Crunch Tactics a Symptom of a Larger Problem?

An anonymous reader writes "One of the brave few: hot on the heels of the recent lawsuit filed against Vivendi Universal for back wages due to a developer who was allegedly asked to alter his timecard, Rob Fahey of gamesindustry.biz has taken the bold step of taking the position that the insane hours game developers are routinely asked to work are might not be in the industry's best interest, and in fact might be less profitable than planning projects well."

Comments

This is, like, news?

[grm_wnr]

Yeah, who would have ever thought of that? The fact that this statement is seen as "bold" should be indication enough that something is amiss here.

It's like this for any programming project.

[JavaLord]

Anyone who has ever worked as a programmer can tell you that as a deadline creeps up they usually end up working more hours. Spec's change, deadlines get moved up and back, other developers quit, etc. In the video game market, where you MUST hit certain deadlines such as christmas, or before a certain quater to make your company look good for stockholders this is always going to exist. Unless you give yourself an extra 6 months to a year of slack time, you are always going to have suicide hours near deadlines because shit always happens.

Re:It's like this for any programming project.

[egomaniac]

Anyone who has ever worked as a programmer can tell you that as a deadline creeps up they usually end up working more hours. Spec's change, deadlines get moved up and back, other developers quit, etc.

...

Unless you give yourself an extra 6 months to a year of slack time, you are always going to have suicide hours near deadlines because shit always happens.

Then you plan for that and include it in the schedule. If it "always happens", then you'd better always include it in the schedule. There is no excuse for doing otherwise -- forty years of software engineering history gives us a pretty strong indication that the belief "maybe everything will go perfectly this time" is a horrible fallacy.

Things will go wrong. Specs will change. People will get sick. It happens every fucking time, and we all know it. So what the hell are we doing not building this time into the schedule? Not doing so is equivalent to jamming your fingers in your ears and yelling "la la la, I'm not listening!" at the top of your lungs. It might feel good for a little while, but it's bound to bite you in the ass later.

At my company (not games, but trust me, you've heard of us) we routinely double or triple all time estimates provided by engineers, to account for unforeseen eventualities. Wonder of wonders, my team has always hit our dates and we don't have insane crunch time near launches.

Obviously, truly earthshaking events -- building burns down, lead programmer hit by a bus -- can throw even the best schedule off. But surely we can be doing better than having the schedule thrown off every single time we build something, can't we?

I don't think poor manangement is the problem.

[hal2814]

I don't think that poor management is the problem here like the author indicates. These companies are working at a backbreaking rate so that they can remain competitive. It's not like EA can afford to cut their development time per day and only put out a football game every two years. Software companies drop off the map very quickly if they don't keep putting out new products that are popular.

There might be ways via management and planning to reduce the time it takes to create a piece of software, but that won't lead to shorter work days for the programmers. It will merely lead to more projects being completed in a year with programmers still working 12 hour days. As long as the other guy has workers that are willing to work 12 hour days to achieve goals, you can bet that you will too.

Already addressed; Solution proposed

[Torgo's Pizza]

I thought this was addressed in the Quality of Life white paper?

Anyway, this was brought up at the June Dallas IGDA meeting. Several producers discussed ways that they avoid crunch time. Tom Mustaine, a friend of mine, told about how he schedules three-day workweeks (!). While sounding totally insane, when crunch time rolls around, they just go to a normal five-day work week and finish what they need without killing themselves.

There's also much to be said for the effect on quality when quantity of hours are worked. In short, the longer you continually work, the more mistakes are made. What happens is that sometimes you lose more time fixing those mistakes than instead just going home and getting enough rest.

The game industry is finally coming to terms that the long work hours caused by inadequate planning and management is driving away many talented workers and programmers.

Re:Already addressed; Solution proposed

[JavaLord]

The game industry is finally coming to terms that the long work hours caused by inadequate planning and management is driving away many talented workers and programmers.

If you are a member of IGDA I'm sure you know that there is no lack of programmers that want to work in the game industry. The problem is the game industry has no method to bring in programmers who have experence programming, but not programming games. Basically you need a CS Degree, plus a hell of a working demo to get hired somewhere and the jobs are very limited. Once you are hired, and you are good enough then you can hang around, but most people in the gaming industry are very good programmers and at some point after working 80 hours a week they are going to say "I don't need this shit". Lack of programmers who want in isn't the problem, lack of an ability to keep them in might be.

Maybe if the gaming industry brought on more low level programmers at the start of a project, they would have enough people so insane crunch time wouldn't be as insane. Of course then they would have to pay their salaries, which gets in the way of Profit!

Wrong

[blunte]

Software company failures are not typically due to the frequency of release of games.

The first and foremost reason a game company fails is that it failed to release its first game. This is often due to poor planning (business, game design, project management), and secondly to lack of resources/talent.

The second reason a game company fails is because it releases a bad product. This can be a product that's very unfinished (rushed out), very bug ridden, or just not what game players want.

Crunches usually happen because of external influences - trying to meet Christmas retail season, trying to get a playable demo ready for E3, or trying to meet a publisher deadline for a milestone.

Anyway, game developers I've worked with were usually as committed to their game development as they were to their spouses (those who were married), or sometimes more. They _want_ to get it done. It's not simply a boss behind them cracking a whip.

Yes about time

[BlightThePower]

I notice already a few comments along the lines of "thats just how software development is; specs change, shit happens". But this is true of any venture in engineering, even the arts. Its about time more emphasis was placed on trying to change things for the better. The software industries need for change is great; 80% of software is either late or fails to meet the initial specification. Its clearly unacceptable, as are the crazy hours demanded. Hopefully as we in the 2nd wave (really) of software development get a bit older it will be increasingly less than acceptable for team leaders to tell us we are 'flying to Australia' (presumably Aussie coders fly to Europe or else have a relatively cushy time!). What has to be lost is the frankly self-defeating and immature hostility towards management. Sure, bad 'PHB' management is the pits. But as anyone who has worked on a project overseen by a skilled leader will know, good management makes things an awful lot better than would otherwise be the case. A bad manager makes you work, a good manager works for you. Sounds trite, but I really do believe that.

Unpopular view.

[PhoenixOne]

By the post before me, I guess I'm the only game programmer who doesn't like working 90+ hour weeks.

Yes, I understand that overtime is needed at time. I really do love what I do, so I don't mind the all night code jams (which are only fun when you look back on them). What I don't like is the fact that many companies take advantage of this fact to set absurd timelines (I'm not going to name names, but they know who they are).

Add the extra 6 months. Need a new NFL game every year? Then hire two teams and give each a the time they need to make a good game. Not only will your employees live longer (and be happy), the end product will improve (remember less returns == more money).

Re:Wouldn't Be So Bad

[mausmalone]

I'm not a professional programmer, but EVERY book I've bought mentions the coders that stay up all night with coffee/jolt just so they can continue to code.

Every book on coding (well, beyond beginner C/C++) I've ever read mentions the same, but it's always tried to put it in a positive light. It's like they're saying "they stay up all night coding because they love to do it so much! and you will too if you make it through this book!"

But I digress. Last night I stayed up all night to code. Any coder who has a project he or she enjoys to work on will want to stay up to work on it. But when it's work and you're there for like 15 hours a day and not getting overtime, then I have a real problem with that.

I guess it's a job like any other, but it would be better working overtime coding a cool game than, say, the next version of MS Word.

You'd think it would be, but game programming is sometimes completely mind-bending. There's lots of parsing, data management, bug-hunting, optimizing, and deadline-dodging that goes on. It's some of the hardest coding on the planet, as the entire thing has to have a good "feel" and "flow." It's not like you can say "thisGame.feel = great;" There are hours and hours of refinement and tweaking and debugging that go on, all in a very high-pressure environment (especially when you're under a release date or convention deadline). Game coders probably don't have it worse than any other coders, but I'd be hard pressed to say they have it much better.

Game development is very popular

[EatenByAGrue]

The real problem is supply and demand for workers. Many, many young programmers really want a career in game development. It sounds fun, exciting and creative. So there's always other programmers willing to step in and work for lower wages than what they'd be making doing mainframe apps or something. This creates some problems - wages are held down by huge labor supply, and the most experienced qualified programmers and project managers go to some other field where they can make real money.

bs

[MarcoAtWork]

'if you give yourself an extra 50% more time, the project will consume those 50 and still have crunch time'

this is bs, of COURSE if your staff is already burned out from the previous crunch time, for the first half of the schedule they'll 'recuperate' and not be very productive, which means that by the end they'll likely be a bit behind. Also a good project has a very 'tight' schedule (not tight = no time, tight = many meaningful milestones, possibly on a weekly basis)

If your work force is not exhausted, on the other hand, you'll see that if you do your scheduling well (adding buffers and so on) more often than not you'll be bang on or even early. In video games development you'll always likely be bang on because there are always a lot of 'nice to have' features you can work on if you're early.

The problem is how to go from an exhausted work force to a happy work force: you do this by having everybody basically take a month off after your last insane crunch spell and making it clear that from now on they will NOT BE ALLOWED to work more than 9 hours a day, and that if the deadline is not hit at the end they will NOT GET their bonus (which should be made a significant % of compensation).

All of this will definitely encourage people not to kill themselves, to have a life, and to be happy productive coders for many years to come. In the end it would also save the companies money, because they wouldn't have the staff turnover problems (with retraining costs etc.) they have now and so on and on.

Odds of this happening? pretty close to nil, also because there is some perverse 'you're not a tough guy coder unless you can go 48 hours on mt dew' psychology at work here as well...

Re:Far more widespread....

[Kevin Burtch]

That might fly in Michigan (big union state, where I grew up), but Florida is a non-union state and very much a republican state... making such a thing practically impossible.

Unions go in both directions, so I have mixed feelings about them.

If there's work, great for every employee.
You always get a raise for hard work, but then so do the slackers that barely get their job done, so there's hardly an incentive to be the best.

If there isn't work, you are NOT allowed to compete and you starve.

My brother is an electrician in Michigan, and royally screwed lately due to the drastic cutbacks in construction up there.
He has to put himself on a waiting list... first-come, first-served.
If he tries to get a job without going through the union's waiting list, he can get blacklisted and will either have to change carreers or move to a non-union state.

At the same time, unions are practically required to keep giga-corporations from abusing their employees... hence the United Auto Workers.

I'm not sure where to find the "happy medium" on that topic.