I'm 10 years into my games career and one of the main reasons I'm still in it is that I've worked for indie studios for most of my career.

I've worked rarely for AAA studios and they are soulless and long hours. It's not fun, it's not creative, it's not about creating personal art. It's about creating a product to make profits. They're really fun games a lot of the time but they get there by limiting who can contribute to what.

An engineer trying to give feedback on design gets shut down. A lot of smaller studios are the opposite and people wear multiple hats daily. I love wearing multiple hats and it helps me understand my own art creation process.

Some folks in the industry as well only see this like a job not an expression of themselves through art. That's fine but limits them to studios who only want workers not artists.

That said, the average has came up. About 10 years ago that average time in the industry was 5 years. Now it's 7. People are finding the industry more and more stable but the industry does have a problem keeping juniors. I almost left the industry several times but as I got over 5 years I started to see a change in job offers. Lots more recruiters contacting me. At 10 years I've started to see a lot more people wanting to pay me for an hour talk. It becomes easier to stay in the industry as you gain experience but those first 5 years are really rough.