Are games companies upside down?

In most highly regarded professions such as:

dentists,
lawyers,
GPs,

the professional is the boss and employs receptionists/nurses/telephone operators to deal with bookings and the public. (Not always, for example there are some No Claim No Pay companies where the lawyers are at the bottom).

But in the game industry the professionals:

programmers,
artists,
etc.

are usually at the bottom whilst the bosses are the people who are people managers and sell to the public.

This is not always the case for example in small collectives of artists and programmers they may hire a PR person to do their bidding.


Also, the culture of freelancing for artists and programmers puts the social status of themselves as subservient to the client. i.e. you would go and freelance for a big important company. Whereas a dentist would rarely freelance for a company (maybe except army dentists).

There are some exceptions, such as in Facebook, Google and Microsoft where the programmer(s) is/are at the top of the pile. And usually these are the most successful companies.

So why do you think creative people tend to sell themselves or their time to big corporations rather than being head honcho themselves. Instead of being like Sachi and Sachi and have the big companies crawling to them? Is it a lack of confidence among creative people or a lack of ambition or just a lack of percieved social status that for example lawyers, doctors etc. might get from their (usually) private
education. Is it a class issue?

Discuss.

 

Managers exist for a reason.
Not all managers have a reason to exist.

 

What are you basing the assumption on? I see a lot of studios where the head honcho was one of the original programmer/artists.

 

Definitely an interesting observation, but there's still always someone above the dentists and lawyers. The dentist operates on your mouth, the programmer programs. Their position is the same.

Games are a luxury, we're at the mercy of clients because we don't survive otherwise.

 

Let me just jump in here for him.
The thing is that even though they're the head of the studios, they often don't have much to say.
Although it's more complicated, it all boils down to one huge problem in today's game industry:
Publisher-owned rights
If the publisher owns the rights to your IP or even your studio, it doesn't matter who's the head of your studio anymore. The publisher calls the shots and the publisher wants to make the investors (read: People who don't give two S***s about the games, just want as much money from other peoples work as possible) happy.

I recommend you to watch The Jimquisition, as he made quite a few episodes on this issue. It's always sad when some of his more hurting theories on the game industries problems get confirmed by actual developers. (Example)
It's a good show I can only recommend.

 

HAHAHA!!!
So true.

 

Cool, thanks for the links will check it out!

On a not really related note I also see this weird disconnect where game developers sometimes don't play games/aren't gamers, I blame this for the multitude of crapware out there.

 

Agreed. Games are for entertainment, and like all entertainment, it can be lived without. I will die if I don't see a doctor for a serious wound, but I won't die if my K/D is too low.

 

Unless you're an 11 year old who dies from a blood vessel rupture from screaming too hard.

 

*SMH* lol.

 

Are they upside down in australia?

And if you are solo developer... which way is up? lol

 

Arguable. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and probably quite an inefficient one too. Hell, even the most ruthless dictatorships offer some entertainment for the people.

Also, if you play Civilization, entertainment is a means of happiness. IIRC, at least some of your happiness points need to come from entertainment sources (luxuries, coliseums etc) if you want to be successful at that game. And because I learned this fact from a game, it must be true

 

That is not true at all. I mean, you could consider Zuckerburg a programmer since he knows how to do it, but he doesn't actually write code at his job; he works as a manager.

It sounds like maybe you haven't had a job out in the real world yet? Having a manager doesn't mean you're "less" than the manager. The manager's job is to keep a group of people organized and shield them from having to deal with clients/other managers directly, so that the engineers can actually do their jobs. Most professional coders don't want to spend all day going to meetings and telling people what to do. They want to code.

 

I think ideally...this is the case. The manager (should be) there to facilitate the technical people to get the work done. It should be a mutually beneficial relationship, where the professional (doctor, programmer, whatever) is the expert on subject at hand. Management is there to handle the "administrative" tasks, assist with project management, and make sure people have what they need. I mean...a surgeon needs to be able to focus on being the best surgeon he can, for his hospital. Not working with administration and such, it's just not the best use of his time.

But on the other side of the coin...developers on projects can't just ignore deadlines and such. If they don't want to worry about those sorts of things, they have to accept that they are accountable to someone else for their results and not act like prima donnas. I mean...in the end, everyone needs to be accountable for their work and what they do. It's also built on trust and mutual respect for each other.

Unfortunately, most places I have been don't see management as enablers for their employees. There is a chain of command. Titles count for more than how well you actually contribute to your team's success. People are generally only accountable to the people above them, not below. I mean...look at how pay generally works. Guys doing the work get less. Guys planning meetings and keeping tabs on the guys doing work get much, much more. Executive retreats are a must have. Training for the employees is not.
It's just a really messed up system in a lot of ways. Having confidence (not arrogance) in your abilities and skills is a huge thing. My suggestion is don't work somewhere where they feel they are doing you a favor by hiring you.

 

It really comes down to how the cash flows in those different businesses. Those professionals that you mentioned can bill hourly. They recoup the money for their efforts at a steady rate.

A professional game designer does not. They have a lopsided cash flow, where the long development process is a cash burn and then profits are made in a short period upon release. Therefore, there are different business dynamics in play.

A law or dentistry professional has their goals aligned. The better they are at the job, the more rewards they will make
(billable time). They have upfront costs (as you mentioned: support staff, and offices etc). If they work too little, they will go bankrupt. Their profits are directly proportional to their work output.

A game development company has the opposite business dynamic. They have a limited amount of money to spend before release, before they go bankrupt. Therefore, they have incentives to reduce the time spent on production to a minimum. There is a relationship between effort and profit, yes, but game polish has diminishing returns and increased cost, unlike the other types of professionals that you mentioned. To maximize his profit, the business owner has incentive to only put in the minimum possible effort to make a good game, and no more.

In order for the "developer-god" model to work, you need to have very talented developers who can produce quickly (see: Valve). Otherwise, you run the risk of simply not finishing the work and going bankrupt.

 

The people "at the top" are the people who front the capital. They may be game developers themselves or they may not. They may care about the product or they may not. If the company is public then major decisions are voted on by anyone with stake (shareholders). They want to get their investment back as anyone would. When you front the capital then you can be the boss. Lawyers and doctors are in a different business. They aren't making capital intensive products for consumers, but if they are on payroll, then they have a boss. Investors are not receptionists. Lead game designers, creative directors, and producers are also not receptionists. Sometimes the executive producer is also the owner. Sometimes the executive producer is just an experienced person on payroll. One might argue that a smart publisher will defer to the developer's judgement. Then again sometimes developers are more short sighted than publishers.

 

So I think the problem is that talented game developers/artists/designers don't often have a lot of capital to start a business and are not very good at getting investors. So they must sell themselves as "wage slaves" to employers. I use that word for any job where you are not allowed to leave without giving a few months notice and so are essentially owned by your boss.

But where does a dentist get the money from to start his business?

My suggestion is that lawyers, doctors and dentists either start from well-off families or they have good connections from their private education.

Artists, musicians and other creative people usually come from families of creative people who often don't have a lot of money.

Whereas lawyers, doctors usually come from well off well-connected families. It is the standard career of the upper-middle-class.

Also, as a new sector banks aren't willing to invest in games companies.

An exception is someone like Bill Gates whose dad was also rich. Or Mark Zuckerberg who went to Harvard one of the most esteemed Universites (and whose dad owns a dental business).

How can we solve this situation? Maybe we need a revolution!

 

In short, supply and demand.

Your analogy is flawed from the start. Some lawyers have their own office. Some doctors have their own office. But the majority of both work for firms and care facilities, so by your wording, most lawyers and doctors are 'wage slaves', and I would say their hours are worse than game developers.

But for the lawyers/doctors/dentists valid for your example, I'll use a dentist example, because I know it much better. If I had no insurance, and went and got my teeth cleaned, it would take less than an hour, and cost about $120. Other procedures can cost quite a bit more per hour. Obviously, a good portion of these fees go to wages, materials, rent/utilities.

There's nothing to solve...

As a developer, you also have the option of finding your own clients, as many on this site/gamedev.net do, but most people are better off just working for a company, because finding consistent work is a pain in the ass ; )

-Alamar

 

Would have thought indies being the most common developer disproved the OP theory.