Sure it's a cool job

Mel

But do games pay?

I thought it was an interesting read and this part struck me:

“Full-time game developers in most states are classified as exempt, meaning they're not eligible for overtime,” says Jill Duffy, managing editor of Game Developer Magazine and the principal researcher on the salary survey. “Developers do work immense amounts of overtime.”

They also talk about burnout which I would imagine can happen easily.

fajerkaos

Now, don't try to scare our new friends here, they might not have thought about all this yet

Squinky

I read a lot of horror stories (remember ea_spouse?) before I did any kind of work in the industry, and expected that it was going to be hell. Imagine my surprise when I came to Telltale and discovered that everyone* seemed to be leading balanced lives, and some were even Married With Children and working from home three days a week. Then again, would Telltale be considered a "casual" game company?

* Well, except Doug and Jake, while they were busy working on the new Telltale site.

LuigiHann

Burnout is expected, especially if you work at EA.

... *rimshot* (It works on TWO levels!)

AdamG

Burn-outs only happen when game companies take themselves too seriously. You're making games so other people can have fun. If you don't have fun when you're making the games, the people playing them won't have fun either. I think that's one of the main reasons why Telltale can actually make adventure games that are successful, because they have a sense of humor.

P.S. Game design and coding, ect, is definately overtime worthy in my book. I tried making an adventure game in QBasic when a was a little kid, but I never finished it because it was so dull to do. I would think the government would be more then happy to let them have overtime, that way they could tax them extra. Go figure.

Laserschwert

Working as a 3D-graphics guy I do tons of overtime. This January I was just alternating between 30 hours of work and 10 hours of sleep, for about 3 weeks. After that the burn-out was really massive. Yet, those crunch-times are mostly exceptions.