Work Environment for Game Developers Must Change

Christopher Reimer writes "C|Net is reporting from the GDC that the video game industry will have to improve its work environment as the working population gets older and unionization becomes an issue. From the article: 'Numerous studies have shown that developers and other workers putting in 12-hour days routinely make more mistakes as the midnight oil burns, said Francois Dominic Laramee, a freelance game developer and author. That means any extra productivity is eaten up by hits to product quality. "If your company is in crunch mode, drunken zombies may be checking your code right now," he said.'"

Comments

Re:So what?

[HarvardFrankenstein]

Not even remotely true. I work for Lockheed Martin, as a software engineer no less, and we have a union that gets us all kinds of good stuff. Unpaid overtime, for example, is strictly forbidden. Admittedly, I'm told Lockheed was already pretty good to their workerbees to begin with (I wouldn't know - I've only been with the company for a few months), but engineers can and do unionize. With the way game developers get creamed, it's bound to happen sooner or later.

Re:So what?

[quark101]

You do have a good point there. But on the flip side, how many people do you know that do jobs like that for 20 hours a day, for several weeks at a time?

I know several nurses. In and of itself, it can be very demanding work, both physically and mentally, especially depending on what subfield one goes into. However, even with the great shortage of nurses, they do not have to work overtime.

Some of the game programmers I know have to though. And it isn't the fact that the work is fundamentally different. It's the fact that working conditions like this (18-20 hour days, for several weeks) are extremely detrimental to a person's health.

The wife of a ex-gametester has talked to me about visiting the company during crunch time. People there would be wearing jackets and several comforters off of beds, while they were working in a normal temperature room. Do you know why? Because they had been awake and working for so long, there body was starting to shut down. They could no longer produce sufficient body heat.

Anyone who says that the video game industry doesn't need to change, or that makes light of the problems in it doesn't fully realize what those problems are, and how drastically major changes are needed.

Re:I want to...

[ChaosDiscord]

You clearly don't work in the field yet. Trust me, no employer will complain if you log some extra hours because you're in Deep Hack Mode. The problem is that you'll be asked to be working 12 hours days when you're not. You know those days when you really don't feel productive, so you do something else? For example, maybe sleeping for 16 hours after doing two up-all-night coding binges. Well, no break for you; you're expected to put in another 12 hour day and be productive. Repeat, night after night, week after week (weekends included). In extreme cases (all too common in the game industry), month after month. Eventually you're going to hit the point where you need a break. But your boss in more interested in having an ass in that chair than in real productivity. You'll be checking stupid mistakes into the code, you'll be oblivious to minor bugs. Eventually you'll get to a point where each hour of work you do actually sets the project further back instead of advancing it.

Death marches (as they're affectionately known) aren't "I'm in the groove and can't possibly stop" all night coding binges. They suck the life out of you. You're typically fighting lots of bullshit (the same BS that got you behind schedule in the first place) and your morale is drained because you're never, ever on time. You're asked to the impossible; not a "I'll just work really, really hard" impossible, but "even if I never take breaks to eat, sleep, or use the restroom I'll never make that dealine" impossible. This isn't cool and the sign of a vibrant programming population. Death marches are typically the the sign of large, beaurocratic, grossly mismanaged companies with terribly managers, a complete lack of plans, and no real hope of accomplishing anything.