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[nathanosaurus]

I don't get it. I realize some overtime is sometimes needed but 80 hours a week every week? Why not just hire another person and split the workload at that point? Crazy hours like that sound mega expensive on top of everything else that comes with it.

I feel exactly the same. Working 80 hours should never be the norm. If you have staff regularly working 80 hours then that's a two man job and you need to hire another person. I get that that's expensive for a company but if the case is it's too expensive for a company then maybe your company can't afford to make video games after all.

I work in TV and film post production and average about 40-45 hours a week. If a schedule is too tight then we tell the people that make them and they get adjusted. I very rarely work past 6 o'clock. And even then I'll try and do stuff remotely after my children are in bed so I can still get home at a reasonable hour and spend time with them.

I realise I'm quite lucky in the kind of work I do and not everybody can be in the same situation but these companies need standing up to otherwise it'll never change.

 

[SlickShoes]

That's actually a really good point. If someone is working double time, you're basically paying for an extra person and a half. You could hire two people at 40 hours per week, actually save money, and have the added benefit of not literally working your employees to the edge of death. If you're worried about carrying a bloated payroll once the project is done, just hire on contract the same way other project-based industries (aerospace,etc) operate.

You aren't paying the person for double time though, the majority of the people working these ours are on a salary. The only people on actual clocked time payments are probably QA who are cheap to employ.

Your options here are to not work the hours, not get the work done in the required time frame, miss deadlines and perhaps lose your job.

or you can work work work to make it happen.

 

[Sakujou]

a lot of crunch and still so many broken shitty games. bad management, that's my only answer to this.

 

[ThanksVision]

if every person who plays games was forced to make a game then nobody in this industry would ever complain about stuff like game delays

 

[Zombie James]

What outsiders to this industry don't seem to get is that AAA games like Battlefield 1 and Uncharted 4 don't just come out of thin air. It's the result of a shitton of manhours working on the smallest details.

Gamers are constantly demanding better graphics, higher resolution, higher framerates, etc

That doesn't come for free.

Gamers are a picky bunch. Your quote makes sense, but we've already seen with stuff like PSVR where you have numerous people complaining about the graphics and such.

It's an arms race and really the winners are the publishers and gamers. Developers can't complain because then they'll just get replaced.

Working in a state of endless crunch has nothing to do with any of this, though, and manhours is a really poor metric. There's been study after study showing that working beyond 40-50 hours a week not only rapidly drops productivity, but ends up hurting projects as people make more mistakes the more tired, stressed, and sleep-deprived they get.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/working-hours
http://www.macleans.ca/work/trendswork/working-hard-hardly-working-our-problem-with-productivity/

More hours = more work is antiquated thinking that ends up hurting everyone involved. There may be short-term gain by working a few extra hours here and there but in the long-run everyone loses. Not enough businesses understand this.

a lot of crunch and still so many broken shitty games. bad management, that's my only answer to this.

I wonder how many game delays, bugs, and missing features were actually caused by crunch?

 

[rackham]

On first party, I imagine some of the concern is budget. Ubisoft and EA can put 500-1000+ people on a game pretty easily. Sony, it's harder.


She was a creative director.

Whatever m8 not the first time I've sounded ignorant

 

[shinobi602]

Absolutely nuts...

Makes me feel guilty to even enjoy these games. :-/

 

[Calamari41]

You aren't paying the person for double time though, the majority of the people working these ours are on a salary. The only people on actual clocked time payments are probably QA who are cheap to employ.

Your options here are to not work the hours, not get the work done in the required time frame, miss deadlines and perhaps lose your job.

or you can work work work to make it happen.

Oh damn that's right, I didn't even think about the fact that they would have the "computer professional" exemption. That is absolutely brutal, because in reality they are being used just like factory line workers.

 

[dracula_x]

a lot of crunch and still so many broken shitty games. bad management, that's my only answer to this.

that because "crunch" leads to broken games.

 

[Piers]

Nuts. Didn't Sakurai only sleep for about 2-3 hours a day during the production of Melee?

 

[Yurikerr]

the worst bit is unrealistic work expectations & crunch are dismissed by the public if the product is good.

see red dead redemption.

The sad truth is that most people don't care.

Brands that are widely know of employing slave labor still sell gangbusters.

 

[J-Skee]

Completely agree with the last quote. Sadly

Well, there is the Last Guardian, which I'm sure will be an 8 hour game with no other modes whatsoever, but it's going to killed for that. And I'm sure a lot more as well.

 

[gbland]

Not really that surprising, but it's the sad truth. Corporate America represents this type of work mentality.

 

[Mogwai]

This is one of the reasons I get so annoyed when people have such hipster attitudes about AAA games. It's frustrating because these poor devs pour their lives into these games, I think that demands at least a minimal level of respect(hopefully a lot more).

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

 

[Stone Ocean]

Working in a state of endless crunch has nothing to do with any of this, though, and manhours is a really poor metric. There's been study after study showing that working beyond 40-50 hours a week not only rapidly drops productivity, but ends up hurting projects as people make more mistakes the more tired, stressed, and sleep-deprived they get.

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/12/working-hours
http://www.macleans.ca/work/trendswork/working-hard-hardly-working-our-problem-with-productivity/

More hours = more work is antiquated thinking that ends up hurting everyone involved. There may be short-term gain by working a few extra hours here and there but in the long-run everyone loses. Not enough businesses understand this.

Pretty much. Humans have physical limitations, you can't just expect someone having basically no life outside of work and whatever little sleep they get to put out their best for all of it. If you're feeling exhausted and/or stressed work just doesn't get done and at the end you're just forcing your employees to bash their heads against a wall for pay.

 

[TylerDurden4321]

reminds of that GDC talk where a naughty dog dev praised the dedication of the people he has honor of working with at naughty dog, who "work overnight until 3 in the morning", so the another dev can finish his previously bugged work in the morning.

 

[wapplew]

I always think part of the problem is game don't have content ceiling unlike other entertainment.
There are no standard on how much content a game should have and our expectations getting higher and higher, I don't see any solution...

 

[RareFantasy64]

I'm not really into what AAA has become. I know AAA games have always been boundary pushing games but the manpower it takes to make an AAA game at this point in the industry compared to how things used to be seems huge. Didn't a team of 40 people make OOT? How many people have been making FFXV? How many people did it take to make FFX?

I'm not saying I don't enjoy the boundaries of production values and graphics being pushed but todays AAA games seem like monumental pixar-level productions and the race for developers to make games this way seems to cut into smaller-scale games that I think would honestly be great. Those games just may not bring in the sort of money they're looking for. It's a business

 

[aeolist]

makes me feel better about moving almost entirely away from the AAA space in recent years

 

[dogpowerd]

"Poor devs..."

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

 

[Purple Cheeto]

That's actually a really good point. If someone is working double time, you're basically paying for an extra person and a half. You could hire two people at 40 hours per week, actually save money, and have the added benefit of not literally working your employees to the edge of death. If you're worried about carrying a bloated payroll once the project is done, just hire on contract the same way other project-based industries (aerospace,etc) operate.

Well for one the mythical man month is mythical for a reason. People are not that productive for that many hours.

There are a lot of positions in the industry that are generally contracted, things like certain types of art, music/sound, and writing. It doesn't fix the problems that lead to crunch though.

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

Except not really. Plus it's almost impossible to make a living doing that. For every Stardew Valley there are thousands of things that no one had heard of. Also the Stardew Valley guy crunched incessantly.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

I can't imagine this will be sustainable for much longer. The AAA gaming industry is going to break down at some point.

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

A lack of empathy is a really bad trait, you know.

 

[Loudninja]

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

You think indie devs dont work really hard?

 

[HandsomeCharles]

Antipathy to unionization is very common in the white collar sector.

There is less solidarity unlike blue collar workers. White collars workers seem themselves as hired hands.

I personally would like a union, but I think it's very important to understand that if it were to happen, more or less the entire AAA sector (and others) would be turned on their heads. A lot of the games industry is built on these bad practices, and to suddenly have to workforce say they aren't going to take it any more would have drastic consequences on the business side of things whilst a solution is found

That could mean AAA games take longer to come out, become more expensive or even cease to exist (unlikely but possible).

Essentially, it will mean higher costs of development.

 

[Garrett Hawke]

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

extra ironic considering your avatar

 

[SuperSaiyanAkuma]

Feel like this is something I'll bear in mind next time I go to criticise a game.

My lazy ass might be unhappy with 30fps, but someone probably worked 60-80 hours a week to make that happen.

 

[SolidSnakex]

I don't get it. I realize some overtime is sometimes needed but 80 hours a week every week? Why not just hire another person and split the workload at that point? Crazy hours like that sound mega expensive on top of everything else that comes with it.

Adding more people isn't going to help. Rockstar apparently has one of the most hardcore schedules around. GTAV had "much more" than 1,000 people working on it according to Leslie Benzies. That took more than five years to develop.

 

[Stone Ocean]

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

Oh you sweet summer child

 

[UnemployedVillain]

This is why while I loved programming and am in software development now, I gave up my dream of working in the videogame industry. The crunch sounded ridiculous and unreasonable, even by normal software dev standards

 

[dogpowerd]

I personally would like a union, but I think it's very important to understand that if it were to happen, more or less the entire AAA sector (and others) would be turned on their heads. A lot of the games industry is built on these bad practices, and to suddenly have to workforce say they aren't going to take it any more would have drastic consequences on the business side of things whilst a solution is found

That could mean AAA games take longer to come out, become more expensive or even cease to exist (unlikely but possible).

Essentially, it will mean higher costs of development.

Or the industry will just move to a country with less fair work laws

 

[dracula_x]

I always think part of the problem is game don't have content ceiling unlike other entertainment.
There are no standard on how much content a game should have and our expectations getting higher and higher, I don't see any solution...

yep, infinite race to nowhere

 

[Omnistalgic]

This is why we need AA games back, and everyone needs to stop complaining about replay value and length.

Just put out quality work.

 

[HandsomeCharles]

Or the industry will just move to a country with less fair work laws

That too.

 

[barit]

Pretty sad to read that she don't think it was worth when your work has entertained million of people around the world. Just mad respect from me to Naughty Dog and Amy Hennig. Thank you for your hard work

 

[Yurikerr]

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

Yeah, no need to feel sorry for this people that want to pay their bills at the end of the month.

Why don't they go indie, as it's evident that every indie developer work just a little and is very successful.

Your comment is ignorant in so many levels that it almost feel like a parody.

 

[Soi-Fong]

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

That sure is working well for Star Citizen which in itself is "indie." Oh wait. There's horror stories regarding development of that as well.

 

[black070]

The hard work paid off in the end atleast, though I do have to ask.. why was she be required to work 80+ hour weeks ? Her role doesn't seem one to necessitate that as opposed to others.

 

[therealist]

I don't get it. I realize some overtime is sometimes needed but 80 hours a week every week? Why not just hire another person and split the workload at that point? Crazy hours like that sound mega expensive on top of everything else that comes with it.

That's like asking yourself why doesn't Cleveland get another player to split minutes with LeBron James. Why does he have to play 40 minutes every night? Just get another player to play his minutes! There's risk that the other person they hire is not as good as she is, and might screw up and waste precious time that they don't have under stressful deadlines. Also, the more responsibilities you have as you move up, the less likely you will find another person who has the competencies that you need.

For 2 years out of college I didn't work 80 hours but probably a solid 55 a week. I hated it. There were times where it was really bad and I had to come in 7 days in a row. I was stressed out all the time and even took up long baths in the morning right before I went to work just to cope. 1 year in I was already looking for another job and finally got one with less hours after 2 years and I left. No regrets whatsoever, I work standard 40 hours now and the day is a lot more easygoing.

 

[benny_a]

The hard work paid off in the end atleast, though I do have to ask.. why was she be required to work 80+ hour weeks ? Her role doesn't seem one to necessitate that.

She was the creative director so she had input in almost every aspect of the game.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

We should just go back to 2D games that run on PS1 hardware.

Spoiler

kidding.....kinda

 

[Krejlooc]

"Poor devs..."

Give me a fucking break. There's no need to feel sorry for these people. It was their own choice to work at AAA developer that is being whipped by a greedy publisher.

Want to avoid crunch? Make your own indie game. Problem solved.

Of course, it's so easy! Just go to the model where you almost assuredly have no source of regular income during development, smart! It's not like they have families to feed or bills to pay or anything.

 

[entremet]

This is why we need AA games back, and everyone needs to stop complaining about replay value and length.

Just put out quality work.

They never left. They went to download only.

I don't mind shorter games, but you see posters complain at shorter games and equate length with value. It's ridiculous. What other art form have those qualifiers?

 

[dracula_x]

Yeah, no need to feel sorry for this people that want to pay their bills at the end of the month.

Why don't they go indie, as it's evident that every indie developer work just a little and is very successful.

Your comment is ignorant in so many levels that it almost feel like a parody.

btw

http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/8/12404700/sean-murray-hello-games-beard

 

[inpHilltr8r]

80 hours is crazy. That's like the worst crunch I've done, and I only did that for a month, and that pretty much killed the team, and almost took the studio with it.

 

[wapplew]

We should just go back to games pre-polygons.

With same expectation on content? Dev need to work triple time.

 

[10k]

Crunch is the worst thing in this industry. With there being so many games to play and an amassing backlog, I'd be completely OK with AAA games taking a year longer of development instead of trying to push out games in less than 36 months.

 

[jett]

I don't know how people endure this for multiple years. I don't know how the people responsible haven't been sued for instigating and virtually enforcing this practice either.

 

[Tain]

AHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA

lmao seriously

 

[Fred-87]

Thats why i would support if games would cost 2 times as much. Consumers are greedy.. they want the best looking games but pay the same as previous generation.
games costing 2 times as much and in return publishers must make there employees work 2 times as less. So 40 hour work week.

 

[Soi-Fong]

You really have an either or here in GAF. There's gaffers in this thread sympathizing with devs then in the Mafia 3 thread, you have people cancelling pre-orders because the game has a 30 fps cap for PC.

Now, just think for a second as a dev how that feels.