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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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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!
So your argument is that if employees settle for being exploited, there's nothing wrong in exploiting them.
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.
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!
The real headline should be: Programmers at Rockstar have wives.