Is The Game Industry Burning Out Talent? |
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Is the game industry burning out talent? UK union Bectu says that it is. Bectu points to the industry's culture of long hours as the primary culprit. The game industry generally pays pretty good, but most of the complaints that are coming out are about the long working hours. When a game is in development, it's not unusual for those involved to be asked to work overtime. Even more so for games that are nearing the deadline. As Gerry Morrissey of Bectu said, "It's not unusual... to do 12 to 16 hours a day for three to four months at a time." Now this might not sound too bad, but what if you're not even being paid for all of these overtime hours?
Most people in the industry kept their mouths shut about this in the past -- mostly in fear of being replaced by younger guys who are willing to do the hours - but with the recently-settled lawsuit against EA Games, people have become more vocal. One good thing that came out of the whole incident was that improvements have been made at EA. Erin Hoffman, who wrote the blog that prompted the lawsuit, said that EA in Los Angeles has "completely turned around its work practices." She also mentioned that with an agreement to never work on Sundays, "the people there are very happy now. They are still producing games on time and getting good reviews."
While this incident did turn out to have some good repercussions on the gaming industry, it is rather sad that it still took a lawsuit to turn things around. Without a doubt, there are still a few unscrupulous companies out there still cracking whips over their overworked staff, but there's always hope that things will change for the better. Happy developers churn out better games, and better games result in happy gamers.
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Comments [refresh]
this reminded me of the Immigration problem over in the states...lol
i wonder how insomniac games is? i think they won some award for being the 4 or 6th best working enviorment
I don't agree with them not being paid for their overtime but hell they sit infront on computers and in meetings and whatnot, the Keyword is "sit". Perhaps they should go out and do some physical labour for 12-16 hours and then they might realise how easy they've got it.
Have you sat in front of a computer for 16 hours a day, actually working. I will say that working in a warehouse is harder, but when you're not playing games or chatting online.. Working at a computer can be like reading a boring book, only for 8 hours at a time. Not fun at all. I'd rather my game developers be happy and make good games than be annoyed a frustrated and make good games..
in the long run, physical labour has nothing on mental labour, sitting in front of a pc for hours working, will burn you out so fast.
It doesn't matter whether you're doing mental labor or physical labor 12-16 hours straight, fact of the matter is that you're gonna get tired at the end of the day. Work is work. Anyways, I'm glad at least one company changed their working environment.
I the thrust of the story is that people we not being compensated of overtime. That is what the suit was for. We don't mind working the hours, just pay us please!
Passing a university test...
Everyday...
That what it is about when you are fully concentrated 10 straight hours for coding complex programs.
It does not happen all the time.
But... it is quite stressfull, sleeping at night can be a problem because you dont do enough physical exercise and your brain is tired but overexcited because of logical problems to solve...
Whatever job you do, if you do it well (=huge physical or intellectual activity),
more than 10 straight hours for months is very hard.
I've done heavly fisical labor before. Hell I use to bundle sunday news papers when I was in high school. When you have to go though 400-500 papers a table for a measly $10 per table and complete about 4-5 tables a night was no pitnick.
Yet now as a 4 year vet programmer in the video game industry, I think being stuck to sit infront of a computer for so many hours and to mentaly work you brain like crazy is much harder. Sure easy going days when you get some gamming in at lunch and seach the web some since there is little work is nice. Yet when you seriously have to crunch its just very difficult. By the end of the day your body is frustrated it has not been moving much and your mind is just killing you from thinking too much.
Worse i've done to date was when i first got into the industry and was willing to prove my self. So I would spend late hours all week till about 8pm, work saturday then come in on sunday around noon and leave work at 6pm on monday. Then repeat every week for 2-3 months till my project was done.
Second worse is when I was lead of a project and had the producer call me up on my cell at 10pm at night to come back in to fix a bug (that was another coders fault). So after already being home from a full days work I would have to go back in for another 3-4 hours just to fix a 5 min bug that they could not wait till the next day for. (it turns into 3-4 hours because of the constant burning to test and verify the bug and then also they would want you to fix a few others and etc.).