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Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wives
juicegg writes "Wives of Rockstar Games employees in San Diego recently published an open letter on their Gamasutra blog. The authors say that Rockstar employees are seriously strained by unending crunch periods of 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks. High levels of stress are leading to serious psychological and physical problems for some of the employees. They charge that studio management uses arbitrary, deceptive and manipulative practices to get employees to work more unpaid overtime hours at greater intensity — despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue. Among the blog comments, some current and past Rockstar employees are confirming problems with the studio. 'Ex Rocker' writes: 'What makes R* crunch periods different then any other studio is that they tell you the game has to be finished in 6 months, so let's start our final push to get this awesome game out there! 6 months turns into 1 year, 1 year turns into 2.' Other comments reveal worker hopelessness and general mismanagement at the San Diego studio. This turmoil is affecting development on upcoming games as well."
Read on for responses from Rockstar itself and other members of the industry.
An anonymous reader adds, "Everyone is talking about the fact Rockstar Games has addressed the accusations that it has forced developers at Rockstar San Diego into unpaid overtime to finish imminent titles. But I've noticed that a former GTA3/Manhunt designer (Chris Kruger) has a comment in this piece published Thursday about crunch in studios, suggesting the problem goes beyond Rockstar San Diego and is company-wide.
He says in Develop's Jury-style debate that the damage caused by excessive overtime can upend the out-of-work relationships developers have: 'Crunch is totally damaging, but much more so to the individuals involved. An almost failed marriage in my case. To the company the cost of crunch is very hard to define but any benefit at all is easy to measure. That's why it's such an easy decision to make for most companies. Unless there is a push back and the cost is made clear, it won't change. In my view self regulation doesn't work, and the only real solution is external regulation or utter agreement from the vast majority of staff on how to approach the matter.'
There's no easy way around the topic, but crunch is clearly damaging. When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?"
He says in Develop's Jury-style debate that the damage caused by excessive overtime can upend the out-of-work relationships developers have: 'Crunch is totally damaging, but much more so to the individuals involved. An almost failed marriage in my case. To the company the cost of crunch is very hard to define but any benefit at all is easy to measure. That's why it's such an easy decision to make for most companies. Unless there is a push back and the cost is made clear, it won't change. In my view self regulation doesn't work, and the only real solution is external regulation or utter agreement from the vast majority of staff on how to approach the matter.'
There's no easy way around the topic, but crunch is clearly damaging. When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?"
Slackers. That still leaves you half the day for sleeping and eating!
'What makes R* crunch periods different then any other studio is that they tell you the game has to be finished in 6 months, so let's start our final push to get this awesome game out there! 6 months turns into 1 year, 1 year turns into 2.' Other comments reveal worker hopelessness and general mismanagement at the San Diego studio. This turmoil is affecting development on upcoming games as well."
He could be describing Electronic Arts. Look, the game industry has been run this way for the better part of thirty years. I worked as a coder for a couple of game companies back in the mid-eighties ... and I left for the reasons described in the summary. Never looked back. As much as I enjoyed that line of work, management practices were abusive even then. The irony is that there's no real reason for it other than poor management. We know how to manage software projects well, we know that pushing programmers too hard does not result in any real savings. The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value. That's how you treat piece workers in a factory ... and guess what, piece work is generally illegal. There's a reason for that.
Jam up your development staff the way these outfits do, and you get poor quality code. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson. The usual chain of events involves increased QA costs, continual rework, missed deadlines and lost customers. Yet they persist in this obviously defective approach, which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?
They'll address it when people stop standing for it. If their developers quit, and they can't find replacements, then things will change.
Unfortunately, my experience in the industry has taught me that most developers are willing to put up with enormous amounts of crap so as "not to rock the boat".
Why don't these programmers just QUIT? I can't imagine that those guys would have a problem getting essentially ANY programming job they wanted. "Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team" looks pretty good on a resume.
They should quit and get into creating applications instead of games. Yeah, it's not nearly as sexy, but the pressure is MUCH lower. And the pay is probably better, too.
Once game development is a boring or uncool as say, J2EE or cobol development, the sweatshop reputation may fade. Until then, good luck.
It's not like these people couldn't get another job, say, writing insurance software or something if the hours were *really* a problem.
That's the way it is - it's profitable for the company with no downside.
The only option is for employees to show that it will cost them in the long run through turnover and training new employees.
Alternately, unionization or government regulation are the only other options.
Maybe they'll go on a killing spree with a supercar they got from their mobile phone.
> When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?
The day that programmers stop being yes-men and saying to their managers they can do it. I've been with EA 5 years. I know the drill. Once your team wises up and only signs up for what it can deliver, the crunch goes away.
Step 1: Be upfront and straightforward. Don't promise what you can't deliver.
Step 2: Dont' work more than 40 hours. Just leave after that.
Step 3: Profit.
What the heck? I was logged in and it posted me A.C. Anyway ...
... and I left for the reasons described in the summary. Never looked back. As much as I enjoyed that line of work, management practices were abusive even then. The irony is that there's no real reason for it other than poor management. We know how to manage software projects well, we know that pushing programmers too hard does not result in any real savings. The problem is managers that use simple metrics like lines of code written per day to determine a developer's value. That's how you treat piece workers in a factory ... and guess what, piece work is generally illegal. There's a reason for that.
He could be describing Electronic Arts. Look, the game industry has been run this way for the better part of thirty years. I worked as a coder for a couple of game companies back in the mid-eighties
Jam up your development staff the way these outfits do, and you get poor quality code. It is inevitable, Mr. Anderson. The usual chain of events involves increased QA costs, continual rework, missed deadlines and lost customers. Yet they persist in this obviously defective approach, which to me indicates that upper management is hiring sadists to run their development teams.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There's a reason EA and Rockstar take young 20 year olds just out of school, and expect them to be gone by 30. Kids buy into the myth of 'work hard, play hard', don't know what quality of life is, and haven't yet had a shitty work experience to stand up for themselves.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
When they say they want to get involved in the games industry.
Didn't this same story run two or three years ago? Game developer's wives complaining about their overworked husbands? I'm sure I saw this in 2007.
A friend of mine was, at 29, a 10 year veteran of EA and in team management position. He left when his boss met him coming in one morning and said "Hey! Look, we redid your office! Isn't it awesome? Look, the couch folds out into a bed!" He said this sort of thing was well understood at EA to mean that he wasn't spending enough time in the office, and quit.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Having worked 28 some years in the semiconductor industry grinding out chips for PC's the story sounds SOOOooooo familiar.
"It's just this time...honest....just give up your entire personal life.... your wife and kids will love you for it cause we are just going to rain cash and kudo's on you"
Fast forward 2 years later...
"Ok, so my wife left me, my kids hate me and now your telling me my bonus went to the CEO and his butt buddies on the board because they needed something to light their cigars with and now your laying me off because we missed the market because you couldn't make up your friggin mind what you wanted and we all killed ourselves for you for nothing? Do I understand this right?"
Sux don't it?
I feel fortunate to have stashed just enough away to moon them all Ace Ventura style and walk away. Those in this kind of mess really have to ask themselves what is REALLY important. Those that run places like this which is 90% of corporate business these days don't give a rat's ass about you. Employees are an expense to be reduced not an asset to be valued. Think you are not replaceable. Put you hand into a bucket of water and pull it out and see how fast that hole fills up. That is the reality. If you really like that work more than life itself, then that is what you should do but if not..... you might just want to look around.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
This is the same situation as in the American Biotech industry. Most companies are small with high burn rates and the whole industry is built around squeezing every bit of time and energy out of employees and then discarding them. Its easy to just say, "Get another job" but its not always that easy. Some of us have friends and family that we actually like to see and living the gypsy lifestyle moving from one job location to another doesn't make that easy on friends, family or children. Furthermore, some of us got where we are by being specialized, and once discarded its not easy or quick to find the next...
"DENIAL"-How an optimist keeps from becoming a pessimist- \ \
I'd suggest crunches are a symptom of bad project management, but there is apparently no project management in the first place. So it's simply incompetent, panic-driven management. Industry-standard, really.
Agreed, they are being ripped off. Thing is, a celebrity company looks good on your CV... the problem is that celebrity companies know that, and exploit it. It's harder to write "Member of GTA programming team" on your CV if you didn't leave on amiable terms - and they may not let you do that.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
And no this is not necessarily standard behavior. Historically at least one other very large and very successful developer/publisher compensated for its cunch time hours with appropriate sales based bonuses. Nearly all workers and wives believe they are treated fairly. In more recent times industry lawsuits led this developer/publisher to move to hourly compensation that includes overtime. It is amazing R* did not also make such a move.
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Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
Only one of those over stressed people would need to report that to the DOJ. The laws on over time pay are laid out pretty clear, and this if true is not at all legal.
The employee that reports it is guaranteed to get 300% of the income they legally are entitled to, as will all the others that come out in the DOJ investigation who wish to join.
Then there will be tons of fines towards the company measuring in the tens of millions of dollars.
I always love to see the excuses why particular members of management are allowed to remain on the payroll after costing the company tens of millions of dollars in illegal activities.
Unless the employees do not wish to start legal action. Which means there is no problem at all.
I smell a Video Game Industry Union coming. Since The Supreme Court decided that Corporations are persons with rights over and above any actual people it's no surprise that this kind of treatment is becoming the norm.
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Those guys need to unionize. They need The Animation Guild, Local 839, IATSE. The Animation Guild represents Hollywood cartoonists at Cartoon Network, Fox, Disney, ILM, MGM, Universal, Warner, etc. Here's their current standard contract. They get the traditional time and a half for overtime after 8 hours or five days, double time after 6 days.
That's what prevents "crunches". The film industry has "crunches", but they cost the production money, so considerable effort is made by producers to avoid them.
The jobs performed by Animation Guild and IATSE members are very similar to those of many game developers, especially on the art side.
The best time to organize is during a "crunch". Management isn't in a good position to face a strike.
It's not just Rockstar. They're all the same.
I worked in games for years before I finally managed to get out and get a job as a freelance contractor. The last company I worked for was the worst - not through malice; just incompetence.
Now, one particular time we were overloaded with projects. I put in my hours. I put in extra time when I decided it was needed. The result was that I got criticised at appraisal for not putting in stupid amounts of overtime.
They did apologise for the heavy workload and promised they'd do somethign about it for futiure projects. Next project there were demands to work every weekend and work late every night.
They gave lip service to work-life balance, but if anyone actually wants to apply this policy, they get nervous.
Why don't they just quit? In this economic climate I think many people are thankful they *have* a job. Thinking about quitting is the last thing on their minds.
But that's not necessarily just it. It's actually the same reason the don't become application developers as you mentioned: they love games. Absolutely LOVE them. They live by them, they breathe by them. Game developers are a special breed... game development is complicated in and of itself, when compared to just regular application development. It takes dedicated, hard-working people under an enormous amount of stress to bring a title to fruition.
And many developers, regardless of workforce pressures, will continue to work for a studio because that's how much they love games.
There are a few articles on this written by some ex game devs who lost/came close to losing their marriages/home life/etc because of stuff that EA was doing. I can't find a link to them so if someone can it may help to understand the point-of-view of many game devs.
more commonly know to devs as 'project mismanagement compensation period'
If it was still doing that stuff, I'd wear a T-shirt that said 'I am not a slave FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU' with an angry scrawl face emblem.
When people are overworked to the point of collapsing, when you put in 80 hour weeks and still can't feed yourself properly. When your boss does his best to make you feel small, you organize.
The conditions these jerk offs are working under are 1 million times better than anything industrial works get. They are being greedy little shits themselves. If they weren't so greedy, they would all just walk out. They would organize. They however, won't do that. They want that shiny car, they want that big house in the burbs, the big fucking tv, the 2.5 kids. They expect it all, and nobody has the heart to tell them, that just isn't how it is.
Simple solution you dolts. Don't like the work ethic of your employer, find a new one! They are treating you that way because you LET them treat you that way! If they ask you to work for free, tell them fuck no. You certainly wouldn't see a machinist, a welder, or any skilled tradesmen work a single minute for free. Our services are valuable, we know that, and if you won't pay for it, we'll go someplace that will. You all have the same option, and it's only your own greed that keeps you working like a dog. I do not feel sorry for these wives or their husbands, neither should you.
A crunch here and there, a weekend spent few times a year is OK.
A continuous crunch-time often means only one thing: bad management and bad planning.
Maybe management does not believe realistic plans. Maybe project managers do not tell the correct estimates, in order to look good.
If I were the owner of Rockstar Games, I'd do some serious introspection of the business practises. I'd lay off the people who fuck things up bad enough so that continuous crunch is a necessity. Otherwise, the future of that company is lost.
Honestly, this is a problem across most of the major industry companies right now.
Having worked on multiple projects, it's pretty much an epidemic of the industry to have poor planning, unrealistic schedules, poor staffing ramp-up (often they try to do too much with too little), and try to squeeze as much out of the development team as humanly possible.
I find it a bit sad that a AAA game can spend the ridiculous amounts on marketing and 3rd party licensing, yet refuses to pay overtime or reward the talent which actually creates the game.
Honestly, my feeling is that the industry really needs to deal with this or else they are going to have significant issues developing talent in the industry as a whole. At the moment, many people are leaving the industry after a fairly 'short' period of time, suffering from burnout and the ability to get positions in other industries which pay 2-3 times as well for less hours.
It is a bit sad how unwilling most companies are to compensate people for their time. Often--as many posts have referenced--they are riding the time of younger additions to the industry who are early 20-somethings willing to work their asses off to ship a game. However, the industry is quickly losing their late-20s/early-30s employees with families and a desire to not spend 60+ hours at work every week for frankly poor pay for a job which requires such specific skills.
The industry is really getting a large skill-sap, and myself and many of my friends have definitely encountered that in our recent projects. While the companies themselves may not see the issue replacing 10 years of experience with a 21 year-old intern--the quality of the work and the product has really been suffering.
At the end of the day, you can only quit--which is a route many people have been taking of late. Myself, I am expecting a child soon and most likely will be making an exit unless I end up somewhere with employee-minded proceedures I will likely simply go back to the tech industry and get paid over twice as much for the trouble of dropping 20 hours a week off my schedule.
Same for me as an EEE in the semiconductor industry.
60-70 hour weeks are common.
Some life.
"Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team, quit at start of crunch period"
The people who'd hire them would expect to abuse them the same way.
So why are Americans so hostile to Unions again? Short of quitting (and that may not be an option for people with families to support), negotiation is the only solution, and to negotiate you have to have something to bargain with, and that thing is called a strike.
Personally I would never tolerate such a situation. There's a limit to what the company you work for can demand of you, and this kind of paid (and apparently sometimes unpaid) slavery is going way over the line.
I hate to break it to them but those are normal hours in the film industry. Back in the 80s it was much worse. We often worked two days and at time three days straight. When you were on a deadline 7 days a week and 12 to 16 hour days weren't unusual. In the 80s overtime was all but unknown for non union work. Enforcing overtime and a flood of younger workers changed things somewhat in the 90s. On set things haven't changed much. The problem is you are talking several hours or prep and at least an hour of wrap. If you do an 8 hour day you get 5 hours of actual shooting. Trust me 12 hours behind a desk aren't the same as 12+ hours of constant motion. One of the biggest changes is a lot of people used to do it out of love but now it's become just a job. It was actually more fun back when we were doing 80+ hour weeks and loved what we did.
Yet another software company most likely lacking proper project management. The lunatics are running the asylum...
I was about to say the same thing. If not the Animation Guild (which may not have relevance for programmers, for example), perhaps another union should be set up for the gaming industry. The movie and television industries have unions for various facets of production:
DGA - directors
WGA - writers
IATSE- production people
Teamsters-- transportation
AFTRA -- news, radio, sports and weather; variety shows, etc..
SAG -- screen actors
MPEG -- (the other one) Motion Picture Editor's Guild
etc.
After that EA letter floated around a few years back, I thought surely a union was going to result, but apparently not. People always say "well everyone wants to work for the gaming industry, they'll just replace you with someone else"... really? And people don't want to be movie directors and actors
The gaming industry is not in its infancy any more. It makes more $ than the movie industry. Modern Warfare 2 made what, a billion dollars? About what Avatar is making?
I know there's been an anti-union trend over the last few decades, but there's a Democrat in the white house now. The fact that this industry isn't unionized yet is confusing to me. What's going on? Are developers just a bunch of nerdy pushovers? Do they believe threats about moving jobs overseas? Are they by nature independent and/or competitive and the idea of working together just not in their nature? You could say the same about Hollywood...
A few years ago there was such a lawsuit against a game developer. It prompted various game developers, affected and unaffected by the lawsuit, to switch from salary with no overtime to hourly with overtime. Since it is in California and high profile with deep pockets I'm very surprised that R* did not.
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Perpenso Calc for iPhone and iPod touch, scientific and bill/tip calculator, fractions, complex numbers, RPN
That's funny.. working at R* sounds just like being a grad student.
Take Two the parent company is losing money for 2009. a lot of money. revenues are down and there is a big loss for the year. and the company is burning a lot of cash. at the current burn rate there is a good chance of Chapter 11 in 2010.
Why don't these programmers just QUIT?
They're so overworked THEY DON'T HAVE TIME!!! Most are working on their letters of resignation, but they only have enough break period type one letter, and most weeks that's taken up by going to the bathroom or eating.
I hear this: "My bosses are morons that make everybody do crunch time, etc"
Makes me wonder: guys, LEAVE, everybody at once, right now! And make your own company. And treat developers like they should be treated.
If your bosses are morons it shouldn't be too difficult.
how long until
I found this article about EA from 2004. It seems like the very same thing.
I don't know Abu, it seems fake.
One must wonder if they are in the position they are in because they are the sort of guys that have to have their wives do the complaining for them.
The federal DOJ has nothing to do with it.
It's at-will, exempt employment. In most states, as an at-will, exempt employee you can be asked to work 16 hour or even longer shifts, 7 days a week, and if you do not like it your only recourse is to quit. That's why it's at-will. The employer has no contractual obligation to retain the employee, and the employee has no contractual obligation to continue working for the employer.
That's called "churning", and many employers do it because workers are simply not valuable. New trucking school students are treated the same way.
"Kids buy into the myth of 'work hard, play hard', don't know what quality of life is, and haven't yet had a shitty work experience to stand up for themselves."
They have nothing to stand ON, they can be replaced by those willing to compete. Until they acquire value, acting as if they have it is a (nice if you can pull if off) bluff.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Why don't they just quit? In this economic climate I think many people are thankful they *have* a job. Thinking about quitting is the last thing on their minds.
I used to think like that and stayed with Oracle much too long putting up with management's BS. Now I work for Google for a few months and couldn't be happier. Google is hiring developers aggressively "in this economic climate". Opportunities are there, you just need to look for them.
Sounds like Rockstar hasn't changed much since my husband left. For those who wonder why people don't just quit, a lot of it is tied up in the promises of big bonus. Sometimes the end of project bonus is actually a significant amount of money but not always. However, if you are contently told that if you hold on for 2 more weeks or 1 more month then you'll get your bonus, you hold on. Then the project is extended. Also when you are working 12-14 hours a day with no weekends or holidays, it's pretty hard to look for other jobs. Any extra time you do have is spent trying to keep your relationships in some semblance of order or making sure you still own clean underwear. There aren't a lot of older game programmers. They burn out and/or decided that they don't want to miss their children growing up to ensure the blood splatters just right. The wheel gets re-invented a lot because seasoned professionals are replaced with shiny new grads.
"It's not just Rockstar. They're all the same."
I agree.
No worker is truely a slave. You chose to get hired. You can choose to walk away.
I gladly was willing to make less money to have a family, family time, and a life. I switched from dot-com to healthcare IT.
Once I was established at IT at the healthcare company, I switched to a 'coordinator' that works between IT and customers. Kept the same salary. Oh, and now I even telecommute a few days a week, too.
Suprisingly, there are jobs out there that pay well, and do not require 60+ hrs/wk.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Required reading for the Period It All Changed is Steven Levy's book "Hackers". He focused on Sierra On-Line, which started off programming Apple ][ games in assembler, with founder Ken Williams as programmer/guru to houseloads of teenage programmers that were making up to a quarter-mill a year (in 1983 dollars) for inventing Frogger and the like, because Williams gave percentages of what the game made to the developers.
This changed at remarkable speed to a market where the owners of capital got everything but "what the traffic will bear" in terms of how little programmers would work for.
And young people doing something that gives them a buzz (and, let's face it, fellow addicts, writing an elegant algorithm, solving a knotty problem, producing a slick-looking result on-screen, especially in a problem area where the output is intensely visual...there's no buzz like it) will work for pretty much nothing.
And, no, my "owners of capital" term isn't the start of some socialist screed. The critics are right: the workers can just walk away any time they come to their senses. The profit split may resemble a 19th-century company town by a coal mine, but "Labour" here isn't some hapless bunch of illiterates with no options; they just have to accept that they're being "paid" in buzz, and any time they want to switch over to money, they can go program payroll systems.
There's some buzz there, too, believe it or not, you find elegant algorithms, and user interfaces that match the human intuition and expectations hand-in-glove, in lots of places. And you're home by six, good paycheque warm in your pocket.
There are satisfactions, too, in being part of actually building the Real World, not just amusing people with fantasy ones.
Games teams are for single 20 somethings. As they become married, and parents, they should move into central teams where the pressure is less and their experience benefits the most games. Sure it's not as "cool" but by then you shouldn't care about that sort of thing.
What's the problem? 6 12 hour days a week is only 72 hours. The current 'guidelines' for resident doctors is 80 hours/week, and no more than 30 or 36 hours in a row. If residents can make life-or-death decisions on that little downtime, why can't developers write code with even more time off?
This is just hitting /.? It's been all over the nets for 2-3 weeks. Perhaps /. could stand to hire some of R*'s management :P
No sig for you!!
I've been working 7 days a week for the past two years. This article is making Rockstar sound pretty good to me (unless the pay is lower ;-).
If you are a manager of a gaming company. Many others will be quite unimpressed. To many people it appears a bit like putting "designed a toy rocket" on your resume for NASA.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
watch the movie if you haven't already. It's a perfect counterbalance to the anniversary of communism.
It's better than I thought
Most of the larger companies are trying to get away from this practice, though not always with much success. I do know that even within a single company, things can vary greatly from one team to the next, so I wonder if this is due to the management at a particular studio, or if it is a problem that affects all of Rockstar. The article mentions 'despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue', which is deeply misleading. That was made at Rockstar North, in Scotland. There is no reason to assume that just because one studio is printing its own money that the revenues will be distributed evenly across all partner studios.
I have worked for two of the largest companies in this industry, Ubisoft and EA. At those companies, I can tell you that as far as the CEO / corporate level management are concerned, they just want to see a game get done on time and on budget, and for it to hit the sales estimates. This is because those things will have a direct affect on the quarterly and annual statements. For a game to be a hit depends on many factors that cannot be directly influenced; ie: the design, gameplay, story (if applicable), the license and the marketing campaign all have to hit the right notes to result in a hit. Most pressure that a typical developer sees, especially if there are not any direct design responsibilities, is to get stuff done On Time and On / Under budget. The incentive used is a bonus. And this is where good intentions start to break down.
The producers on a project are typically given a bonus that depends mostly on the game being done on time and on budget. They are given a budget, and after that, the rest of the company does not look at anything beyond various demo's done for the editorial boards. The CEO types would like for the employees to be happy (no one wants bad press), but they leave that up to the studio HR and project leads / producers. What most people do not realize is that even within the same company, the work experience can vary greatly from one team to the next. One team might be using wise development practices, be carefully deciding which employees work on the title, and doing what they can to keep the scope of the game manageable given their time constraints. Other teams might simply pour on the crunch hours and death march the employees to meet the goal. But if the game is done on time and on budget, the producers always get their bonus.
What I see as being a big part of the problem is that there is no incentive at any point for those who run the projects to keep their employees happy. At a company like Ubisoft, you can finish your project, and have 70% of the staff quit, burn out, or just refuse to work on the sequel. But if you got it done on time and on budget, you get the same bonus.
Getting back to the article at hand, it is entirely possible that the people running Rockstar North have great development practices and have happy employees, but for the Rockstar San Diego studio to be helmed by Captain Bligh.
END COMMUNICATION
Never enough time to do it right, always enough time to do it again
I used to work for a company where stress level was high. I did it for money, for 4 years. When that problem was solved I quit. Your body and mind it's like a car: if you abuse it, it will start to fail.
Yet you found enough time to post on Slashdot!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
GTA IV was originally meant to look like Pikmin but the employment conditions are so terrible that the work output shows what's on programmers' minds...
There's an old expression, "Don't complain about not having shoes, when there are people who don't have feet."
I'm unemployed and would love a job. So would those included in this January 8, 2010 report by the US Dept of Labor.
Unemployment rates for the major worker groups--adult men (10.2 percent),
adult women (8.2 percent), teenagers (27.1 percent), whites (9.0 percent),
blacks (16.2 percent), and Hispanics (12.9 percent)--showed little change in
December. The unemployment rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not seasonally
adjusted.
Among the unemployed, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27
weeks and over) continued to trend up, reaching 6.1 million. In December, 4 in
10 unemployed workers were jobless for 27 weeks or longer.
If you don't like the job for whatever reason, quit. This isn't indentured servitude.
Normally I'd side with the workers, but in this case.... for the love of God be happy you have a job at all!!!
Why don't these programmers just QUIT? I can't imagine that those guys would have a problem getting essentially ANY programming job they wanted. "Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team" looks pretty good on a resume.
Sure, if you're looking for another job in the game industry. It's not going to count for much in the bulk of the business software world, where the stiffs in HR who are screening the resumes probably haven't even heard of GTA and are mainly looking for an entirely different set of buzzwords and acronyms than a game programmer is likely to have.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Give me a break, if you don't like your job then quit and get a different one. I used to be an Electrician in the Canadian Oil Patch, 24 days on, 3 days off / 12 to 16 hour days in -30 degree weather (during winter +24 to 30 during summer) and we didn't have a masseus. If you don't like your f*cking job then get a different one.. or maybe it's better to have your wives write letters on your behalf, because they've obviously got more cojones then the developers at Rockstar.
Telemarketers, garment industry workers and many others would be greatly surprised to find they are engaged in illegal work activities.
The problem is not bad management, or workers accepting these practices. The problem is that overtime is unpaid. You see, if overtime is free for the employer, the employer would be unwise to not use this valuable, free resource. If a manager did not spur their workers to work nights and weekends, all year long, they could be accused of wasting resources. It's free, people! Use it as much as you can! If employers would have to pay their workers for overtime, they would not ask them to work so many extra hours as a matter of course. -Ron.
Aren't a lot of white collar jobs like this now?
- "Unending crunch periods"
- 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks
When I was a systems consultant that was pretty much the norm. As a consultant I got off easy compared to the regular employees.
Problem of age, often it comes down to the fact, first job, being inexperience, ending up in a high profile shitplace and being worked to a burnout, after that the management cashes in and you are let go...
Most of the times you have to go through one of those dreadmills to really get the fact straight.
I have been through that, and when my last job started to develop in the same way, I simply quit, I had learned my lession. You can get those shit jobs also outside of the games industry, but they are not as common!
All I can say is once you see such a job starts to develop into this direction, immediately start to look for other options, polish up your resume and go for interviews (heck even if they want you to make overtime, you can leave for any reason if you are outside of your working hours) and once you landed something decently, give to them hard...
And then leave! The other option is to sue them into oblivion for breaking the labor laws (also once you are out of the dreadmill) those guys do not understand any other language!
Those bosses behave like the school bullies and unless you hit them really hard they will not change their ways!
Why don't these programmers just QUIT? I can't imagine that those guys would have a problem getting essentially ANY programming job they wanted. "Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team" looks pretty good on a resume.
They should quit and get into creating applications instead of games. Yeah, it's not nearly as sexy, but the pressure is MUCH lower. And the pay is probably better, too.
Nah screw that. They should develop more applications that have a little more excitement into them. Hell, I'd like to see a FPS-style application that I could use to manage my networks and servers. "Work" would take on a whole new meaning when you're busy arming yourself with the Ping Pistol and Portscan Pulse Cannon...
Management must set realistic goals. If they don't, they can get away with some short term 'crunching' but in the long run, the attrition rates will go through the roof and productivity will eventually settle down to where it should be. NEVER plan a project with overtime included in the schedule. ALWAYS look at past performance and DON'T try to improve upon it without a real plan. Abusing your employees will result in health problems and increase your benefit premiums. Eventually your reputation will tarnish and it will be difficult to find good people to work for you. This stuff is all common sense but many people in management just don't have any.
JSL
Why do they need to be under a tremendous amount of stress? What makes that required component of the process? Is a game better when the developers suffer?
I bet they get in at 8am, take their lunch and are home by 5PM.
I would bet on it, because I have never worked anywhere yet where executives work those sorts of hours.
If they do, they are small privately held companies and not publicly traded.
The only time I ever put those sort of hours in where for myself, at about $100 an hour.
There is no way I will ever do that for a corporation. In fact, as an individual, if you are seriously considering wrecking your health or your personal family relationships at that sort of work pace, why the hell would you do it for a corporation instead of your own private business?
Dumb.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
That's called "churning", and many employers do it because workers are simply not valuable. New trucking school students are treated the same way.
"Kids buy into the myth of 'work hard, play hard', don't know what quality of life is, and haven't yet had a shitty work experience to stand up for themselves."
They have nothing to stand ON, they can be replaced by those willing to compete. Until they acquire value, acting as if they have it is a (nice if you can pull if off) bluff.
Er, no offense to the Bubba FTE crew out there, but I'd say your analogy is a bit flawed. It takes a WHOLE lot more training to code and code well than it does to drive the big rigs, thus employers, after either paying an experienced coder a decent salary, or investing upwards of tens of thousands to get the noob up to speed on coding, I'd say that they have a value.
Why don't these programmers just QUIT? .
Because if Hypothetical Employee quits it often void things like severance, unemployment, and benefits. Furthermore, there are HB1s and overseas outsourcing firms ready and willing to step up and deliver at a fraction of the cost of an American employee.
Problem is those guys should report the companies to the authorities...
They usually clearly break labor laws, and that means they owe the employes a lot of money.
EA already lost a load of money over the incident several years ago. I assume Rockstar needs to learn its lesson as well.
Christ that is gay.
Oh, back to the topic at hand. Rockstar employees: if you don't like there it find a new job.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I suppose I should post this one anonymously.
I disagree with you. I felt like most of the people I worked with at EA would have rather been working on movies.
I see it more like this: there's this mentality amongst developers that they're a sort of chosen people. Bear with me. Getting into game development is SUPER-competitive especially for entry level positions, so people have an attitude of once you get your foot in the door, do whatever you must to keep it there.
But that doesn't get to the heart of the matter. After I left EA, I was having an IM chat with a former co-worker and I expressed that I really liked that while my new job wasn't as exciting, the hours were very reasonable. He snipped back that he didn't "have patience for people that [couldn't] hack a production schedule." Y'know. And this was pretty much the only guy I worked with that I liked in any "Let's potentially hang out and play games after work," kind of capacity. He took the attitude of, "Hey man, this is what everybody thinks and I'm just being your friend by telling you." That was the last conversation we had.
Because it's a "production schedule." It's not an insane EA schedule that could be expanded if the assholes in suits could deal with profits in two quarters instead of this one. No, it's a "production schedule." This is the way things are and this is how they'll continue to be. If you don't like it, you can leave and we'll all talk shit about you behind your back once you're gone.
What I took away from my experience at EA is that the chief qualifying skill a person can have there isn't passion for games, a finely honed artistic ability, or enthusiasm and good ideas. Plain and simple: you last in games if you can put up with 80+ hour weeks for months at a time. Anybody else "just can't hack it."
"Why don't these programmers just QUIT? I can't imagine that those guys would have a problem getting essentially ANY programming job they wanted. 'Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team' looks pretty good on a resume."
Having worked in the industry one major reason is "Naive and heroic dedication to the project". I had friends recently working in a similar crappy situation, crunching for a year, and the attitude they expressed was "The new management sucks! They're killing us. Right after this game ships for christmas (9 months away), I bet the whole team will quit." Which is jaw-droppingly bad career tactics if you think about it; I was pretty aghast listening to them.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
There hasn't been anyone there to lead the charge. Organizing a union is a big undertaking. I used to handle the IT system for the MPEG. They have a staff of about 20 people. Too many nerds are "do it themselves" types. They won't give their "hard earned money" to someone else just so that someone else can "represent" them.
Yeah, if you mean compared to developing corporate VB applications.
There are many other types of development that are also complicated in and of themselves.
Embedded software. Automation control systems. Engine controllers. Drivers. Operating systems.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
Ok, so you had a good experience with unions. That's wonderful, not everyone does. Take my roommate, he's in a plumber's union. Well for starters they take a significant amount in union dues, over a hundred a month. For that he gets apparently jack and shit. They ran out of work during the recession and basically told all their employees "Sorry, nothing we can do." None of those dues were used for savings for unemployment help, they didn't reduce rates to try and get more work. For that matter he got a "raise" because he'd been with them long enough. Of course additional money per hour times zero hours equals useless. Also he's not allowed to take non-union jobs while they don't have a job for him. He is more or less expected to sit around and go broke because they can't find work. Of course he's broken the rules and gotten a job, but there you go.
Or there's me. I work in a non-union place. Hours are pretty much 8-5 unless there's an emergency which there rarely is. Plenty of paid time off, fairly low stress work environment overall. Pay isn't stellar, but then you do have to trade some pay if you want higher quality of life, and it is still plenty to own a house and all that jazz.
Unions can be good, but they also can be extremely bad. If you had a good experience, fine, but don't assume it is all great. With my roommate's union, it was fairly good when economic times were good, but then so was most work. However in the down time their members are even more fucked than non-members.
Mod this up--I'm no way involved in even a related field of work, but this is pretty close to the reality of how corporations run.
I'm sick of the "CEOs are evil sociopaths" mentality simply because it implies that the rich are some evil exploitative faction of society while everyone else are halo-wearing do-gooders. Everyone is the same, and often the greatest evil is really just assholes in middle-management. My point here is that malice is far less common than simple incompetence.
The only way to fix this is for employees to work together. Unionize? Maybe, maybe not, but in any business the lowest common denominator can affect business if they work together.
The problem really isn't R* or EA (not that they're faultless here), it's the employees. If you LOVE games so much that you're willing to sell you soul to a studio, then who's fault is it? It's like the battered wife that LOVE the man so much that she'll keep going back no matter how badly he beats her. Is the man faultless? Absolutely NOT! But it isn't he who continues to go back for more abuse.
Hey Devs, wake up! Stop putting up with the abuse! No need for a union, just stop taking it.
Oh yeah, and if it's true that studios hire 20-somethings and expect them gone by 30, let me tell you something... your 20-something. You have you're whole life in front of you. Quit. Move. Stand up and say, "NO!" Whatever you want, you're 20-something. The night is still young!! Once you get to be 40-something, you'll understand what I'm saying here.
Maybe because the opportunity is the best thing they have at that moment of their lives, particularly in a rotten economy?
>There are satisfactions, too, in being part of actually building the Real World, not just amusing people with fantasy ones.
Exactly. And you know something else important: If the payroll system doesn't work, the company immediately feels the pain. That means they quickly have incentive to keep you there. Which was probably learned many decades ago by large companies the hard way, and is *why* they make sure to do things to keep you there (pay you well, nice hours, decent benefits).
Unlike the gaming industry, where the worst that happens is the company gets a few months behind schedule. Sure, it means someone gets chewed out, but it doesn't mean they aren't getting their paycheque. And nobody cares if the game is 1 month late. Try turning payroll off for a month, though.
It's a little bit more immediate. :)
Lets not forget most of these guys make a metric shitton more money than most of the rest of us. Quit and get a factory job like the majority of us and I'll listen to you complain. Right now you're a programmer, writing some of the most popular games on the market and building a reputation for yourself that will land you a job anywhere you want in the future. My guess is most of these guys love putting in these kind of hours doing this sort of things and their excuse to their wives is "The company makes me do it!!"
Well, there's also the fact that 20-somethings just out of school work for about half the pay of a 40-year-old looking at how to pay for their kids' college tuition and put a little aside to retire before they hit 70.
For some reason engineers and software developers got the idea years ago that they were "professionals" and thus should have pride in finishing no matter the cost.
Of course, the jobs that are really considered "professional" by most people (lawyers, doctors, etc) don't operate this way.
Too bad you can't go to the alternate reality without unions where everybody works 60hrs/week and you can be legally exposed to any danger without the company having to worry about being responsible.
There's a whole lotta Rockstar employees' wives who need some pipe layed. San Diego, here I come!
the puppy mill for young and fledgling programmers.
In the US there's a large supply of people who want to eat and keep their houses that are willing to work under crap conditions.
I like big tits and big butts, you insensitive clod!
"Would you also support the right of software companies to collude among themselves to keep wages low? Oh wait, that's actually illegal."
I'm not sure if it's illegal in the US but it happens everyday here.
I can't speak for the current generation of game developers, but my first generation experience (Atari 2600) is that being a game developer carried little weight when applying for a non-game job.
Do you get paid to write these? If you haven't already, you could make a template that you could sell to anyone who wanted to try to scare hippies away from moving in to their town. They could just fill in some company names and some landmarks and voila. Just keep constant the greed and religion and militia themes, the pot-head victimization angle, and the xenophobic finale.
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
The wives don't mind the money that comes in each paycheck. Oh but I don't get to seeeeeee him until the game is done. yeah and?
get a damned hobby.
So your argument is that if employees settle for being exploited, there's nothing wrong in exploiting them.
If you actually still think that Obama or ANY GOP/DEM is going to fight for your cause ( no matter what it is ) you've not been paying attention all these years.
... years. This sounds like standard MBA resource planning to me. Management probably knows it will take years. But if they start out telling the staff that, people will pace themselves. So they turn it into a panic and get everyone psyched up for a 6 month push. Followed by another one, and on and on.
"Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." -- C. Northcote Parkinson
Have gnu, will travel.
Any company will exploit their workers given the opportunity. At least Rockstar employees love what they're doing.
I've come to the point where I no longer care about rocking the boat. Yes, it will get you a bad performance review. But now that the economy is in the tank, it is very important to draw that proverbial line in the sand. You might even get fired.
Now, you might ask why anyone would voluntarily do something that would get them fired. Here's why: It is better for both you and I in the long run. This is almost a classic prisoner's dilemna. Here's how it would play out in a world where every employee stood up for themself:
In other words, a small amount of unemployment shows that the economy is working well for workers. What most people don't know is that the average employee in a tech-oriented business brings in $10k of revenue *per week*. That is, the salary and (more importantly) bonus a new hire draws is almost insignificant in comparison to the loss of profit a company endures during their absence. A company which waits even two weeks to hire someone at a lower salary will in most cases never recoup the lost opportunity cost of waiting. Businesses hate uncertainty, especially the loss-producing kind.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Thing is, games has a really casual atmosphere, and most of the programmers are C or C++ programmers, and don't suffer from the "can only think in objects, not instructions and data/bytes". Better still most are there because it's more than just a job to them, they are interested in the technology and how it works. It's why so many are self-taught. I've spend most of my time in tools (and some engine), in central departments, so I've avoided the horrors that is common. Every time I've looked outside of games, I've been put off by all C#/Java/HTML, and "professionalism" (read, not really interested, "just a job"). Seen the odd one that interests though.
Do you live in San Diego, or have you lived in San Diego in the past 10 or so years?
If you answered "yes" to the above, did you live South of Poway or Sorrento Valley* and West of El Cajon?
If you answered "yes to the above, then you know that all of those items are true. If they were written anonymously from the perspective of a concerned tech worker watching out for his Slashdot buddies and in more sterile, less alarmist terms, then it'd've been at +3 by now.
Ethanol-fueled is a batshit crazy nut, but he does manage to pull some credibility out of his ass once in awhile.
* The people who work and live in Poway/Sorrento Valley/Carlsbad/what most people call "North County", which is where Rockstar SD and the rest of San Diego's tech sector are located, are already so damn overworked that all they do is work overtime and then go home to their cookie-cutter condos and gated communities to sleep. In short, they're too damn tired to pay attention to anything other than their employer's NASDAQ numbers.
Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wives
By wives' definition: overworked means not spending a lot of quality time with me. Regardless of how strenuous and stressful the work is... there's more of a self-interest there.
What about married female workers at Rockstar? Do their husbands say they are overworked?
Why are we inquiring of spouses rather than the employee?
Some spouses' definition of "overworked" means working 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and not chatting (personal calls) on their business line 3+ hours a day.
12 hours a day, 6 days a week is not that bad, that's 72 hours a week. As long as the employee agreed to it, and the pay is appropriate, that should be fine. There are plenty of professions that involve that many hours a week, e.g. The average Firefighter works >60 hours per week as well.
But again, most of that time is not spent conducting physically draining activity. In the case of a developer, most time is spent thinking.
It's called "needing the money", and sometimes the need for cash trumps having a lot of time for recreation, in certain life situations.
Realizing for most individuals, it's going to be unacceptable over long periods of time, but for a few years it should be alright. Employees at startups have long been known for long work hours in exchange for extra compensation or special fringe benefits.
In fact... in the long run, working 8 hours a day is going to be unacceptable to most people. Every hear of this concept called "retirement" ?
Would you think it an adequate tradeoff to work 72 hours a week instead of 40, and retire within 10 - 15 years instead of 30 years?
The parent is marked funny but it's actually somewhat close to the truth. In my last job I was getting hit with constant OT. Usually by the time I got home or was just about to head out on weekend, the phone would ring because some BS or other had cropped up. Often these were related to some software or other update pushed live without proper testing by another department. It was crazy, because though it pissed my boss off as much as us most times, he wasn't in charge of those that kept pushing up broken crap.
Long story short, finding a job while dealing with hefty OT at work, fixing various things at home, and generally surviving wasn't all that easy. Most companies want to interview during the day as well, so when you're already punched for time try finding enough to get halfway across time for an interview during the middle of the work-day.
The company would have been a lot more productive by putting proper testing procedures in place and/or paying a bit more for proper hardware and another admin (we went from four to two in the time I was there), and it may have actually saved them money in the long-run. Instead the admins got run into the ground and eventually (myself included) did quit. I've heard that they actually changed a lot since I left, maybe having 3+ of their Sr Admins go in a year pushed the right message forward, or at least gave those remaining the power to make a stand.
I work in the commercial industry and the story is pretty similar. 12 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week sometimes for weeks on end. Just like the game industry, it's a young person's field. Studios usually get people either straight out of school or a couple years out, still trying to make their career, and they work them hard. The money is great at that age, you're not tied down with much familial commitment, and you're hungry to work. I'm almost 30, so I'm not that old yet, but every year I see younger people coming in and older people moving to another field - once they get married and have kids, it just isn't worth it to put in the time and effort that the jobs require.
You hear horror stories mostly coming from the game industry because they're even more notorious for bringing in young people straight out of school and giving them crazy hours. Since they're salaried, they're usually not paid OT. Also, as opposed to the average 1 - 2 month delivery time for commercials, games take up to 2 or 3 years to get out the door, so the crunch is a lot longer and more sustained.
I have buddies in both industries and all of them don't hesitate to complain but they also don't really do anything about it. In order to survive in the industry, you have to really love what you do, and these people really love it, and often get taken advantage of because of it.
That wasn't funny, you insensitive clods.
I can believe it. This isn't the first time we've heard this sort of tale. This is a bit more severe than some of the others people have told, but not all that far outside the norm. And if it's true, then that sort of thing can really mess up a person, which might explain why they come out with so many games only a sociopath could love.
> It takes dedicated, hard-working people under an enormous amount of stress to bring a title to fruition.
No, it just takes dedicated, hard-working people.
The guy's on crunch, he's not getting laid.
I used to work at Jagex. They consider themselves to be very good in this regard... despite which, I did do 10 hour days for about 10 days in a row (including the weekend), right before Christmas, to get a game ready for launch, only to have it delayed by 10 months the moment I took a break. Warning bells went off in my head when my boss praised me for "coding like a hero". I have, unfortunately, been hearing similar things from one of the other departments in that company.
Now, while I can't comment on Rockstar, EA, Blizzard, etc., I am absolutely certain that in Jagex this issue is caused by the middle management, and not senior management. The CEO has been appalled at such things on at least one occasion and stopped it, so I have a lot of respect for him.
That said, despite the efforts of senior management to be awesome, I still left the company because of my line manager. Well, him and the HR department not doing anything visible about his repeated use of "Your fired!" as a joke. I know multiple others are also planning to leave because of him.
If you regularly work more than 45 hours a week, you are doing it wrong. There are exceptions, but they should be rare. Get your priorities straight!
If your job sucks, you are doing it wrong. Fix it or get out!
If your wife talks to your boss for you, you are doing it wrong. Grow a pair for christ's sake!
Confucius say: What batshit crazy nuts don't realize is that only a fellow batshit crazy nut would actually think that someone who's a batshit crazy nut could ever be credible.
Let's see:
Grueling hours. Check.
Damaged health. Check.
Strained personal relationships. Check.
Doing work for free. Check.
Corporation raking in billions. Check.
Disregard for talent. Check.
Sounds just like being a real life "rock star!"
(on a serious note: Come on Rockstar. Treat your freaking employees well. This makes me not want to buy your games.)
"Member of Grand Theft Auto programming team" looks pretty good on a resume.
More like toxic than good.
I know how the gaming industry works and what kind of developers that environment is likely to produce, unless I'm looking for something specific to game development (say a DirectX expert) its unlikely someone from the GTA team would even get an interview.
I've worked 80-hour weeks, and made the following observations: 1) Doing it for a couple weeks is generally ok. Do it for more than 3 or 4 weeks in a row, and it does begin to have serious health side effects. 2) After about 12 hours, your error rate goes increases to the point where you are probably doing more harm than good 3) The best code gets done when people have a chance to step back, reflect on what they are doing, and brainstorm on more efficient ways to reach their goal ("sharpen their axe", so to speak), rather than just keep plugging away at what their first guess for a correct approach was. Sure, sometimes I change my mind too much when faced with a number of equally valid methods, but in general allowing people to actually think about what they are doing does produce better product. These observations apply to development, the experience of managers, QA, or testing may be different.
One of the most destructing things to productivity is bad management. Shortly after I was moved between two teams in the same group at Intel, I asked my team manager if I could take a day off (without pay) to go on a Mt. St. Helens climb with my old team. He refused, claiming "We're doing a new release that day and we need you around to test it." (I was a developer, not a tester. Also, I was a contractor, so technically I could have just told him "fuck you!" and gone anyway.) So, I come in, and wait around for the release. Around 4:30, they finally got the build to work! That's right - I missed out on a team building excursion with a majority of the group so that I could sit around all day doing nothing! It's things like that that make you start looking for a new position; shortly after that, I found one, and announced "It should come as no surprise to anyone that I've found a better place to work."
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
There's a reason EA and Rockstar take young 20 year olds just out of school, and expect them to be gone by 30. Kids buy into the myth of 'work hard, play hard', don't know what quality of life is, and haven't yet had a shitty work experience to stand up for themselves.
And young 20 year olds just out of school haven't yet had a shitty work experience to pay off their massive college debts yet either.
They also haven't had a shitty work experience to put on their resume since every decent job requires at least 2-4 years of experience in the industry.
The big problem with going from the video game industry to a different technology industry is convincing hire managers that your video game work experience is real work. That's a high hurdle. When I got out of the video game industry, I had IT certifications and a programming degree in my pocket. The fact that I turned 30 and started studying for a career change meant that I was no longer a "team player" in the video game industry. When my manager gave me the "his way or the highway" speech, I took the highway because I was ready.
Well, that is rather easy to do if you can make your employees work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and not pay overtime.
My wife is a USDA vet supervising inspectors at a meat processing planet.
The employees there work 12 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week depending on whats going on at the various local farms.
If the guys slaughtering animals, and doing back breaking manual labor for minimum wage aren't bitching and are happy to be employeed, please tell me why I should give flying fuck about the whining of some well paid desk jockey who has been educated so could easily go do something else?
You ever wonder why people offshore jobs? Here is a good example.
Bunch of spoiled brats.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The real headline should be: Programmers at Rockstar have wives.
Confucius say: What batshit crazy nuts don't realize is that only a fellow batshit crazy nut would actually think that someone who's a batshit crazy nut could ever be credible.
Confucius also say, "Even pig fly once in long while."
Granted, that's usually after having been launched from a steam-powered catapult, but there it is.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Rockstar are TWATS. Evident by the grade A shite they produce. Anybody working for them deserves what they get.
Is /. implying only lesbians and men work at r*?
If you LOVE games so much that you're willing to sell you soul to a studio, then who's fault is it?
I think it's more akin to the artists that go to the big labels and sign away their collective souls to black-hearted record company executives. Here's the problem, as I see it. Truly creative minds derive much of their (for lack of a better term) job satisfaction from the creative effort itself, with financial reward being a secondary attribute. Businesses are usually very aware of this, and will cheerfully exploit what they perceive as a weakness.
... watch your step because the private sector will take your best years from you, and leave you little in return.
Unfortunately, that fact (along with the generally naive attitude that most young people have towards the corporate world) just makes them grist for the mill. Programmer, musician, artist
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
as a military man all i can say is get over it. If you dont like it leave, i doubt they signed a 6 year contract.
Notice he didn't say he was one of them...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I mean, I guess we're all in agreement here that it's crappy management who is to blame for crunch time. At least I have never seen any good reason for crunch except management with unrealistic ideas of time tables and schedules. But why is it so apeshit bad in game dev? Sure, everyone had his share of crunch, but I can't remember it being as bad anywhere else. Permanent crunch is definitly neither known in database engineering, not even in malware defense (where it can be quite crunchy at times, if something new hits the fan).
Don't come with "but technology develops so quickly, you have to get your game out before the technology is obsolete". I know technology moves quickly, but it moves even faster in the malware biz. You have to learn new tricks on a weekly base. And still, crunch in the excess of 70 hours is rare and definitly nothing that becomes the standard for half a year or longer. Don't tell me a new set of DirectX fads every other year is worse.
And yes, I'm also aware that there are special times in a year when games HAVE to be finished. But that would probably warrant crunch in October/November to get the game done for Christmas. Not throughout the year.
So what is it? What makes game development a permanent crunch?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
May I remind you of Electronic Arts:
http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/
I worked there during that time, it's all true. The truism here is that too many young coders think that writing games is "cool", so they'll put up with bullshit to do it... while the company (correctly) figures that they can burn 'em out with no worries, as there's always more young talent eager to take their place.
This post is somewhat offtopic, but contains an interesting fact, nonetheless:
This is exactly the premise behind Britney Spears' song "Baby One More Time." Only difference here is we have a married couple rather than a bf/gf deal.
Treatment guidelines are here, especially important for slashdot types (like me :-) who spend too much time indoors at the computer:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Because of the way game development works, you are almost certainly going to have a crunch time, and probalby a pretty heavy crunch time near the end.
Could outsourcing help?
I'm serious! We're always decrying the evils of offshoring and other outsourcing, but which would you rather do: allow some Indian coders to hack out the last-minute changes from this afternoon's meeting, or lose your marriage?
Hollywood movies also have "crunch time" during post-production, especially on big blockbusters with lots of special effects. What happens is that you get movies with end credits a mile long, because they include the names of everybody in every FX studio in Hollywood. They part out the work all over town, because there's no other choice. One studio can not handle the work.
Is this impossible in the videogame industry? Really impossible? I can't help but wonder whether the fact that videogame studios name themselves things like "Rockstar Games" might be symptomatic of an attitude that's prevalent in the industry. Maybe it's time to stop acting like "rock stars" and admit that you're working professionals just like anybody else, and that you need more manpower to meet your company's ambitions?
Breakfast served all day!
Management is the line of communication as well as allocation of resources.
That makes the six different versions of a printer driver a management failure.
But what do their mistresses say?
The sad thing is that Slashdot is mostly just a place where batshit crazy nuts come to validate the batshit crazy nuttiness of other batshit crazy nuts. Like quizmaster AC above did.
So being batshit crazy nuts becomes a range rather than a point, for connoisseurs of batshit crazy nuttiness to identify and celebrate the nuances of!
Attention zealots and haters: 00100 00100
You need to work real hard in an American company when your a coder. Especially if it's a company that saw huge returns on one of their programs. The greed has set in. Get your asses in gear. NOW. Or; or... we'll ship these jobs over to India or China!
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Perhaps its not that they don't know what quality of life is, but that 20 years have a different idea of what quality living is than a 30 year old.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
12-hour work days and 6-day weeks
Come on. That is my regular work schedule plus a few more hours in the evening when I feel like it. It's what comes with having exempt pay status. Only in California is that considered inhumane. If they employees don't like it, they should get another job that pays more or has better hours.
Get a fucking life. Don't work 12 hour days. Don't come in on Saturday. You may be passed over for a promotion, but you won't be laid off. If you are, sue the sonofabitches and get your money that way. Then find a company that doesn't rape your ass for a paycheck. There are plenty of those around.
They have bills to pay. The economy is at 10% unemployment. If you work 6-7 days/week and get yelled at for going to the doctor(see the blog), how do you get out for an interview? If most game companies are like this, how do you switch to another form of programming in a slow economy? Even in a good economy companies prefer people in their niche. So if your a game programmer, companies won't necessarily want you for something else.
we all have to pay our rent or mortgage.
In 6 or so years of experience, I am starting to find that companies may be 'hit or miss' with regard to this management behavior. It's sort of sad to me & I believe encourages inefficiency. I believe long-term afterburner use ends up lowering efficiency and quality. This, and it would seem that employees that are the most effective at delivering typically understand the warning signs when management starts going down this path and are halfway out the door by the time the MBA jockeys and the Jack Welch acolytes gain their footing. It's not that I've completely lost hope of long-term stable employment in a company with effective and efficient management that know how to get the most out of their people. I just don't expect it anymore.
I wouldn't have any problem putting on my CV that I quit celebrity team X because of poor working conditions. It tells the prospective employer that you won't let them push you around.
Hearing stories like this irks me to no end. This type of treatment is rampant in IT. What needs to happen is to start holding these companies resposible for this type of abuse. Call it what it is. It's abuse, it creates a purposeful hostile work environment, and it can both kill or destroy someone. CEOs and managers need to be held criminally liable for this and thrown in jail. No deadline, no app, no amount of money is worth the possible killing of someone through overwork, stress, the destruction of a marriage, the destruction of relationships etc. Before someone says, "Then you should leave or get out of the business." That is a copout! That is excusing horrible narcistic behavior by blaming the victim, who may be trapped where they currently are--especially in the current job market (thanks to the Democrats, Republicans, and many of the obscenely greedy Wall Street mafia).
Sounds like a ploy by Fernando to get some more "workers" for Fernando's New Beginnings.
To repeat the AC... "Why do they need to be under a tremendous amount of stress?" Sure, you have to meet deadlines and such, but that's what the planning process is for. Planning happens in all development types (Agile, etc.) And the plan must be revisited to revise the deadlines (because, sometimes, crap happens and code doesn't work correctly.)
I wonder how the employees do at companies that state "it'll be done when it is done." I wonder if it is a less stressful place to work because you know your employer is watching out for you and the product. Or is it a massive push to get it done at all costs, and the employer is trying to put a good face to the public.
Not that this is right, but hey, if you want a six figure salary, live in San Diego, big house , nice car you should have expected it. The rest of us or more then happy to have a more realistic salary, modest living and far more time with our family. Plus some of these game companies are just burning through money and losing it just as fast.
As a 30-something, I already do. There's a reason my ringtone is They Might Be Giants' "Minimum Wage"
After reading stories like this one there is no way I would ever want to work in game development. But I am interested in some of the programming techniques that are used in game development. Are there any good books that explain the algorithms etc that are used in games? I would be happy if I could learn to write simple games that resemble some of the classic video games.
Very interesting.
While I certainly can't describe my own city as vividly as you, I wouldn't recommend Phoenix either. It used to be a nice, laid-back town, but it's really gone to the dogs in the past decade, and just seems to be turning into a gigantic ghetto. It also seems to be completely full of scammers and low-lifes, and I suspect this has something to do with the education level being very low. Not coincidentally, it's the car-theft capital of the nation. A lot of the tech jobs seem to be leaving too, except for the ones at defense contractors, which are NOT fun places to work unless you like filling out time sheets to account for every 6-minute block of time in your day and charge it to the right government contract, and you don't mind being absolutely required to be back from lunch at 1PM sharp, every single day.
In your opinion, what are some better places to live? I've been thinking a lot about moving to Portland, Oregon. It seems to be pretty nice up there, with more educated people and plenty of good tech jobs.
If you think Rockstar management is honest I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
Imagine if employees would act that way:
“Hey boss, you know, the economy is pretty bad right now and, $someOtherExcuseOrLie, bla bla bla... So this month I expect you to pay me 150% of my normal pay, for the same work. Or else I will have to quit, because you don’t have the proper engagement in the company and our contract. Thank you for understanding.”
That’s just as right/wrong.
Now ask yourself, why it’s going this way, and not the other way around.
I mean the company can just as badly work without employees, and you can just as well find another job.
The only difference: It’s a one-to-many relationship with companies vs people. People are fragmented and fragmentable.
And bosses naturally assume a position of the world being under their control. Employees naturally assume a position of the supplicant.
Despite this not being the case. Both give and take.
This results in something, that is practically the same as (unfairly) exploiting a monopoly. Which for good reasons is illegal. But unfortunately only, if it’s about any other market than the job market.
The solution is quite simple: Just as a boss can have multiple employees, a employee must be able to have multiple bosses.
The fact that you can only have one boss at a time, is effectively killing most competition, and raising the risk for employees.
As you will know, this is partially the case, if you’re self-employed. Just that in that case, you don’t get all the benefits of working in a company. Like perhaps medical care, pension, and other departments taking care of billing etc.
But who says that it’s not just as easily possible, for a company to offer these services to self-employed people with contracts?
A “boss” can just as well have 20 hours a week subscriptions/leases with a proper contract. That contract can just as well include additional services like paying something into pension, medical care, and those external companies that handle billing etc. Either hidden in the normal costs, or explicitly stated.
I completely stopped trying to get into companies,and this is the only kind of contract I will ever have with a company again. :)
The only hard part, is to find someone reliable, who can do the billing for you. I also recommend an experienced sales guy, who can be the interface between you any your clients, and find new clients for you, in exchange for a payment.
If you want to free yourself, I can only recommend doing something similar.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I think there's two things that lead to shitty conditions for game developers:
1) There are a lot more people who want that job than can have that job, so people who won't put in unreasonable hours can be and often are replaceable. (Unsurprisingly, experienced game devs/managers with a bunch of shipped successful titles on their resume often are able to demand better working conditions, because they're at least a little less replaceable.)
2) Game development isn't run as "professionally" as other development. This is a superset of the problem of bad management that the parent poster raises.
Generally in the game industry it seems like it's standard to be able to fuck around more at work and work late/varied hours than the rest of the team much more than is standard in other dev jobs. So of course you have to spend more time if you can take a two hour lunch and play other games, or if the lead dev doesn't roll in until noon and anyone who needs to ask him a question is shit out of luck until he arrives.
"THEY ARE DESK JOCKEYS, get some fucking perspective people, for fucks sake." - by BitZtream (692029) on Saturday January 23, @09:03PM (#30874638)
BitZtream, obviously, you HAVEN'T BEEN THERE, or you wouldn't talk that way. This isn't to "troll you" but rather to ENLIGHTEN you from myself having been there many a time. It's worse this decade in fact than ever.
Ever gone a couple days w/out sleep, because you have a deadline of somekind (or, for whatever reasons)?
You DO start to "slip", not only mentally... but PHYSICALLY as well! Problems in eyesight, hearing, & more.
That makes you DANGEROUS TO YOURSELF, but possibly even MORESO to others.
I'll tell you 1 thing: I've been out one time, out of work in coding, & I went onto a job building a steel framework (for a large furniture company in a warehouse larger than 5 football fields & it was 70 ft. high) just to make bills..
This was only a few years back, when things got REALLY bad in the IT field period, especially in the area I am from.
Sure - When i was in my 20's, it wouldn't have been TOO bad, but now (40's now)?? Yea, it kicked me in the butt physically (but, I got into better shape again by it too).
However, @ the end of the day, I thought: "Well, yea you're tired & hurting, but... it was NO DIFFERENT working @ a desk slaving over code OR WORSE BUGS (intermittent type is the worst) & WONDERING IF I WAS GOING TO MAKE 'DeadLine'"...
BOTH type of work, mentally stressful + high-concentration AND heavy labor intensive physical WHIP YOU... albeit, in diff. ways though. Especially if MANY HOURS of either is put in day, after day, after day etc. et al.
Why is this happening? Simple... "hard times". They put the "working stiff" @ the mercy of the slave drivers/taskmasters.
I.E.-> Today's working world in the states, what w/ this "greater depression", is making employees the "expendable asset"... truly expendable, as it is an "employer's market" now & there are no "IT WORKERS UNIONS" & there OUGHT TO BE, to "level/even up the playing field"... as it has been the ONLY thing I know of that kept the "KORPORATE AMERIKA" tyrants in check over the past century @ least in other fields.
Fact is, from experience here as a programmer/analyst or software engineer? Especially THIS decade professionally?? You rarely put in ONLY "8 hr. days" & then you get HOSED by salaried pay too (e.g.-> An $1,000 take home, post taxes / 40 hrs. sounds REALLY GOOD, until you find out your really going to put in 60++ actually, & many times more IF you want to hold your job!)
Don't like it (as you're told IF you bitch, or underperform, because your "wiped out" both mentally & physically)?
WELL, you hear "DO YOU LIKE THIS JOB? DO YOUR JOB & PUT IN MORE HOURS!" ala the invalid argument in LOGIC of "the use of force" to coerce you, while you wonder how you'll feed your kid, or make rent & bills etc. et al.
All so some "fat cat exec" can work only (maybe & YES I HAVE SEEN IT WITH MY OWN EYES) only 2 hrs. a day & the he goes golfing or the the rifle range, etc. et al (& when they 'work'?
LOL, man... a child could do what most of them do (& they got their many times NOT ON MERITS but rather "connections" too, it's saddening... & folks wonder WHY "made in america" is a joke now & offshoring goes on like mad, & folks are generally disenchanted when led by morons that haven't even DONE THE JOB OF THEIR SUBORDINATES & yet earn paychecks as large as entire smaller companies' payrolls??)
Man... welcome to "AMERIKA" 2010...!
APK
P.S.=> If you've ever been a coder professionally? You had better get ready for @ LEAST 10 hr. working days in many shops. Students might be the closest ones to know how THIS is (serious students that is)...
You have to work hard, & put in the hours, + at very ODD hours @ times as a student too, & it's MUCH like the life of a coder!
(Which
Never heard of a developer that have a girlfriend so I think wives are totaly out of the question.
Once I realized in my last job that I wanted out, I just shifted priorities. No matter how hard they try to push you, if you only care about _appearing_ to do your best in your present position, that takes much less effort, and leaves enough energy free to jobhunt aggressively. It's still tough, but eminently doable.
It's a well known fact that if your mind get tired, the code you write is not that good. It's one of the reasons there is no overtime for programmers in the aerospace & defense industry, where each bug may cost millions of dollars and possibly human lives.
I used to think like that and stayed with Oracle much too long putting up with management's BS. Now I work for Google for a few months and couldn't be happier. Google is hiring developers aggressively "in this economic climate". Opportunities are there, you just need to look for them.
So, will you know what to look for when Google becomes like Oracle?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Possibly you are not aware of psdoom.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
former high profile game developer, worked on the operating systems of the 3DO, original PSX, and many high profile games. The game industry, the business, is about as corrupt a place as possible. Game developers, the people, are professionally naive fan boys to begin with who are smart enough to make these complex video games. And they get taken advantage of by the game studios to an unbelievable degree. Game designers and game producers are slimy, back stabbing, do-everything-verbally (so there's no official record of what they demanded) assholes.
I'm a bitter former star game developer. Fuck that industry. I hope something horrible happens and all the game studios burn down.
"The problem really isn't R* or EA (not that they're faultless here), it's the employees. If you LOVE games so much that you're willing to sell you soul to a studio, then who's fault is it?"
While I am all about personal responsibility, this doesn't give the studio to treat the employee's any way it pleases. They have to be held accountable as well.
So what. What a bunch of whiner CRY BABIES! If you can't compete it's YOUR FAULT. I will hire an H1b that will WORK FOR 90 HOURS A WEEK at MINIMUM WAGE. So stop complaining, nerds.
Most geeks can't sustain a varied conversation, their social ineptitutde is now legendary.
Somebody in a company has to relate to the outside world and bring some realism. Geeks are not that people, which is why you need to manage them.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have worked in several industries and never worked more than 40 hours/ week.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have never worked more than 40 hours per week.
If you don't say no then you will say yes forever.
Sad to see so many people with so little self respect and dignity (and please don't come with the "I need bread on the table". I do as well, but I plan in order to be able to afford to uphold my dignity...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"In the programming industry, I DO have a way to answer the power of the boss: I find another job. And it works way better for me than a union ever would."
It is always entertaining to see how precious some geeks thing they are.
The evidence is overwhelming that programmers have zero power against their employers (heck, their wives are saying as much), but you valiantly suggest otherwise, against monumental anecdotal evidence.
Laughable frankly.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is called a Union for a reason buddy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That on its own is enough reason to claim unfair dismissal.
Also there are rules about periods of rest and how many consecutive hours you should work.
Most people don't know this, or if they know it don't have the moral fortitude to confront their employers.
I am a foreigner in the UK and stand for my rights. Every employer that has suggested to me to opt out of the EU time directive has been told in no uncertain terms that is not going to happen, and since I am a nice chap I will forget about it. In other words I rock the boat because it is the right thing to do.
So no pity or sympathy for you matey.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It takes a WHOLE lot more training to code and code well than it does to drive the big rigs
Tell that to John Carmack.
Again, let me toss some information into this thread about how this works, in case anyone is curious about it. (Rockstar guys, listen up!) At this point, it's probably just in the archives, but this issue has come up before, so it'll come up again, and someone might sesarch the archives for the story to read up on what to do. IANAL, so verify this information with one before you act on it.
The statute of limitations for filing a claim for back OT is THREE YEARS. Someone who files a claim can theoretically get back OT pay at time and a half for the prior three years if the court decides that that person's position was misclassified as exempt. Ever seen the fangs of an employment-related plaintiff's attorney (the contingency fee guys) drip saliva in anticipation? I have. Hence, the anonymous post.
And as stated elsewhere, the court's decision on whether someone is misclassified isn't based on their job title. It's based on what that employee actually does during their work day. And it isn't necessary for 100% of the tasks performed during the work day to be non-exempt, for the position to be classified as exempt. For example, a very large retail coffee chain (you can guess) found out that an employee with an assistant manager title who spent 20% of his day on managerial tasks and the rest on pulling shots like an hourly barista... is not exempt from OT.
Sometimes some people with a title are exempt and some people with the same title are not, because in all but the smallest companies, different departments may have employees with the same title doing vastly different work.
I refuse to give credence to a report about employees when they require their spouses to do all the fighting and talking for them.
'[U]tter agreement from the vast majority of staff on how to approach the matter.' has another name. It also begins with a U. Of course, 'union' is a dirty word on slashdot, and apparently in IT in general outside of government. Which is why these people continue to be exploited.
snig
Wow! Me too!
I was a game tester working 12 hours a day.
Now, I've cut back to 8 hour shifts which means I can go home and relax playing games for 6 hours.
To paraphrase Thoreau: I have no doubt that some of you who browse this site are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your employers of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live...
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.