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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'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.