Slashdot Mirror
Game Developers Sound Off On 'Quality Of Life'
simoniker writes "At the recent WIGI Conference in Dallas, a number of game industry veterans discussed the ever-problematic issue of 'quality of life' in the game industry, or, as moderator and The 7th Guest creator Graeme Devine commented: "What does that mean to most of you? Well, it means crunch." Aspyr's Lori Durham suggested of the issue: "You won't always have a perfect balance as far as how many hours you're outside of the office, and how many hours you're inside the office", but, for game developers: "As long as you feel good about where you are at that moment, Durham thinks that's what matters.""
Sorry I'm not first...but I'm only allowed out of my coding cell for two breaks in each twelve hour shift. Quality of life? I'd say it's pretty good. We get three meals a day, including one hot meal, and sometimes we get a mouse pad or eye drops if we invent something that saves render time. Well, gotta go - I heard we just got the rights to code the game for Charlie's Angels III; I know I'll need to pull a couple all-nighters just getting those stupid line breaks in the string tables lined up again.
I'd rather take a break...... off a kit-kat bar.
He whom you called four-eyes yesterday, you call Sir tomorrow.
Alright, I'm sick and tired of hearing about this issue and the overworked underpayed game developers. The only reason this is turning into a big deal is because a lot of these developers are fresh-out kids and have nothing to compare to so they eventually start thinking they are in a uniquely punishing position.
The fact is, the conditions are nearly the same across the entire American culture. Everyone is always in crunch mode. I can't think of any development position I have ever held that wasn't mostly in crunch mode and I have never worked in game development. If you're working for the man then you are going to have to work overtime without pay and all sorts of things like little to no vacation time (at least in America where it seems the worst).
The main thing with developers is they lack skill and/or experience and end up reworking code all the time or debugging like crazy because they can't figure out why something doesn't work. That is what really puts the pressure on them. It's especially difficult when you realize you made a mistake and have to redo days or weeks of work or you neglected to put enough debugging information to make problems easy to spot. That is painful crunch mode. As you get better and get more experience you make less of those mistakes (if you're smart) and although you're still in perpetual crunch mode it doesn't feel as stressful.
This is not unique to software development either. Almost everything is like this.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Quality of life are no more then 45 hours per week work time, 6 week paid vacation per year, a short commute, enough money to feed the family, keep it healthy and live comfortable and a job you don't hate most of the time.
It seems that with the general IT population getting older, even in the USA people start to realise that spending 16 hours per day in the office isn't improving their life. Also it seem to me, that people aren't really more productive than people who just spend 9 hours per day. The excess time is usally spend in goofing around or creating problems, which will take time the next day to fix.
You won't always have a perfect balance as far as how many hours you're outside of the office, and how many hours you're inside the office...
Why not? (Assuming the guy means not like perfect to within a Planck constant, but a more normal kind of perfect.)
What's really so damned unique about the game industry that makes it need 110 hour weeks? What's really so damned unique about the game industry that it makes it immune to the productivity nose dive that occurs after just a few 60 hour weeks?
The real problem here is the fundamental assumption that there's something inevitable about this way of life. But somehow, almost nobody else needs to do this. So what's unique about the game industry?
High stakes? Competition? Tight cycles? Winner-take-all market? High quality requirement? None of these are unique to the game industry, not even in combination.
My personal opinion, informed on experience, is that the software industry in general is not unique. It is not immune to extremely-well-documented productivity declines that occur with excessive work weeks. It's just really, really hard to measure productivity, so people substitute time measurements instead as the nearest measurable quantity and never ask what it's measuring. The whole software industry has this disease; the game development community has an especially acute case, brought on by ignorance, pigheadedness, and (perhaps more important) the "need" for all these hours being determined by people who probably don't have to work them, or have no reason not to and can't imagine why anybody wouldn't.
40 hours of a job that SUCKS is worse than 80 hours of a job you enjoy. I've had jobs that went on 18 hours a day for 7 days a week, going on for months. Didn't matter. It wasn't something I didn't enjoy. It was actually fun. Yeah, I'm weird, I consider creating code fun, and when an exceptionally cool function works it's better than sex.
If I had to, say, bag some handbills for 40 hours a week (aside of the most certainly crappy pay), it would put more burden on my quality of life than those 7x18 weeks in a job I did enjoy very much.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The 'article' just talks around the quality of life issue. Nobody on that 'panel' has the guts to define a baseline 'quality of life'. Nothing like "Hey, nobody should be required to work unpaid overtime. Everyone needs to get the hell out of the office at five or six, go home, bang the wife (girlfriend, boyfriend, squeeze one off), unwind, relax, etc... If your in the office after hours because you want to be there then you don't have a life, much less a quality life, and we'll hand ya a roll of tens, take you to the nearest strip joint, and introduce you to tits and ass."
Work is not 'fun', it's not for 'play', it's certainly not a 'life'. It pays the bills, that's what it's for.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I guess denial is how he copes?
Or maybe he was just screwing with me. :-P
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
I think Dilbert sums it up nicely! Been there, done that, don't want to do it again.
and that's all well and good while young and single.
Yes, and when you hit 35, you'll be replaced by someone else.. who is young and single.
You're a fool for accepting those working conditions.
..don't panic
I guess it's you who is in denial...;) Since when does a 50-hour work week = a 100-hour work week? IMO, "crunch time" wouldn't happen at all if the people who manage and work in the game companies didn't spend ~20 or so hours per week of every week leading up to the month before release "talking at the water cooler" and "taking coffee breaks" and "scratching their nuts" and "Internet surfing" and etc., ad infinitum...;)
Basically, "crunch time" looks to me as the game developer saying to itself and its employees, "OK, we've all had a lot of fun for the last year and a half, haven't we? But now we are six weeks out from shipping and it's time to take this work very seriously, isn't it? So, we're going to have to work our asses off to make up for what we didn't do that we should have done over the last eighteen months!"
I think, though, that "crunch time" is likely inevitable and unavoidable in any process that takes what is essentially a highly creative venture and seeks to internally inject regimention, discipline, and scheduling into it at the same time. You're going to have to flow creatively in the process of crafting a game for as long as you can so as to create a decent game, but eventually there comes a time when the rubber meets the road and you have to *finish and ship.* I think it's the nature of the beast, frankly. I also think that professionals in the business for a long time understand this, whereas other people just don't. And there's the rub, isn't it?