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: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.

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.

Crunch time rush

[phantomfive]

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.

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.

From a developer's perspective

[Dutch Gun]

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.

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:From a developer's perspective

[TBBle]

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.

Which usually indicates that you've confused "love games and want to be part of the process" with "love playing games and want to be able to play games for a living". They're not mutually inconsistent, but my criteria for enjoying a game has gone up drastically since I started working in the industry.

This is not a bad thing.

And sure, I could be making more money programming in a business environment, or administering systems (and have done exactly that) but then I wouldn't be a video games programmer. I wouldn't be (sometimes a bit indirectly) manufacturing fun, producing someone's creative vision, and generally contributing to that vast pool of noise that entertained me throughout my childhood.

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.

Re:From a developer's perspective

[internerdj]

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.
I've come to the conclusion that such things are not inevitable it is a sign of terrible management. If the company is forcing 12 to 16 hours a day especially at every stage of the cycle, they have several issues.
1) They don't care about quality. Quality is easy enough to burn without overworking your employees.
2) They aren't really getting the work they think they are. I'm as productive on a 10 hour day as I am a 16-10 hour day. Work past about 10 hours straight ends up being exponentially harder.
3) They have a hiring problem. If a company is forcing their employees to do 16 hour days they really are trying to do all the work with half the people they need.
4) They lose productivity and money from turnover. It costs to lose an employee, it costs to train the new one. I know not everyone is like this but I'm willing to stay in a job with a lower pay rate if I enjoy it. Perpetual crunch-time is not conducive to enjoyment. So at least for some employees it will save money to keep them happy.

Re:Is this where we're headed?

[__aaclcg7560]

Before I left Atari as a lead game tester, I worked 28 days straight because that's what my manager expected from me. The HR person looked the other way on the six-day work week policy. When the manager told me to do this his way or take the highway, I took the highway. I was the third of a dozen senior testers to leave under that manager. Guess what? Manager got promoted and the company tilted towards bankruptcy.

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.

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: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.