Timely article considering the spate of complaints - Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them

[Arry]

nice summary.



even if not made redundant, just frowned upon, that's usually enough. places that depend on crunch time (and this is absolutely and exclusively bad management) develop a culture for it, and even if you don't buy the , you'll have a hard time letting your mates down. it's not exclusive of the games industry, but several factors make it pervasive there: young and inexperienced folks are more manipulable, the cool factor and the fact that the crunch culture has infected the whole sector, which means you will have to swallow it if you want to be part of it.

i know crunch quite well. my last job as a sw engineer was not in games, but in a very innovative company and on a very engaging topic. crunch time was very frequent (spectacular mismanagement) but i was really engaged with the projects, i was having a good time and learning a lot and other engineers were brillant and nice to work with, so i didn't mind much. for about a year and a half. some of them burnt out and left (that company is an absolute talent grinder), i decided that i liked my job, a lot, and just had to stop crunching, end of story. management and deadlines were not my business. i made it clear to every new manager that i was not responsible for their screw ups, and to every new team that while i'm a loyal teamplayer i'm not their nanny, and if they wanted to crunch that would be on them. i was ready to be fired or rejected but, to my surprise, everyone accepted it. hell, i even worked less hours from there on. they allowed me to do that because they knew my work was gonna be ok, and they were better of having me than not. i spent 6 more years at the company this way, and saw a lot of nice folks coming and going, burning out, until i finally got bored myself and quit.

I would say that it is not always down to bad management. Well not at the lower levels of management anyway. It is more down the expectations of the senior management and directors etc.. Take the NHS, they are constantly (these days) at crunch time, constantly having to meet impossible demands and targets with less and less resources and it is the egos of the executives at local levels that allow this to happen; because they simply agree to the demands, restraints and budgets, set from above. Often set by people, who have no real idea, of what the job entails. The days of the unions stating that 'the bosses expect too much'; have long gone with Thatchers policies etc. and it is now time the 'managers' pointed out the excessive demands from the top; instead of letting their egos doing the talking; when they are told to 'manage' their team to preform the impossible.

 

[znôrt]

I would say that it is not always down to bad management. Well not at the lower levels of management anyway. It is more down the expectations of the senior management and directors etc.. Take the NHS, they are constantly (these days) at crunch time, constantly having to meet impossible demands and targets with less and less resources and it is the egos of the executives at local levels that allow this to happen; because they simply agree to the demands, restraints and budgets, set from above. Often set by people, who have no real idea, of what the job entails. The days of the unions stating that 'the bosses expect too much'; have long gone with Thatchers policies etc. and it is now time the 'managers' pointed out the excessive demands from the top; instead of letting their egos doing the talking; when they are told to 'manage' their team to preform the impossible.

to an extent, it is. i quoted my anecdote as an illustration, the short answer is it's just about knowing when to say no. comes to mind the old saying 'the difference between a senior and a junior is that the senior knows when to say no'.

i agree with your analysis but all it shows is that responsibility trickles down. now here's the catch: i was a sw engineer. a sw engineer has to know the tools, the field, and have some talent. his duty is to have these skills and put them to use to produce quality sw. the time it takes to do this is not up to debate. period. if you are consistent with that you have a very solid case of work ethics.

indeed the problems in that company started at the very top, and it's most likely always the case, but low level management is still management. it's at the low end of the food chain, and that may suck, but they are expected to honor work ethics too, which is not about producing sw (my job) but about managing correctly (their job). accepting impossible assignements is in clear violation of that. they have to be able to say 'no' when it matters, and make it trickle back up. i know it's hard, but it's them who chose to be managers after all!

so i hinted at the only solution to crunch for techies: say no. else quit. in my case it worked.

it works because not saying no is poor work ethics, it's being a bad engineer because it just allows managers to be bad managers. and if a company doesn't value work ethics ... why bother?

 

[Arry]

to an extent, it is. i quoted my anecdote as an illustration, the short answer is it's just about knowing when to say no. comes to mind the old saying 'the difference between a senior and a junior is that the senior knows when to say no'.

i agree with your analysis but all it shows is that responsibility trickles down. now here's the catch: i was a sw engineer. a sw engineer has to know the tools, the field, and have some talent. his duty is to have these skills and put them to use to produce quality sw. the time it takes to do this is not up to debate. period. if you are consistent with that you have a very solid case of work ethics.

indeed the problems in that company started at the very top, and it's most likely always the case, but low level management is still management. it's at the low end of the food chain, and that may suck, but they are expected to honor work ethics too, which is not about producing sw (my job) but about managing correctly (their job). accepting impossible assignements is in clear violation of that. they have to be able to say 'no' when it matters, and make it trickle back up. i know it's hard, but it's them who chose to be managers after all!

so i hinted at the only solution to crunch for techies: say no. else quit. in my case it worked.

it works because not saying no is poor work ethics, it's being a bad engineer because it just allows managers to be bad managers. and if a company doesn't value work ethics ... why bother?

I agree 100%. As soon as the said task filters down to someone that understands, this is not going to happen as those upstairs think it will. It is time for that person to call time out and explain the situation, up the line. Unfortunately, this rarely happens and can only really happen, if those higher up the chain, have done the job in question.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Crunch time is not just in the game industry, any project got crunch time one way or the other.

Its not *just* in it, but in game industry (and movie industry) its pretty much the norm. To the point that you'd get (carefully) asked what do you think about "sometimes spending more work hours, when needed" - obviously with underlying intention to early reject people who averse.

You can quit, that what I've done eventually. But there is no shortage of people to take your place - as I said, this industry sustained by influx of relatively young and talented people who *want* to make awesome games and *want* to be creative.

 

[Shadowdancer]

You can quit, that what I've done eventually. But there is no shortage of people to take your place - as I said, this industry sustained by influx of relatively young and talented people who *want* to make awesome games and *want* to be creative.

That's a place where strong unions make sense; as I understand it, the unions (or "guilds" as they seem to call themselves) permeating the US movie business work on the premise that a production has a choice of either employing exclusively union staff in the positions covered by a given union, e.g., screen actors, and meeting the standards of that union, or it gets none. That sets standards, because a studio can't decide to have non-union "betas" they get to screw over, while still eating the cake of putting big names on their posters.

 

[Ozram]

That's a place where strong unions make sense; as I understand it, the unions (or "guilds" as they seem to call themselves) permeating the US movie business work on the premise that a production has a choice of either employing exclusively union staff in the positions covered by a given union, e.g., screen actors, and meeting the standards of that union, or it gets none. That sets standards, because a studio can't decide to have non-union "betas" they get to screw over, while still eating the cake of putting big names on their posters.

So long as they keep quiet about all those pesky sexual assaults that permeate the industry (Hollywood).

 

[RidingTheFlow]

That's a place where strong unions make sense; as I understand it, the unions (or "guilds" as they seem to call themselves) permeating the US movie business work on the premise that a production has a choice of either employing exclusively union staff in the positions covered by a given union, e.g., screen actors, and meeting the standards of that union, or it gets none. That sets standards, because a studio can't decide to have non-union "betas" they get to screw over, while still eating the cake of putting big names on their posters.

Sure, sets standards.
Why crunch is still prevalent in US movie business then?

Also, do you fancy paying 4x times more for your games?

 

[milligna]

So long as they keep quiet about all those pesky sexual assaults that permeate the industry (Hollywood).

Right, as if that doesn't happen in EVERY industry. Hilarious to hear about this bizarre abstraction of Los Angeles people have in their mind. Most people here just do good work and want to continue doing good work. It isn't some cult of constant sex abuse and coverups. Mostly it revolves around seeing movies and going to dinner. Maybe I'm going to the wrong parties and working for the wrong people.

But yes, the unions here sure make sense. I'd have been ripped off countless more times if it weren't for strong technical unions.

 

[Ozram]

Right, as if that doesn't happen in EVERY industry. Hilarious to hear about this bizarre abstraction of Los Angeles people have in their mind. Most people here just do good work and want to continue doing good work. It isn't some cult of constant sex abuse and coverups. Mostly it revolves around seeing movies and going to dinner. Maybe I'm going to the wrong parties and working for the wrong people.

But yes, the unions here sure make sense. I'd have been ripped off countless more times if it weren't for strong technical unions.

You work in which industry? My family actually do and have worked in the Hollywood film industry... and yes, sexual assault and harassment in the workplace is spread farther and wider than that, but boy do they have some whoppers that they’ve managed to keep silent.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Also, do you fancy paying 4x times more for your games?

If it prevents the abuse of staff I'll pay more. In reality though its a false choice that CEOs like to tell. In truth the price is determined by the market, and if costs are forced to go up it means profit margins go down. Or just less sports cars for these CEOs. Employees at McDonalds are paid perfectly fine living wages over here. We don't pay 4x as much for our burgers. You can stand up for your fellow human beings, its just scare mongering by those with something to lose.

 

[Ozram]

If it prevents the abuse of staff I'll pay more. In reality though its a false choice that CEOs like to tell. In truth the price is determined by the market, and if costs are forced to go up it means profit margins go down. Or just less sports cars for these CEOs. Employees at McDonalds are paid perfectly fine living wages over here. We don't pay 4x as much for our burgers. You can stand up for your fellow human beings, its just scare mongering by those with something to lose.

So glad to see someone pointing this out.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

If it prevents the abuse of staff I'll pay more. In reality though its a false choice that CEOs like to tell.

Well, problem is there is not enough of "you's"

Its not a false choice. Simply because its false choice with some other companies does not mean it also false choice with gamedev companies.
I worked in gaming for 10 years, and seen very well how most large gamedev companies always balance on brink of bankruptcy even with current overtime practices.
Lately hardware technology expanded in exponential rate, allowing (and demanding) game content 10x more complex than it was 5 years ago (higher res pictures, higher detailed models, more voiceovers, more disk space, etc). This content takes exponentially more of staff time to make.

In result, most companies forced to exploit their staff to the bone, raise prices as much as they can (without making sales plummet), do tricks like DLCs and paid content to increase "real" price as much as they can while tricking people it costs less, make games shorter, do tricks like same content recycling, do content cuts, borrow money from banks and external investors - and its extremely difficult balancing act. Sometimes you screw up the balance, game does not sell that ~1.5 million projected copies - and you've finished.

I've seen it getting progressively worse over years, then I finally left since I didn't see it getting better any time soon.

Indie games have a bright future. AAA - not so sure, not unless they invent something truly game-changing.

 

[Old Duck]

I accidentally started a duplicate thread of this called Go Home, FDev. Here's the text from that OP:

There is a very interesting article in the New York Times titled, Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them. I highly recommend that you take a moment and read it.

I've been very frustrated with some of the bugs introduced in the 2.4 update, at least on the PS4 platform. Why am I frustrated? Because Elite: Dangerous is one of my favorite games of all time! Bugs tend to "mess with that", and thus my (and our) frustration when things aren't working right or fall short of what they could be.

However, for me the player, it is just a game.

So dear Frontier developers, please, go home at the end of the day. Enjoy your family. Enjoy a life that doesn't consist of staring at a screen 24/7. As long as you're working hard to fix these bugs during your official 8 hour day, I can wait for the next patch. To quote the article, "No video game is worth burnout, brain damage or overnight stays at the hospital."

 

[Bran Tse Mallory]

Crunch due to management changing minds is more or less the reason I got out last year. I finished the project I was on and handed off the future development projects to some other poor swine. Been seeing this happen more and more over the last 10 years to the point where as a PM you can predict when the crunch will be needed... Tends to happen as well due to feature creep, something that was agreed upon which then gets a fundamental rethink and becomes a bigger job. This can also happen due to staff not coming into work. I've also seen it happen when a team didn't really appreciate the amount of work they had to do and ended up having to delay a launch because so much still had to be done.

You can try to manage all of the above to avoid the crunch but it's far better to build in a contingency time for each job. I always added 17% to the time required for every part of a project, this helped. Despite this I've spent time in hospital with bleeding ulcers and more time of work recovering that I care to think about, most of it due to delays in work from remote studio's where I had no direct control over peoples work flow/rate.

I would never go back into the entertainment software industry... Even for Frontier if they asked nicely and promised a big fat wage. Not worth it, especially in the middle of a project - Absolute nightmare to do that.

What really bites is when you realise that the £35,000 per year you get is working out at less than minimum wage when you work out the hours you just spent flogging your guts out just to meet a deadline. That can be somewhat sole destroying.

 

[Ian Skippy]

Well, problem is there is not enough of "you's"

Its not a false choice. Simply because its false choice with some other companies does not mean it also false choice with gamedev companies.
I worked in gaming for 10 years, and seen very well how most large gamedev companies always balance on brink of bankruptcy even with current overtime practices.
Lately hardware technology expanded in exponential rate, allowing (and demanding) game content 10x more complex than it was 5 years ago (higher res pictures, higher detailed models, more voiceovers, more disk space, etc). This content takes exponentially more of staff time to make.

In result, most companies forced to exploit their staff to the bone, raise prices as much as they can (without making sales plummet), do tricks like DLCs and paid content to increase "real" price as much as they can while tricking people it costs less, make games shorter, do tricks like same content recycling, do content cuts, borrow money from banks and external investors - and its extremely difficult balancing act. Sometimes you screw up the balance, game does not sell that ~1.5 million projected copies - and you've finished.

I've seen it getting progressively worse over years, then I finally left since I didn't see it getting better any time soon.

Indie games have a bright future. AAA - not so sure, not unless they invent something truly game-changing.

Check the financial statements of Ubisoft, EA and what-have-you. They are not forced to exploit staff, they chose to do so because its possible and convenient. Heck, check the financial reports of FD, hardly a top dog.

 

[Dan Diplo]

I work in development (web, not games) and have mentored a few younger developers. One of the things I always tell them is to go home on time and do not spend the night working. What invariably happens is that when you get tired you make things worse, not better. Been there, done that. Always best to get some sleep, approach with a clean fresh head. Tiredness, lack of perspective, this is what introduces bugs.

It's not just the fact that companies will have these "crunch" periods, it's also the fact that developers are often very committed to their work - it can literally be difficult to walk away until you've got that last bit of code compiling or squashed that obstinate bug. Then there's the whole myth of the caffeine and pizza fueled devs sitting in dark rooms that unfortunately young devs can buy into. But it's not a healthy culture. And I can't imagine how much worse it is if you have to deal with "toxic" gamers screaming at you that you are useless, your game's terrible etc. If you want to destroy someone programming career then undermine their self-confidence (see Impostor Syndrome, which is rife in development) and force them to work long hours under pressure.

 

[Crank Larson]

This isn't limited to video games. I've worked for large IT corporates, and a large number of staff seem to work long hours to little effect - the extra hours aren't productive. I only work the hours I'm contracted for (which will be 8 daily - no more). If I'm effective, my contract will be renewed. I've been a contractor since I left school.

Productivity is not equal to number of hours worked. Far from it.

 

[RidingTheFlow]

Check the financial statements of Ubisoft, EA and what-have-you. They are not forced to exploit staff, they chose to do so because its possible and convenient. Heck, check the financial reports of FD, hardly a top dog.

Sorry, but public reports don't show whole picture. This to put it mildly.
In many cases you will see good reports until suddenly "poof!", studio is out of business, and everybody is looking for a new job.

Even internally in most cases you get these "confidential" memos and top staff which always state "all is good, we are doing great!", then one day "poof" - "don't bother coming to the office".

It was very always amusing to watch people discuss your studio coming's and going's on forums, reddit, etc, while repressing desire to cry - "hah, people! you have zero idea!"

If I'm effective, my contract will be renewed. I've been a contractor since I left school.

Most of gamedev QA staff are contractors nowadays - mostly young guys straight out the uni dreaming their job in QA eventually moving them into something bigger (programming, design, art). Since they are contractors on pretty short times, its very convenient to dispose of them in droves - when they are not needed anymore (plenty more where they came from). And don't even mention them saying "no, I am not doing that overtime, it's not in my contract"

 

[Ian Skippy]

Sorry, but public reports don't show whole picture. This to put it mildly.
In many cases you will see good reports until suddenly "poof!", studio is out of business, and everybody is looking for a new job.

Even internally in most cases you get these "confidential" memos and top staff which always state "all is good, we are doing great!", then one day "poof" - "don't bother coming to the office".

It was very always amusing to watch people discuss your studio coming's and going's on forums, reddit, etc, while repressing desire to cry - "hah, people! you have zero idea!"


Most of gamedev QA staff are contractors nowadays - mostly young guys straight out the uni dreaming their job in QA eventually moving them into something bigger (programming, design, art). Since they are contractors on pretty short times, its very convenient to dispose of them in droves - when they are not needed anymore (plenty more where they came from). And don't even mention them saying "no, I am not doing that overtime, it's not in my contract"

You do understand the studios I mentioned have shareholders, and that you are accusing these companies of serious-jail-time crimes? With all due respect, if you want to make the argument the financial statements of these mentioned companies are wrong, major crimes are consistently committed and the only choice is to abuse and exploit staff I'd like to see a bit more support for those claims than 'trust me.'.

 

[Harry Hates Golf]

Crunch? I can tell you about "Crunch".

15-20 hours days, 7 days a week. 24hr on call. Early morning. Late night. Dinner date interrupted. Movie night interrupted. Sorry, can't wait. Family wants this done NOW! Want Thanksgiving off, go work for the post office. Want Christmas off, go work for the post office. You got a family event? So what. This family is paying us, so they comes first, not your family (if you have one).

Yep, that's a reality.

Working 9 to 5 is a song (a damn good one), but that's all it is. In reality, if you own a business, or are involved with the growth of a business, or wanting career growth, "Crunch" is life. If "Crunch" is killing you, or destroying of family unit, or making you emaciated because you aren't eating enough, then there is nothing wrong with going to work for the post office, or being counter help, or stacking boxes, or being employed at whatever job that only requires you to be in a given place to perform job duties during set hours. It's honest work, and sometimes it pays very well (post office and government jobs pay extremely well for their grunt work).

Quoting Marcin Iwinski in the article, “It’s hard-core work. It can destroy your life.”

Also, the article states, "Too many who have stayed have suffered the physical and mental consequences. Game developers need to insist — to their bosses and, most important, to themselves — that health comes first". That sounds nice, in theory (like "we shouldn't have to lock our doors at night" sounds nice, in theory). Although I fully agree with those two theories (and others), I have to temper it with another school of thought that comes from the other side of the fence.

"The squeaky wheel doesn't get oiled, it gets replaced."

I can appreciate what developers must go through. Probably more so than others (believe me on this). I would tell Mr. Iwinski that sometimes you end up spitting blood, and no one is thanking you for it. That's the nature of the beast, and it is never going to change. There might be exceptions to the rule, but that is what they are, exceptions.

When others have asked me why I go through the misery, the "crunch", that I do, all I can tell them is that this is how it is, and how it will always be. I tell them that for whatever reason, I was meant to do what I do. I don't complain because I already know that if I walk away from it, I'll just come back to it eventually.

Like I said, it's what I was meant to do.

Maybe that is how some game developers feel?

I guess for some of us, whether they are like me, or are game developers, or in some other career, we kind of hover under the Warren Zevon motto.