Secret developers of the video game industry
polygon.com
polygon.com
I worked on a title for ~3 years, many of those being 6-8 months of 75-100hr weeks. Saw marriages destroyed on that project, people pushed to the edge.
I left ~4 months before ship because I knew if I didn't it would be the end of me. Twice I blew the stoplight in front of our house because I was so exhausted. Yet it was insinuated that I didn't work hard enough since I came in the office at 8am and left at 10pm(everyone else left 12am-2am).
You want to know what I was credited as?
"Special Thanks"
That and many other reasons is why you'll see the game industry burn through talent. I've never seen a collective of some of the sharpest, creative people I've ever worked with exploited to such a degree under the misplaced reason of "Passion".
The place I worked before then was very much white-label, with very similar issues and working conditions. I think we did get the studio logo on the back of the box but there was a very clear agreement where no logos could be placed in-game.
All those companies proudly talking about their 18 months of crunch? Nooooope, shouldn't happen. This shouldn't be a thing you're proud of. You shouldn't be proud of your employees for slaving to death on those projects.
It's very tough. Compared to the "regular" tech industry, people in video games can be so passionate about what they're making. It almost seems comparable to founding a startup, except you're just an employee working on a project.
You, reader, wherever you're working: Imagine if every single member of your team was incredibly passionate about the work they do. They are building their own baby. They have the vision, they have the motherly drive that puts the existence of their baby ahead of their own. You can see how that could be abused by companies?
It's possible to be passionate without driving yourself crazy like that, but in the video games industry it's far too common and it becomes the norm. In fact, I was going to post about this a few minutes ago - and then you yourself described the problem better than I could.
Credit in your story is not the issue. The 8 months of 100 hour weeks is.
And because of that enthusiasm there's always someone else in the funnel if anyone burns out or leaves.
Also, because games are art the most successful franchises can get away with completely broken processes as long as it doesn't go over some threshold (which appears to be very high judging by the success of even very broken releases).
I mostly worked in Austria and Germany.
Now I was young at the time and had no issue with a long day, I ended up in a startup, pulling similar hours but I had a small stake in ownership. My friends that did go into the field, on the other hand, have very fond memories of the work (similar to soldiers in battle trying to pull off a heroic effort) but they have a lot of regrets overall for entering the industry and feel that they have been damaged as an employee after they inevitably became disillusioned as happens when you life goals of your 30's and 40's start to materialize.
Simply put, the game industry has an almost inexhaustible supply of young bright talent that are falling over one another to get a break in the industry. My nephew being one of them, I literally staged an intervention with him and asked him to talk to several of my friends that left the industry. But he is young and cannot see past his 20's so he is well on his way in the industry. His college girlfriend just split on him over the hours, as she wants to go out and be 20 something, but that has not rocked his confidence in maintaining course in the industry. It is unfortunate, a lot of bright kids get sucked down that hole, I am thankful I was not.
Because the jobs pay well and considered to be desirable there's a huge mass of folks wanting into the industry. So as people burn out and as talent evaporates away to find better working conditions those folks are easily replaced. To the people who are "in the trenches" it becomes very obvious that this is a problem, because they see kids trying to walk around in big shoes and they know exactly why it's not as easy to get things done. This is a huge institutional drag on productivity, product quality, and development velocity, it's one reason why it's pretty common for games to be pretty shit quality when they launch. But because the connection between action and consequence is indirect and diffuse it's easy to avoid working out the cause. More so when there are strong institutional biases from the top down which hinge on distinctly avoiding the idea that burning through employees could be a problematic practice with major real-world consequences for studios and games.
You see the same thing in the rest of tech, though not generally as severe, and with some degree of awareness of it. Look at the way amazon treats devs, for example.
Sorry, but it is in German
www.igmetall-itk.de/index.php
"yeah so in the two months leading up to RTM I might need ya'll to work until 10PM and occasionally another four or so hours on the weekend. I'll be taking dinner requests for weeknights and lunch requests on the weekend."
Tired developers write /shit/ code. Every time we end up in bug regression hell it is because we (as a team) panicked and fixed something with too little sleep and not enough critical thinking.
I put in 80hr weeks for a month one time. I wouldn't want to do it again. (I was hourly at a good rate, so I didn't mind crunch time for a month too much!)
The interview process is nice though. "So there may be an occasional 60 hour week, is that OK?" and they look at me like I am crazy for saying such a low number...
Is that a 5 day week, so they're working 12 hours a day? Surely they will be tired after that?
I was never a type of person to put work before family and friends.
And even though general IT also has its crunch time, it doesn't come even close to those hours.
Additionally, in many countries, unions are also present in IT companies.
So, I just kept it as yet another hobby.
Apparently the industry prefers to destroy people life's than make it more pleasant to newcomers, thanks to the dream everyone has to work in the field.
I understand when you are sole developer or owner of the studio who is burning midnight oil. I have done that on some of my projects. But I could never understand how people would give up their lives to make someone else's dream come true for average compensation.
I still love video games but now I try to play good indie games and hardly ever play anything from big studios.
As you can imagine, that led backers to think that Comcept had tried to be hush-hush about the delay so that it wouldn't affect the Red Ash campaign. It hasn't helped matters since then that Mighty No. 9 continues to be delayed, even failing to meet a deadline to produce a demo that was meant to make up for the delay.
So...to use Comcept in the lede of this story, as if it were the use of these "secret developers" that pissed fans off and caused the Kickstarter to fail...That just seems...a bit misguided...The OP couldn't find any other anecdote to lead off with?
[1] http://kotaku.com/the-story-behind-mighty-no-9s-shady-delay-...
I wonder if id's success helped start this atmosphere. (Read masters of doom)
They were portrayed as rockstars, friends, who busted ass and made a popular game which made them all rich.
I fell for that idea when i was young, luckily i never got into the industry. I later read some blog post of an EA developer's wife or something, going on and on how much he had to work and wasn't compensated for it, etc.
I agree, there's definitely this romanticised image of game development in the developer community. It's something I always aspired to get into but the sacrifices don't seem to be worth the rewards, at least in my case.
The people making uber-cynical cash-milkers at Zynga or King, or those German shovelware job-simulator games with Microsoft-style trade dress are likely far more likely to fit your description than some blockbusting AAA bestseller like CoD.
But those do not apply to people that can decide their own hours - managers (that are actually managers, and that can choose when they are present), or people in an "especially free position".
The latter one is a bit woollen, but it generally means consultants that really are free to set their own hours.
While the particulars of what's reasonable hours/off-time etc is debatable (and could use more research), I think the core idea, that working hard for yourself is much less harmful than being forced to work hard. While the hours might be similar, the stress is different when you decide for yourself how to spend your time.
I'd love to see some research on that, though.
(Disclaimer, I work with for poster's company)
Just use a generic project name. "Major RTS Franchise, 90% Metascore, ##M sales" and then list your responsibilities.
Many of the rest of us work in industries without this professional norm. That's wonderful for us, but does not itself fix the problems of this norm for people affected by it.
Now, if there had been some kind of official record then credits might have had a bigger weight but, with a lot of people's experience being in unfinished/cancelled projects, still it would not reach the level of critical importance IMHO.
No, but that doesn't mean people don't use it as hiring critera. Some software companies use github profiles to screen candidates. Open source contributions in general, and github in particular are a comically inept way of evaluating candidates, even in comparison to credits. But it still happens.
Notably, Rodriguez is no longer a member of the Director's Guild Of America - with a number of knock-on effects including being unable to work for most of the major studios - as the direct result of a disagreement about credits.