4 ms·

Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article. I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr week

Crediting is a much larger issue than just what's referred to in the article. I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge. I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I didn't work hard enough since I came in the office at 8am and left at 10pm(everyone else left 12am-2am). You want to know what I was credited as? "Special Thanks" That and many other reasons is why you'll see the game industry burn through talent. I've never seen a collective of some of the sharpest, creative people I've ever worked with exploited to such a degree under the misplaced reason of "Passion". The place I worked before then was very much white-label, with very similar issues and working conditions. I think we did get the studio logo on the back of the box but there was a very clear agreement where no logos could be placed in-game.

scrollaway 11y ago
The games industry has a worker abuse problem. All those companies proudly talking about their 18 months of crunch? Nooooope, shouldn't happen. This shouldn't be a thing you're proud of. You shouldn't be proud of your employees for slaving to death on those projects. It's very tough. Compared to the "regular" tech industry, people in video games can be so passionate about what they're making. It almost seems comparable to founding a startup, except you're just an employee working on a project. You, reader, wherever you're working: Imagine if every single member of your team was incredibly passionate about the work they do. They are building their own baby. They have the vision, they have the motherly drive that puts the existence of their baby ahead of their own. You can see how that could be abused by companies? It's possible to be passionate without driving yourself crazy like that, but in the video games industry it's far too common and it becomes the norm. In fact, I was going to post about this a few minutes ago - and then you yourself described the problem better than I could. Credit in your story is not the issue. The 8 months of 100 hour weeks is.
- InclinedPlane 11y ago
  Precisely. And because of that enthusiasm there's always someone else in the funnel if anyone burns out or leaves. Also, because games are art the most successful franchises can get away with completely broken processes as long as it doesn't go over some threshold (which appears to be very high judging by the success of even very broken releases).
  - ido 11y ago
    Might be better in some places than others (e.g. europe vs the us). I've worked in the games industry for about 5 years now (another ~7 before that mostly as a web dev) for several companies and never had insane crunches like that. I mostly worked in Austria and Germany.
- kls 11y ago
  When I was young, I was in the simulation industry in Orlando and the game industry was taking off there. Tiburon, who would become part of EA later, was snapping up the young simulation talent, in the area and I had an offer to move over. That was the day I decided that web development did not look like that bad of a tradeoff. Game dev was a cut in pay from simulation salaries, which where already well under web dev salaries and the work days my friends where pulling bordered on the insane, crunch mode for 12 months or more with no ownership stake. Now I was young at the time and had no issue with a long day, I ended up in a startup, pulling similar hours but I had a small stake in ownership. My friends that did go into the field, on the other hand, have very fond memories of the work (similar to soldiers in battle trying to pull off a heroic effort) but they have a lot of regrets overall for entering the industry and feel that they have been damaged as an employee after they inevitably became disillusioned as happens when you life goals of your 30's and 40's start to materialize. Simply put, the game industry has an almost inexhaustible supply of young bright talent that are falling over one another to get a break in the industry. My nephew being one of them, I literally staged an intervention with him and asked him to talk to several of my friends that left the industry. But he is young and cannot see past his 20's so he is well on his way in the industry. His college girlfriend just split on him over the hours, as she wants to go out and be 20 something, but that has not rocked his confidence in maintaining course in the industry. It is unfortunate, a lot of bright kids get sucked down that hole, I am thankful I was not.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
I spent 2-3 years working with occasional overtime building a major feature of a successful game people love. I wasn't able to stay on the project until the very end due to events out of my control. When the game finally shipped I too had a "Special Thanks."
InclinedPlane 11y ago
Gamedev has a special, and virulent, form of the same problem afflicting much of the tech industry. Because the jobs pay well and considered to be desirable there's a huge mass of folks wanting into the industry. So as people burn out and as talent evaporates away to find better working conditions those folks are easily replaced. To the people who are "in the trenches" it becomes very obvious that this is a problem, because they see kids trying to walk around in big shoes and they know exactly why it's not as easy to get things done. This is a huge institutional drag on productivity, product quality, and development velocity, it's one reason why it's pretty common for games to be pretty shit quality when they launch. But because the connection between action and consequence is indirect and diffuse it's easy to avoid working out the cause. More so when there are strong institutional biases from the top down which hinge on distinctly avoiding the idea that burning through employees could be a problematic practice with major real-world consequences for studios and games. You see the same thing in the rest of tech, though not generally as severe, and with some degree of awareness of it. Look at the way amazon treats devs, for example.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  With the exception that in some countries, we do have unions that work, even in tech. Sorry, but it is in German www.igmetall-itk.de/index.php
com2kid 11y ago
I hire a lot of ex-game devs. "yeah so in the two months leading up to RTM I might need ya'll to work until 10PM and occasionally another four or so hours on the weekend. I'll be taking dinner requests for weeknights and lunch requests on the weekend." Tired developers write /shit/ code. Every time we end up in bug regression hell it is because we (as a team) panicked and fixed something with too little sleep and not enough critical thinking. I put in 80hr weeks for a month one time. I wouldn't want to do it again. (I was hourly at a good rate, so I didn't mind crunch time for a month too much!) The interview process is nice though. "So there may be an occasional 60 hour week, is that OK?" and they look at me like I am crazy for saying such a low number...
- kraftman 11y ago
  How can you say 'Tired developers write /shit/ code.' and then 'So there may be an occasional 60 hour week'? Is that a 5 day week, so they're working 12 hours a day? Surely they will be tired after that?
  - loup-vaillant 11y ago
    Yes they would. But the fatigue takes a couple weeks to be so bad that productivity drops below your regular 40 hours work week. (On average. Studied on creative labour. Not guaranteed for knowledge work.)
pjmlp 11y ago
That type of experience is what made me never really get into the industry, although I used to attend GDCE on my own, be an IGDA member, had interviews at known UK and DE studios, and still do know some devs in the field. I was never a type of person to put work before family and friends. And even though general IT also has its crunch time, it doesn't come even close to those hours. Additionally, in many countries, unions are also present in IT companies. So, I just kept it as yet another hobby. Apparently the industry prefers to destroy people life's than make it more pleasant to newcomers, thanks to the dream everyone has to work in the field.
sudoherethere 11y ago
I got into programming because of my love of video games. Unfortunately/Luckily, I couldn't get a job in game industry immediately out of college. As I started reading online forum about game dev, I realized almost every corporate game developer complained about it. I was no longer thinking making video games as one of the best job in the world. I understand when you are sole developer or owner of the studio who is burning midnight oil. I have done that on some of my projects. But I could never understand how people would give up their lives to make someone else's dream come true for average compensation. I still love video games but now I try to play good indie games and hardly ever play anything from big studios.
novaleaf 11y ago
FYI, You are lucky they credited you at all. If you left before the game shipped they do not have a legal obligation to credit you.

scrollaway 11y ago

The games industry has a worker abuse problem. All those companies proudly talking about their 18 months of crunch? Nooooope, shouldn't happen. This shouldn't be a thing you're proud of. You shouldn't be proud of your employees for slaving to death on those projects. It's very tough. Compared to the "regular" tech industry, people in video games can be so passionate about what they're making. It almost seems comparable to founding a startup, except you're just an employee working on a project. You, reader, wherever you're working: Imagine if every single member of your team was incredibly passionate about the work they do. They are building their own baby. They have the vision, they have the motherly drive that puts the existence of their baby ahead of their own. You can see how that could be abused by companies? It's possible to be passionate without driving yourself crazy like that, but in the video games industry it's far too common and it becomes the norm. In fact, I was going to post about this a few minutes ago - and then you yourself described the problem better than I could. Credit in your story is not the issue. The 8 months of 100 hour weeks is.

InclinedPlane 11y ago
Precisely. And because of that enthusiasm there's always someone else in the funnel if anyone burns out or leaves. Also, because games are art the most successful franchises can get away with completely broken processes as long as it doesn't go over some threshold (which appears to be very high judging by the success of even very broken releases).
- ido 11y ago
  Might be better in some places than others (e.g. europe vs the us). I've worked in the games industry for about 5 years now (another ~7 before that mostly as a web dev) for several companies and never had insane crunches like that. I mostly worked in Austria and Germany.
kls 11y ago
When I was young, I was in the simulation industry in Orlando and the game industry was taking off there. Tiburon, who would become part of EA later, was snapping up the young simulation talent, in the area and I had an offer to move over. That was the day I decided that web development did not look like that bad of a tradeoff. Game dev was a cut in pay from simulation salaries, which where already well under web dev salaries and the work days my friends where pulling bordered on the insane, crunch mode for 12 months or more with no ownership stake. Now I was young at the time and had no issue with a long day, I ended up in a startup, pulling similar hours but I had a small stake in ownership. My friends that did go into the field, on the other hand, have very fond memories of the work (similar to soldiers in battle trying to pull off a heroic effort) but they have a lot of regrets overall for entering the industry and feel that they have been damaged as an employee after they inevitably became disillusioned as happens when you life goals of your 30's and 40's start to materialize. Simply put, the game industry has an almost inexhaustible supply of young bright talent that are falling over one another to get a break in the industry. My nephew being one of them, I literally staged an intervention with him and asked him to talk to several of my friends that left the industry. But he is young and cannot see past his 20's so he is well on his way in the industry. His college girlfriend just split on him over the hours, as she wants to go out and be 20 something, but that has not rocked his confidence in maintaining course in the industry. It is unfortunate, a lot of bright kids get sucked down that hole, I am thankful I was not.

Tiktaalik 11y ago

I spent 2-3 years working with occasional overtime building a major feature of a successful game people love. I wasn't able to stay on the project until the very end due to events out of my control. When the game finally shipped I too had a "Special Thanks."

InclinedPlane 11y ago

Gamedev has a special, and virulent, form of the same problem afflicting much of the tech industry. Because the jobs pay well and considered to be desirable there's a huge mass of folks wanting into the industry. So as people burn out and as talent evaporates away to find better working conditions those folks are easily replaced. To the people who are "in the trenches" it becomes very obvious that this is a problem, because they see kids trying to walk around in big shoes and they know exactly why it's not as easy to get things done. This is a huge institutional drag on productivity, product quality, and development velocity, it's one reason why it's pretty common for games to be pretty shit quality when they launch. But because the connection between action and consequence is indirect and diffuse it's easy to avoid working out the cause. More so when there are strong institutional biases from the top down which hinge on distinctly avoiding the idea that burning through employees could be a problematic practice with major real-world consequences for studios and games. You see the same thing in the rest of tech, though not generally as severe, and with some degree of awareness of it. Look at the way amazon treats devs, for example.

pjmlp 11y ago
With the exception that in some countries, we do have unions that work, even in tech. Sorry, but it is in German www.igmetall-itk.de/index.php

com2kid 11y ago

I hire a lot of ex-game devs. "yeah so in the two months leading up to RTM I might need ya'll to work until 10PM and occasionally another four or so hours on the weekend. I'll be taking dinner requests for weeknights and lunch requests on the weekend." Tired developers write /shit/ code. Every time we end up in bug regression hell it is because we (as a team) panicked and fixed something with too little sleep and not enough critical thinking. I put in 80hr weeks for a month one time. I wouldn't want to do it again. (I was hourly at a good rate, so I didn't mind crunch time for a month too much!) The interview process is nice though. "So there may be an occasional 60 hour week, is that OK?" and they look at me like I am crazy for saying such a low number...

kraftman 11y ago
How can you say 'Tired developers write /shit/ code.' and then 'So there may be an occasional 60 hour week'? Is that a 5 day week, so they're working 12 hours a day? Surely they will be tired after that?
- loup-vaillant 11y ago
  Yes they would. But the fatigue takes a couple weeks to be so bad that productivity drops below your regular 40 hours work week. (On average. Studied on creative labour. Not guaranteed for knowledge work.)

pjmlp 11y ago

That type of experience is what made me never really get into the industry, although I used to attend GDCE on my own, be an IGDA member, had interviews at known UK and DE studios, and still do know some devs in the field. I was never a type of person to put work before family and friends. And even though general IT also has its crunch time, it doesn't come even close to those hours. Additionally, in many countries, unions are also present in IT companies. So, I just kept it as yet another hobby. Apparently the industry prefers to destroy people life's than make it more pleasant to newcomers, thanks to the dream everyone has to work in the field.

sudoherethere 11y ago

I got into programming because of my love of video games. Unfortunately/Luckily, I couldn't get a job in game industry immediately out of college. As I started reading online forum about game dev, I realized almost every corporate game developer complained about it. I was no longer thinking making video games as one of the best job in the world. I understand when you are sole developer or owner of the studio who is burning midnight oil. I have done that on some of my projects. But I could never understand how people would give up their lives to make someone else's dream come true for average compensation. I still love video games but now I try to play good indie games and hardly ever play anything from big studios.

novaleaf 11y ago

FYI, You are lucky they credited you at all. If you left before the game shipped they do not have a legal obligation to credit you.