You are fortunate that you have the experience to make that decision. Lots of kids are sold on becoming game devs young, and the ones who succeed land a job at mega publisher studio who has all the financial capital to hire junior devs.
At the end of the day, it is the employer at fault. They are the ones saying “your family’s health insurance will be revoked if we don’t like you” and there are no industry-wide or general unions to tell em to fuck off. “It’s their choice” sure, but they have a family to feed and they know how to make games since they were in high school and that has always fed their kids—how’d they know this industry would turn into a capitalist fuckfest? I get the frustration, but it should be pointed towards organizing and put the pressure upwards, not down or sideways.
I’m a socialist. I understand market forces and I wish more people did. Technology itself can help the lower class. Government protection of technology (patents, copyright) will always hinder them.
lowering the barrier to entry without protecting the elite will bring about market forces necessary to defeat corporations—small sizes can move and adapt faster and try new things than those with institutional bureaucracy, who just follow the money and don’t innovate. Corporations learned this, and now use government protections (copyright, patents) to prevent these new, necessary, market forces. I don’t like the “economic” terms myself, but it’s not rocket science that corporations benefit from cops (aka law enforcement aka laws).
We can remove the restrictions on new market forces by reducing IP protections, prevent corporations from mucking with newbies by preventing them from getting uncompetitive protections, or by stealing from corporations without regard for the law. I think we should steal more, honestly.
Stopping technology has never worked, though. I understand the plight of artists, but I’m extremely excited for the new human artists that dream up art that AI can’t create because it hasn’t been fathomed before.