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."

Comments

You want crunch time?

[Renraku]

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.

Re:You want crunch time?

[Anonymous Coward]

you think that's isolated to GAME companies?

Companies use exempt/salaried positions to avoid paying overtime. If you want paid overtime, get smart and unionize -- it's what the coal miners did a century ago.

Instead of people looking at, say, teachers and saying "wow, they have good benefits and job protection because they have a union," American workers say "I work harder than that union guy does, and don't get paid as much so unions SUCK!"

Wake up -- if other guy is getting a better deal than you, it's because YOU didn't negotiate as well as he did. I've worked shitty jobs where I had union protection, and I've worked shitty jobs where I didn't. Yep, I paid the union dues, and they didn't always do as much by me as I'd have liked -- but I'll tell you this: my overtime was paid. At the shitty non-union jobs I've worked, my overtime was NEVER paid.

In fact, at the shittiest non-union job I've had, as a software engineer, I was working long hours in crunch time when the manager came in and said "we have a comp time policy now! 5 to 1!" and everyone said "really? We work a saturday and we get the next week off?"

"Don't be silly," he said, "if you work five hours of overtime, you get one hour off! Isn't that GREAT?"

Unionization won't necessarily protect you from having all your jobs outsourced, but it will get you paid overtime, and protection from capricious firings -- and give you a formal grievance process against punitive managers.

Re:You want crunch time?

[Creepy]

I have mixed opinions of Unions - while on the one respect, they can negotiate salaries, hours, keep jobs local and whatnot, but they also make it nearly impossible to save a company when it's in trouble due to those same contracts. Let me just sum it up - non-union Toyota is the #1 auto maker right now and financially looking very good. Former #1 GM is cash strapped and facing bankruptcy. Which do you think has more job security right now?

Depending on how Unions collect fees, you can absolutely get screwed in low paying jobs (some take a percentage, while others charge a fixed fee). My only union job was one of these - I got screwed in Union dues because they charged a fixed $1/hour fee for anyone making less than $12/hour - I made state minimum wage for large employers at that time working for the school paper, but all the jobs at the school paper were union jobs (but actually comprised several unions - I think I was something like the Clerical Workers Union) and I was in the lowest paying position and made $4.25 an hour - that's $4.25/hour, minus taxes, minus fee, which left me with $2 and change for every hour worked. The job was fine, but I couldn't handle the fees - I quit after a month and got a campus non-union clerical job and doubled my take home pay (it paid a base $5.50) and was, in fact, easier work. Now admittedly, I believe the union failed the worker in that case, and it is my fault for taking a crappy job as well, but I was desperate and it was on-campus so I saved myself gas money, and honestly, I didn't realize the union dues would be so high because they didn't mention it. It was only the second job I had ever worked in my life, so it definitely was an educational experience.

Re:You want crunch time?

[im_thatoneguy]

Let's be clear. The reason GM is failing is not because of the unions. It's because they made cars nobody wanted to buy.

When GM was raking in the cash the unions asked for a bigger cut. Now that GM is on the brink of bankruptcy after squandering their billions in profit the unions are accepting concessions.

If you think UAW unions are strong... take a look at Japanese employment contracts.

Re:Cramming and the art of innovation

[MichaelSmith]

But this is normal for engineering. Two of the three top projects at my workplace are going to go this way. The increase in workload towards the deadline is almost exponential.

Its bad management, pure and simple.

Re:Cramming and the art of innovation

[Morlark]

Y'know what else comes in times of great stress? A botched rush-job.

Inspiration is one thing, but as you quite rightly pointed out, after that comes implementation. Funny thing about implementation, it can take a while, and be methodical.

Crunch time is inevitable

[TBBle]

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.

Re:From a developer's perspective

[Skreems]

And, for the most part, we do it becomes we love games, and want to be part of that process.

Yep, and that lasts a couple of years until you realize that making games isn't anything like playing them, and that working behind the scenes on a product you used to enjoy has killed your enjoyment of them (not that you have time to play games anymore anyway). Seriously, the whole "games are so much more challenging/fun" thing is nonsense made up by people who want to justify being taken advantage of. Data is data, and moving it around efficiently is an interesting puzzle to solve whether it's polygons or account information.

Obviously there are some situations where that doesn't apply. If you work in a small shop where you get a voice in the story and gameplay as well, then there's some truth to it. But the large studios have entire teams for that, while the coders get to do the same thing they'd be doing at any other job, only for less pay and with a couple more anime action figures on their desk while they do it.

Re:Crunch time rush

[phantomfive]

That's unreasonable. If you are salaried, you should be doing about 40 hours of work a week. That doesn't include time surfing the internet and wasting time in other ways.

Don't let your boss push you around. He will try to get you to work as many hours as possible, many of them will manipulate you in miserable ways. Don't commit to do more work than you can reasonably do: push back and say, "sorry, if you want me to do that, it's going to take X more days." When the goals change be honest, say, "sorry, if we want to make that change it's going to take this much longer." Then let your boss decide if it's worth it or not. If he gives you a deadline that can't be done in a certain amount of time, tell him, "Sorry, I can't do that." Be honest. If you are working too hard like that, it's your own fault. You need to make changes.

As any industrial psychologist or human engineer

[Jane Q. Public]

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.

Re:From a developer's perspective

[cliffski]

Crunch does not work. It just adds bugs at 2am that take 2 days to find.
I love games too, which is why I left mainstream dev and started up on my own. I work hard, and put a lot of effort in, but I don't 'crunch' any more, because I understand that coding at 2am is a disaster.
Its tragic than mainstream development has not realised this.

Bravado

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Cramming and the art of innovation

[Antique Geekmeister]

An occasional 'crunch time' is just life: it's easy to slack off on a project when things go well, and add extra features or levels to fill your worktime, and find an unexpected market need or disaster in QA cause a last minute crunch. It's when crunch time is for every project, and you can never get your staff _out_ of crunch time that it's blatant mismanagement and manpower starvation. I've seen excellent engineers driven into the ground by that kind of misuse of their time, where they were never allowed to fix issues or do their work far enough in advance to avoid panic-laden crunch times: it's deadly to good engineering.

Re:Is this where we're headed?

[twoallbeefpatties]

And if I'm not mistaken, burnout is pretty much just as consistent as overtime in the industry at the moment. So there's also a big question of just how much the companies want to retain talent as well. I've known two people in the industry who left jobs at some very prestigious game companies and went to work at unknown, small-time publishers because those jobs just allowed them to see their families more often. Of course, those people were working positions on teams that were persistantly understaffed, so they were in constant crunch time - they'd finish shipping one project out the door and immediately get transferred to another team's crunch to get their product shipped on time. Either way, the, ah, "spiritual" growth of the industry has been kinda stunted lately.

Re:From a developer's perspective

[internerdj]

Ok, yeah. I agree with you there. Any project will have a ramp up of intensity as the final deadline appears. We have worked a few 20+ hour days at my current job to meet deadlines but those are very infrequent. My direct supervisor is a former special forces aviator: he has a special sensitivity about jobs taking you away from family time and takes extra care to make sure we are properly staffed and scheduled to meet deadlines without burning the midnight oil.

I've got to say if a manager can't make reasonable scheduling and staffing decisions how can you trust that person to go to bat for you for a raise if you've done excellent work? When you work for someone there is a two-way trust bridge. If it isn't there in either direction, then the relationship is dysfunctional and is trouble just waiting to happen.