Software engineer is a position marked to be in decline of total number of jobs available in the United States, due to outsourcing and other factors.  As far as being forced or not forced, it would depend on what experience you have.  In the current economy, over 50% of college graduates with minimal experience are out of work or underemployed.  The IT industry itself has this absurd mix of requirements for like 3 month contracts.  I will say though, the videogame industry is likely worse than other parts of IT.

You are getting a vibe, just are misreading it.  As a person who has designed over 60 board and card games, and not counting game coding I have done, who remembers the videogame industry back to Pong and the arcades, I tend to have more of a bias in favor of small team project than larger ones.  It isn't east vs west, it is size.  I also see the trends in the videogame industry where costs are shooting through the roof, and even while logging recored revenues, they have a hard time breaking even.  I see the focus being not on gameplay, but on whatever it takes to increase production costs to add an extra level of polish that may or may not be worth it.  I also see, outside of the Indie realm, less and less genres.  I have witnessed genres get driven into the ground (music) because the industry thought it was best to milk it to death.  And then throw in my post here that, despite all this, the low level people face immense job uncertainty, combine with lousy work conditions.  I have also worked in the IT industry, and have seen death spirals hit projects due to mismanagement, and demands that could in no way be met.  

If you want to know my bias and vibe, it is this.

So, in a round-about way... you fit my point well. If you truly hated our work given its conditions, which you admit can be hard but you still love the job, then you'd look for other work.

This is my issue with this entire topic of making a big deal about the current conditions of the gaming industry. Its not for us, the consumers, or governments to muck with. Its for the employees and only the employees.

They have a choice. If they hate it and cry for change...then they can leave. If companies found it hard to gain employees.. guess what, it would change. If some companies (Nintendo) prove that they can actually increase productivity and revenue by changing from a must meet deadline strategy to a deliver when its done one, we'd have better games, happier devs, and a better ecosystem. But, the issue is all these yearly games and trying to cram stuff in.. as a project manager you must realize that you need to set achievable goals with real considerations.

... ok sorry about the off tangent rant.

point is... you make my case. You say its a tough environment but you like it overall and stay. I think that is why its still the way it is. Most people enjoy the game development far more than the times when things are crazy busy. However, it must suck to be in an environment a few poorly received games that you may of had no impact on original design for... causes massive layoffs. But, such is the entertainment industry overall.

I can get behind this, especially the bolded. I was gonna comment on how there are still small western devs that are doing ok and not facing the problems of some others, but you also mentioned indies, so that about covers it. However i dont feel that eastern devs are immune to this, didnt SE, Sega & Capcom close down some devs. and dont get me started on the Fabulos Crstallis Nova or whatever the hell its called

In order to do ok, and be able to stay in the game, you have to be able to entertain people with games that differentiate themselves sufficiently you don't have a red ocean bloodbath competing foe the same limited audience.  The attributes of the game have to be both sufficiently unique and appealing enough, enough people buy the product.  A kicker that happens with the industry is that they decide to increase the production value and drive up costs, to the extent that the investors backing it want to see a track record that a product will sell.  The end result is that the industry, as costs go up, end up focusing on smaller and smaller niches that have track record, and you end up with a glut, which then is a bubble, and it pops and genres die.  Things get stale.  The only way around this is to keep development costs WAY down, and have stuff that provides something new, and able to recover costs.  This is why smaller shops can make it, but other ones get closed down.   This cycle I find particularly problematic, because is how the industry thinks.  Luckily, smaller shops can get around it, and also the industry is getting freaked by the likes of Angry Birds being the BIG thing, because if small shops can make it, they can't have their same level of teams, and they don't get the same level of funding.  End result you have individuals in Nintendo fuming about the threat the iPhone is doing, and Sony trying to push the PSP as "real gaming", rather than the throw the paper in the trash game.

Just another reason to play PC games and enjoy all the brilliant small team games.

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!