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No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer. That's a fine-sounding statement but in reality if you want to be a game developer in the US then you'd better

No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer. That's a fine-sounding statement but in reality if you want to be a game developer in the US then you'd better be willing to live a life where you wake up, go to work, get home sometime later than 8pm, spend ~2 hours unwinding and maybe visiting with your SO, and then go to bed. Repeat forever. A lot of times even on weekends. The studios I worked for all made it regular habit to make pizza available in the evening and then refuse to allow devs to leave. Crunch time became a way of life. Anyone who dared not to like it risked ostracism. Those who were fired for it severely harmed their career prospects, precisely because every other employer has the exact same culture of insanity. Put that way, it's more than a little bleak. If I sound outraged, it's because it's outrageous that it somehow became the norm in the US and that nobody bats an eye because "that's just the way it is." It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change. I'm saying the companies had better change themselves before the nice little train of momentum they've built up from legions of starry-eyed young developers finally runs out when those developers realize they could be going off and starting their own companies rather than playing by your rules.

dalke 13y ago
"It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change." Why not? What if game developers were to unionize? Or we were to strengthen the 8-hour work day laws? Or boycott the most egregious companies? What's wrong with those or other ways of forcing the companies to change?
- sillysaurus2 13y ago
  It's a social problem: those who don't want to work 50+ hour weeks are made to feel as if they're a bad employee. Those who don't need to work 50+ hour weeks are steadily assigned an increased workload until they are. It's a nuanced situation that I doubt a legal system could address without introducing horrific unintended consequences of the new laws, as new laws so often do. Unionizing is only effective in situations where employees can band together into a shared social framework. During the industrial revolution this was facilitated by the massive size of workplaces. But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs. I think ultimately the solution is to start our own companies imprinted with a culture of employee well-being and work-life balance. If it's a success, and it's located in a gamedev hotspot, then all of the top talent will want to work there. This synergizes well with free market aims, because competitors who don't get top talent soon go out of business.
  - dalke 13y ago
    8-hour workday laws are not new laws. Why do you think they are? And your view is basically that there should be no new laws, isn't it? The relevant California law is that computer professionals are exempt from overtime law if they "mainly perform intellectual or creative work that requires independent judgment in the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of systems, programs, software or hardware. In 2012, they were required to earn $38.89 or more an hour ($81,026.25 or more annually, or $6752.19 or more monthly)." My modification to that law would be to raise that to $75 or more per hour. What might be reasonable "horrific unintended consequences" of reclassifying programmers thusly? "But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs" You don't know much about the history of unionization, do you. That's okay, neither do I. But I do know a bit more than you do. The early unionizations include unions that came out of the guild system, not the factory system. For example, Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which settled that unions were legal in the US, dealt with the journeyman shoeworker Jeremiah Horne, who charged less than what the Boston Journeymen Bootmaker’s Society required. It was legal for him to charge less, but then the Society would have called for a walkout. The master of the shop "would not wish to lose five or six good workmen for the sake of one", so fired Horne instead. So we have a union which is effective even against a shop of 10 "boot developers", as it were. Why do you think that unions are only effective in large factories? Do you mean to disregard the history of craft unionism, or are you speaking mostly out of a lack of knowledge?

dalke 13y ago

"It's not about fair or unfair. I'm not saying anyone should force the companies to change." Why not? What if game developers were to unionize? Or we were to strengthen the 8-hour work day laws? Or boycott the most egregious companies? What's wrong with those or other ways of forcing the companies to change?

sillysaurus2 13y ago
It's a social problem: those who don't want to work 50+ hour weeks are made to feel as if they're a bad employee. Those who don't need to work 50+ hour weeks are steadily assigned an increased workload until they are. It's a nuanced situation that I doubt a legal system could address without introducing horrific unintended consequences of the new laws, as new laws so often do. Unionizing is only effective in situations where employees can band together into a shared social framework. During the industrial revolution this was facilitated by the massive size of workplaces. But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs. I think ultimately the solution is to start our own companies imprinted with a culture of employee well-being and work-life balance. If it's a success, and it's located in a gamedev hotspot, then all of the top talent will want to work there. This synergizes well with free market aims, because competitors who don't get top talent soon go out of business.
- dalke 13y ago
  8-hour workday laws are not new laws. Why do you think they are? And your view is basically that there should be no new laws, isn't it? The relevant California law is that computer professionals are exempt from overtime law if they "mainly perform intellectual or creative work that requires independent judgment in the design, development, documentation, analysis, creation, testing, or modification of systems, programs, software or hardware. In 2012, they were required to earn $38.89 or more an hour ($81,026.25 or more annually, or $6752.19 or more monthly)." My modification to that law would be to raise that to $75 or more per hour. What might be reasonable "horrific unintended consequences" of reclassifying programmers thusly? "But at each studio there are usually less than 30 devs" You don't know much about the history of unionization, do you. That's okay, neither do I. But I do know a bit more than you do. The early unionizations include unions that came out of the guild system, not the factory system. For example, Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842), which settled that unions were legal in the US, dealt with the journeyman shoeworker Jeremiah Horne, who charged less than what the Boston Journeymen Bootmaker’s Society required. It was legal for him to charge less, but then the Society would have called for a walkout. The master of the shop "would not wish to lose five or six good workmen for the sake of one", so fired Horne instead. So we have a union which is effective even against a shop of 10 "boot developers", as it were. Why do you think that unions are only effective in large factories? Do you mean to disregard the history of craft unionism, or are you speaking mostly out of a lack of knowledge?