Yeah, I don’t think I could have ever made it in a job with long hours. I don’t know what it is about me, but if I don’t get 8-9 hours of sleep or work more than 9 hours a day, I become even more of a babbling idiot and become nearly incoherent after only 2-3 days of that. I seriously respect the people that can pull it off though.
Are you sure? If you’re happy, you’re likely to estimate that you are worth more. That means you are more likely to look for better opportunities. That means either greater pay to retain you or losing you. I don’t know if that’s how it works out, but it seems plausible.
I maintain that an unhappy developer is more likely to leave than an happy one, just from empirical evidence.
So there’s nothing between happy and unhappy?
This is the reason crunch exists (it’s not just California that has a law like this, though it’s the most famous case). The only reason management mandates crunch is because they can do it without financial penalty. If they were forced to pay normal overtime rates (time and a half being the norm), two things would happen very quickly: 1) crunch time would end, permanently, and 2) many, many “producers” would lose their jobs as their incompetence in planning and controlling scope would be revealed. The minute publishers saw the development costs of games skyrocket as they became accountable for overtime hours, they would stop funding those hours and demand the projects be planned and managed correctly. Crunch was intended to allow for the natural delays and slippage inherent with any cutting-edge technological development. It has instead been used as a crutch by those who cannot think of solutions beyond “throw more man-hours at the problem.” I don’t know what I would enjoy more: ending crunch, being paid for overtime, or watching those people be unceremoniously ushered from the industry and replaced by people who have some idea what they’re doing.
Indifferent programmers?
Yes, what can I do for you?
On a slightly related note, in the geology world we get whats called comp time. Basically when we are in the field we work close to 60 hrs a week, but every hour we work over 40 earns us paid time off. I actually love it. I’ll be out on projects for 3-4 weeks and then have a couple of weeks off paid. While I admit it can be grueling in the field, I probably only work about 8 months a year. (though I do run my own business in my offtime)
Fixed.
You also get a boss who isn’t a complete tosser, usually :)
The law in my country says overtime for salaried employees shall be compensated with equal time off. Hourly pay has a semi-complicated formula for how much you’re getting after regular hours. Certain periods can pay triple, like xmas eve after noon and various other national holidays.
Nah, my boss is an angry egomaniac obsessive argumentative bastard who enjoys a drink and collects weapons. Would you want him as a boss?
I think its very true that if you really identify with the game and feel some ownership of it, you don’t mind working long hours. Its Sunday morning here and I feel terrible and have a sore throat and a headache, and I’m sat at the PC ready to do some spaceship engine trail animation. If I didn’t enjoy the game I was working on, and I didn’t have a direct financial link to wanting it do sell well, I doubt I’d be anywhere near as motivated.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!
But it really takes people willing to tell the people above them to go suck it. They may not like it, but I continually deliver, so how do you argue with results?
Not that I entirely disagree with you, Charles, but telling the people above you to go suck it can make for a tense and uncomfortable work environment. That is arguable, even in the face of results. Team unity and coherency is just as important as anything else. If some people are refusing to crunch while others see a need and are willing, it puts team members at odds with each other and that’s just as harmful as any other problem really.
Both talks ended with recruiting slides inviting people to send in their resumes. Which I guess just shows that in the current economy, employment in the game industry is a buyer’s market.
But what Rod said is completely valid. Look at it again:
- I believe that crunch is necessary in a creative medium
- Crunch should be driven by the ambition of the team and not the inaccuracy of the schedule
- Gather feedback from the team on how they want to crunch
- Crunch a little each milestone to avoid bigger crunch at the end
What he’s really saying is that some crunch will be necessary to get the game beyond shippable and into “great” status. He’s advocating small bursts of crunch at milestones rather than a huge one at the end, and he’s saying listen to the team as to how they want to do it - which means things like “10 hour days and have weekends off, or 8 hour days and we come in Sat as well”?
All of that is reasonable and I see Epic management taking steps to minimize crunch as much as possible. With projects like Gears it’s simply not possible to avoid crunch entirely and still ship the games that we want to ship. Games like Gears don’t ship without some pain.
However, as I stated earlier, Epic makes it WELL worth our while.
Oh, and as for the indie thing …
To each his own, I guess. I see the allure there but, really, I don’t want to run a company. I don’t want to worry about marketing, web sites, managing every little detail of the project, wrangling contractors, worrying about pirates, etc. All for the pleasure of making less money than I do now. Thanks, but no.
I want to work on my area of the game and contribute creatively to the overall project. Let someone else worry about the crap. :)
I think this is pretty important. Honestly I’ve never had any problem putting in the extra effort at work, as long as the client is recipricating.
This whole attitude of a company demanding all this extra effort and crying poverty instead of acknowleging and rewarding it is just wrong.
This whole attitude of a company demanding all this extra effort and crying poverty instead of acknowleging and rewarding it is just wrong.
I agree and those are usually companies you want to try and get away from. They’re either living milestone check to milestone check, or they are idiots.
It’s worth noting that we’re talking about two different worlds here.
There’s the US where you typically get about 2 weeks holiday and there are few laws governing hours. Then there’s continental EU (i.e. everywhere in the EU except the UK) where Hanzii lives, where you typically get 4-6 weeks holiday mandated as a minimum, and there are laws governing working more than 48 hours a week.
That doesn’t mean crunch doesn’t exist in continental European game studios. As hours are supposed to average 48, you can work 40 most weeks and then 60 during a few weeks of crunch time without breaking the law. Still, I suspect it’s a lot less of a problem than in the US (and also the UK).
The EU Working Directive gives this as a minimum:
*Guarantees workers 11 hours’ rest per day and regular breaks
*Weekly working time of 48 hours, on average, or less
*Minimum annual holiday of four weeks
That’s a minimum. Some countries have more generous rules than that.
One country, the UK, decided to give workers the chance to “opt out” of this minimum. So a manager can ask “are you ok working 80 hours this week?” and as long as the employee agrees, then no law is broken.
I actually earn much more as an indie than I did at Lionhead.
just saying :D
Rod’s argument sounds exactly like a smoker trying to explain why just a few cigarettes, just for stress relief and of course not because of addiction, is no big deal. In other words, it’s setting my bullshit rationalization meter off in a big way.
Crunch is never a technical or creative necessity. Crunch is how management gets more work done without more paying for more people.