10 Things Video Game Developers Wish You Understood Better

I think there's this assumption that, just because you're sat at a desk, working in games is somehow... a triviality. Easy-peasy. Potsy-pie.

Yet the percentage of mental and physical illness in game development jobs is shockingly high (with a recent industry census noting as many as 40% suffering some form of mental illness).

(I, for one, am pretty bored of hearing the same old remarks from guys that work as soldiers, firefighters, lion irritators or acid-drinking contestants, telling me not to complain because they almost die every day... like those jobs don't somehow invite and expect danger. Like you said - we work on computers. We don't expect the danger to be so high).

Between the notoriously long hours, the constantly-high expectations and seemingly perpetual onslaught from alleged "fans" (who bypass the game to simply insult and berate the individual), it's not impossible to conceive of reasons why game development has one of the highest percentages of mental health sufferers amongst all professions.

Anecdotally, I know several individuals suffering depression, agoraphobia, social phobia, and anxiety all brought on from this perfect storm of stress-creation.

What isn't talked about enough is how these conditions tend to avalanche into physical maladies - for example, I overworked to the point I started missing all my meals. This in turn became anorexia, which exacerbated my brittle bone disease. A dear colleague of mine found himself in a similar scenario and now suffers from a form of Crohn's disease.

They say that "stress is the killer" - but that ain't the half of it. With enough tormenting and outside cruelties, your inner stresses can quite easily become outer crises.