Crunch Tactics a Symptom of a Larger Problem?

An anonymous reader writes "One of the brave few: hot on the heels of the recent lawsuit filed against Vivendi Universal for back wages due to a developer who was allegedly asked to alter his timecard, Rob Fahey of gamesindustry.biz has taken the bold step of taking the position that the insane hours game developers are routinely asked to work are might not be in the industry's best interest, and in fact might be less profitable than planning projects well."

It's like this for any programming project.

[JavaLord]

Anyone who has ever worked as a programmer can tell you that as a deadline creeps up they usually end up working more hours. Spec's change, deadlines get moved up and back, other developers quit, etc. In the video game market, where you MUST hit certain deadlines such as christmas, or before a certain quater to make your company look good for stockholders this is always going to exist. Unless you give yourself an extra 6 months to a year of slack time, you are always going to have suicide hours near deadlines because shit always happens.

Already addressed; Solution proposed

[Torgo's Pizza]

I thought this was addressed in the Quality of Life white paper?

Anyway, this was brought up at the June Dallas IGDA meeting. Several producers discussed ways that they avoid crunch time. Tom Mustaine, a friend of mine, told about how he schedules three-day workweeks (!). While sounding totally insane, when crunch time rolls around, they just go to a normal five-day work week and finish what they need without killing themselves.

There's also much to be said for the effect on quality when quantity of hours are worked. In short, the longer you continually work, the more mistakes are made. What happens is that sometimes you lose more time fixing those mistakes than instead just going home and getting enough rest.

The game industry is finally coming to terms that the long work hours caused by inadequate planning and management is driving away many talented workers and programmers.

Wrong

[blunte]

Software company failures are not typically due to the frequency of release of games.

The first and foremost reason a game company fails is that it failed to release its first game. This is often due to poor planning (business, game design, project management), and secondly to lack of resources/talent.

The second reason a game company fails is because it releases a bad product. This can be a product that's very unfinished (rushed out), very bug ridden, or just not what game players want.

Crunches usually happen because of external influences - trying to meet Christmas retail season, trying to get a playable demo ready for E3, or trying to meet a publisher deadline for a milestone.

Anyway, game developers I've worked with were usually as committed to their game development as they were to their spouses (those who were married), or sometimes more. They _want_ to get it done. It's not simply a boss behind them cracking a whip.

Yes about time

[BlightThePower]

I notice already a few comments along the lines of "thats just how software development is; specs change, shit happens". But this is true of any venture in engineering, even the arts. Its about time more emphasis was placed on trying to change things for the better. The software industries need for change is great; 80% of software is either late or fails to meet the initial specification. Its clearly unacceptable, as are the crazy hours demanded. Hopefully as we in the 2nd wave (really) of software development get a bit older it will be increasingly less than acceptable for team leaders to tell us we are 'flying to Australia' (presumably Aussie coders fly to Europe or else have a relatively cushy time!). What has to be lost is the frankly self-defeating and immature hostility towards management. Sure, bad 'PHB' management is the pits. But as anyone who has worked on a project overseen by a skilled leader will know, good management makes things an awful lot better than would otherwise be the case. A bad manager makes you work, a good manager works for you. Sounds trite, but I really do believe that.

Don't mistake this for crunch-time

[quantax]

The author's point is not that the games industry needs to eliminate crunchtime; crunchtime exists in almost any product-based situation, especially when it comes to computer products. Software development, games, and 3D animation are three that come to mind in that catagory and all of these require crunchtime when the deadline looms near. The issue here is mis-management from the start to finish, in which the project manager actually plans 12 hour shifts for everyone which naturally spills over sometimes to 14 - 16 hour shifts, that extra 2 - 4 hours going unpaid. We've all played video games and I think we can all tell when a video game was rushed to completion, Driv3r being a newer example; rushed games are obvious and the resulting morale drop from not only having busted your ass for the last 3 - 6 months on a game, only to be pressured by the publisher into a release date, then releasing an incomplete game which proceeds to bomb with reviewers as well as in sales. Whats the drive to really make an innovative game next time, knowing your publisher is going to knuckle you into the same situation again and again?

The big game publishers are reaching the point big music publishers reached about a decade or so back with music: their very presence hurts the overall industry due to their pump-em-out-n-release-an-expansion attitude, EA especially. Perhaps it is nearing a time where like-minded people need to stop buying games and their expansion packs from companies such as EA, Vivendi, etc. Now that it has become as popular as its music & movie siblings, we can expect more and more re-releases of games redone for new engines & systems, more (potentially crappy) sequels, and more branding (street fighter, resident evil, etc).

Game industry is the new record industry

[CarrionBird]

All the players being bought up by big labels. Dubious quality, workers and artists getting the shaft as a rule. Competition with the big boys near impossible.

Could apply to the music business or the game business. It's the conglomerates(sp?) utopia.

Re:It's like this for any programming project.

[Ex Machina]

Ever hear of Parkinson's Law?

-- Formula invented by the English political analyst Cyril Northcote Parkinson, which states that 'work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion'.

I hate the games:movies analogy, but

[Colazar]

this is one of the areas where it makes sense. Both indutries are intensely project oriented, and both are "cool" and "fun" , so workers are willing to work for peanuts to get into it.

What's interesting is that the movie biz is heavily unionized, so the movie studios can't really take advantage of the impulse to hire cheap labor and work them to death.

In response to that, the movie studios have had to develop project management down to a fine art, because that's the only way they had to cut labor costs. It has the pleasant side-effect of making it more cost-effective to hire talented workers and treat them well.

Things will only get better for game programmers when the gaming companies can organize their projects as well as the studios do. What will be interesting to see is what it takes to make that happen. Inefficient companies going out of business, and successful ones leading by example? Or external pressures from workers suing or organizing themselves? I'd believe either.