Work hours in general CS and the games industry

[Jonathan Birch]

So, this topic seems to be something of a perennial issue for discussion among CS professionals, but its recently become particularly relevant for me, and I thought I'd float it here to see what everyone thinks.

In recent years there have been several news stories regarding ridiculous work expectations put upon CS professionals in certain industries, with game development set apart as being particularly bad. Many of you have probably heard about the fifteen million dollar class action lawsuit filed by various employess of EA games, and there have been other complaints that generated less of a media buzz.

It's said that many companies in the games industry take advantage of their employees by expecting them to work 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week. Generally, this is done while paying salary that would be standard for someone only working a standard 40 hours work week. The idea is that so many people want to work with games, such companies are in a buyers' market where new hires are concerned. Burnt-out and fed-up employees can be replaced with little difficulty.

And the practice is said to be perpetuated in a kind of vicious cycle. Game company executives believe that reducing the demands on their employees would prevent them from competing with other companies that still exploit their workers.

I've heard this justified before in terms of "crunches", periods of intense work used to catch a product up to its schedule. I've been told these are relatively common in industry, and I've experience them myself.

I actually had an opportunity to speak with some employees of EA a few weeks ago. I brought up this issue with them, and they defended thei organization rather fiercely. Particularly, one of the guys I was speaking with said something along the lines of "You have to expect to make sacrifices if you're going to make games. I mean, working in this industry I know that I'm sometimes going to have to work 7 days a week for a few months at a time." I had trouble sympathizing with this view though. It seems to me that a person can't live anything approaching a reasonable, fulfilling life if they spend that much of their time at work.

That is just my impression of things though, and my opinion. I'm interested in the thoughts and experiences that the rest of you can share. Have any CAOS alumni dealt with the issue of expected overtime or "crunches"? Do any of you feel like these sorts of work expectations are reasonable? Or do you think that the problem might be exaggerated?

An article on the subject - yes, it's a college newspaper

Or, a more humorous take on the issue

[Devon Berry]

That's terrible. The gaming industry sickens me these days. They run workers ragged to produce games which are look great until you get them and you find out that they put everything into the graphics and almost nothing into the gameplay.

I have a feeling this all stems from the Hollywood influence on the gaming industry. They have been pushing for better and better graphics so they can get high first week sales. The sad thing is, this is making everyone suffer, except them of course.

All programmers and gamers must unite to take a stand against this monster. Programmers should band together and create their own games to be distributed on the internet. The must focus on gameplay rather than shiny expensive graphics. Gamers must buy these games and shun any gigantic corporate games.

Here is a link to the Scratchware Manifesto, courtesy of Home of the Underdogs:
http://www.the-underdogs.org/scratch.php

[Jonathan Birch]

Not to distract from the main topic, but that article you linked to strikes me as being more than a little ridiculous.

I worked in independent games for about 5 years, and a number of the points they make are completely false.

There are alternate retail dsitribution channels for games, but brick and mortar is still the way to go. We only made about $0.25 per copy sold in stores, versus $5-$10 for online sales, and our revenues from store sales still outmatched online sales by something like a 100 to 1 ratio. Also, we were nobody, and we were selling games in Walmart.

You can make a game with a small team, but you really need at least 4-5 people, you can't do it with 2 or 3, unless you want to make a text adventure. Graphics should be done by artists, music by musicians, and programming by programmers; people who excel at all three of those are pretty rare.

And really, that thing reads like some sort of Marxist tract from the 50's. I really don't think the problems with the industry arise from some sort of weird plot of the bourgeoisie to keep the proletariat in check with evil game making practices.

[Devon Berry]

That's crazy, you were making 20 to 40 times the profit per copy sold online and the store sales still made more?!

I suppose that is why large publishing companies exist to distribute games for game making companies. It is too bad though, I wish more games were distributed online instead of in stores, even if it is not as profitable.

I wonder if the problem lies in getting people to visit the site or getting people to order it from the site. In other words, do less people see it online or do less people buy things they see online? I definately expect there to be less "impulse buy" sales online, but are those the majority of sales in stores?

As far as the plot is concerned... you never know... :lol:

By the way, it certainly is a strange coincidence that you asked me how to spell a word you were using to reply to my post without even knowing it.