Perhaps hire fewer employees right out of college for crap salaries, and foster an environment where senior employees with families can work?
There is simply very little diversity in applicants who apply for videogame jobs, and if your entire employee base is comprised solely of these applicants, it's going to become an echo chamber.
The people who would not stand for this type of behavior are typically not those who would stand for 80+ hours a week of work at $25,000 salaries.
Build a diverse employment environment with your employees spanning the spectrum in terms of both age and gender, and the problems will become more and more self-righting.
As an anecdote, the only environment where that kind of inter-personal discussion was reinforced and accepted was one where the majority of employees were just out of college. Every other company where the majority of employees are over 30 has not tolerated this behavior at the employee level.
That is off-topic. That cliche about the game industry is irrelevant to this question. These verbal attacks are from outside the work environment, and have no awareness of the composition of the company. And these attacks do happen to mature teams and people, I've seen it.
> That is off-topic. That cliche about the game industry is irrelevant to this question.
I disagree. A team's composition is the only thing that matters when it comes to minimizing this sort of behavior towards co-workers (whether in or outside work). And a team which is comprised of people who have not experienced a professional work environment can not be expected to be professional. It's the same reason we don't expect interns to be immediately familiar with the reality of programming in a business; they have no context of business reality.
I honestly believe that it's fair to say that vast majority of people will act poorly, when the action has no (or few) repercussions; it's why we have easily-pickable locks on our houses, to deter the 98% of people who would steal small items if there were no barriers or consequences.
Diversity and professionalism are the locks to deter people from behaving poorly in a work environment. Of course, this leaves the small minority who would act poorly regardless of the repercussions, their behavior can only be resolved through rules and contracts regardless of the team size or composition. The most you can ever hope to do is prevent the majority of attacks, and penalize the minority appropriately.
There is simply very little diversity in applicants who apply for videogame jobs, and if your entire employee base is comprised solely of these applicants, it's going to become an echo chamber.
The people who would not stand for this type of behavior are typically not those who would stand for 80+ hours a week of work at $25,000 salaries.
Build a diverse employment environment with your employees spanning the spectrum in terms of both age and gender, and the problems will become more and more self-righting.
As an anecdote, the only environment where that kind of inter-personal discussion was reinforced and accepted was one where the majority of employees were just out of college. Every other company where the majority of employees are over 30 has not tolerated this behavior at the employee level.