10 Things Only I Learned About Game Dev Once I Was on the Inside
I’ve been in the gaming industry for around 15 years in various capacities, including journalism, PR, esports tournament hosting, and running brand campaigns for non-endemic gaming brands (looking to tap into gaming audiences without coming across as cringe - because who knows more about what is cringe than a Dad)
When you’re just a player or even someone who works in a supporting role like PR or marketing, you think you know how the sausage is made. It’s only once you get on “the inside” that you realise that you really had no clue. Here are a few things I’ve learned about game dev that I honestly had no clue about until getting inside the sausage factory.
Quick Note
These are broad lessons learned across years of working in and around games, not criticisms of any one studio. If anything, they’re the universal “behind-the-curtain” truths that every dev I know nods along to. These are based on chats with colleagues, friends and industry vets who have to bite their tongues, roll their eyes and simply scroll past some of the hot takes they see online.
1. Money Shrinks on Contact
As a player, $70 feels like a straight shot into the studio’s pockets. As a dev, you learn how many hands touch that money first: platforms, publishers, marketing spend, even refunds. By the time it lands in a studio’s account, it’s a fraction of the headline number. Players see “greedy devs,” but the reality is usually “lots of middlemen.”
2. No One Actually Has a Master Plan
Studios don’t sit on perfect, ten-year roadmaps. They sit on whiteboards filled with ideas, prototypes, and heated arguments about whether the double jump feels floaty. From the outside, you assume everything is scripted; from the inside, you see just how much is duct-taped together right before launch.
3. Community Management Is Basically Defusing Bombs
This one’s universal: managing players isn’t about typing answers, it’s about threading needles. The same reply that reassures one group can trigger another. Sometimes the best option is saying less, not because studios don’t care, but because any public statement gets screenshotted, dissected, and turned into “proof” of conspiracy. Community managers aren’t ignoring players - they’re walking minefields daily.
4. Marketing Can Make or Break a Game
The dream is “a good game sells itself.” The reality is that the graveyard is full of great games nobody knew existed. Meanwhile, some aggressively average titles blow up thanks to a killer trailer or the right TikTok clip. Players rarely realize just how much money and effort goes into making a game visible (and how brutal it feels when marketing fails and a good project dies quietly). As a marketer this one stings extra hard. I guess partly because it’s so easy to take a successful game and say “this is what they did” or take a failed game and say “this is what they should’ve done”. As consumers we think it’s easy to simply reverse engineer the process (spoiler - it ain’t).
5. Nothing Ships Finished
From the inside, you realize no game ever ships 100% “done.” Teams triage. Some bugs get patched, others get tolerated. Entire features die quietly before launch because they just didn’t make the cut. Shipping is always a trade-off between idealism and reality.
6. Luck Decides More Than We Admit
Talent matters. Craft matters. But so does dumb, blind luck. A streamer picks your game one night and suddenly you’re trending. Or you launch the same week as Elden Ring, GTA 6 or Silksong and disappear into the abyss. Inside the industry, you stop pretending meritocracy rules. You see how much success comes down to zeitgeist, timing, and the RNG gods smiling on you.
7. Crunch Isn’t Just Sleeping Under Desks
Players imagine crunch as people living at the office. Sometimes that happens, but more often it’s the creeping treadmill: constant updates, live-service pressure, and no real “off-season.” Even studios trying hard to be healthy feel that pressure. It’s an industry-wide challenge, not one studio’s shame. As gamers, we create this unrealistic expectation of studios to be always perfect, always innovating and forever bug-free.
8. Players Shape Games Without Realizing
As a player, it feels like your angry forum rant goes into the void. As a dev, you watch those rants change roadmaps. Loud voices do move mountains. Sometimes it’s good (a feature gets fixed), sometimes it’s bad (vocal minority derails a project), but it’s real. The line between community feedback and community control is a lot thinner than most people realize.
9. Game Devs Are Just Guessing Too
From the outside, game design feels deliberate. From the inside, you learn a lot of it is educated guesses. Balance patches are half analytics, half “let’s see if this feels better.” Systems are redesigned because vibes were off, not because science proved it. Games look clean at launch; they’re often messy experiments under the hood.
10. The Industry Runs on Passion (and Sheer Stubbornness)
Nobody stays in games for the paychecks or the stability. They stay because they love it, hate it, and can’t stop doing it. Behind every broken launch and miracle comeback are teams of exhausted weirdos too stubborn to quit. That stubbornness is what keeps the lights on, and sometimes, it’s the only reason a game ships at all.