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I know that usually games_industry = low_pay * long_hours, but it doesn't have to be that way. I worked in a studio where this does not happen and their staff t

by yeureka 15y ago

I know that usually games_industry = low_pay * long_hours, but it doesn't have to be that way. I worked in a studio where this does not happen and their staff turnover is very low. Maybe because the managers were former developers and they knew the limits to overtime. Other places have not been so nice.

bsenftner 15y ago
Where and who is this mythically ethical game studio? In my experience, publishers force these hours: a studio can't land the publishing contract without milestones insuring these conditions.
- jheriko 15y ago
  They exist and take your pick pretty much. Most of them run much better than Codies, with less staff, smaller premises, less expenditure and putting out more, higher quality games, without masses of overtime. I used to work at Rebellion for instance, and although they made me redundant and cocked it up it was fine - they had good reasons and they never mistreated me. It was a great place to work.
  - bsenftner 15y ago
    Ha! "take your pick" sounds like a cruel joke... I gave up on the games industry after 15 years in the majors. Kept hoping to find ethical behavior somewhere, never did and left for film VFX. But I never looked outside the US...
- yeureka 15y ago
  Digital Legends in Barcelona. I left in 2007 because I had to move to London for reasons unrelated to work. It was one of the best places I worked at. I cycled in at 10 am, worked until 13:00 then went to the gym for an hour and had lunch for another half-hour, came back at around 14:30 and left at around 19:30. In 2.5 years there I only remember spending one Saturday in crunch and they gave me extra holiday for that day. The people were very friendly and amazingly talented. They implemented normal mapping on an nGage back in 2004 ( this is a device with a 100mhz ARM CPU with no fpu and no division instructions and no GPU). They did one of the first 3D games for the iPhone and my boss got invited on stage to show it during an Apple conference. In contrast, when I arrived in London in 2007, although I would be working on a sexier title for the then hot Wii the equipment in use was inferior ( CRT's where still used ), the code base was the worse I had ever seen ( switch statements with thousands of lines, spaghetti with meatballs code, stupid tricks like: struct { #include "somefile.h" }, etc... ), crunch was typical at the end of every deadline, talented people were unhappy and quitting... The embodiment of the game's industry cliché.

by yeureka 15y ago

bsenftner 15y ago

Where and who is this mythically ethical game studio? In my experience, publishers force these hours: a studio can't land the publishing contract without milestones insuring these conditions.

jheriko 15y ago
They exist and take your pick pretty much. Most of them run much better than Codies, with less staff, smaller premises, less expenditure and putting out more, higher quality games, without masses of overtime. I used to work at Rebellion for instance, and although they made me redundant and cocked it up it was fine - they had good reasons and they never mistreated me. It was a great place to work.
- bsenftner 15y ago
  Ha! "take your pick" sounds like a cruel joke... I gave up on the games industry after 15 years in the majors. Kept hoping to find ethical behavior somewhere, never did and left for film VFX. But I never looked outside the US...
yeureka 15y ago
Digital Legends in Barcelona. I left in 2007 because I had to move to London for reasons unrelated to work. It was one of the best places I worked at. I cycled in at 10 am, worked until 13:00 then went to the gym for an hour and had lunch for another half-hour, came back at around 14:30 and left at around 19:30. In 2.5 years there I only remember spending one Saturday in crunch and they gave me extra holiday for that day. The people were very friendly and amazingly talented. They implemented normal mapping on an nGage back in 2004 ( this is a device with a 100mhz ARM CPU with no fpu and no division instructions and no GPU). They did one of the first 3D games for the iPhone and my boss got invited on stage to show it during an Apple conference. In contrast, when I arrived in London in 2007, although I would be working on a sexier title for the then hot Wii the equipment in use was inferior ( CRT's where still used ), the code base was the worse I had ever seen ( switch statements with thousands of lines, spaghetti with meatballs code, stupid tricks like: struct { #include "somefile.h" }, etc... ), crunch was typical at the end of every deadline, talented people were unhappy and quitting... The embodiment of the game's industry cliché.