If working overtime on AAA games with giant budgets is the only way to succeed, 'then maybe the industry deserves to die,' says RPG veteran David Gaider: 'There is another way to be'

Gaming IndustryIf working overtime on AAA games with giant budgets is the only way to succeed, ‘then maybe the industry deserves to die,’ says RPG veteran David Gaider: ‘There is another way to be’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Summerfall Studios)

The main character, Grace, of musical RPG Stray Gods.

Underneath the professional atmosphere, there was a defiant tone to this year’s Game Developers Conference. During the GDCA awards, Larian Studios boss Swen Vinckecalled out corporate greedfor “fucking this whole thing up for so long,” and other developers gathered tohave a cathartic screamabout the state of the industry. In an interview with PC Gamer, Summerfall Studios co-founder and former Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider expressed similar conviction that something has to give.

“The way the games industry and game devs are heading right now—the type of existence they have—it doesn’t have to be that way,” Gaider said. “There is another way to be. I just want to see them all finally get unionized and get treated fairly.

“There’s this fear that exists—if we don’t have everybody working overtime and we don’t make AAA games that have $200 million budgets and the focus is on photorealistic graphics and 1,000-hour playtimes, we need to pack all that in and work everyone to death making it and that’s the only way to make games.

“If that’s true then maybe the industry deserves to die.Ifthat’s true. The thing is that I just don’t think it’s true.”

“We’re working four days a week right now at Summerfall,” Gaider told me, explaining his hopes for a change in the status quo. “You just have to make a schedule that is realistic, that actually doesn’t lie to the people that you’re reporting to above or to your own team. You work with the time you have; you make a game that makes the most out of the time you have and then the result is that you have employees who love what they do and don’t feel like they’re just a resource to be tapped.”

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