The Game Industry Has Spoken: Remote vs. Hybrid vs. On-Site
The prequel to this post is Why Remote Workers are Increasingly Less Productive, Anxious, Depressed, and Lonely. But don’t worry, you can enjoy the sequel first, just like with Star Wars.
I’m a curious product person at heart. I love setting a bold hypothesis and then testing it against data. I’m also not married to any of my ideas and I’m willing to change my opinion against compelling data-supported arguments. The winning condition is not proving my hypothesis right. Winning for me is understanding the why.
Last week I presented a hypothesis about Why Remote Workers are Increasingly Less Productive, Anxious, Depressed, and Lonely. This week, I will test this broader industry hypothesis against our very own gaming industry.
So without further ado, let's examine how satisfied our industry is with their work and whether remote, hybrid, or on-site plays a significant role in job satisfaction.
Most of us have been in games for a long time and are now working remotely
“A lot of places have room to do better. I have worked remotely for my last four employers and they each handled it differently with varied success. But I have landed and stuck at my current studio, which handled it the best because they make room for us to navigate what works best for us and provide real support through the challenges to get us to a positive outcome.
A lot of remote work isn't working for other employers, because they put too much on the employees to adapt and they think they can just keep doing everything the same. Don't paint with too broad of a brush for this important topic.”
- Anonymous Developer from our survey
Three-quarters of people who participated in the survey have been in the games industry for over five years while nearly half of the participants in the survey have more than a decade in the games industry. This means that Deconstructor of Fun is read predominantly by the more senior folks in the industry - or that more senior folks were eager to reply to the survey. Likely both.
Over half of the respondents (57%) work directly on game development. Other significant groups are marketing folks (17%), executives (9%), and central service teams (7%).
The biggest group (37%) of respondents was working fully remotely. And if you add those who infrequently (not coming to the office even once per week) visit the office, the portion of remote employees replying to this survey climbs up to 58%!
The minority group, with only a little more than a tenth (12%) reported working on-site. Hybrid workers represented a third of the respondents.
Looking at the numbers, I can only imagine the dramatic difference from just a few years ago and what a profound impact this will have on the commercial real estate industry - but that’s a different story…
Overall, there wasn’t a strong correlation between years in the industry and whether a person was remote, hybrid, or on-site. My assumption is that the more junior folks would gain from working on-site, both in terms of skill development as well as building their network in the industry. Whether that assumption is correct or not, it’s not being implemented according to the survey,
Employees are happy. An increase in pay would make them happier.
“I am a Brazilian data analyst, I started my career in technology at the beginning of the pandemic, before that I worked in a model that required on-site work. Thanks to remote work, I was able to be hired by companies beyond my city, working with professionals from all over the country and beyond. I don't have to deal with traffic or worry about my safety when I get back from work late, I use the hours I would spend commuting to study, and take care of my health by exercising or cooking something.
I have more time for my family and I end the week less tired. I'm even less bothered by having to work overtime because I know I don't have to worry about going home.
I understand that it is a model that does not work for some people, but in my case, my anxiety has improved, I have more desire to see friends outside the work environment and more time to dedicate to hobbies and activities that make me happy.”
- Anonymous Developer from our survey
Overall, folks in our industry are feeling good about their jobs! four out of five respondents were happy or at least reasonably satisfied with their work at the moment with less than 10% actively looking for a new job. This is fantastic! We often talk about issues in working environments, but when looking at the data, it seems like those of us who are actually looking for a new job are far and few between.
Higher work satisfaction leads to higher retention of employees. On the flip side, it also makes it harder to hire experienced people who are working in the industry.
When it comes to what would increase already very high job satisfaction, pay is the primary driver (37%) with interesting projects (17.0%) and better work/life balance (14%%) trailing as the second and third factors. This might be because the majority of employees are working on projects they like and have already found a good work-life balance.
My hypothesis was that an increase in job security (7%) and a change of manager (9%) would have been more prominent reasons for increased satisfaction. Job security due to ongoing layoffs and managers due to the fact that it is the most common reason for a person to switch jobs.
Nevertheless, those two didn’t crack to the top three drivers for increased happiness in the survey. Partly this is because employees don’t worry about their jobs. And maybe a poor manager is not that big of an issue when you’re remote with very limited contact.
Although I am surprised of pay is so important for increased happiness. I’ve never met a person who is happy with their job while being paid handsomely under a bad boss, working on a hopeless project, having a poor work-life balance, and worrying about their job. My hypothesis is that pay increases would come after several other factors. But this is why we do surveys.
Further examining the relationship between years in the industry and happiness, we can see that those between three and 10 years in the industry seem proportionally more dissatisfied or even unhappy with their jobs. This is not explained by whether they are remote or hybrid. And frankly, I have no hypothesis here. Do share yours if you have one.
The Executives surely are happy at the office, right?
“For me, hybrid working has been and remains a huge advantage that’s made me and my team more productive. I think we have a rose-tinted view of the pre-COVID office as a beacon of creativity and collaboration, rather than a one size fits all solution that almost kind of works for most work activities.
How many times have we all stayed late or gone home and continued working because we just couldn’t get shit done with all the distractions during the day? Even now I see some teams at my company slip back into old patterns - people commute into the office, put their noise-canceling headphones on, and then struggle to get work done.
The majority of work for the majority of people at a games company is ‘doing’ work rather than talking work (us executives often forget that) and in many cases a big open-plan office isn’t the best environment.
I’ve made this work for my team by having us in the office less frequently (once a week) but making it explicit that the goal is to have meetings, to casually catch up with people, and to generally socialize. Focusing this time has made it more efficient, and the infrequency makes it more of an event. There’s more energy when you’re talking to someone you’ve not seen in person for a week, and conversations seem to be more interesting and productive as a result. Still figuring this out, but this seems to be an opportunity to use different work environments more purposefully rather than just stick people in a big glass box and hope for the best.
Also, we definitely used WFH as more of a scapegoat than it deserves to excuse our inability to get a handle on the current mobile gaming environment… this is anonymous, right?”
- Anonymous Executive from our survey
When it comes to the executives, many open answers to the survey were openly hostile towards this group of people for mandating on-site work. Based on the survey, the 49 executives were quite evenly divided between hybrid and remote work. And the only unhappy executives were those working in hybrid or on-site settings.
So based on this survey, the executives seem to at large share the same sentiment towards remote work as the employees. Meaning, they are just as often remote as their teams and are quite happy to continue to work remotely.
The fact that over half of the game's executives in this survey are remote is an interesting statistic given that media is filled with quotes from prominent tech executives mandating more time to be spent at the office.
My hypothesis, based on dozens of conversations with games executives, is that the push for on-site is something executives of large companies can afford. After all, they have the mass for it. Whereas executives of smaller companies don’t really have the option. Their studios often lack the same pull and their size is so small, that losing employees due to on-site mandates would risk ongoing projects.
The future looks peachy and remote - or should we say ‘remotely peachy’
“The biggest loss with working from home is being with other people acting on a shared purpose, satisfying the social needs of the human psyche. But a lot of time is devoted to working at a desk and I don't need to commute to do that. The key is to change how we work to make hybrid work. If you can, it will be better in the long run. An all-or-nothing approach, like most things in the game industry, will lead to not fulfilling potential.“
- Anonymous Developer from our survey
Nearly 60% of respondents to the survey said they are working remotely, yet only 41% believed this would be the way of working going forward for them. Respondents believe that they will spend more time at the office with hybrid going from the current 30% to 45%. On-site remained the same, which means that the employees don’t believe there’s going back to how we used to work before.
The final question of the survey probed on the employees' job security. Given the tech recession, with over 150,000 tech jobs lost in the US alone, the hypothesis was that folks in the games industry would also be worried about their employment.
Turns out, the majority (67%) are not worried about their employment. Only 4% see themselves having to look for a job in the near future with an additional 11% pessimistic about their employment and 18% who are neutral…
What do I think…
If you read the analysis Why Remote Workers are Increasingly Less Productive, Anxious, Depressed, and Lonely, you’ll notice that it didn’t write any of my opinions. There were some hypotheses, but they were mainly based on the presented data.
In fact, the writing covered both the pros and cons of remote work arriving at a hypothesis that the best way, based on data, is likely hybrid.
But I understand my influential position in this. And thus it is only right I expose my own opinion which is based on my own experience, discussions with my developers, executives, and investors around the World and the writing process during last week.
#1 I believe that for most creative organizations, hybrid work is the superior option
We can all agree that focused asynchronous work should be done without interruption in a setup of the employees' choosing. Whether that is at home, in a cabin, or at the office should be determined by the employee.
We can also agree that synchronous work reaps better results when done together in the same space with others. There’s seldom magic in an on-site brainstorming meeting or a development conversation. But they are, in my opinion, much more impactful done face-to-face than via video call.
In other words, even within the same company, there are different areas of work that require higher or lower touch or interaction. For example, under a hybrid regime, it might make sense to be together for 1-2 full weeks for road mapping, brainstorming, prototyping, or unsticking a team from a tough problem. Whereas, if you're in the swing of things and focusing on pure execution with clear marching orders, such as live operations, everyone being remote for even an extended period of time may work really well.
#2 I’m empathetic toward those working remotely
On an individual level, I definitely don’t fault anyone for working remotely. I also know from experience, that remote work is sometimes the only option for both the company and the individual.
In fact, I’m constantly trying to understand how to make remote setup work as well as hybrid. You’ll be hearing more podcasts from top publishers who have embraced remote setup and are crushing it due to it - not despite it.
I hope to deliver a remote work playbook for companies to avoid the pitfall and gain from the possibility of this setup. I also believe that these learnings will help to make the hybrid setup even better.
#3 I want to raise the pitfalls of remote work so that organizations can address them
Remote setup requires extra communication to keep the team aligned. At the same time, the loss of ad hoc communication between team members makes the less creative and agile.
Diligent remote employees end up doing too much work risking burning out. Less diligent end up slacking even more - or worse, taking on a second or even a third job they can work remotely. All the more junior team members are left behind with their career progression due to the difficulty if building their professional network in a remote setup.
Setting a common rhythm for a remote team is also harder. And on top of this, the challenges only increase with the size of the organization, the novelty of work done, and the range of locations people are hired from.
Most importantly, I just find it unlikely that you can build and maintain an engaging and outstanding company culture with people in a remote setup. A remote organization, to me, feels more like a group of contractors rather than a team that will gel and work together on multiple games and several pivots.
If an organization overlooks the issues that a remote work environment causes, it will never fix them and optimize its way of working against this setup.
#4 Barring an exception, I personally don’t see myself investing (anymore) in fully remote startups
This is not a unique position in any way. For example, founders of the prestigious Y Combinator (companies like Stripe, OpenSea, Reddit, Twitch, Machine Zone have all incubated there) Sam Altman and Paul Graham, have strongly come out against fully remote startups going as far as saying that it is one of the worst mistakes of the tech industry.
If I didn't have my own experience as a founder and a head of studios, I see myself rationalizing that Y Combinator founders are wrong. But then again, completely dismissing some of the most successful and experienced startup investors without a second thought doesn’t seem the right way to handle one's angel investment portfolio.
The exceptions for me are teams that have a proven track record of working remotely for years or founding teams that have a long history of working together as a team.
I think there are too many variables to get right when starting a company. If you're ALSO worried about creating a successful remote culture, it's a recipe for disaster. My advice is to get those other variables somewhat settled before worrying about remote. Another way I've seen work is by using a remote workforce as a pure execution play with outsourced teams.
The few exceptions I’ve invested happily into:
A long history of working together as a team: FunCraft is fully remote and absolutely crushing it. The founders go way back to the previous startup they established, which allows them to work perfectly together despite limited face time.
Remote workforce as a pure execution play: ODEEO, just like countless other Israeli startups, immediately set up a strong development team in Eastern Europe to overcome the challenges set by the very competitive (and expensive) Tel Aviv labor market.
Closing words…
In an extensively polarized world, for the sake of democracy, we need to be able to reply to arguments with well-crafted counterarguments. That creates dialogue and allows us as a society to find the middle ground.
In other words, this is an open invitation for everyone to do their own research on the optimal structure for different creative organizations. We at Deconstructor of Fun promise to review and publish them, assuming they pass the same review process this article has gone through.
In conclusion, I want to thank everyone for reading, commenting, and sharing your opinion.
I hope this has made you and your organization think about how to improve your setup for the greater good of your company.
