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Game Development Conditions Could Drive Devs East
Kotaku has up a feature piece looking at the opening of a new studio in mainland China. Staffed by expatriate Western game developers, it represents something that founders Chris Pfeiffer and Max Garber see as a future trend: developing games in the west is soul-crushing. The two participated in the grind to get Resistance: Fall of Man out in time for the PlayStation 3 launch, and have now opened a studio with the goal of 'making great games while living a good life.' Lower costs in China allow for a higher standard of living, while labour laws will force game studios to stick to rational work-weeks. Pfeiffer also suggests that the overwhelming costs involved in making games will force U.S. studios to outsource development work to Asian nations. When that happens, Pfeiffer's studio and compatriots will be ready.
I could've sworn I just read an article the other day about how Japanese video game companies were trying to make the social aspects and work schedule of their employees more in tune with the West so that they would be able to retain their programmers. Japan's work week + work conditions = 10 x worse than the West's.
You have to live in Red China.
This is the same government that likes to filter the Internet for its citizens. I hope the reduced cost of living is worth it, guys!
Canthros
At DICE this year, Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games (developer of the Dungeon Siege games and the just-released Supreme Commander title) had a very intersting talk regarding improving work/life balance at his company. It appears that you don't really need a "work-till-you-drop" work schedule to ship big games after all.
... but that doesn't mean you have to move your studio East to achieve them.
I think it's an interesting, and necessary, shift in the game development culture. As the industry matures, so does its business practices. Understandably, there are lots of passionate folks who prefer to stay up late to work on their game, but that doesn't mean everyone wants to. Additionally, those who stay up late may actually be contributing negatively to the product (decisions and code generated at 2 AM may not be the best).
So yeah, I agree that the typical hardcore work development schedules need to change
-- jchenx
That's the problem at had when I worked at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari for six years. One of my mentor told every new hire that they must prepare to sacrifice their personal life to the video game gods, get rid of the girlfriend/wife (prositutes are OK), and forgot about the kids. My current job is being a help desk specialist where I work only 40 hours a week but I make the same kind of money when I worked 80 hours a week in the video game industry. Now I have time to enjoy a personal life.
Man, it took me way too long to process that story. All I would think was "China is west of me".
How long did they work on Halo, or Halo 2? Or what about Gears of War and Dark Sector (which, while not out, has been a work in progress and looks to be a Marquis title)? These devs took their time with their product and made the effort to do the job right, not just fast. If Halo had been an EA franchise instead of Bungie/MS, what would we be on now? Halo 5? And what would the quality of those games be?
Once the industry can get into a quality over quantity mindset you'll see conditions improve, pay will get better and talent will be more appreciated. They need to realize that we want quality products, not just another iteration of the same game, with the same engine, and the same graphics, but *2* new characters! That starts with the devs though, and the consumer (read: guys that own Madded '03, '04, '05, '06, '07, etc..). Running away to China won't fix this.
"Life's short and hard, like a body building elf." -- The Bloodhound Gang
I work in the games portion of MS, and we've always had a good work/life balance schedule in my group. Yeah, there are times where we do work late night, but that's surprisingly rare. I think it's a combination of both smart management, and also the fact that my team doesn't ship retail titles, but works on platforms. So there isn't really a periodic crunch schedule, the way there are for games. Rather, we're always hectic, but in a manageable way.
But I have definitely heard the horror studios from friends who work in other companies and other parts of MS, which are really scary sounding.
-- jchenx
Too funny that Chinese labour gets better treatment under Communist rule than US labour gets under the current Corporatist setup.
As long as the game developers don't try to openly practice religion or have to work in manufacturing, they should be fine.
The opposite of progress is congress
Why not India? Its a democracy(albeit poor one)
but you can live there as well as in China for the money.
If they consider to stay there long-term it might be a factor.
When you hear about the huge budgets of modern video games, you rarely hear what percentage goes to actually paying developers. If more of the money went to the people actually doing the work, they could hire the developers they need to get the job done without working their developers to death. As it stands right now, no self respecting developer with a family can afford to take a job in games because the hours are crazy, and because if they're any good the pay in non-games work is as much as three times what a programmer can make in the games industry. No wonder they end up understaffed with inexperienced people, struggle to hit deadlines, and we're always hearing about how this or that experienced developer gets fed up and leaves the industry. Meanwhile, the publishers and marketers are living fat off these people's labor.
One of two things will break this trend. Either publishers will become less relevant as self funded studios become common (who knows how this will turn out as Vista pushes game development off of open platforms into a console and portable only world), or the rest of the venture backed software industry will start to treat their employees poorly enough that game development doesn't look so bad anymore. Either way, it's likely to get worse before it gets any better.
Regardless, it's hard to see how China has anything to do with this story other than to stir up the outrage of outsourcing and send hits to the website. So they opened an independent studio, and they did it in China because they have some delusion that their happiness there was due to geography and not the fact that they actually took a vacation... I wish them luck, really, but the geography of this story shouldn't be the focus. It's a red herring.
They develop a launch title for PS3 that DOESN'T move PS3's .. then "Move to enjoy the good life" in China ...
They didn't decide to relocate; Jack Tretton promptly shipped them off when Resistance didn't kill Gears/Wii like it was supposed to.
...because it was developed using Chinese labour, and we all know how well that one turned out. No creative spark, no real connection with the audience, and a bunch of guys working to the rule without question or concern. That's fantastic for mass-producing (or knocking off) consumer goods, but rather less so when trying to develop something that appeals to emotion like game-play.
The article seems to be suggesting that labour laws in China prevent the kind of unpaid mega-crunch 60+ hour week hell that western developers demand... since when were we behind China in labour laws?!
Saying that, the UK is behind a lot of Europe, and the US behind us...
As for Japan, I'd gladly put with with the crunch there I think. It's hard for a while but the rewards are genuine.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
More work hour doesn't mean higher productivity, have you guys forgot about the EA bride thing? Back when The Day After Tomorrow was made, Dreamworks treated their employees like crap, and I mean really like crap. They work almost every waking hour of their life for months, people would work until they can't take it anymore, crash under their desk for a couple hours, get up and get right back into working. It's a destructive way of life and many many people got sick physically and mentally. Immediately after the movie was done (you never ever walk out of project even if it's shitty and you're not getting paid, walking out of a project is the same as black listing yourself in the industry) Dreamworks lost their entire talent pool. For a long while nobody want to work for Dreamwork because face it, nobody want to work 160 hours a week. Someone did a bit of calculation and found out that with the salary that they are making and the hours that they are working, they make as much as someone who work at McDonalds. After that Dreamworks had to start treating their artists like human and people could actually expect to get paid well for a job well done and can go home at 6~7. Another example of this is Industrial Light and Magic, they close at 6 unless it's the final crunch period. They literally kick you out by 6 and nobody is allowed to stay to work. They get things done, they make good movies and they are one of the best studios in the industry. Or how about Pixar? They treat their artists like human, everybody gets paid well, does not work 12 hour days (most of the time), the management and the artists are friendly with each other, the whole company is like a big family. Last time I checked they are coming out with block buster after block buster films. I wish the executives would realize that when you push your artists to work 20 hours a day, they are not going to be able to make good games. I know when I was crunching 16 hour days, I literally just zone out and make a ton of mistakes by the last few hours. We're not robots, when you overwork us you should expect our productivity to drop. In the end it hurts the productivity because next day when I come in I have to fix a whole lot of mistake I made last night before I passed out.
If gamecompanies would spend less time on pushing the graphical boundaries but instead would focus more on providing innovative gameplay or interesting storylines we can keep the jobs here. I mean we don't outsource our hollywood scriptwriters to china do we?
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
Believe it or not, I believe the game industry is actually growing up. Losing your life to the almighty schedule was the accepted norm a few years ago, but not so much today. I actually know of publishers routinely scheduling six-day workweeks for the latter half of the project, and seven-day workweeks for the final month or two.
This is an issue I actually talked with my current employer about during the hiring process. I've now worked at a pretty well-known studio for the couple of years, and have shipped two successful games. So far, I'm still working normal 40-hour work weeks, except for the few weeks before and after the ship data (after because it's online). And so far, I have yet to come in on a weekend.
The company was founded by guys who were tired of the burn at other companies and wanted to make sure theirs was not like that. Lots of our devs have families and young kids, and it's a great working atmosphere. And, we're *still* very productive. Many companies are starting to understand it's just not worth burning out your talent and losing them for the sake of a single title.
For anyone looking for a job in the industry... don't let anyone tell you that everyone in the industry goes through insane crunches. Crunches, yes, but the days of mandatory death-marches are fast disappearing. Many developers love to brag about how many hours they worked during the end days of a project (guess it's the game developer equivalent of a war story), but I'm no longer impressed. Putting up with that kind of a nightmare is just foolish at best, and destructive at worst.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.