“Overtime” apologist (because Crunch would sound too negative)

 Promoting Crunch  Comments Off
Jan 142013
 

“Overtime in games.. different viewpoints” (after the title, he never calls it Overtime (because it isn’t: Overtime is generally *paid*, unlike Crunch); that little euphemism sets the scene…)

A great post if nothing else for the handy table listing how much crunch the team and the author did on various games:

1. Perfect Dark Zero. 12 months, 60-100 hours a week..
2. Diddy Kong Racing. 1-2 month. Couple of hours extra a day
3. Don King Presents Prizefighter. 3 months 60-80 hours a week.
4. GTA / Beaterator. R*. 4 months 60 hours a week
5. LittleBigPlanet VITA. 3.5 months. Staff average of about 2-3 hours per day.

These are used as evidence to justify that Crunch is pretty good, really. I’m not sure that makes sense, but have a look for yourself…

Crunch is – apparently – fine and great if you’re the CEO and winning awards. As a CEO, you apparently don’t have much influence over your company nor do you talk to your staff, apparently you can only “hope” that the staff enjoy crunching as much as you do:

“These crunches lasted 2-3 days and happened every 2 months or so. I believe they we’re all worth it and I would hope the staff involved in them would think they were too. Without the exposure they gave us we wouldn’t be sitting on the awards and recognition that we have now, which is especially important…”

(let’s not forget Lindsey Redding’s perspective on the awards and recognition:

“So was it worth it? Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling. No ultimate prize. … Oh yes, and a lot of framed certificates and little gold statuettes.”)

Also, it’s very easy to crunch. So, um, I guess that makes it OK then:

“It is very easy to get into a situation where you find out that an implementation of something is fundamentally flawed in the dying days of a project and have no choice but to re-write the entire thing in a caffeine induced frenzy. I have witnessed this on a number of occasions and it usually rears its head when you get below 200 bugs and are having to start fixing the tricky glitches that you’ve been ignoring as they are so infrequent that they don’t really bother anyone enough to fix them. You then find to your amazement that they cant be fixed and/or patched and you have to start again.”

(In my experience, you always have a choice … although some of the people you work with / for may have a huge vested interest in ensuring you never realise that fact, it doesn’t change it. But as long as you play naive, they can get you to fix their mistakes for them, while they continue to get paid for making them)

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 Posted by at 12:08 pm

Peter Molyneux’s staff work 36 hours non-stop. Idiots.

 Promoting Crunch  Comments Off
Nov 132012
 

It seems that even decades of game development don’t teach the basics of software management. When Peter Molyneux’s team ignored 15 years of free literature on how to run large-scale online projects, and launched a broken, untested, unscalable system, there was an obvious solution at hand:

Yes – 36 hours (allegedly). If we take that at face value, they’re probably breaking the law (they’re UK based, see our previous article decribing the simple UK laws on working time). Damaging other people’s health is an appalling thing to do.

Even if the “36 hours” claim is not quite what it seems (par for the course with Peter’s public statements) … It is deeply irresponsible for someone of Molyneux’s calibre to be broadcasting this as if it’s an acceptable practice. This is not “a backroom developer who doesn’t understand what he’s saying” – this is an accomplished, professional, front-man who’s lead large studios / divisions, with decades experience of having his words broadcast and analysed.

Peter, meet Shovel. Keep diggin’

Peter followed-up with the following tweets:

  1. “I swore we would not have such crushing work ethic, but with live service and 5 coders.Its tough. Now we have to be on call 24h.”
  2. “we have 2 cases of RSI and 4 totally spent server coders. ”
  3. “I tried to force them home but they just had to finish, the cerlibration that there code worked was amazing to see.”

In other words (again, taking him at face value) …

  1. Peter “swore” not to do this, but even with a tiny team of 5 people he is seemingly so incompetent that he cannot manage the most basic elements of directing a project: Planning, and Execution. 30 years of making games … and he still (apparently) doesn’t know the first thing about making software
  2. Not one but two of Peter’s staff have been physically damaged by this. RSI isn’t a minor matter – I have seen friends lose their career due to this, forced to stop working for years at a time
  3. The man who founded, ran, and sold two major game studios, won many awards, and lead Microsoft’s Game Studios … is seemingly incapable of leading his team in basic acts, like staying in or going home

Is it all true? Almost certainly not. But whichever way you look at it, NOT what we want to hear from an industry legend.

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 Posted by at 3:15 pm

Web startups debate crunch; decide it’s a very bad idea

 Commentary, Promoting Crunch  Comments Off
Aug 232011
 

Jason Calacanis, a famous Journalist-turned-Entrepreneur, may be a great networker, but when he came out with top tips for running a startup, it was disturbing to see this buried at the bottom [published 2008]:

“Fire people who are not workaholics…. come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz”

…resulting – the same day – in a strong rebuttal from the creator of Ruby on Rails, and a rich stream of people from across the startup world crying “you’re wrong; this isn’t even GOOD for startups, let alone acceptable”. Did Jason do what the Crunch Apologists do, and dig in his heels?

Um, no. He quickly rehashed that, and changed the meaning substantially, even leaving in the original wording and explicitly crossing it out, to make clear that’s not what he meant:

“Fire people who don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it.”

Rather different, no?

Workaholics; Good for a startup, or bad?

Along the way, the rebuttals were pretty clear: Crunch is bad.

And went further. Even for a selfish manager/investor trying to extract maximum flesh for their money, many seemed to feel: Crunch advocated by a company … is bad *for the company*, let alone for the individuals.

Take Dave’s rebuttal, for instance:

“Fire the people who are workaholics! Here’s five reasons why:

1. Workaholics may well say that they enjoy those 14 hour days week after week, but despite their claims, working like that all month, all the time is not going to be sustainable. When the burnout crash comes, and it will, it’ll hit all the harder and according to Murphy at the least convenient time.
2. People who are workaholics are likely to attempt to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at the problem. If you’re dealing with people working with anything creatively that’s a deadbeat way to get great work done.
3. People who always work late makes the people who don’t feel inadequate for merely working reasonable hours. That’ll lead to guilt, misery, and poor morale. Worse, it’ll lead to ass-in-seat mentality where people will “stay late” out of obligation, but not really be productive.
4. If all you do is work, your value judgements are unlikely to be sound. Making good calls on “is it worth it?” is absolutely critical to great work. Missing out on life in general to put more hours in at the office screams “misguided values”.
5. Working with interesting people is more interesting than just working. If all you got going for your life is work, work, work, the good team-gelling lunches are going to be some pretty boring straight shop talk. Yawn. I’d much rather hear more about your whittling project, your last trek, how your garden is doing, or when you’ll get your flight certificate.”

Closing commentary, from the world of 37 Signals

“If your start-up can only succeed by being a sweatshop, your idea is simply not good enough. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that can be implemented by whole people, not cogs.” – Dave Heinemeier Hanson

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 Posted by at 8:56 pm

Michael Pachter: “[if you don't like working for no pay] find another profession”

 Opinion, Promoting Crunch  9 Responses »
Jul 252011
 

Let me say this up front:

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter apparently knows very little about game development. Do not believe a single word of his claims; I would argue most are false, based on my own *first-hand* experience of game development.

However, it’s an interesting video (for some transcripted highlights, see: http://www.develop-online.net/news/38317/Unpaid-crunch-deserves-no-sympathy-Pachter)

Commentary

Some choice quotes:

“If your complaint is you worked overtime and didn’t get paid for it, find another profession,”

“[But] if you are a salaried employee – if you’re not told what to do – then you are master of your own domain and you don’t get overtime.”

…this will have 99% of game developers laughing until they cry.

The words “master of your own domain” are generally never seen in the same room as “salaried employee [in the games industry]“, let alone the same sentence.

“I think [the point] that everyone is missing is that, if a game is good – and LA Noire was good – there will be a profit pool, and there will be bonuses,”

…generally speaking, no-one in this industry EVER gets bonuses, unless they’re senior management – the very people who are enforcing the crunch on everyone else.

A large number of studios used to “pretend” to give bonuses. A very small number of studios actually did (the rest found accounting tricks to get rid of the royalties, the bonuses, everything). In fact, these days, many studios have stopped even mentioning “bonuses” because no-one believes them anyway.

“Sweatshops should have unions but games studios, which tend to pay people a lot of money, shouldn’t,”

…Really, Michael? Do you actually KNOW how much the staff at Team Bondi were individually paid?

I think you’re guessing. And so am I (although I’ve heard unsubstantiated off-the-record numbers). And my impression is that your guess is way off…

And yet …

And yet. Even this Crunch Apologist has a limit:

“I do get that it is a bad and unfair business practice to work 18 months non-stop overtime, I don’t think anybody was entitled to overtime pay.”

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 Posted by at 4:23 pm