Dream Benefits at a Game Development Company [closed]

Question

Besides salary, what are the benefits you dream to get from a game development company as an employee?

For example, I would find these things useful for both, me and a company:

• Right to suggest own ideas.
• Everyone participates in the brainstorming process.
• 20% of the paid time spent on testing new games, making prototypes of own ideas, blogging about game development or giving presentations about related matter to colleagues.
• At least some of the code produced should be open sourced.
• Access to development-related books, magazine subscriptions.
• Credits in the developed games with all developers and links to their personal websites of their choice.
• International coworkers.
• No more than 40 hours per week for work required, but optional over-time is paid.

And if I founded a game development company myself in the future, I would like to have all that for the employees.

Answer 1

Small teams guaranteed. It's the number one way to keep game dev fun, and bring out the real passion and team spirit required to make great games.

A fair employment contract that does not try to steal ideas/code I come up with outside of work, or contain any nasty non-compete clauses.

When the pressure is on, weekends and holidays will be sacred. None of the 'no holidays between pre-alpha and submission' BS

Guarantee of a decent spec development PC with two 24" monitors or better (surprising now much old hardware, particularly monitors, is still in use at big studios)

Management that know the abilities of their staff well - their strengths/weaknesses/skills/specializations - and don't just treat them as 'Programming resource X'

A place that supports multi-talented developers. Artists that can do design/scripting, Coders that do a bit of audio work, etc - rather than 'you're a coder, your input about the art style is not welcome'

Understanding that 'you can't make a baby in 1 month by using 9 pregnant women'

Answer 2

The number one thing I'd look for from a game development company would be producers who actually understand the concepts in The Mythical Man Month. Everything else is just there to make up for the hours you'll spend in the office because they didn't understand it.

Answer 3

Realistically, I think paid overtime or time-off-in-lieu is a necessity. It's a simple thing, but it makes such a difference to know that you're going to be fairly rewarded for all the crunch. Unfortunately it's still fairly rare, at least in the UK.