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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.
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.
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.
Having a lot of cousins working in tech in china, I can attest the labor laws do not prevent 85h weeks, 45 of which is unpaid overtime. As well they provide dorms and meals to reduce the possible need to be off site but they expect you to be at their beck and call. Although for an oppressive regime of tyrants I never witnessed any oppression. Or even seen any police that weren't directing traffic. They also don't pay income tax or have any retail taxes that I could see. The tyranny is all to those who rock the boat. To the average folk in china, the tyranny is benign. For those who tkae pride in how the state are different I'd like to point out if you rock the boat in the US you will also disappear. Much faster if your brown or black.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I've been in the industry for about 8 years now (I'm a programmer). In my years I've worked for several US companies, a British company, and a Japanese company.
The US companies had a wide range of policies. Some were not too bad, others were outright criminal. Working for a PC game outfit, my hours averaged about 60 a week - of course that company no longer exists. At another company I did only tech and tool work for about 45-50 hours a week (was a really nice job but my department was closed). The console developer I worked for was run "poorly". I averaged 120 hours a week there and I have the scars to prove it.
The British company I worked for enforces quite reasonable rules on thier GB based employees. Unfortunately for us we were a new studio based in LA. That meant that some of the people in charge were from the US and therefore when our development contract was signed they used US think. We ended up having 1 years worth of work to do in about 3 months. I ended up working 90-120 hour weeks again, and after the project was complete (the contract was renegotiated to roughly 10 months), I bailed.
The Japanese company was my most recent. I was there for 2 years. The studio was based in the US, but more than 1/2 the employees were Japanese. I was working 10am-2am hours most of the time I was there, but the Japanese employees arrived before me and were still working when I would leave. I rarely saw any of them on weekends however. I'm really not sure if the Japanese workers worked so much due to their work ethic, or if they were asked to. I think it was a little of both.
The moral of the story is the industry as a whole sucks. I was working crazy hours no matter who was in charge. My story is neither unique nor uncommon. Moving to China isn't going to make a difference unfortunately. They may be forced to set good working hours, but the company will not be able to survive that way. The problem boils down to schedule - Xmas season, Hardware launches, or License tie-ins. No games are made without one of these deadlines in mind. If a company cannot finish their work on schedule (outsorced or otherwise) they will not be hired for future projects and will die.
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.