industry professionals at these expensive events, wearing their best clothes and celebrating the work they did, and not feel some form of bitter jealousy. Maybe if I’d been born into another situation, I too could be working in video games. Who knew?


BREAKING IN Thankfully, in 2021 I lucked into my first games industry job, a QA technician role at a local studio. I applied on a whim, crammed QA knowledge half an hour before and absolutely waffled my way through it with a level of confidence I wish I could tap into again. For some reason, they hired me! It paid minimum wage and didn’t alleviate the struggle, but I was working a job I actually WANTED to work, and for a time, I felt like I belonged. Moving between studios and networking, I became a passive observer to discussions on things like mortgages, investing, fancy trips to conventions abroad and people discussing “money saving tips” that really began to paint a divide. I started to feel like the aforementioned butter sandwiches, the shared baths, and the 8am bailiff visits and eviction notices weren’t a shared experience. Turns out, these experiences aren’t unique. Conversations with peers have highlighted that yes, there is a prominent low income and working class voice in the games industry, but it’s being overshadowed and brushed off by a wealth-driven, shiny public face that paints a rather luxurious view of the life of game developers. The face that strives to push our medium to have prestige parity with the film and television industries, is the same one that avoids the gaze of the developer worrying how their next rent payment will be made. The obsession with glamour and legitimacy for our craft to be seen as equal to those other industries, has systematically been built to discount the lived experience of those from a lower income background. Developers worry about paying their rent and feeding their kids, while the industry elite jet off to events and drench themselves in accolades. When concerns are raised, discussing money is treated as taboo and unprofessional - a myth manufactured by those who earn more than you could ever hope to, and have never struggled a day in their lives. (I remember being frogmarched into a private meeting room to be told to stop discussing my pay - that moment sticks with me, and will always be a driving factor to encourage more pay transparency.) For all its splendour, our industry continuously feels like a concentrated emblem of an aggressively middle class workforce. Built to fuel an expensive hobby, its inner


mechanisms and workings are designed to revolve around expensive opportunities and sacrificing personal freedoms to secure employment, without the offer of a fair pay to soften the blow. It’s no surprise then, that the games industry is continuing to fail its working class members.


HIRE LOWER We have expensive award shows and conventions all year round, where highly paid execs from billion-pound generating studios get up on stage to give thanks for their latest shiny game being given the financial opportunity to create the amazing technology, art, and stories that ultimately net them awards to bolster their already strong industry presence. Companies that, despite this financial success, still think it’s acceptable to pay their junior staff minimum wage and lay them off at every opportunity - the very same people that struggle to pay bills, are the ones building the products that give these studios the finance and fame to stand up at these glamorous events, and give a hollow speech thanking the people they can’t be bothered to pay a fair wage. When a small underdog developer occasionally makes the breakthrough to get recognition in these events, it’s romanticised and shown as something to strive for as an indie, instead of being identified as being a key indicator that the rareness of these occurrences means that the industry needs to do more to support its underfunded studios. This lack of financial support, is what routinely prices low-income people out of joining the industry, or starting their own studios. After all, would you rather make no money to put together something that will take five times as long as it would for a funded studio and worry about paying


June 2023 MCV/DEVELOP | 15


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