I've gotta say I disagree with this whole thing about 12 hour days, sleeping in the office and little to no breaks. I don't work in the industry but I think its wrong. Just because someone is passionate about their job and enjoys it a lot doesn't mean they deserve less pay or to be treated like work horses.
Here in Canada many of the leading developers have been named in Canada's top 100 employers. They are known for great business practices. While I know some studios still work their staff to death a lot of studios have changed that model and are treating their staff better. Look at what happened to Midway when they began pushing longer hours and less breaks. They rushed their teams to make products and those games turned out bad.
Also their are tons of cases of studios working their staff so hard that they leave and go independent. I think big publishers and developers who actually make some money are using that money to treat their staff better.
Also about their being so many job's for IT guys to go into. Well I knew two guys who went to BCIT here in British Columbia. Both tried getting any career, anywhere. They couldn't find a job nobody wanted to hire them (Including the game companies) the IT sector is not as strong as it used to be. So game developers could leave their jobs and hope to find another one, but fact is the jobs are few and far between.
A lot of tech companies are out sourcing to India and China. If you have a job in North America its probably smart to hang onto it. Especially if you enjoy the job your doing.
Honestly I think game companies should have unions. If they need to boost retail prices by 10$ a game then the whole industry should boost retail prices a bit to enable them to hire more staff to relieve the existing ones! Theirs no excuse for some of the business practices that have been reported!
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
