P6: And is the development team required to put in crunch hours?
AK: To some degree, yes – to be honest. We try to limit crunch as much as possible, but it is the final stage. We try to be reasonable in this regard, but yes. Unfortunately.
jdreyer wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 21:53:Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 21:23:As long as you keep working 70 hours a week, why would they?The Magician wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 19:47:Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 18:41:
Everyone take a shot every time you see the F-word.
Sorry, I'm pretty passionate about devs not being treated like slaves, 40-50 hours a week like everyone else does should be perfectly doable.
I can agree with that. I put in 50-70 hour weeks as one of only two programmers on a large eCommerce platform. It's too much work and we're spread out too thin trying to keep up. There's no sense that they'll bring on another resource to assist.
Cutter wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 23:55:
It's completely unnecessary and shows bad management. Not to mention it's wholly inefficient. After 10 hours at most you're mentally checked out so you're just wasting time and money at that point.
Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 21:23:As long as you keep working 70 hours a week, why would they?The Magician wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 19:47:Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 18:41:
Everyone take a shot every time you see the F-word.
Sorry, I'm pretty passionate about devs not being treated like slaves, 40-50 hours a week like everyone else does should be perfectly doable.
I can agree with that. I put in 50-70 hour weeks as one of only two programmers on a large eCommerce platform. It's too much work and we're spread out too thin trying to keep up. There's no sense that they'll bring on another resource to assist.
The Magician wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 17:42:What's your thoughts on unionization?saluk wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 17:38:
HAHAHA
We don't have enough time to finish the game. We have about 10 months of work left. So let's just delay 5 months, burn out our developers, and still end up releasing the game too early.
Exactly what I was trying to say, but I said with a lot more foul language, because I've been a gamedev. I might have to return to it, too, now that I'm unemployed. ugh.
Prez wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 15:31:The difference is that you get paid for your crunch, they don't. Unions could help mitigate/prevent that.
Mandatory overtime is just a fact of life in a large percentage of blue collar jobs. I work on an airport for a major shipping carrier and they can and will mandatory you for dozens of hours of overtime a week if necessary. A snowstorm or ice storm for example means you get an extra 12 hour shift added to your work week at a minimum. You can easily work up to 17 hours a day for 7 days. It sucks but it just comes with the job. It's brutal and frankly dehumanizing but it pays well and thankfully workweeks that brutal are pretty rare. It has been worse at other jobs, but thankfully techs in my field are highly sought after so changing jobs, as much of a pain in the ass as that can be, is always an option. "Crunch" is a thing in more places than just in games development, but what makes it unique in the gaming industry is that, according to reports on Bioware and Epic, it is constant. It can go on months or even years at a time. The psychological toll this takes on a person cannot be overstated. I get that there will be periods of time where it is simply unavoidable, but to operate like that continuously is fucking criminal. If CD Projekt Red is putting their people in crunch mode from now until September that is just fucked up beyond description. No game, no matter how great, is worth the toll something like that will take on the people who have to suffer through it.
Burrito of Peace wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 14:03:Large scale software projects are notoriously hard to forecast. That's why Agile was invented.
With rare exception, crunch is a sign of bad management. It shows a failure to properly forecast man hours.
The Magician wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 19:47:Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 18:41:
Everyone take a shot every time you see the F-word.
Sorry, I'm pretty passionate about devs not being treated like slaves, 40-50 hours a week like everyone else does should be perfectly doable.
The Magician wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 19:47:Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 18:41:
Everyone take a shot every time you see the F-word.
Sorry, I'm pretty passionate about devs not being treated like slaves, 40-50 hours a week like everyone else does should be perfectly doable.
Kxmode wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 18:41:
Everyone take a shot every time you see the F-word.
The Magician wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 17:03:Sepharo wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 14:58:
While nobody wants to crunch.... and crunch shouldn't be planned.... and it does show bad planning....
There's a difference between constant crunch and wrap-up crunch.
.... 5 months of crunch time, most likely. This means they fucked up, and fucked up big, and are going to continue fucking up for that 5 months, because if you have to do that, you're fucking up.
With the absolute garbage quality of most software that is turning out these days, this bullshit is inexcusable.
Developers are not an infinite resource, and they are *HUMAN*. You can't treat them like this.
Well, you can, but the results are .. well, we see the results in all the shit software we use, and the number of game devs that burn out of the industry completely.
saluk wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 17:38:
HAHAHA
We don't have enough time to finish the game. We have about 10 months of work left. So let's just delay 5 months, burn out our developers, and still end up releasing the game too early.
Sepharo wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 14:58:
While nobody wants to crunch.... and crunch shouldn't be planned.... and it does show bad planning....
There's a difference between constant crunch and wrap-up crunch.
Burrito of Peace wrote on Jan 17, 2020, 14:03:As would the missed deadline.
With rare exception, crunch is a sign of bad management. It shows a failure to properly forecast man hours.