Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them

[crazy canuck]

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.

The issue is that a lot of them literally live for their jobs. A lot of the time this isn't imposed on them; it's a choice that they make.

Yeah, but I think you and DG are saying the same thing - it is the culture of the industry.

That's why it sucks. Gamers on average are older & more women play than in the past yet the games keep being made by the different generations of 20 years old guys because experienced people leave the industry.

That is likely why we are knowing seeing stories like the one in the OP.

[Grey Fox]

That's why it sucks. Gamers on average are older & more women play than in the past yet the games keep being made by the different generations of 20 years old guys because experienced people leave the industry.

Why does that suck?

As a consumer of games, I don't get games made with serious & insightful stories in mind, I get dude bros Overwatch & DOTA.

[grumbler]

Crunch time has nothing to do with what you are now describing.  Although, you have made a valiant attempt to move the goal posts.

Crunch time is an employer telling their employees that a certain date must be met for a certain piece of a certain project.  Very different from someone, on their own, for their own benefit, engaging in some creative endeavor for their own edification.

Now you are trying to shift the goal posts to avoid admitting that you were wrong.  The article that we are discussing says nothing about "an employer telling their employees that a certain date must be met for a certain piece of a certain project." And it would be asinine if it did define crunch time as anything so banal as an employer setting a deadline for the completion of a task.

If you want to talk about some fantasy you have about slave-driving employers, start your own thread about it.  This thread is about the article in the OP.

[grumbler]

As a consumer of games, I don't get games made with serious & insightful stories in mind, I get dude bros Overwatch & DOTA.

The circumstances you described earlier have always been true in the gaming industry.  If you think that you don't get stories because there aren't enough geezers working on games, you need to have some evidence that game features are decided by the age of the coders, not the market.  I very much doubt that that is true.

[crazy canuck]

The article that we are discussing says nothing about "an employer telling their employees that a certain date must be met for a certain piece of a certain project."

I am sorry, I assumed you had a basic understanding of what causes "crunch time".   An assumption I should not have made given your responses.  Jacob provided a good explanation for the causes early in the thread.  Please go back and read that.

[grumbler]

The article that we are discussing says nothing about "an employer telling their employees that a certain date must be met for a certain piece of a certain project."

I am sorry, I assumed you had a basic understanding of what causes "crunch time".   An assumption I should not have made given your responses.  Jacob provided a good explanation for the causes early in the thread.  Please go back and read that.

Now that I have demonstrated that I understand crunch time and you do not (and you have tacitly admitted that by instantly abandoning your definition of it when I challenged it), I can point out that I have worked "crunch time" many times in my career.  The most extended crunch times were those when I worked as an analyst for the US Navy and we sponsored the Navy's annual ASW wargame.  That was three weeks every year, and consisted of spending time with the Navy players during the day, and then overseeing my team running the new scenarios generated that day at night.  The regular analysts shifted to working from 6pm-2am, since they didn't have to deal with the Navy guys, but all of the Principal Investigators spent the day with our Navy counterparts, and then the evening and early morning with our team, and then some more time preparing the presentations of the results.  Then, at 8 am, we were back with the Navy guys to run the next day's simulation.  Generally, the PIs got about three hours of sleep while the analysts crunched the numbers (often awakened to answer questions) on cots in our offices, and then went home for a nap and shower around 4am.  It was an exhausting three weeks, but it was worth it because we set up the game results we would be using for the rest of the year.

Now, the PIs were actually only required to work from 8 am-5 pm (though 7 days a week during the wargame), and we could technically just leave notes for the analysts to use setting up their problems for the night.  None of us did that, though, because we wanted the work to be perfect, and we didn't want to frustrate our subordinates by leaving them to deal with their questions on their own.  So we put in probably 60 extra, voluntary hours a week to make sure things went well.  It wasn't a "culture" issue, since there was no "culture" to running Navy wargames.  It was a desire to see an important project run and finish well. 

That's far more what the Op is talking about.  Jean Simonet didn't say he was forced to work long hours.  He said he did so because he wanted to move his work "from good to great."  I think that great is a worthwhile target, and that government should not ban great to protect Jean Simmons from himself.  He needs education, not regulation.

[Grey Fox]

As a consumer of games, I don't get games made with serious & insightful stories in mind, I get dude bros Overwatch & DOTA.

The circumstances you described earlier have always been true in the gaming industry.  If you think that you don't get stories because there aren't enough geezers working on games, you need to have some evidence that game features are decided by the age of the coders, not the market.  I very much doubt that that is true.

No, how to monetize the game is decided by the market/publisher. But actual stories & gameplay loops? All designers.

[crazy canuck]

Now that I have demonstrated that I understand crunch time

When did that happen?

[grumbler]

Now that I have demonstrated that I understand crunch time

When did that happen?

If you can't keep up, you should get help from someone who cares whether you keep up.  That's not me.

[Oexmelin]

How can the situation of, say, musicians in a band, even remotely comparable to employees in the game industry?

[crazy canuck]

How can the situation of, say, musicians in a band, even remotely comparable to employees in the game industry?

Grumbler has declared he has fully understood the issue - that should be enough for us.

[Grey Fox]

Oh, my, god.

Grumbler is General Kelly!

[grumbler]

How can the situation of, say, musicians in a band, even remotely comparable to employees in the game industry?

Artists tend to be artists, whether they create music or game graphics.  How can musicians be even remotely considered not artists?

[grumbler]

How can the situation of, say, musicians in a band, even remotely comparable to employees in the game industry?

Grumbler has declared he has fully understood the issue - that should be enough for us.

  Man, you have no shame when it comes to intellectual dishonesty, do you?  I wonder if you are this intellectually dishonest in everything, or whether you save all your dishonesty for Languish.

[dps]

In the fundamentals your system is the same as ours.  There is a distinction between putting a limit on the maximum hours which can be worked and the point at which overtime must be paid.  That provides flexibility for employers because they can choose to have employees working longer than a normal work day but they have to pay for it.  At the same time maximum hours of work (both in terms of hours in a week and mandatory rest periods between days worked) are imposed so that workers' health does not suffer.

For the purposes of this thread the issue is which workers are excluded from these protections.  In the US, it seems excluded employees are defined by whether they are paid a salary or an hourly rate.  The exclusions in Canada are based on whether they employee is a "manager" or whether they fall within a description of work which is excluded from the protections of the regulation (eg most professions). Relevant to this thread, employees in the Gaming industry are excluded (at least in BC) because of the logic argued by Berkut - that they are a special type of employee who do not need protection.

It's actually more similar that what you seem to imply here, simply because in the US, the definition of who can be a salaried employee mostly limits it to managers and members of certain professions (doctors, lawyers, etc.).  The trick is in defining who can be considered a manager and thus be salaried.  Generally, the trend has been to place more restrictions on who can be considered a "manager" for the purposes of overtime law.

the difficulty with that argument is that if those employees are so special, why do so many end up accepting employment with such poor contractual terms of employment - eg no overtime pay, long hours of work, uncertain tenure (most work in the industry is now project based).  I doubt the answer is that every one those employees prefers to work under those conditions.  More likely the answer is that most have no other alternative.

More likely the answer is that they enjoy that type of work, and find it fulfilling.  I very much doubt that people with no other alternative end up with job titles like "game developer".  People with no other alternatives end up with job titles like "ditch digger", "janitor" or "fast-food restaurant crew member".