Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them

[CountDeMoney]

Interesting Op-Ed in the FNYT

Opinion | Op-Ed Contributor
Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them
By JASON SCHREIER
OCT. 25, 2017
The Failing New York Times


Among video game developers, it's called "crunch": a sudden spike in work hours, as many as 20 a day, that can last for days or weeks on end. During this time, they sleep at work, limit bathroom breaks and cut out anything that pulls their attention away from their screens, including family and even food. Crunch makes the industry roll — but it's taking a serious toll on its workers.

In late 2011, as he was finishing up production on the role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the programmer Jean Simonet started feeling severe stomach pains. At first, doctors were perplexed. But on his third emergency room visit, he revealed that he'd been regularly staying at the office late and coming in on weekends to fix bugs and add features that he thought would take Skyrim from good to great, no matter how much sleep he lost along the way.

He took his doctor's advice and took the next few weeks off work, trying to relax and acclimate to a normal sleep schedule. With this hiatus from crunch, "eventually the pain just disappeared," he said.

Anecdotes like this are common in the video game industry, which generated $30.4 billion in the United States last year but has a human cost that can't be calculated. The designer Clint Hocking described suffering memory loss as a result of the stress and anxiety of crunching on a game. Brett Douville, a veteran game programmer, said he once worked so long and for so hard that he found himself temporarily unable to step out of his car.

Modern video games like Mass Effect and Uncharted cost tens of millions of dollars and require the labor of hundreds of people, who can each work 80- or even 100-hour weeks. In game development, crunch is not constrained to the final two or three weeks of a project. A team might crunch at any time, and a crunch might endure for several months. Programmers will stay late on weeknights to squash bugs, artists will use weekends to put the final polish on their characters, and everyone on the team will feel pressured to work extra hours in solidarity with overworked colleagues.
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In a 2016 survey by the International Game Developers Association, 65 percent of developers said they'd had to crunch, with 52 percent adding that they'd done it more than twice in the previous two years. (Of those who said they did not crunch, 32 percent noted "that their job did require periods of long hours, extended work hours or extended overtime that was just not called 'crunch.' ")

While many jobs are demanding, the conditions in this industry are uniquely unforgiving. Most game developers in the United States do not receive extra compensation for extra hours. They may gaze with envy at their colleagues in the film industry, where unions help regulate hours and ensure overtime pay. Their income pales in comparison to what's offered in other fields with reputations for brutal hours, like banking and law. The average American game developer earned $83,060 in 2013, according to a Gamasutra survey, or less than half the pay of a first-year associate at a New York law firm.

While I was reporting for a book on how video games are made, veteran game makers told me stories of lost family time, relationship strains and such severe burnout that they considered leaving for other industries.

"People think that making games is easy," said Marcin Iwinski, a co-chief executive and co-founder of CD Projekt Red, the Polish developer of a 2015 game, The Witcher 3. "It's hard-core work. It can destroy your life."

Mr. Iwinski, like many other top video game creators, sees crunch as a necessary evil. He and other developers say because of the rapid evolution of video game technology, among other reasons, the time it takes to complete basic tasks can vary drastically from project to project, which makes it difficult to plan accurate schedules.

A growing faction of game developers, however, argues that it's possible to make good games without crunching. Tanya X. Short, a co-founder of the independent studio Kitfox Games, asked colleagues to sign an online pledge against excessive overtime. The pledge, which was published last year, has been signed by over 500 game developers.

"Crunch trades short-term gains for long-term suffering," said Ms. Short in an email.

To avoid long-term deleterious effects, game developers must commit to stop facilitating a culture in which crunch is the norm. The occasional long night or weekend at the office can be useful and even exhilarating, but as a constant, it is damaging. No video game is worth burnout, brain damage or overnight stays at the hospital.

Those of us who cover the video game industry can see that the current conditions are unsustainable. Too many of the people who make games have left for more lucrative, less stressful industries. Too many who have stayed have suffered the physical and mental consequences. Game developers need to insist — to their bosses and, most important, to themselves — that health comes first.

Jason Schreier is the news editor at Kotaku and the author of "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made."

[dps]

Opinion | Op-Ed Contributor
The average American game developer earned $83,060 in 2013

Well cry me a river for 'em.

Don't get me wrong--nobody should have to work those kind of hours.  But I worked for years in fast food management, where when you go in to work, you never know when you'll get to leave the restaurant, the pay isn't a third of that for most assistant managers, and the work itself is a lot less fulfilling.

[Razgovory]

Sounds like they need a Union.

[CountDeMoney]

Well cry me a river for 'em.

Don't get me wrong--nobody should have to work those kind of hours.  But I worked for years in fast food management, where when you go in to work, you never know when you'll get to leave the restaurant, the pay isn't a third of that for most assistant managers, and the work itself is a lot less fulfilling.

I would agree, but I think that average salary is really geographically skewered to higher-end COLAs on top of the technical premium.  More like SF, Seattle, Chicago, NY and NJ than, say, Brunswick, GA or Lexington, KY.

[grumbler]

Crunch time exists in a lot of artistic and intellectual endeavors.  If game developers don't think the compensation (artistic and financial) rewards the labor put in, they should definitely seek alternate ways of making a living.

Now, if the writer of this dog-bites-man op-ed could say something about what distinguished studios that don't rely on crunch time from those that do, this would be worth reading.  As it is, it just notes the issue and then notes that various people have uttered meaningless platitudes about the issue.  There's no there, there.

[dps]

Well cry me a river for 'em.

Don't get me wrong--nobody should have to work those kind of hours.  But I worked for years in fast food management, where when you go in to work, you never know when you'll get to leave the restaurant, the pay isn't a third of that for most assistant managers, and the work itself is a lot less fulfilling.

I would agree, but I think that average salary is really geographically skewered to higher-end COLAs on top of the technical premium.  More like SF, Seattle, Chicago, NY and NJ than, say, Brunswick, GA or Lexington, KY.

True, for all I know, BK assistant managers in places like Seattle make north of $83K a year.  Probably not, but I hope they make more there in 2017 than I did in WV 10 years earlier.  But you're not going to get generate much sympathy for someone on financial grounds by pointing out that they make half the starting pay for an associate at a NYC law firm.

[CountDeMoney]

I wasn't comparing them to BK assistant manager salaries, and you know it.  Don't be twatty.

[Razgovory]

Now that's the merciless capitalism I've come to love from Languish.

[Valmy]

Crunch time exists in a lot of artistic and intellectual endeavors.

Well I am glad I do not participate in any of these sadistic and inhuman artistic and intellectual endeavors then. I would think it would be more efficient for your mind and creativity to not violate every piece of advice given by medical professionals regarding stress and sleep and so forth. But hey maybe medicine does not apply to these artistic and intellectual types.

Anyway better them than me.

[Oexmelin]

Yeah, poets routinely demand 20 hours workdays from their employees. It's even worse for performance artists. They bleed their workforce dry.

[Monoriu]

If there is a sufficiently large number of people who are willing to work crazy hours, there isn't much the rest can do, aside from quitting. 

[Josquius]

I am surprised they are only making in the 80k range. For skills like theirs I'd have thought they'd be over 100k at least. Unless there's a bunch of juniors with a high drop out rate dragging down the average?

[DGuller]

This is why things like OSHA exist.  Beyond a certain point, employees just shouldn't be allowed to trade health for employment, regardless of how willing they are to succumb to the prevailing culture at the workplace.

[Tamas]

I am surprised they are only making in the 80k range. For skills like theirs I'd have thought they'd be over 100k at least. Unless there's a bunch of juniors with a high drop out weight dragging down the average?

I bet you are one of those, though, who complains when a game on Steam costs more than $20.

[The Brain]

People need to relax.