I don't know what's driving people to work in the gaming industry. If you worked on simulation software, for example, you could still do graphics programming, have a phenomenally better working environment, reasonable hours, and more pay.
Games are more than "graphics programming". In fact, the fraction of programmers on a game is small, and the number of graphics programmers is a tiny fraction of that. In my most recent project we didn't even have a dedicated graphics programmer because we used Unreal Engine. Yes, sometimes things had to be tuned and UE had to be kicked in the butt, but mostly it just worked.
I haven't worked in regular software in ages and have no intention of every going back to that. A single game will have multiple areas in which you have fun, interesting and challenging problems to solve. You don't typically get that in a vanilla software job.
Of course, if you work for a large game company, they tend to have specialists for various areas and I would guess the job gets old in one of those places pretty quickly.
In my experience, the ones who really get exploited in the game industry are non-programmers. There are plenty of young people who want to work on games but not be programmers. They are frequently tracked into QA, game design or producer (known as program manager elsewhere) careers. There's an oversupply of these kids and along with artists they are the most egregiously underpaid. The best among them do go on eventually to be game designers (or upper management if they so desire) and do well.
It's because it's a dream for people, comparable to working on movies. That's like saying why should a AV technician not work on movies when they can make more money doing recordings for corporate events.
So why should anyone outside this "dream" industry give two shits about the people inside the industry being mistreated? If they don't like it, they should go to work in some other "boring" industry that uses those same skills. There's no shortage of jobs out there for skilled people these days, the problem is too many prima donnas like these game devs who want to live their dream and then also be treated well. When everyone and their brother is clamoring to work in a particular niche industry, producing a huge oversupply, this is what you get. Go work in an industry where there's a shortage of qualified people instead.
Sorry, I don't believe that. I believe people who don't have a good choice should be treated well, but if people are happily signing up to be treated poorly, and they KNOW they are going to be treated poorly there, (and they have plenty of far better alternatives, and they're only signing up for this because it's "cool") then I don't have any sympathy for them whatsoever.
If you want to be treated well, then stop flocking to people and places that treat you like crap.
A lot of people love the industry and the idea of making games. They hate the working conditions however which leave much to be desired... especially considering the working conditions are bad at many companies that make a significant profit on many of their projects.
A pretty large number of people do end up making that decision. I'm an academic researcher who does some stuff related to AI & Games, and one of my personal problems is that my game-industry AI contacts keep leaving the game industry for jobs elsewhere, which makes it hard to build any kind of longer-term collaboration.
