My personally experience is that game development isn't all that flashy of a job either. Most classmates that I went to uni with specifically didn't want to go into game development because of the shitty way the programmers are treated and how low the pay were. What people really want is to work at Apple or Google or Facebook or ect. None of which has anything to do with gaming. Gaming was for very specific people that actually like games and want to make them. There is still a lot of people who like gaming in CS so the talent is there.
However, the way I understand it tho, there is a lot of hopeful people who like gaming who would work for bread so the entry level positions are all terrible. You don't get a dev position and you will have to start out as QA or something else. The actual dev team is relatively small but the amount of QA and support is much bigger and you end up working on these things. Terrible pay, terrible work-life balance and terrible crunch time overtime. There is still a lot of people going into these positions, at the studio here, they don't even get hired as real employees but are set as contractors so there isn't even job security.
Personally think AAA game development is a terrible career.
Also the postings for Senior development roles permanently posted. It's not just for game companies either. I think the need for experienced people is industry wide, it seems hard for people to both have lots of experience and still be up to date on all the new technologies needed to lead development in an industry that moves so fast.
However, the way I understand it tho, there is a lot of hopeful people who like gaming who would work for bread so the entry level positions are all terrible. You don't get a dev position and you will have to start out as QA or something else. The actual dev team is relatively small but the amount of QA and support is much bigger and you end up working on these things. Terrible pay, terrible work-life balance and terrible crunch time overtime. There is still a lot of people going into these positions, at the studio here, they don't even get hired as real employees but are set as contractors so there isn't even job security.
Personally think AAA game development is a terrible career.
Also the postings for Senior development roles permanently posted. It's not just for game companies either. I think the need for experienced people is industry wide, it seems hard for people to both have lots of experience and still be up to date on all the new technologies needed to lead development in an industry that moves so fast.
