Game Developer Reacts To A Day In The Life Of A Game Developer

the other day i stumbled upon a video titled a day in the life of a japanese game programmer it reflects a real world person working for one of the biggest game development companies in the world and how they spend their typical work day so i want to go through this video and comment all the things that i see good and the bad so let's get into it this is masa 23 year old programmer living in tokyo and working for one of the largest video game companies in japan the first thing that i want to reflect here is and this is a question for people who live in japan and again this is not for me making fun of this or bashing or whatever but i just want to ask is it typical for people to have this small apartment when i say for people i mean people you know like young people living alone because i know how hard it is to live in a small apartment especially when you have family members because i used to live with my four family members so us five were living in a two-room apartment it's really hard it's you don't have any privacy you cannot you can't get any work done and so on and so forth so is it typical that you as a program are working for one of the biggest game development companies in the world that you cannot you know rent a better apartment for you to enjoy yourself to have more space on and so forth and this is how he starts his work day he lives alone in a typical japanese apartment which are known for their efficient use of space like this enclosed unit bath with built-in sink facilities masa how long does it take for you to get ready for work today like most salary man in tokyo he commutes to work by train door-to-door about 40 minutes so it's not bad but more than half of this trip is walking to and from the train station not pleasant on rainy days like this so the first thing that i see over here is as soon as he gets up he just washes his face he goes to the bathroom does his thing dresses up and goes to work basically as soon as you wake up you go to work second thing is and this is an answer to all of you guys who have asked me why don't you work for a big game development company because you're good and so on and so forth well because these game development companies the big ones are usually stationed at big cities and this is why i don't like big cities as you can see he needs to go or walk from work to home it takes him 40 minutes with trains and so on and so forth and as you saw it can get really ugly in typical rainy days like the one you see in the video which i find you know annoying i just find it annoying because you lose 40 minutes to go from work to home and another 40 minutes to go back from work to or from home to work and 40 minutes from work to home that's you know one hour and 20 minutes just going back and forth what if you want to go to gym what if you want to meet your friends and so on and so forth you can see how you know you lose a lot of time when you live in a big city should be coming soon but the typhoons these months have been really really crazy and look the trains are super packed crazy typhoon right works for bandai namco studios which is the network entertainment unit of bandai namco group they're known for developing popular game pedals like tekken mario kart and even pac-man and there's about a thousand employees in the tokyo office spread across five floors that's his digital time card he's officially clocked in now [Music] also common in many japanese companies is for employees to change in the slippers for the work day so this is masa's office very common japanese style desk with low dividers so mata keeps his desk simple like many of his co-workers as you saw he wake up at 8 15 in the morning he washed and all of the stuff that he did and he arrived at 9 50 at his workplace so it took him about an hour and 10 or 15 minutes to get to his work and as soon as he got to work he sat down and he started to work and why i say this because a lot of people were like yeah that's what you usually do at work yeah but you see he is all wet from the rain and and from you know i i this lab that you just saw it's not because i'm mocking him or whatnot it's the it's the irony over here you know it's the irony because he should you know be treated with you know respect the company should she would respect he should have closed to change at his work space especially on rainy days because i see this is not that uncommon in japan or wherever his city is so you know like you sit down in a wedding pants and you start to work right away as soon as you get from you know walking or going through trains and walk for over an hour it's very different when compared to western deaths which are often littered with decorations and family pictures first thing in the morning he checked his email as well as the internal company social network for updates while also having a quick breakfast masa where did you buy another thing that i find sad with a lot of big game development companies is that as you can see the person so masa in this video he bought his juice and he bought a cookie to eat why the company doesn't provide a food stamp stand or whatever is it called where he can get whatever he wants to eat especially in a big company like this it should be easy for them to create you know a small cafeteria where you know nasa and other people can just come over there don't spend their money to eat whatever food they want and they can eat peacefully and not eat and work at the same time this is also one of the things that i don't like with big companies and i'm not saying that all game companies do this but a lot of big game development companies especially when they're working on a big project and especially when a deadline is near you basically devote your whole life you eat at your desk you sleep at your desk you take a piss you take a at your desk you bat at your desk and you work at your desk and you will die at your desk basically it's like that it's gonna be some time before he has kind of like a break because he's pretty focused so let's go walk around the office and see what kind of facilities they have so right behind mazda's desk they have a game corner kind of place right here and they have the switch they have playstation they have xbox and they even have some virtual reality gear i guess you get to play games anytime you want which is pretty cool oh wow and just below here there's a big big computer i think it's an alienware computer looks like one powerful machine so as you saw the guy was commenting about the consoles and all the virtual gear and everything that you have over there and he said well i guess you get to play games anytime you want that is not true you will see from this video and especially i'm talking for this video i don't know if this is in every game development company like this but you will see later on in this video that nasa doesn't get a lot of time to play video games because he works most of the time like 95 of his time spent in the company he needs to work and those five percent other time that he gets he needs to eat rest a little bit and so on and so forth so no he doesn't get to play video games anytime he wants all right so this is the break room area on the second floor let's see what they have just separate all of the trash you have your burnables you have your cans and your bottles and you also have non-brandables like plastic they have a hot water pot and microwave so this behind me is a snack corner but it runs on the honor system so basically at the top you have a place where you deposit money all the different chocolates or candies they have a price for it and even the refrigerator has a frozen treats like ice cream and whatnot and you just need to pay on the honor system and then you take what you actually paid for i don't know how would this do in your country's office all right and so apparently this is one of the perks or one of the amazing things that you have at the company you have you know like one microwave for a thousand employees if you remember you know they said the beginning of this video that they have like a thousand employees so you have one microwave you have you know one hot water burner whatever is it called and you have treats that you need to pay for again i'm really amazed by this especially for a big company like bandai namco they created tekken and all the you know big games i'm amazed by the fact that they don't have free food and free snacks and free drinks and free whatever not for their employees but you need to pay for some honor system i don't know what that is maybe that's some kind of a culture thing maybe that's a good thing but for me personally i would make it free you know if if if i would to choose i would make it free because why should i pay anything because i'm already working for you i'm already working a lot of hours on my daily you know life i'm working for you and coding for you why shouldn't i get free stuff especially for a big company that is not expensive to you know get to the employees to or for the employees and the employees would really appreciate that finally lunchtime so he's much as doki which means a co-worker who started working at the company at the same time in fact it's common for many japanese companies to do mass hiring once a year for college graduates just outside this dope cafeteria food trucks come during lunch time apparently the trucks vary each day but damn it doesn't look like a pleasant experience waiting in line during this typhoon masa do you always eat here so is this the only office in japan [Music] that's a decent option for lunch itadakimasu is a customary term used by japanese okay so he basically arrived at 9 50 a.m and he coded until 12 p.m which means 2 hours and 10 minutes he was coding on his desk until it was lunch break okay so now again they don't have lunch at their company and he needs to go outside of company and wait for this food stamp again on the rain where probably it's cold and it's you know the the wind is blowing and it's probably freezing and you need to wait until you get until on your turn to get to the food stamp and order food to eat especially with you know hundreds of employees inside of this building i i really don't understand what they do i really hope that at least the paycheck is you know fairly large but as you heard from this short segment over here that these people or nasa is a college graduate so it's like 22 23 years old he was probably hired as soon as he finished college so i really doubt that they have a big salary allocated to people who just started working for the company especially for fresh college graduates so again another negative so far that i see in the video before each meal meaning let's eat or thank you for the meal looks like they have a little time before their lunch break finishes i wonder where they're going what is that oh wow they take their pac-man serious here and like all the games here it's also free to play anytime so again this person or paolo who is recording this video he mentioned like all the games here are free to play anytime i don't think so because they are playing these games at the end of their lunch break and he said himself that they have a little more time left from their lunch break and they want to play games so basically let's say they have an hour or let's say assume they have one hour so he needs to go wait in a line to get the food as you saw and then when he eats he can go and you know relax a little bit and play games again he cannot play these games anytime he wants which again makes me really sad about you know the industry in whole they should treat people with more respect with more you know benefits and so on and so forth so what are you doing now so i've kind of got some free time while masa is working so so it looks like masa is not in the sea right now he's supposed to be here but i guess not maybe he went somewhere let's go find out where he is oh there's masa he's having a scrum meeting i believe he has this meeting every day for 30 minutes they review what they programmed the previous day what needs to be done today and share and discuss problems for the future and they use software to manage all the tasks and display it on the screen during the meeting oh are you gonna code again okay zamasu has a full-on employee nap space at his office and he even brought his own heated steam eye mask he sure doesn't mess around when it comes to his naps what is that so he got back from his lunch at 1pm which means one hour for lunch as i predicted i mean i'm psychic and after that he started to code again until 2pm and then he had a meeting for 30 minutes and he needs to continue coding even though he said he's tired so he went at the corner of the company to take a nap i mean what was that what was that i mean it was a chair you cannot even lay down how can you take a nap while sitting down i mean is the budget that low that you cannot afford a couch or i don't know whatever that your employees can you know lay down and sleep like a person is meant to sleep but yeah there is one positive over here which they offer free drinks which he got over here and yeah thank god there is something free offered here in the company now he's back to his coding again so basically this is what masa does all day i mean from morning till the afternoon until evening before he goes home he is programming like this in front of a black screen oh he's going with finance department to ask about expenses so this is the second scrum meeting the sprint review held once every two weeks usually they combine it with their first scrum meeting but due to scheduling issues with one of the other members they had to break up the meeting today it is interesting though that they use post-it notes to do their final review i guess sometimes analog is just better by the way the meeting rooms can be booked from this digital panel here that's pretty convenient now he's finishing up his tasks checking emails that he missed during the meeting and writing a log of today's activities yay finally work is done so after taking that painful nap again he had another meeting for i don't know 30 minutes and then he went back to coding overall he was coding for another five hours after he went on his first launch break which now is 7 p.m so he arrived at the office at 9 50 and he is going away at 7 pm that's like 9 hours in an office 9 hours and later on in the video you will see that he says when there is a schedule due they even stay over hours and i i can assume they are not paid this is what i hate about the industry actually what i hate about big companies that's why i advise a lot of people who ask me i tell them you should start working with an indie company an indian company they can afford to hire you of course but they generally treat their employees better than big aa companies because you know in big triple a companies you are just like one person out of you know one hundred thousand person and you're unimportant but in an indie company you're like a person in 20 people so you are kind of important because if you go that's like you know 10 of the company that went or 5 or whatever depending on how many people are there but you know in a big company if you go if you leave you're simply not important but as you can see even though he was tired he took a small nap he continued to code for another three hours which is you know a lot of time coding don't get me wrong i enjoy creating english i enjoy sitting on my computer here in the keyboard but i cannot stay and code for five hours i cannot code six hours a day it's really exhausting especially if you you know don't have a place to rest thank god that i work in my own office with my own rules with my own schedule and i can you know rest whenever i want to rest and take a nap or you know eat whatever i want to eat and so on and so forth but i particularly find this you know really sad the sad aspect of game development that i think should be improved a lot in the next few years so that you know people will love to work for big game companies and not you know go there be excited work on a big project and then get disappointed with all the conditions and everything that's inside the company that's not accounted inside of making that game you know just a little over eight hours but masa says he does have to do overtime once in a while during large projects overall though that's pretty good for a japanese company as many other places require their staff to work a lot of overtime hours which is often unpaid now masa is meeting up with his work friends for dinner otsukata is another customary office term often used to greet your co-workers a difficult translation loosely translated to mean thank you for your work and today is payday and it's friday as well so time to let loose of it usually in japanese drinking culture everyone orders drinks at their own pace while everyone shares the food group splits the entire tab equally at the end no matter how much each person drank or ate also smoking indoors in japan is fine as long as the restaurants are okay with it which is usually the case with izakaya drinking restaurants so masa what else do you do in your free time [Music] even after work his pc desk is his go-to spot masa do you watch youtube well i don't know much about gundam but i can tell from looking around he sure loves it so what are you gonna do for the rest of the night [Music] is going to be doing this for another couple hours it looks like you'll be doing this until so at the end of the work day he finally gets to meet his friends and go and you know blow some steam as you know people say so at the end of the work day he finally got to meet his friends and blow some steam as people say in usa i believe i don't know anyways again i find this you know after this hard working day he goes with his friends you know what was that for an hour or two to enjoy himself which is you know very little time you know when i say very little time i mean that you need to balance your work with your enjoyment with the things that you love to do i'm not saying that you should hate your work i love my work and i love every second of it but i also love enjoying being by myself thinking about things you know whatever things that relax me and so on and so forth and after that he went back home which is another 40 minutes you know walking and going through trains and so on and so forth and he arrived at his home where he plays with his robot things and so on and so forth i really i really find this you know sad a little bit because i don't know like 90 of his day is spent with sleeping and working and like 10 is time for him at the end of the day creating this model or however these you know toys are called and so on and so forth i don't know i don't know for me particularly i wouldn't want to be this guy or any person who works in a company similar like this i'm not bashing him i'm not making fun of him i'm just saying the reality of working for a big game development company me personally i would look for an indie game company to work for just because they look at their employees better maybe if i get really really good conditions in a big company handwritten signed and so on and so forth stamped or whatever so that i can expect or know what to expect then i will work at a big game development company but otherwise you know with conditions like this i don't want to you know no matter how high the pay is i don't want to spend like 85 percent of my life working for somebody else making him rich and you know just die at the end of my life i don't want to spend my life like that so i would rather work for myself even though i don't get to be rich any you know at the end of my life you know i don't get to be rich you know i don't get to have millions of dollars expensive cars apartments and so on and so forth i would rather prefer that and be happy than work for a big company and still i'm saying still if the pay is that high but from what i can see and assume from this video the pay is not mentioned but i you know like two to three thousand dollars people who work in japan especially people who work in big game development companies who know this maybe you know i'm wrong tell me if i'm wrong but this is my assumption anyways i didn't like the majority of things i saw in this video i think they could get better and improved a lot especially because people are doing hard work they should be rewarded and i really don't have anything else to say except you know don't mind download my game links in the description below and yeah see you guys in the next video

Channel: Awesome Tuts - Anyone Can Learn To Make Games

Views: 103,747

Keywords: day in the life of a game developer, day in the life of a game developer student, game development, game developer, a day in the life of a indie game developer, indie game development, game development job, how to get a job as a game developer, game development employee, how to learn game development, how to learn game development free, one year of game development, how to create games, how to become a game developer, game development in a nutshell, mobile game development

Id: kpQVK_ZjoMU

Length: 24min 28sec (1468 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020