Video Games Are Destroying the People Who Make Them

[Admiral Yi]

You said no, then agreed with him.

[CountDeMoney]

You said no, then agreed with him.

Even your pedantic ass knows the difference between laws that govern employers versus actions of employees that voluntarily engage in unhealthy behavior. 

[Jacob]

There's a bit of a power imbalance between the company and the workers.

This adage always pops up when we're discussing labor market issues.  My previous attempts to elicit elaboration have not been very successful.

Though you and I have a record of mutual unintelligibility on these kinds of issues, I'll give it one more go:

1) There are usually more potential candidates available should an employee leave than there are potential positions available should an employee want a different job.

2) The consequences for failing to secure a similar situation when an employee-employer relationship ends is usually much higher for an employee than an employee. Companies can typically afford to wait for the right candidate much more than workers can afford to weight for the right job.

3) Companies are much more able to shape employees into the workers they need than individual employees are able to shape the particulars of a job or a company to suit them.

4) Companies generally have a much greater level of accumulated experience in managing employee-employer relationships than any given worker does.

5) Companies - at least past a certain minimum size - have dedicated resources for managing relationships with employees, hiring staff for missing functions etc. That means dealing with staffing issues do not detract from regular company functions, while for workers dealing with issues - and finding new work - comes out of their individual limited time and mental energy. Similarly, company staff dealing with such things are usually trained for and are suited for such activities - that is not necessarily true for workers.

Thus in aggregate the company has an advantage in power since they can engage in any given situation with more energy and confidence in their methods, while the consequences they suffer for things not working out are much less than those suffered by individuals.

[grumbler]

There's a bit of a power imbalance between the company and the workers.

This adage always pops up when we're discussing labor market issues.  My previous attempts to elicit elaboration have not been very successful.

Though you and I have a record of mutual unintelligibility on these kinds of issues, I'll give it one more go:

1) There are usually more potential candidates available should an employee leave than there are potential positions available should an employee want a different job.

2) The consequences for failing to secure a similar situation when an employee-employer relationship ends is usually much higher for an employee than an employee. Companies can typically afford to wait for the right candidate much more than workers can afford to weight for the right job.

3) Companies are much more able to shape employees into the workers they need than individual employees are able to shape the particulars of a job or a company to suit them.

4) Companies generally have a much greater level of accumulated experience in managing employee-employer relationships than any given worker does.

5) Companies - at least past a certain minimum size - have dedicated resources for managing relationships with employees, hiring staff for missing functions etc. That means dealing with staffing issues do not detract from regular company functions, while for workers dealing with issues - and finding new work - comes out of their individual limited time and mental energy. Similarly, company staff dealing with such things are usually trained for and are suited for such activities - that is not necessarily true for workers.

Thus in aggregate the company has an advantage in power since they can engage in any given situation with more energy and confidence in their methods, while the consequences they suffer for things not working out are much less than those suffered by individuals.

The problem lies with the assumption that this generic case applies to all employer-employee situations.  I can assure you that it does not.  So, for you to play the "power imbalance card," you need to show that it applies.  Now, for the bog-standard employer-employee relationship, it shouldn't be too hard for you to meet that standard.  In the case of video game designers, though, I am not at all sure that it does.  Video game companies are pretty ephemeral and a name designer wants his own team.   You work in the business, though, so you'd know better than me:  other than the low-level guys, does the designer want the studio more than the studio wants the designer?  I'm always hearing the studios bemoan the lack of developers.

[dps]

Is it really try that in the US only employees who pose a risk to others are protected by maximum hour regulations?   

Well, yes and no, depending on what you mean by maximum hour regulations.

First, there are some jobs, such as the over-the-road truckers and airline pilots mentioned above, that have strict regulations about how many hours you can work.  The over-the-road truckers, for example, are only allowed to work an 8 hour shift, and then can't drive again for 12(?) hours (not sure exactly about the length of the time required between driving shifts;  I've never worked as a trucker or supervised them, so I don't have detailed knowledge of the exact rules for them).  Strictly speaking, though, laws like this aren't technically an issue of protection for workers from their employers--the 8 hour limit for truckers applies even to a driver who is self-employed, for example.

For most hourly wage earners, there are restrictions on how long you can work without a break, but generally there's no direct restriction on how many total hours you can work a week, just when during a work shift you have to be given a break.  In many (most?) states, an hourly worker has to be given a break after 6 hours, but that doesn't mean that you're only going to be scheduled to work a 6 hour shift on a given day.  I'm usually scheduled to work an 8 hour shift from 8 AM to 5 PM with an hour lunch.  So I work until noon or so, take my lunch, and then work another 4 hours or so before I go home.  Legally, they only have to give me a half hour lunch after 6 hours worked, but company policy says that I am allowed to take an hour.  In practice, my supervisors usually don't care exactly when I take my lunch, as long as I neither work more than 6 hours before clocking out for lunch, nor go to lunch so early that my shift has more than 6 hours left once I finish lunch.  And there's nothing that legally prevents them from scheduling me an 18-hour shift, as long as I take a half-hour break every 6 hours.  Heck, AFAIK, there's no law in this state that keeps them form scheduling me to work a 48-hour shift, as long as they give me that half-hour break every 6 hours, and pay me overtime for any hours over 40 in a given week.  There probably are laws in some states that don't let an employer keep an hourly worker on the job for that long at a time, and even in states with no general prohibition against it there may be special restrictions in certain industries.

And note that the restrictions I mentioned in the previous paragraph apply to hourly wage earners.  There is much, much less protection for people who are salaried.  An employer could, generally, legally keep a salaried employee working 24 hours straight or more   with no breaks.  And you don't have to pay salaried employees overtime, or technically even keep records of how many hours they work.

The rules on overtime and who can be salaried are a matter of federal law, but most other aspects of labor law are governed at the state level.  It would appear that the designers and developers who work very long hours during "crunch time" are salaried, because otherwise they'd have to be paid overtime.  If they weren't salaried, they could still have to work those long hours, but they'd get time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours in a week.  I'm not sure exactly what detail in Federal law allows them to be exempt from overtime regulations;  generally people have to be employed in management-type positions to be salaried and thus exempt, but I would guess that it's something similar to the provisions that exempt actors and the like.

If you did want to legally intervene to limit the long hours of "crunch time", all you'd really need to do would be change the regulations so that the designers and developers are no longer salaried.  Then they'd have to be paid overtime, and as someone mentioned earlier, having to pay you time-and-a-half for any hours worked over 40 in a week goes a very long way towards convincing an employer that they don't really need to have you work more than 40 hours in a week.

[Berkut]

I would actually support some kind of broad based rules that would greatly restrict the ability of companies to exempt most salaried workers, and force them to pay overtime or comp time of equal or greater value for hours over 40.

Not because I think salaried workers need the protection, but because I think it would be good for the economy in general to pay 4 people at 40 hours a week then 3 people at 50 hours a week. I do think the salaried 40 hour work week exemption has become de facto abused by companies overall.

But that has nothing to do with the OP.

[Josquius]

It's not necessarily a case of having to change people from salaried to hourly.
It could also be a case of mandating hour tracking and putting a reasonable limit on hours in a given week.
I. E. Doing a 50 hour week is fine. Though that 10 hours of overtime is yours. Either you take the 10 hours to go and do your own thing or at the end of the year the employer has to pay you it, calculated from monthly salary divided by number of hours. Plus a premium.

[Grey Fox]

..that is what Berk said.

[crazy canuck]

Is it really true that in the US only employees who pose a risk to others are protected by maximum hour regulations?   

Well, yes and no, depending on what you mean by maximum hour regulations.

First, there are some jobs, such as the over-the-road truckers and airline pilots mentioned above, that have strict regulations about how many hours you can work.  The over-the-road truckers, for example, are only allowed to work an 8 hour shift, and then can't drive again for 12(?) hours (not sure exactly about the length of the time required between driving shifts;  I've never worked as a trucker or supervised them, so I don't have detailed knowledge of the exact rules for them).  Strictly speaking, though, laws like this aren't technically an issue of protection for workers from their employers--the 8 hour limit for truckers applies even to a driver who is self-employed, for example.

For most hourly wage earners, there are restrictions on how long you can work without a break, but generally there's no direct restriction on how many total hours you can work a week, just when during a work shift you have to be given a break.  In many (most?) states, an hourly worker has to be given a break after 6 hours, but that doesn't mean that you're only going to be scheduled to work a 6 hour shift on a given day.  I'm usually scheduled to work an 8 hour shift from 8 AM to 5 PM with an hour lunch.  So I work until noon or so, take my lunch, and then work another 4 hours or so before I go home.  Legally, they only have to give me a half hour lunch after 6 hours worked, but company policy says that I am allowed to take an hour.  In practice, my supervisors usually don't care exactly when I take my lunch, as long as I neither work more than 6 hours before clocking out for lunch, nor go to lunch so early that my shift has more than 6 hours left once I finish lunch.  And there's nothing that legally prevents them from scheduling me an 18-hour shift, as long as I take a half-hour break every 6 hours.  Heck, AFAIK, there's no law in this state that keeps them form scheduling me to work a 48-hour shift, as long as they give me that half-hour break every 6 hours, and pay me overtime for any hours over 40 in a given week.  There probably are laws in some states that don't let an employer keep an hourly worker on the job for that long at a time, and even in states with no general prohibition against it there may be special restrictions in certain industries.

And note that the restrictions I mentioned in the previous paragraph apply to hourly wage earners.  There is much, much less protection for people who are salaried.  An employer could, generally, legally keep a salaried employee working 24 hours straight or more   with no breaks.  And you don't have to pay salaried employees overtime, or technically even keep records of how many hours they work.

The rules on overtime and who can be salaried are a matter of federal law, but most other aspects of labor law are governed at the state level.  It would appear that the designers and developers who work very long hours during "crunch time" are salaried, because otherwise they'd have to be paid overtime.  If they weren't salaried, they could still have to work those long hours, but they'd get time-and-a-half for anything over 40 hours in a week.  I'm not sure exactly what detail in Federal law allows them to be exempt from overtime regulations;  generally people have to be employed in management-type positions to be salaried and thus exempt, but I would guess that it's something similar to the provisions that exempt actors and the like.

If you did want to legally intervene to limit the long hours of "crunch time", all you'd really need to do would be change the regulations so that the designers and developers are no longer salaried.  Then they'd have to be paid overtime, and as someone mentioned earlier, having to pay you time-and-a-half for any hours worked over 40 in a week goes a very long way towards convincing an employer that they don't really need to have you work more than 40 hours in a week.

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.

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.

[merithyn]

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.

[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.

[Grey Fox]

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.

[grumbler]

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.

They are saying the same thing, but it isn't about the culture of the industry, it is about the nature of the people who gravitate towards that industry.  Should musical groups, for instance, be forbidden to voluntarily work 24 hours or more consecutively to get that song down perfectly, in order to protect them from their own artistic vision?  Should stage actors be forbidden from engaging in "hell week" (which virtually every play suffers from) in order to protect them from their own desire to perfect their roles?  Shall we forbid the scientist on the verge of that big breakthrough from working through the night, to save her from herself?

Some people have that drive for perfection that makes them over-work themselves voluntarily to see their vision realized.  Even of they are working completely independently, they still do it.  Your nanny state shouldn't stop them.

[grumbler]

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?  If programmers see CD Projekt Red succeeding without crunching, why don't they follow suit? Unless, of course, crunch time doesn't really bother the vast majority of programmers.  As far as the youth of the game programmers, I think that's probably unavoidable.  Only a few of the grunts will get promoted to leadership positions within the industry, and those who don't won't want to work for beginner's wages when they are experienced.  Game development really isn't all that lucrative for the game development companies, and they can't pay what more mainstream companies can pay for experienced programmers and artists.

[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.

They are saying the same thing, but it isn't about the culture of the industry, it is about the nature of the people who gravitate towards that industry.  Should musical groups, for instance, be forbidden to voluntarily work 24 hours or more consecutively to get that song down perfectly, in order to protect them from their own artistic vision?  Should stage actors be forbidden from engaging in "hell week" (which virtually every play suffers from) in order to protect them from their own desire to perfect their roles?  Shall we forbid the scientist on the verge of that big breakthrough from working through the night, to save her from herself?

Some people have that drive for perfection that makes them over-work themselves voluntarily to see their vision realized.  Even of they are working completely independently, they still do it.  Your nanny state shouldn't stop them.

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.