• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Amy Hennig worked 10.5 years of 80+ hour weeks at Naughty Dog, says AAA not worth it

Right but then the solution is pretty simple, you hire MORE people. Yes, you would need a bigger budget, and publishers are not going to like that, but this is what should be done in such cases.

Putting more people on a project does not mean it will get done faster. (See Brooks' Law post).
 
Yeah. Naughty Dog seems like a extra crunchy studio. U3 especially sounded like its development was hell

I wonder how big a part crunch played in her leaving Naughty Dog mid project the way she did.

Like maybe the game had a planned date Sony didn't want to budge? So she and others just said no and bailed, Cant blame em if that was it. As noted, Uncharted 3 development seemed like it was mostly crunch



TLOU and Uncharted 4 getting summer releases kind of made me hope they where trying to ease that off a bit instead of having a death march for a holiday release. Who knows though.
 

Urthor

Member
Can there ever be a real solution do this issue though?

90% of the development cost of a game is skilled, highly trained labour. The more hours you spend on a game, the better it gets, there's a very very direct relationship where you trade off features, polish and man hours.

The nature of making video games is pretty straightforward, more man hours=more quality. And the man hours aren't just bozo off the street man hours, they're man hours that have to be trained and integrated into the system, get taught their exact niche within the company getting time to learn the engine/software/production pipeline.

]
How do you solve the issue of crunch and compete in a highly capitalist marketplace when the competition is just going to work 6/7 day weeks and release games that will have had more attention lavished on them?

The only solution I can possibly think of is the most banal, putting a cheesy 100% sticker on the game boxes that says "developer lives were ruined working grinding out 50+ hours a week making this game."
 

Biff

Member
To those saying "why does that matter?" to people asking how much she makes... It absolutely fucking matters.

Do you think investment bankers work 80 hour weeks out of the good of their hearts? FUCK. NO. They do it because that is required in a role where you can clear $300k before you are 30 years old and $1M+ before you are 40. Same goes for people who are killing themselves working day in and out at Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. They do it for... Wait for it... MONEY! SHOCKING!

Amy Hennig must be making, what, $500k a year? Lead Creative on Sony's #1 franchise pulling 80 hour weeks wouldn't do it from the good of her heart either.

And a big LOL to people bringing up overtime and how it's not fair that salaried workers don't get paid overtime. Umm.... Wat? If you want to make big money, or you want your career on a trajectory to make big money, you need to enter the salaried workforce.

Honestly some reactions on NeoGAF to the concept of adult working life is just bewildering. You guys really need to grow up, because this is how the world works. Either play the game or don't.
 

Shep572

Neo Member
To those saying "why does that matter?" to people asking how much she makes... It absolutely fucking matters.

Do you think investment bankers work 80 hour weeks out of the good of their hearts? FUCK. NO. They do it because that is required in a role where you can clear $300k before you are 30 years old and $1M+ before you are 40.

Amy Hennig must be making, what, $500k a year? Lead Creative on Sony's #1 franchise pulling 80 hour weeks wouldn't do it from the good of her heart either.

And a big LOL to people bringing up overtime and how it's not fair that salaried workers don't get paid overtime. Umm.... Wat? If you want to make big money, or you want your career on a trajectory to make big money, you need to enter the salaried workforce.

Honestly some reactions on NeoGAF to the concept of adult working life is just bewildering. You guys really need to grow up, because this is how the world works. Either play the game or don't.


This is such an immature way at looking at this issue. You think money is the main reason anyone works in the game industry? The pay is nowhere near as good as other technical avenues. People work at these companies because they are passionate about games, and publishers take advantage of this passion. There is very much a drive of 'if you don't work overtime, than we'll find someone else who will' from the publishers in the games industry which forces people to crunch, and abuses their passion for the industry.
 
Salary probably caps out fairly low six figures (around $250k/yr would be my guess) for someone in her role. The rest of the package will be equity and/or bonus/royalty payments (I don't know how Sony's royalty structure works, they may just do discretionary annual or whatever).

That said I think there are a few other things to think about...

- many understand that working insane hours is part of your apprenticeship/making your bones in this industry; is it something that should be done throughout your career? how is that transition managed? you have enough leverage from seniority to demand otherwise? entrepreneurship?
- should management be expected to work longer hours than rank and file, irrespective of actual work to be done? does that inspire esprit d'corps, or set unhealthy precedents?
 

eot

Banned
I don't have experience about American law, but in the EU we regulate the work an employee can do a week by law, with special regulations for minimum daily rest periods and a maximum number of working hours per week.

I cannot believe that America doesn't have something similar in its legal system.

And how much these companies pay for overtime when they have all their employees on constant crunch?

Plenty of people work insane hours in the EU as well. Crytek were infamous for having too much crunch, just to name one company. It happens in other sectors as well of course.
 
To those saying "why does that matter?" to people asking how much she makes... It absolutely fucking matters.

Do you think investment bankers work 80 hour weeks out of the good of their hearts? FUCK. NO. They do it because that is required in a role where you can clear $300k before you are 30 years old and $1M+ before you are 40. Same goes for people who are killing themselves working day in and out at Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. They do it for... Wait for it... MONEY! SHOCKING!

Amy Hennig must be making, what, $500k a year? Lead Creative on Sony's #1 franchise pulling 80 hour weeks wouldn't do it from the good of her heart either.

And a big LOL to people bringing up overtime and how it's not fair that salaried workers don't get paid overtime. Umm.... Wat? If you want to make big money, or you want your career on a trajectory to make big money, you need to enter the salaried workforce.

Honestly some reactions on NeoGAF to the concept of adult working life is just bewildering. You guys really need to grow up, because this is how the world works. Either play the game or don't.

I would HATE to work for you.
 

TLZ

Banned
To those saying "why does that matter?" to people asking how much she makes... It absolutely fucking matters.

Do you think investment bankers work 80 hour weeks out of the good of their hearts? FUCK. NO. They do it because that is required in a role where you can clear $300k before you are 30 years old and $1M+ before you are 40. Same goes for people who are killing themselves working day in and out at Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. They do it for... Wait for it... MONEY! SHOCKING!

Amy Hennig must be making, what, $500k a year? Lead Creative on Sony's #1 franchise pulling 80 hour weeks wouldn't do it from the good of her heart either.

And a big LOL to people bringing up overtime and how it's not fair that salaried workers don't get paid overtime. Umm.... Wat? If you want to make big money, or you want your career on a trajectory to make big money, you need to enter the salaried workforce.

Honestly some reactions on NeoGAF to the concept of adult working life is just bewildering. You guys really need to grow up, because this is how the world works. Either play the game or don't.

You're missing the point entirely. That's not how it should be to begin with.
 
To those saying "why does that matter?" to people asking how much she makes... It absolutely fucking matters.

Do you think investment bankers work 80 hour weeks out of the good of their hearts? FUCK. NO. They do it because that is required in a role where you can clear $300k before you are 30 years old and $1M+ before you are 40. Same goes for people who are killing themselves working day in and out at Amazon, Facebook, Google, etc. They do it for... Wait for it... MONEY! SHOCKING!

Amy Hennig must be making, what, $500k a year? Lead Creative on Sony's #1 franchise pulling 80 hour weeks wouldn't do it from the good of her heart either.

And a big LOL to people bringing up overtime and how it's not fair that salaried workers don't get paid overtime. Umm.... Wat? If you want to make big money, or you want your career on a trajectory to make big money, you need to enter the salaried workforce.

Honestly some reactions on NeoGAF to the concept of adult working life is just bewildering. You guys really need to grow up, because this is how the world works. Either play the game or don't.

I think the issue is that this would be more understandable if we were only talking about the people at the top. I mean, I get it. There's a big pool of smart, talented people out there, and even among them there's going to be people that live to work and totally hand over their life to getting projects done. Why wouldn't you pick them for promotions over Johnny NineToFive?

The issue I see is that there becomes this weird "all or nothing" mentality wherein either you're busting your hump to climb the ladder, or you might as well just find a blue collar hourly job because you're simply not cut out for professional white collar work. What if you're really good at your job, but you'd still rather work closer to forty hours a week than 80 hours a week? Maybe that disqualifies you from ever being able to run a studio someday, but Hennig describes this as not something limited to just people in her paygrade. There's got to be some middle ground between needing to be an ambitious go-getter willing to work him/herself to death or just simply needing to find a different career if reasonable work schedules are something you desire. Can someone simply make good money working decent hours without aspiring to several hundred thousand dollars a year salaries?
 

darkace

Banned
You're missing the point entirely. That's not how it should be to begin with.

That's how it is. Yelling loudly from the sidelines about how people who work hard get the rewards doesn't get you anywhere.

You either play the game, or you lose.
 

Urthor

Member
Salary probably caps out fairly low six figures (around $250k/yr would be my guess) for someone in her role. The rest of the package will be equity and/or bonus/royalty payments (I don't know how Sony's royalty structure works, they may just do discretionary annual or whatever).


250 would be studio head or project lead tier dough in gaming. And plenty of project leads would be dreaming of 250 regardless.


It's a 50k-150k industry in big publisher AAA, Hennig would be somewhere in the 90-150 range for senior development staff.

A lot of AAA devs in roles that aren't say, Q/A, are paid 70k plus, especially if the market rate for their skills is much higher in a non-gaming profession. That's enough pay to take the sting out of things, pay off a mortgage etc, although obviously a salary that size with no overtime isn't comparable to the number of hours that are demanded.
 

True Fire

Member
I can only imagine the crunch Final Fantasy XV's team is going through. They probably went through 20 hour days to get the game looking as well as it does in such a short period of time.
 
That's how it is. Yelling loudly from the sidelines about how people who work hard get the rewards doesn't get you anywhere.

You either play the game, or you lose.

Accepting things as they are and stating that's it's the only way they can be is also incredibly immature and defeatist. It doesn't have to be the way it is, and by the sounds of it, a lot of developers don't want it to be either. Hopefully they can create the change they'd like to see.
 
Can there ever be a real solution do this issue though?

90% of the development cost of a game is skilled, highly trained labour. The more hours you spend on a game, the better it gets, there's a very very direct relationship where you trade off features, polish and man hours.

I was always under the impression that giving workers more time off and less hours actually improved productivity and efficiency overall.

Insane work hours like this just leads to burning people out, which leads to people doing less productive work. It also causes skilled workers (like Amy Hennig) to leave when they realize they can have a better quality of life with another company, which causes the original company to have to hire new people who require onboarding and training which wastes additional time and money.
 
That's how it is. Yelling loudly from the sidelines about how people who work hard get the rewards doesn't get you anywhere.

You either play the game, or you lose.

Nah

You change the game.

Industry's not sustainable at this rate, which is probably fine to those who just want to eat off their employees but if people want to be able to continue playing games less apathy and antipathy is a start
 
That's how it is. Yelling loudly from the sidelines about how people who work hard get the rewards doesn't get you anywhere.

You either play the game, or you lose.

Sure, but this is sort of the all-or-nothing attitude that I was talking about. Why are the only options "play the game" and "lose"?
 
D

Deleted member 126221

Unconfirmed Member
Honestly some reactions on NeoGAF to the concept of adult working life is just bewildering. You guys really need to grow up, because this is how the world works. Either play the game or don't.

You're surprised that GAF is vocal about a game being total shit? ;)

Of course we know "this is how it works". Doesn't mean we can't be critical of it, and it doesn't mean it's the ONLY way for it to work forever and ever.
 
Ratchet and Clank doesn't even come close to a high-production-values title in 2016 -- you can tell because they sold it for $40 at launch.

Just for clarification, you're saying this based on the structural scope of the game? Since it's a straight modern adaptation of the original 2002 game it's based on, and doesn't try to expand the original borders with new modes or content in order to stand alongside today's premium priced "AAA" games.

Not trying to be snide, I just want to make sure that we're on the same page. If we are, I'm not in disagreement (though if you referring more to its graphics, I'd honestly be a bit bewildered lol).
 

Urthor

Member
I was always under the impression that giving workers more time off and less hours actually improved productivity and efficiency overall.

Insane work hours like this just leads to burning people out, which leads to people doing less productive work. It also causes skilled workers (like Amy Hennig) to leave when they realize they can have a better quality of life with another company, which causes the original company to have to hire new people who require onboarding and training which wastes additional time and money.

I mean in an idealised world that would be the case. In real life it's more like one well rested hour is worth 1.2 regular hours, so working the 8h day vs the 14h day is just pointless from the perspective of the merciless corporate executive.

Fun fact, for most of human history the weekend wasn't even a thing, for thousands of years the majority of the population of China worked almost every single day of the year growing rice. Much of Asia still does in fact. It's not even extraordinarily unhealthy to work that hard as long as you eat well, humans are designed to survive and thrive in the most extraordinarily punishing conditions. Our concept of the 8h day and the 40 hour week is an anachronism in the eyes of the majority of the world.

And well, it's video gaming. Skilled workers like Amy Hennig aren't going to leave because small indie studios can't offer the same creative opportunities that AAA industry dominating titles do, and there's a significant risk of them going bust and you getting laid off. Plus if they do leave you can easily hire more, equally motivated people, it's not like there's a shortage.

Millions of people love video games enough to aspire to be game developers at the end of the day, Naughty Dog is scraping the 1%.
 
Is It an american issue ??

No it's a global issue, but like many other things it is more extreme in America. But many international corporations in the age of globalization wants to insert the same type of laws.

The arguments are the same too. More growth, more jobs, more opportunity. All is attainable if we just scale back on the protections, because protecting workers or capping these sorts of regulations will hurt their max revenue spot.
And that is true. It's easy to go down this road if you do not take a hard look at the consequences or have people who are ignorant to the realities of what it does to you.





It's not that long ago that a intern at Goldman Sachs died from overworking;

Goldman Sachs has officially announced that it will cap interns’ days at 17 hours, meaning interns are encouraged to go home by midnight and not arrive before 7 a.m. At the beginning of June, Goldman Sachs took on around 2,900 summer interns.

The announcement comes shortly after Bank of America Merrill Lynch intern Moritz Erhardt, 21, was found dead in his shower after working for 72 hours straight. According to an autopsy, Erhardt died from epileptic seizures that could have been triggered by all-nighters.

Still, after Erhardt’s death, some banks have been making an effort to scale back on the absurd rigor of their internship programs. The bank also recently restricted junior bankers from working on Saturdays.

Investment banking internships are notoriously grueling. Recently, an email addressed to Barclays’ Global Power & Utilities interns began circulating, outlining “10 power commandments” they were expected to follow. The supposedly humorous instructions included: “We expect you to be the last ones to leave every night… no matter what,” “Never take your jacket off at work,” and “I recommend bringing a pillow to the office.”

In a statement, Barclays responded to the letter: “We have implemented policies and training guidelines to enable employees to gain valuable experience while at the same time maintaining a healthy work-life balance.”

The issue of workplace stress has crept into mainstream debate, largely thanks to efforts from people like Sheryl Sandberg and Arianna Huffington. According to studies from Yale and the Families and Work Institute, around one-in-four Americans report feeling often burned out or extremely stressed at their jobs.

Goldman Sachs’ chief executive Lloyd Blankfein recently told interns that they shouldn’t devote all their time to the company.

“You have to be interesting, you have to have interests away from the narrow thing of what you do,” Blankfein said. “You have to be somebody who somebody else wants to talk to.”

Recently, Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced the Guaranteed Paid Vacation Actto Congress, which, if passed, would require workplaces with at least 15 employees to mandate 10 days of paid vacation per employee.

“What family values are about is that at least for two weeks a year, people can come together under a relaxed environment and enjoy the family,” Sanders said. “That is a family value that I want to see happen in this country.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/18/gol...s_after_death_of_bank_of_america_corp_intern/


This is the expectation of people in many industries so people do it. People in this thread who argue that "they choose to do it" is a inane statement that betrays human nature that people are trying to grab whatever opportunity they can to improve their lives. The government is supposed to protect people from misuse by other people. Corporations are incapable of themselves putting out an agenda or take responsibility for the social constructs. They are in the business of operasting within the law, and as we have seen across industry after industry, they push the envelope of what is allowed to maximize their own output and expertise.
This is not on companies. It's on poor worker protection laws and a deafness to wanting to put a stop to abusive lower wage jobs. / This is not me talking about a creative director, but the mistreatment of everyday workers, who don't choose this, but are expected to do it, and do it through pressure due to societal norms shaping everything.



Daily reminder that the average working conditions in the US suck ass.

Unions are neutered and dismorphed in America, and a lot of it boils down to anti-worker right laws that killed them. In the early parts of the 20th century massive strikes decided the faith of American corporate life, and laws like the taft-hartley act was instated to make it illegal for the people to say enough is enough, to protest, to unionize.
It was a total assault against the labor movement; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Management_Relations_Act_of_1947


This is likely one of the main reasons why the US does so badly with regards to paid maternity leave, paid over time, paid vacation time and similarly. If you work for a company with good benefits, then that is great. If you don't, then you are open to being abused, and that in turn of course feeds into sexism, misuse and mistreatment of staff.

But in the name of more jobs and more growth nothing else matters. You don't need to be happy or content at your job if you're making real money.




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.

It doesn't work this way. Outsiders sometimes think that if you can throw more staff at the problem and then it works, but you don't just get more expertise. Often more staff particularly in managing roles and decision roles means more beaucracy which halts a project.
Like many other creative leads in other industries- Like say, a show runner on a TV show, it is a role where you tie everything together, and the size of the project and the massive gigantic undertaking of the project cannot be done by more than one person by conventional means. hiring assistences or trying to delegate jobs to specific individuals can backfire.

Think about a project like Assassins Creed Unity where over a thousand developers are working across studios all over the world, and a few key personall has to tie everything together. Every new build breaks the game, milestones have to be met, investor meetings constantly have to satisfy, development grows to a halt as members have to prepare demos for shows and media, setbacks every day ruin it for other teams like a domino effect.


Another factor you have to consider is that training valueable employees with a high level of skill is difficult to find, and having a optimal team where the leads know one another and work together to effiency is not an easy thing. It's the arrogance of a dumb producer to think he can buy himself to a fantastic game by just hiring a million staff and throwing hundred millions after the project. Thats how you end up with a Call of Duty or Madden.
And you can bet that people on those teams- working on games that are not considered ground breaking, also work an insane amount of hours.
Many game development slave away because they dream about getting credit on games that made history. You're supposed to slave away throughout your career so you can climb the ladder and sit in a good cubicle later in life. So trends create the parameters for behavior which guides us all into a catch 22 feedback loop. expectations become reality, and really there is no place for you if you want to work on the next Uncharted if you're not going to put work in. Why would you hire a 9-5 joe, if you got a hundred other designers, programmers and artists lined up who is willing to bleed for your vision.



Thirdly, when projects are greenlit it happens in the room between investors and lead developers, and very often they will underplay how realistic it is to achieve the goals agreed on when a game is greenlit. Games run into problems throughout development and features are cut, but even when you get a game that is falling short on experience or which took many years to make, you're look at individuals at every project who gave their lives basically to even make a mediocre game. Many games are completely oblivious to that even mediocre or average large budget games are a massive undertaking and required massive levels of hard work, inginuity and impossible expectations.
Same thing with Hollywood movies. Transformers is not a good franchise, but the CG artists worked their asses off. the special effects people worked their asses of. The 1 AD and the runners and the technical and practical effects staff worked their asses off. It's convenient to forget all the hundreds of nameless faces because the only thing you think about is Michael Bay.
 

TLZ

Banned
That's how it is. Yelling loudly from the sidelines about how people who work hard get the rewards doesn't get you anywhere.

You either play the game, or you lose.

And that is NOT how it should be. This is an extremist mentality. This is so wrong on so many levels. Like someone else said, what if you're extremely good and passionate about what you do, but you still want a life? You want to keep a balance? Why should these "extremists" ruin it for me? No, they're NOT better than me because they choose to work 24/7. They simply ruined it for the normal people.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Wasn't she the script writer at Naughty Dog? The one with the crude hostility towards platformers? I wonder what she was doing at that capcity in the beginning (later she was team leader, right? There I can see it) 80 hours a week. At least with Jak II and Jak 3 this, as a regular work time, would lead to an astronomical amount of story writing.

Moreover, assuming she still had weekends, this amounts to 16 hour days. Assuming she took about two hours per day for everything regarding food, hygiene and travel to the workplace and back home, she would be left with 6 hours of sleep. Being sleep-deprived like that I see no chance this kind of work load even is productive, i.e. I would suspect having her work less would yield better results. I can't imagine this being accurate and if it is accurate then it's just plain stupidity by the team leaders to let this happen.
 

darkace

Banned
Accepting things as they are and stating that's it's the only way they can be is also incredibly immature and defeatist. It doesn't have to be the way it is, and by the sounds of it, a lot of developers don't want it to be either. Hopefully they can create the change they'd like to see.

I'm not saying you can't affect change. But change takes a long time. And if this change makes the companies uncompetitive then it won't happen. This is how things are now.

And that is NOT how it should be. This is an extremist mentality. This is so wrong on so many levels. Like someone else said, what if you're extremely good and passionate about what you do, but you still want a life? You want to keep a balance? Why should these "extremists" ruin it for me? No, they're NOT better than me because they choose to work 24/7. They simply ruined it for the normal people.

Yea they kinda are better than you at the job. That's why they get paid more. That's why they're in higher demand.

If you want a life then you get lower wages. You get worse positions. You get worse career prospects. That's the sacrifice you make. You can't have it all.
 
This isnt just Crunch. She said this is on average.

There is definitely this weird attitude in software development firms where if you arent working crazy 50-60+ hours a week you are looked down upon by other folks. Basically, working weekends and 60 hour+ weeks has become the norm.

It has nothing to do with crunch. On crunch its even worse, but this is the attitude perpetuated by software programmers and engineers. they have fucked themselves.

"Crunch", and this "weird attitude" are not exclusive to software development. Just about anyone I interact with professionally deals with these issues, myself included. It's our work culture as a whole here in the US
 

TLZ

Banned
Yea they kinda are better than you at the job. That's why they get paid more. That's why they're in higher demand.

Nope. They're not. Better does not equal longer hours. Their masters just like them because they surrender their lives to them. That is all there is to it. I completely refuse this mentality and will never give up my healthy lifestyle for neither money nor career. My life and my family come first and foremost. That is the #1 investment. I live once and I choose to leave it with the best of memories.

If you want a life then you get lower wages. You get worse positions. You get worse career prospects. That's the sacrifice you make. You can't have it all

That's not true, at all. This is such a defeatist mentality.
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Why are you assuming things that are literally talked about in the first paragraph of the OP? She says she worked weekends.

I have overread this. In this case she wouldn't necessarily be sleep-deprived, but missing rest anyway (even on a 7 day basis this amounts to almost 12 hours a day), my point that this would be stupid from a team leader's perspective remains unchanged.
 

darkace

Banned
Nope. They're not. Better does not equal longer hours. Their masters just like them because they surrender their lives to them. That is all there is to it. I completely refuse this mentality and will never give up my healthy lifestyle for neither money nor career. My life and my family come first and foremost. That is the #1 investment. I live once and I choose to leave it with the best of memories.

Awesome. You do that.

And when you sacrifice your career and money for your lifestyle, maybe you should realise that that actually means making a sacrifice.

That's not true, at all. This is such a defeatist mentality.

Lmao what. Of course it's true. If you work harder you get paid more. If you want more time off you get paid less. There is no other way that this could possibly go. Jesus this is some hardcore denial. 'Pay me the same and give me more time off'. Yea no.
 

jackal27

Banned
Burn it all to the ground.

How a company in 2016 is allowed to run its employees like this is beyond me. Screw AAA game development and screw corporate slave masters who put the bottom line above real human lives.
 
I'm not saying the Gaming Industry has to evolve (don't how it really is from the inside) but why people don't take their responsibilities and leave?

I have two kids and I'd sacrifice my career any day if for me it wasn't worth it. And that's why I can have time with my family (even if it's little) every morning and every night.
If I take the decision to do sacrifices I won't come back on them. Else it means you made a choice you didn't really want to make... and we're in a free world. One life only, have the courage to make your own big choices.

Oh and it's even not worth it for the Gaming Industry because they are loosing talent and they are still not delivering way better things than before (bigger for sure but better is not that obvious for many AAA games).

"I mean, Uncharted 1; a ten-hour game, no other modes... you can't make a game like that any more."
=> yes you can if you think about the quality of what you have to offer instead of size or other buzz/hype/marketing focused criteria.

More than 10 years is a lot though, sad for her :(
 

ElNino

Member
Lmao what. Of course it's true. If you work harder you get paid more. If you want more time off you get paid less. There is no other way that this could possibly go. Jesus this is some hardcore denial. 'Pay me the same and give me more time off'. Yea no.
Except that is not necessarily (or even commonly) true, particularly in a creative field like games. You can make far more money, and work far less hours as an engineer in another field.

I referenced my wife's career in accounting earlier. If you leave the firm to go into industry, you can work far less hours (as much as 50%) and make more money in the short term at least, sometimes significantly. The only reason for staying is that you are hoping to be a partner and make more money later in your career, but by that time you might well have become CFO/CEO of whatever company in the industry you ended up in.

Working more, does not guarantee more money or better career advancement. It can, but I'd argue it works against more people than it helps.
 
This is why I had nine women push me out in a month. Legit though communication difficulties and budget scale rapidly when you start up-scaling teams. It's not as easy as 'hire more people'.

I didn't know software was biologically conceived. Obviously, having 20 programmers working on a game will get things done faster than having just one guy doing the whole thing. Yes, communication difficulties and budget can scale rapidly when you start up-scaling teams, if you don't know how to properly run a company.
 

darkace

Banned
I didn't know software was biologically conceived. Obviously, having 20 programmers working on a game will get things done faster than having just one guy doing the whole thing. Yes, communication difficulties and budget can scale rapidly when you start up-scaling teams, if you don't know how to properly run a company.

It's a quote from a book somebody else posted above pointing out why this line of thinking is fallacious.
 

Lime

Member
I see two issues that are forcing employees to have these insane working conditions: (1) How will the games industry ever back down from its arms race and (2) how will consumer demand ever be realistic?
 

Tal

Member
I wonder if the industry is going to experience any kind of labor shortage in the coming decades. The working conditions just seem so transparently terrible, even relative to the rest of the tech sector.
 

Raysod

Banned
Plenty of people work insane hours in the EU as well. Crytek were infamous for having too much crunch, just to name one company. It happens in other sectors as well of course.

Crytek has many studios outside the Eurozone countries, so I guess they overwork their staff on studios outside the eu.

The EU law is clear that it is illegal for an employee to work more than 48 hours per week (including overtime).

I put the European Working Time Directive here for reference and as a base for discussion:

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intPageId=205

Any person that works in the UK, Germany, France etc can verify this.

Even unskilled workers, drivers or doctors have to obey this law, although there are special arrangements for the medical professionals in every eu country.

That is why I asked if any similar law exists in the US. It has nothing to do with the amount of work, money or compensation, but with the overall health (physical and mental) of an employee.

How on earth gaming studios management accept to treat their staff like this and expect them (i) to produce quality products and, something that will turn against them as an industry in the long run, (ii) keep the talent and their amazing skills in the industry?
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Awesome. You do that.

And when you sacrifice your career and money for your lifestyle, maybe you should realise that that actually means making a sacrifice.



Lmao what. Of course it's true. If you work harder you get paid more. If you want more time off you get paid less. There is no other way that this could possibly go. Jesus this is some hardcore denial. 'Pay me the same and give me more time off'. Yea no.


It's not like the only options are work crazy and make bank (not that all or most crazy hour jobs pay well) or sacrifice for life and family and live poor. There are plenty of professions with 40 hour max weeks that pay good wages for a family to live a nice middle class lifestyle. Especially if the people are smart with their money and live under their means.

Of course it's a trade off vs. getting a more demanding career in a field that pays in the $200K a year and up range. But there are plenty of people working salaried positions as retail managers and what not only making $50-60k so it's not like long hours is a guarantee of making bank.

I always 100% prioritized finding a flexible job that also paid well. So my sacrifice was getting a Ph D from a top program (and thus not entering the workforce until 30) and working some long hour weeks while getting tenure. Now I work 30-40 hours a week, with an occasional crunch here and there around a grant deadline, and my 9-month salary is $80k. If I want to work more I can teach a summer class for another 10% of my salary, bring in research grants to pay myself summer salary (can make a max of 33.33% of my salary in the summer through teaching and grants). My fiancé makes nearly as much, and works 40ish hours as well. We both fucking loathe kids, don't care about shit like luxury cars so we're living a nice life with zero stress about bills, plenty of money for nice foreign vacations etc. while working reasonable hours in jobs we enjoy.

So it's just a matter of being thoughtful (with some degree of luck) and finding a career that gives you enough income to live a nice life without burning you out and causing you to be miserable regardless of how much money you make as you have no time/energy to enjoy it and will probably die younger due to the ill effects of the stress, lack of sleep etc.

If one chooses to chase wealth so they can afford a bunch of shit no one needs and/or to put up with terrible working conditions to work in their hobby industry, so be it. I'm not going to have sympathy for them. I'll reserve my sympathy for the people who's life circumstances prevented them from getting an education and a career or who are working a bunch of hours in shitty, part-time blue collar jobs and living barely above the poverty line. At least people "stuck" in the above type of jobs have the education, skills and resume to have options for changing careers unlike the unskilled laborers who are just fucked to forever be poor regardless of how many hours/jobs they work.

Aside from that, it's hypocritical for so many here to be expressing sympathy when many are the same people who complained about lack of content in $60 games, only buy games used, only buy games after steep price drops etc. that are a big part of what that creates this AAA crunch as there's so much pressure to put in MP, tons of bloat etc. just to hit content checkboxes so the game is received better and sells enough around launch to recoup costs before the sales tank and prices drop.
 
Crytek has many studios outside the Eurozone countries, so I guess they overwork their staff on studios outside the eu.

The EU law is clear that it is illegal for an employee to work more than 48 hours per week (including overtime).

I put the European Working Time Directive here for reference and as a base for discussion:

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=706&langId=en&intPageId=205

Any person that works in the UK, Germany, France etc can verify this.

Even unskilled workers, drivers or doctors have to obey this law, although there are special arrangements for the medical professionals in every eu country.

That is why I asked if any similar law exists in the US. It has nothing to do with the amount of work, money or compensation, but with the overall health (physical and mental) of an employee.

How on earth gaming studios management accept to treat their staff like this and expect them (i) to produce quality products and, something that will turn against them as an industry in the long run, (ii) keep the talent and their amazing skills in the industry?

I don't believe there is anything similar that the US has to EU labor laws. The only thing we have is overtime for hourly (non-exempt) employees that work over 40 hours and most businesses must now offer some form of health care to their employees (though some exemptions to this exist to the ACA).
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Right but then the solution is pretty simple, you hire MORE people. Yes, you would need a bigger budget, and publishers are not going to like that, but this is what should be done in such cases.
Assassin's Creed Unity took just as much time to develop as Uncharted 4, (and needed a substantial delay). Throwing more people at it doesn't magically make it go faster.
 

Raysod

Banned
I don't believe there is anything similar that the US has to EU labor laws. The only thing we have is overtime for hourly (non-exempt) employees that work over 40 hours and most businesses must now offer some form of health care to their employees (though some exemptions to this exist to the ACA).

Thanks a lot for the reply.

So all these highly smart and very capable and efficient people have either to literally die themselves working, change industries or create a form of a union and request better working conditions from publishers and studios.

Amy in the OP talked about health issues and destroyed families.
 

Croatoan

They/Them A-10 Warthog
My business partner and I have talked about this a lot. When, or if, we are ever able to expand and hire more people we would like to try something different. The current idea is possibly alternating 5 and 6 day work weeks but only working 12-5 (5 hours a day).

That is how I currently work as I get off of my job at 1130 and work on game stuff until my wife gets home from work at 5. I get a shit load more done in those 5 hours than I would get done 8 or 9 till 5. I don't feel groggy during that time, I don't have to stop to eat, and I can focus better due to the constraint.

Alternating between a 25 and 30 hour work week would extend project time but maybe there would be a payoff in the quality of work? IDK, need to do more research. Hopefully, we can make a little money and expand beyond the three of us to try it out.
 
Top Bottom