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IGDA Split Over "Crunch Time" Development
LingNoi writes
"Arguments between members of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) have been red hot over recent controversy because of a 'Studio Heads on the Hotseat' panel video (skip to 21:00). The fighting started when IGDA board members (that also happen to be studio executives) which were taking part in the discussions made clear their favor for 'crunch time,' a method of doing overtime on a game to make very tight deadlines. It has been seen as hypocritical that an organization whose goal is to create a better quality of life for developers is led by studio executives who are happy to overwork employees. The IGDA released a response which didn't take sides on the issue."
No one ever sat down, planned out a beautiful piece of art, then executed it according to plan. At least nothing worthy of the name art.
All inspiration comes in flashes, and it is frequently in times of great stress that the best inspiration comes. After inspiration comes implementation, and that can take a while and be methodical.
But what better than to keep the environment of inspiration for as long as possible, even during the implementation? You gain the benefit of the first inspiration as well as subsequent innovations because the pressure remains high.
Art isn't for the weak. It is created by the strong under great periods of pain. It is only by coming through that pain and finally seeing the greatness of the art afterward that an artist can truly be happy.
I gave up being a video game tester after six years to become a help desk support specialist to make the same kind of money working 40 hours per week instead of 80 hours a week. Now that I have time to enjoy the money I'm making, I'm writing a novel about my misadventures as a video game tester. Unlike the real world, managers in my novel do die for working people to death. :)
You, as an employer want crunch time?
What do we get out of it?
We get to watch you lobby to Congress about how your company can't survive if they have to pay overtime benefits, but you make it clear that if you can't put in the 16 hours a day 6 days a week required to complete the game on time, we'll be shitlisted from the game industry.
We get to watch your marketing drones take expensive trips and have nice things, while you've reduced the number of fridges in the breakroom to one, to 'encourage people to eat healthy!'..has nothing to do with saving costs, I'm sure.
We get to watch the higher ups give us unrealistic goals. You want your own engine, you want a whole planet of scenery and stages, you want the latest and the greatest, and you want it to work on a Game Boy Advance. After all, that's what you promised Nintendo when they offered you a bonus to do so. You want it in a month, from Monday of two weeks ago.
We get to watch you use your corporate cards for lunch everyday, and dinner too during crunch time.
Then we get that lay-off notice right after the game is launched, with the new 'support' team you hired from a small university in India picking which desks will be theirs, while we're still sitting in them in shock.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
You have a strange theory on how to optimize the artistic process, but the point is, it can't be done.
This might sound like a shameless plug for Union. I don't care about that.
If you didn't need a Union, the companies would already show the respect that the 'common' worker deserves. That is payment of overtime, guaranteed start and finish times - if a worker wants to put in extra, or if the employer requires this, to finish what they are working on, then an ammendment to the Collective Agreement can be worked out.
No, unions aren't perfect, but as a union worker I don't have to put up with that kind of crap.
I'm terribly surprised that TFA doesn't mention children working there for 16 hour days.
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
As they used to say, "The first 90% takes 90% of the effort, the last 10% takes the other 90% of the effort". Crunch time is just the expression of doing that last 90% effort in the last 10% of the schedule.
Mind you, my current employer states that they'd prefer we to not have to crunch, given the chance. I get a talking to any time I come in and work on the weekend. ^_^
Then again, I quite like crunch, as long as it's not overly extended. It's a bit of a rush, and it can be fun unless you're the one who's hideously behind on the milestone.
There are plenty of crunch horror stories though, and everyone is aware that crunch adds bugs, so usually management will look to shift or redefine milestones where possible to avoid it. Or at least my management does. YMMV.
Paul "TBBle" Hampson
Paul.Hampson@Pobox.Com
I used to love crunch time, it was like a rush. In school I always put off my assignments to the last minute, and when I was working, I always had deadlines that were too short, and it motivated me to work as hard as I could. But of course, there was always a period of being burned out afterwards.
Then one day I snapped. It seemed so stupid to be in a constant state of panic: it's not like the work actually got done faster. So one day I came up with the bright idea, "why not plan enough time from the beginning to get the job done? Then I won't need to panic at the end!"
It was hard at first, I had trouble figuring out how long things would take, but after a while I got really good, even when it involved figuring out how some mystery hardware works (ie, it's going to take a LOT longer than you expect). I still get things done just as fast, if not faster, and I am happier and more efficient. In addition I know how long things are going to take, so I can promise things to customers and deliver on the promises. And I have more energy to put towards productive things, not towards stress.
Qxe4
As a student at a pretty well-known school with the intent of becoming a video game developer, I definitely put in my share of 40+ hour weeks (60-90 aren't uncommon). But hearing a company's CEO say he won't hire people who aren't constantly willing to put in hours beyond the workweek is definitely disheartening. What happened to the EA legal woes of a few years back? Is the solution to just say "Oh, well we expect it" up front? Hello to the new EULA of being hired? That's a grim future for all of us, if that's the precedent Epic is trying to set.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
In game development, crunches are absolutely inevitable, as are nearly all large-scale project-based projects. There are even some companies that thrive on insane hours as a regular matter of course. I know of at least one company in which everyone regularly puts in 12 to 16 hours a day as a matter of course. They make no apologies for this, and if people go into this voluntarily, more power to them.
Unfortunately, it's all too tempting for some companies to simply use the "inevitable crunch time" as a way to exploit young and naive workers who are often all too willing to give up their lives - especially early on, with no family to think of - for the sake of a fun career - let's face it... we make games for a living, and it's a fun and challenging job (most of the time). Most people I've met in the game biz understand they could probably make quite a bit more money working outside the industry. And, for the most part, we do it becomes we love games, and want to be part of that process.
There's a significant difference between a normal "crunch" (which may not even include significantly extended hours - simply an acceleration of development intensity), and a "death march". I've seen extended crunches that have been brutal enough to cause the virtual disintegration of an entire team when a project was finished. Is any one game worth losing experienced employees over? Many companies used to believe that they could afford high turnovers and low morale caused by these crunches. I've watched many of these companies go out of business over the years as well. Obviously, I can't establish firm causation here, but it makes sense to me that the best developers will tend to migrate to where they're treated well, and a game company that can't retain talent will eventually collapse under their own mediocrity.
Let's face it - it's not as though you can plan every detail of a game from start to finish. Plans will change - you have to remain flexible enough to ensure your game captures that elusive "fun" aspect. But then again, it's not exactly some magical mystery either. Good planning and scheduling can alleviate most crunch-time woes. If you end up in a severe crunch, and your team has been working hard and competently, then it's a failure of management - either by not scheduling enough time or for not cutting unneeded features or project scope aggressively enough. There's really no other way to look at it.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I mean, seriously, why not?
Say that management expects that the last three months of the project will be 80 hour weeks. Well, tell people that they are going to be paid less, so that you have money left over to pay the overtime at the end. If you projected the effort correctly, there's no difference in the cost, and you're a bit more honest with your employees.
People may even want to work that overtime in this point, they might look forward to crunch time!
On the other hand, you as the manager will see your expenses triple at the end of the project, and you'll have a real incentive to find a way to finish the project within, say, a 50 hour week.
On my movie projects, we pay weekends as overtime. It's only right. We build in the costs at the beginning of the project. People who say that you can't schedule overtime are lying.
Thad Beier
will tell you, "crunch time" is like last-minute cramming for exams: it is a terrible way to get things done. Error rates go up dramatically, morale goes down dramatically, it has latent health effects, and leads to shoddy product.
The reason management likes it, is that they get to put all the burden on the lowly workers, and then blame them if the outcome is less than ideal. In fact, the workers were probably already blamed for making "crunch time" necessary in the first place. If you are an employee in such a place, this should send up a huge red flag that says: your company suffers from very bad management.
The thing that strikes me about the quality of life issues in the game industry is that there is always a struggle against it by people in the industry. While half of the industry is says things like "we need time to see our families" the other side seems to be from the point of "if you really had a passion for this you wouldn't have a family."
Mike Capps in this panel was a perfect example of this overwhelming bravado that causes so many good people to go outside of the industry for work. He stated pretty clearly that his employees have to prioritize work over family. He even went as far to say that one of the bonuses of having official crunch policies is that it allows his developers to have an excuse to give to their families as to why they never see each other. (Shortly after having divorce as an example of problems that can bring performance down. gee I wonder what happened at home)
There is a very large percentage of people in the industry who have a problem with seeing overtime and crunch as something to be proud of. Really it is the game industry equivalent of out of shape men at the gym crowding around each other lifting way too much weight and giving themselves hernias.
I know it is that way because I used to be one of them. I used to be proud of the fact that I was dedicated enough to work 80 hour weeks for months at a time, get swapped onto another team and start the 80 hr weeks again a few months later. Now that I am a little older, haven't been in the game industry for a while, and have a family I realize that it really is not worth it and how stupid I was for putting up with a work environment like that for so long. The fact that those environments still exist in such a large percentage, and even are encouraged to exist, is one of the big reasons why I haven't gone back to the industry.
Exactly!
Which planet do these guys live on, that it's normal to work 16 hours/day without looking for better management alternatives?
If you're going to work that much you may as well start your own company doing whatever it is you want to do. That way you get 100% say in how things are run & you 100% of the dinero.
Really strange, these people don't seem to have any lives whatsoever outside work. Kinda sad when you think about it!
As opposed to non-human engineers?
Programmers, analysts, and techs are not managers, and we are not doctors. We should be paid by the hour, without exception. This would force management to behave, because it would reveal to them the true cost of a project. Overtime pay is as high as it is because it accurately reflects the additional strain on your workforce.
Write your congressman and senator - IT should not be exempt from FLSA!
Sounds like the typical business of proprietary software to me. Milk your developers for as much copyrightable stuff as possible and give them money in return. When someone is not passionate any more (i.e. has burned out) just take the hard decision and fire them. Once you have accumulated enough intellectual property, you can start using it to push less ruthless companies out of business.
Oh, SNAP!
It's noteworthy that not too long after this event, Mr. Della Rocca left the IGDA. I haven't had the time to watch the whole video yet since I'm on my way out the door to work, but a few days ago, Della Rocca put a large rant up on his website excoriating members of the IGDA for not wanting to get anything done. Summary at Kotaku:
Sorry for not having the leadership skills to beat the barriers of participation inequality. Less than 1% of the IGDA membership are truly active in driving the org forward. Sorry for not doing a better job building up a strong pipeline of community leaders and volunteers. Sorry for not overcoming your general apathy and laziness.
Sorry for not doing a better job of roping in all the snipers from the sidelines. Turns out you are all pretty damn good at bitching and complaining and being critical. But then you don't actually do anything about it and you don't get involved. Sorry for not bringing critics under the tent and getting them to work at improving things.
Sorry for not getting you to be more serious about the profession of game development. You are no longer a bunch of hacks. This is a real art and science. We need to be way more deliberate and control the path the profession takes as it evolves into the future.
It's a bit worrisome. In an industry that seems pretty staunch against unionization, who's going to make any change if even the groups that do exists for the rank and file aren't willing to take any voice in the matter?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Something is fundamentally wrong with the IGDA. First they state their mission is to promote better quality of life in the game industry. Then they have industry heads in the upper management(board of directors) of the igda(elected unfortunately) leading. Its like having the CEO's of a drug cartel leading an anti-narcotics organization. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the board is struggling to deal with how to defend the views of one of its own, with several industry veterans leaving as a direct result of this.
This is not the first comment about cruching from epic.
http://gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=22945
But, but, but the Unreal engine is perfect and bug-free and a work of genius, and doesn't look at all like it was written at 1 in the morning by someone half asleep...
"The reason management likes it, is that they get to put all the burden on the lowly workers, and then blame them if the outcome is less than ideal."
I don't think that's really true. I think most management would want the project to succeed, and they're probably fairly desperate at that stage. They may have convinced themselves that crunch time is necessary, and anyone who doesn't put their whole life into the project is just not trying, but I doubt many of them like it. At least I hope not.
For a given project that's behind, what are the alternatives? It's considered somewhat 'standard' in the industry (and I know that's the real problem), and so the managers will be expected to make it happen. Standing up and saying that the project will miss the milestones and shipping dates to provide better working conditions would be unlikely to have a good result...
So the real need is to change how the whole industry views development. I think the post further down makes a good suggestion:
"Write your congressman and senator - IT should not be exempt from FLSA!"
But part of the problem is that the companies doing this to their employees are able to get people to take those jobs.
And now Tom Buscagula (IGDA board member) is running around deleting many of Brian Beuken's posts from these QoL forums, claiming they are personal attacks. Which they were not, they were very tame by Internet standards, and all contained reasoned and well thought out criticism of the IGDA positions.
So, if you ask a question the IGDA board doesn't want to hear, it seems that their response is to delete the question. Utterly disgraceful.
An organization held in contempt by the very people it is supposed to represent, this kind of action is a good example why. They don't have time to agree on what wor/life balance means, and certainly won't criticize a game developer on this issue, but they have time to delete reasoned criticism of their positions. Nice.
What developers need is a union, like The Animation Guild. They represent people doing CGI effects for movies.
Film productions have crunches, too. What keeps them under control are union contracts.
Hollywood has some other cost control provisions which are interesting. There's something called a "completion bond", where an insurance company guarantees to the investors that a picture will be completed. If a project gets into serious trouble, the completion bond company has the option of firing the management and putting someone else in. This keeps management from making overoptimistic estimates. Generally, a 10% cushion in time and money are explicitly added to the estimate. If the production runs over, bad stuff happens to the producer and director.
Because of contracts like that, film scheduling and budgeting are taken very seriously in Hollywood. Schedules and budgets are designed to avoid getting into unnecessary crunches.
Quote: "I don't think that's really true. I think most management would want the project to succeed, and they're probably fairly desperate at that stage. They may have convinced themselves that crunch time is necessary, and anyone who doesn't put their whole life into the project is just not trying, but I doubt many of them like it. At least I hope not."
I think you have missed my point, which is: if things have reached this stage, then the project has already been mismanaged. Sincerity has nothing to do with it. "Crunch Time" might be the way that management has decided to deal with the issue, but it is just about the worst possible way they could deal with the issue.
Quote: "For a given project that's behind, what are the alternatives? It's considered somewhat 'standard' in the industry (and I know that's the real problem), and so the managers will be expected to make it happen. Standing up and saying that the project will miss the milestones and shipping dates to provide better working conditions would be unlikely to have a good result...
Unfortunately, though, that *IS* the proper result. If the project has been mismanaged (and at this point it has), then management should suck it up and absorb the blame, which after all, they deserve. Let me try to clarify this: barring your in-house rockstar's sudden serious illness or the like, if the project does not meet its deadline, it is the fault of management. Period. Something has been mismanaged. Period. Either the deadline was badly estimated, or something else has gone wrong, but once again, the fault is not that of the workers, it is on the part of management.
Management can be sincere as hell, and as well-meaning as Mother Theresa, but if they are in this situation, they screwed up! They failed at their function.
Likely you already know this, but "Human Engineering" is a field of engineering, similar to Mechanical Engineering, that relates to making machines and products suitable for humans to use. So for example mechanical engineers might design a backhoe, but human engineers will likely be called in to design the operator's seat, and the controls, etc.
No one ever sat down, planned out a beautiful piece of art, then executed it according to plan. At least nothing worthy of the name art.
Michelangelo's David.