment>
<story><title>Making Video Games Is Not a Dream Job</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/opinion/video-games-layoffs-union.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>adrianhel</author><text>And the type of software people make for free is not the same software people get paid to create.&lt;p&gt;I bet few people would be eager to develop banking software on their free time for instance.</text></item><item><author>slg</author><text>&amp;gt;In this case, the demand is “the ability to express myself to a huge audience.” People are willing to pay to do that. Because of that, they see any job where they get to do it as a net positive, even if the job is horrible.&lt;p&gt;This is true for any job that is just an extension of a hobby.  People put on local community theater productions in their spare time because they find it fun and fulfilling.  You don&amp;#x27;t have to pay people to do that, so the pay for people to do it professionally would naturally be low in a free market system.&lt;p&gt;Do you know another profession like that?  Software development.  People spend countless hours working on open source software for free just because they like it.  The open source community saves businesses billions in labor costs every year.  Would anyone suggest we get rid of the open source community so developers could be better compensated?  We are just lucky enough that the global demand for general software development is much
higher than the demand for video game development or theater&amp;#x2F;TV&amp;#x2F;movies that it can offset these other factors.</text></item><item><author>derefr</author><text>&amp;gt; the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of &amp;#x27;passion&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;So the “practical” solution is to change human nature? That doesn’t sound right. It’d be like saying that the practical solution to human trafficking is for people to stop visiting prostitutes; or that the solution to gangs’ drug income is for people to stop buying drugs.&lt;p&gt;In all these cases, you can quash &lt;i&gt;supply&lt;/i&gt;; or you can &lt;i&gt;constrain&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;regulate&lt;/i&gt; the way that the supply supplies, so that it doesn’t hurt people in the process; but—even in the most totalitarian state you can imagine—you can’t quash demand. Humans gonna want what humans gonna want.&lt;p&gt;In this case, the demand is “the ability to express myself to a huge audience.” People are willing to &lt;i&gt;pay&lt;/i&gt; to do that. Because of that, they see any &lt;i&gt;job&lt;/i&gt; where they get to do it as a net positive, even if the job is horrible. Because, in essence, they’re taking the original trade they had in mind (paying to reach an audience) and then balancing out an increase in the troublesomeness of doing that, with a payment for dealing with that troublesomeness that moves the needle all the way from “paying for” to “being paid for.”</text></item><item><author>CM30</author><text>&amp;gt; For many kids who grew up with controllers in their hands, being a game developer is a dream job, so when it comes to talent, supply is higher than demand&lt;p&gt;This is basically the reason for low wages in quite a few &amp;#x27;passion&amp;#x27; driven industries. If a job is something enough people want to do, then talent is cheap and plentiful and companies can provide low wages and poor conditions that for every person who quits, ten more are lining up for the &amp;#x27;opportunity&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;You can see this in all manner of arts or entertainment based fields, since there are far more people wanting to become artists&amp;#x2F;musicians&amp;#x2F;writers&amp;#x2F;whatever than there is demand for their services. You can see it in journalism, where in many cases organisations will try and get work done for free, and will pay so little that living off said wages is virtually impossible in a major city if you don&amp;#x27;t have a trust fund (though admittedly the huge increase in competition from the internet puts pressure there). And I even recall people saying it&amp;#x27;s one reason teaching wages aren&amp;#x27;t too high either.&lt;p&gt;Unionisation may help, but the only practical solution is for people to stop taking on terrible jobs because of some sense of &amp;#x27;passion&amp;#x27;, and to go where their skills are appreciated&amp;#x2F;where they&amp;#x27;re treated better&amp;#x2F;fairly compensated.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>excalibur</author><text>&amp;gt; I bet few people would be eager to develop banking software on their free time for instance.&lt;p&gt;If a bank found someone who was eager to develop its software for free, it would have a pretty good reason to question their motives.</text></comment>