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[Tumetsu]

So I came up to this article today:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/why-your-games-are-made-by-childless-31-year-old-white-men-and-how-one-stud

Basically its about the game industry and its crazy work expectations where apparently people who work under 80 hours/week are looked down, or investors shun you. I found it kind of fascinating since so far I haven't worked in "industry", just in some small projects and always thought it applied only to AAA+ games (which is also implied in the article). Meaning that mostly only people in the topic title can fill the requirements.

I also find it interesting that average career at game industry is only 5 years.

Personally I don't have plans to get into AAA-industry, I'm interested in, is this same culture prevalent in smaller teams? Also, please share your experiences regarding this or your own work time be it a "real" or a hobby project.

[deathtotheweird]

Yeah, I remember reading an Anna Anthropy article that talked about this. It was her dys4ia post-mortem: http://www.auntiepixelante.com/?p=1991 go down to lesson 9. (the rest of the article is kinda trash and those lessons shouldn't apply to every game and every situation, but lesson 9 is a good point that is hard to argue).

I could see how super strict deadlines and long work weeks could drive someone to leave the industry in 5 years. There's no way I would ever work a job that required you to work that much. Even if you loved your job, you would get tired of it fast.

[Udderdude]

When I work on my own stuff I make sure I don't overwork and sleep 8 consistent hours every day .. but most don't have any luxury like that.

And I still managed to totally burn myself out.  Only reason I'm not making more games right now is I'm too tired to do so at the moment. D:

I can only imagine having to work 80 hours per week on something you aren't even invested in must be some form of punishment.

The industry definitely needs to mature beyond crunch time hell.

[Tumetsu]

There's no way I would ever work a job that required you to work that much. Even if you loved your job, you would get tired of it fast.

Yeah, that's something many people don't really realize.

Personally I have had some problems with allocating time between my studies, game development and other life. Recently I started to log my work hours and it surprised me how much I actually spend time on studying. Now after I see that I have done X-amount of hours/day I know that I can relax and focus on something else. That really helps me to avoid the nagging "I should do something useful" feeling.

[gimymblert]

D:>

that's totally me in and out the industry

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

one thing to realize is that it's *cheaper* for the industry to employ people for 5 years. because, you know, beginners fresh out of college are paid less than veterans. so it's far cheaper to fire your 5-year code monkey and get an interchangeable new code monkey fresh out of college, because if you kept the 5-year guy, you'd have to pay him more than the new guy

[Udderdude]

Must really suck for all those industry hopefuls that think working on videogames is a 24/7 party, only to get tossed into the meat grinder and come out the other end 5 years later looking like crap.

And all they ever wanted to do was maek gaem ;_;

[gimymblert]

@Paul Eres
At the same time they are less efficient, but I think you imply that. The truth is that with rising cost the tide will turn to experience and efficiency instead of brute force.

[eigenbom]

Ok, I'm a childless 31 year old white man, so behold my wisdom.. :S

It's likely that these 80 hour work weeks are 80 hours of bad work. I've been a full-time "self-employed" dev for a year now, and I've come to the realisation that weekends are a perk of working for someone else, there's simply too much stuff to do. For example, I'm coming to the realisation that my latest iOS game needs at least an additional 120 hours of marketing work. As an indie, everything has to be paid for in work hours.

[ThemsAllTook]

It's remarkable to me that such numbers of people can be convinced to work like that. I've never had trouble standing up to unreasonable demands by an employer, and it has yet to cost me a job (though that might just be good luck on my part!). I guess the key is that they somehow make what seems unreasonable from an outside perspective seem reasonable when you're working at the place?

A few years ago, I'd resigned from a job just before going to GDC, and the original plan was to try to get a game industry job while I was there. Spending some time in the career pavilion and attending the Friday career seminar changed my mind. There might be some cool stuff about working in the game industry, but it doesn't seem worth all the negative things about it right now.

I worked an 80 hour week...once. It was actually kinda fun and I was able to focus way more on getting stuff done than I can during a normal schedule. Afterward I needed to take a LONG break to recover, though. I'd be completely unproductive, unhealthy, and would hate everything if I had to work 80 hours every week for any period of time.

[gimymblert]

To be frank a part of it is passion, the inability to stop obsessing about it. In my case I used as a way to teach me habit and making motivation out of the equation to not give up. Now even when I'm depressed I have the reflex to do something anyway, because I jump on the computer and fire unity. However my own incompetence in some domain I'm tackling down and the learning research loop have greatly slow me down.

[Udderdude]

Good link found in the comments. http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/

"Passion" is also described in there.

[Superb Joe]

it's because paul eres always practices safe sex

[Tumetsu]

Good link found in the comments. http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/

"Passion" is also described in there.

Read it now and it makes sense. A bit afraid of my future career at software engineering and making me think I should have chosen something else 

[Sar]

Read it now and it makes sense. A bit afraid of my future career at software engineering and making me think I should have chosen something else 

I've been working in software engineering in the UK for about 11 years now, and... my working week has probably averaged about 36-37 hours a week over that time. I suspect the craziness described in the Salon article is largely talking from an American perspective. The first company I worked for was owned by an American company, and the guys on the other side of the Atlantic were certainly far more nuts about their working hours than we were.



(I don't know very many people in the games industry, but I get the strong impression from those I do that the five-year average is probably as much because the people running the show are such colossal dicks that any sane person would want the hell out as soon as possible as anything to do with working hours, though.)

[Tumetsu]

Yeah, forgot  to add that I think there might be some cultural differences between countries, so I guess that I should have use word "way" instead of "afraid".

Worst crunch stories I have heard are from game industry.  I think most of them were from US also. From the basis of the article Udderdude posted it would make sense, since article pointed the success of Silicon Valley as an origin of the trend. However, I have heard some similar stories from Europe also. Personally I live in Finland where afaik, law states that emploeyer has to pay extra wage for overwork and so discourages it.

[Alevice]

My experience on IT is eerily similar. I think any computing related job tends to be exploited due to the average profile. It is reaaaaally common to exploit people, and whilemy current job is relatively stable, it is still overworked somewhat (60 hours week on average, but have reached nearly 100 hours depnding on projects - thankfully that barely happens anymore). Trying to find anything less taxing for the same paycheck is hell. Most will be even more underpaid (I earn around USD 2000/month and I still have trouble affording a house and a decent car).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

there was a loophole where, in the arts, in california specifically, overtime doesn't have to be paid, and since game dev is technically an art they didn't pay programmers for overtime, but made them work overtime anyway or they'd be fired. this changed fairly recently as a result of the ea_spouse scandal, there was a class action lawsuit to seek overtime pay for those working more than 40 hours a week for games companies; so i believe now game devs get overtime pay, but this wasn't the case 10 years ago or so

[C.D Buckmaster]

I really hate the idea that crunch time is just expected as part of the industry culture.

In fact, I even made an infographic about it for my graphic design class: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26635718/infographicsmall.png (statistics from aprox 2004)

[Blademasterbobo]

it's not "the arts," is it? because that shit happens with almost every salary based computer science job