Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them

[Oexmelin]

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

I am trying to assert how you draw (ha) the line. Every one who works on video game is an artist? Every member of a recording company? Every roadie? Does wage labor enter the equation?

[grumbler]

I am trying to assert how you draw (ha) the line. Every one who works on video game is an artist? Every member of a recording company? Every roadie? Does wage labor enter the equation?

I am not sure why you are looking for an absolutist answer to a complex problem.  What does it matter that the janitor in the game development office and the secretary to the band manager are not artists.  The problem with overwork/crunch time isn't limited to game developers and it isn't caused solely by evil/incompetent corporations.  Some aspects of the problem might be alleviated by, e.g. forcing employers to pay overtime to professional staff when employers force them to work overtime, but the perfectionist problem will remain. 

CD Projekt Red  doesn't do crunch time, according to GF, and yet it's co-CEO claims in the op that work there is "hard-core work. It can destroy your life."  Simple solutions may be attractive, but they don't seem to work in this case.  Drawing black-and-white lines may sound logical to you, but I think that there are grays you are ignoring.

[Oexmelin]

Of course, every one wants nuance and complexity. But I fail to see how insisting that the video game industry tolerates crunch time because it is an artistic pursuit relevant to the issue at hand. We could certainly try to establish parallels - and it is possible - but you seem to want it to be a normative-prescriptive matter: i.e., crunch is just the inevitable byproduct of artistic activity (and thus, presumably, everything is fine?).

The artists I know indeed pour a lot of time in projects, but they are not salaried. They control their time, they decide on their gigs, their crunch times are of their own choosing. They are, at most, 4-5 people in a band, and their decisions are usually decided by consensus. They are not working for wages - which I think is a crucial distinction here.   

People who work in highly structured "cultural industries" like movies and circus, for instance, are either solidly unionized (i.e., IATSE), or under much scrutiny for health and safety-related questions. Directors may indeed be artsy type motivated by "perfectionism", but they belong to an entire industry, where thousands of other people employed, from technicians to set designers, do not share in this ethos - and indeed, should not.

In short, it's not about "evil industry" - it's about "industry". To claim that a multi-billion industry cannot really care for the health of its employees because they are all artists willfully living a bohemian lifestyle which requires crunch seems disingenuous. Not to mention at odds with the actual outlook of many people involved in the creation of, say, a AAA title.

[Valmy]

I don't know man. The way those artists skillfully fit all those loot boxes and micro-transactions and DLC into $60.00 games puts Michelangelo to shame. Middle Earth: Shadow of War is the Sistine Chapel of our age.

[grumbler]

I am the one saying that crunch time and overwork comes from multiple forces, and that a one-size fits-all "save the artist from himself" approach is too simple to solve the problem.

The first step in solving the problem is to recognize that "crunch time" isn't always imposed on an unwilling but helpless employee and that solutions that assume that it is will fail (as, indeed, it seems to have failed for CD Projekt Red, whose co-CEO considers it "a necessary evil" even though his company doesn't use it). 

The idea that the employee is forced to accept work for a company that employs "crunch time" also seems unfounded.  CD Projekt Red, again, doesn't use it, but checking its jobs listing it has about 80 openings listed for a job force of 700.  I'd guess the potential hires have a great deal of leverage there.  Bethesda Game Studios has 18 openings for a staff of 180.  Sounds like the candidate is going to have a lot of leverage there, as well.  Ten percent vacancy rates are high in a professional business.

[11B4V]

What bonuses do these folks get on a successful game?

[Admiral Yi]

Thanks for responding Yakey.  Nothing to say right now but I reserve the right.

[Jacob]

Thanks for responding Yakey.  Nothing to say right now but I reserve the right.

I have more to say on the topic at hand, but ironically - or perhaps aptly - I can't spare the time to read the posts and respond thoroughly right now....

Edit: re: who hold the cards when it comes to OT in the game industry I will say that I have seen it on both side of the issue - working on the floor and being the manager who determines if and how the OT trigger is pulled.

[Eddie Teach]

Bethesda Game Studios has 180 openings for a staff of 180. 

That sounds like "out of business".

[CountDeMoney]

Bethesda Game Studios has 180 openings for a staff of 180. 

That sounds like "out of business".

They deserve everything they get.

[Ed Anger]

Bring back SSI!

[grumbler]

Bethesda Game Studios has 180 openings for a staff of 180. 

That sounds like "out of business".

That first number should be 18.

[Razgovory]

Bethesda Game Studios has 180 openings for a staff of 180. 

That sounds like "out of business".

That first number should be 18.

I really don't think that changing the date of Eddie's post from 27 to 18 will alter the situation.

I for one, would like to hear more about how computer programming is an "art" and thus should not be regulated.

[dps]

I for one, would like to hear more about how computer programming is an "art" and thus should not be regulated.

Just for the record, I didn't make that argument here.  What I said was that I'd guess that people employed in making video games are exempt form having to be paid OT under similar provisions to those exempting actors and the like.

Having said that, though, I'd say that from what (little) I know about programming, there is an art to it, especially if you're working on a game and not writing, say, an automated billing program.

[CountDeMoney]

Having said that, though, I'd say that from what (little) I know about programming, there is an art to it, especially if you're working on a game and not writing, say, an automated billing program.

Michaelangelo used the Unreal engine for the Sistine Chapel.