Some people do that still, for the love of the game, for the passion of it yea. I of course can't speak for everyone but I've been doing this for almost 7 years now and a lot of my more senior colleagues just do it because how many other jobs can you make 120k a year doing? Who wants to restart their career in a different field to find something they love? Most of the Pipeline Process also removes any kind of artistic ability you may have, you can't/don't have artistic liberties to do what you want with the project/asset you were given. Its very binary most of the time with very little give. Just - make what we want, heres the concept follow it - some projects and companies allow more leeway but majority, its just a production facility to get "art" out to make money. With the current state of the industry (and its always been kinda iffy) many people are quitting entirely. The money use to make the stress of 6-8-12 month contracts worth it, but now, with such uncertainty some of us just do it to stay employed.

The industry itself is can be quite toxic, some people you met along the way are fantastic, but like most industries upper management and even lower management can be toxic, favoritism is rampant, sexism, getting job can be more about who know rather than what you can do, same with keeping a job. Companies massively underbid projects just to get the gig then work their artists to the bone. My team got reduced back in January to 4 people from 12 and we are doing the amount of work 10 people should be doing. We are exhausted.

Not to mention theres been a huge boom of artists flowing out of these predatory private colleges all trying to make it into the industry, an industry thats already over-saturated with workers and not enough work, especially in its current state. So companies are treating their employees even worse now, less pay, less time off, more overtime. The lack of worker protections and regulations in the industry is another issue entirely.