How hard have you pushed yourself because of your work?

mmm, that doesn't sound too good Mino, you really should pay a visit to a doctor.

Personally, i can't complain about the place I work at, we have flexible hours, and we can take breaks whether or not we want, when we want, we game artists are not assets-makers machines, and I'm glad my boss understand that, coz he's an 3d artist as well.

Although, I do spend around 12 hours per day in front of the PC, (around 7 hours here at work, and the rest of the time at my place, gaming or working on my map), I can't complaint of any physical damage, although I did paid a visit to a ophthalmologist last month, and he told me my eyes are very tired, and I must wear eye protective glasses always I'm in front of a PC or TV from now on.

Well, I work at home but I did had first stadium of RSI due to overworking, I had to slow down for few weeks. Now I'm ok but I feel like I will have to check my eyes as well. My vision is sharp as hell but i do feel I'm still overworking it due to exposure to the display.

My ears got a bit damaged when i was in the army because it was so fucking loud in the tanks even with ear protection. I don't hear as good on my left ear since then and sometimes have a pressure on it.

Working at my company is pretty relaxed most of the time. I have a normal 8 hours work day. Didn't had to work a single crunch time yet (mostly because im still rather new in the company and not so deep involved in the projects as some others. But the other level designers don't have to do too many over hours either as far as i can tell). We can take creative breaks whenever we need, even have a room for relaxation with a massage chair. I don't feel any pressure to work like a machine. Also the company pays some extra money for gym or massages. And we get free fresh fruits for our vitamine needs. After all the horror storys that i read about work conditions in the video game industry i'm happy to work at a company that treats its employees well.

Personaly i wouldn't sacrifice my health for a job anymore. I have a friend who always worked too hard and too long. Had his second burnout-syndrome already not long ago and is pretty fucked up now physically and mentaly. He is in my age.

i dont want to talk of my current employer, but i will talk of my old one:

so there was no health care. even worse: you had to do what you are supposed to do. no matter what. i remember a co-worker staying in office an entire week. 6 hours sleep. rest of the time was for working. this couldnt have been healthy. so did the doctor say! he was put on a diet and a sports training program.

the tables and stuff: well they were new, but i always prefer my chair at home. i can fall in there or lean forward. its just as i want. at work there was only a chair with a low back, so your head always dongled around.

to talk of physical damage:

i think i kind of have a small epileptic malfunction. from time to time my eyes start to flicker around. so do the fingers. its not that bad that i couldnt work or read, but it is annoying.

as a positive remark: my new employer is 10km away from my home. so i ride my bike to work as often as possible. and as a result i lost around 2kg weight. that means i am under 80kg now and i hope to reach the 70 one day again

Not game industry related but I pushed myself at work so hard one week I physically couldnt walk and move for the next 4 days afterwards.

I'm a landscape gardener over the holidays, basically a garden maintenance and builder job. We had a job for some extremely rich people to do a "patio" area. This patio turned out to be well over 100 square meters of slabs, at the bottom of his garden next to his triple garage containing two SLK's and a 911 Turbo. He also wanted it in a weird shape and out of extortionatly expensive slabs (ones we normally use are 60p-£1 each, standard moulded slabs. His ones were £7 each). It took three of us 5 days of 7am-8pm to do it. I ended up pretty much making concrete by hand (couldnt get lorry down there so cement mixer and shovel at top of garden and wheelbarrow it down) and god knows how much I made. Usually I can do about 4 tonnes of it by hand a day but I mustve been pushing 6 those three days along with another guy part time doing the same.

Long story short, he got his patio, we all couldnt do work the next week and enjoyed the nearly 6 figure sum to do it.

Quote from hessi

as a positive remark: my new employer is 10km away from my home. so i ride my bike to work as often as possible. and as a result i lost around 2kg weight. that means i am under 80kg now and i hope to reach the 70 one day again

I started riding a bike to raven since my apartment is right up the street. Only do it when its nice outside tho and I don't think I've lost any weight from it.

Quote from ginger_lord

Not game industry related but I pushed myself at work so hard one week I physically couldnt walk and move for the next 4 days afterwards.I'm a landscape gardener over the holidays, basically a garden maintenance and builder job. We had a job for some extremely rich people to do a "patio" area. This patio turned out to be well over 100 square meters of slabs, at the bottom of his garden next to his triple garage containing two SLK's and a 911 Turbo. He also wanted it in a weird shape and out of extortionatly expensive slabs (ones we normally use are 60p-£1 each, standard moulded slabs. His ones were £7 each). It took three of us 5 days of 7am-8pm to do it. I ended up pretty much making concrete by hand (couldnt get lorry down there so cement mixer and shovel at top of garden and wheelbarrow it down) and god knows how much I made. Usually I can do about 4 tonnes of it by hand a day but I mustve been pushing 6 those three days along with another guy part time doing the same.

Long story short, he got his patio, we all couldnt do work the next week and enjoyed the nearly 6 figure sum to do it.

Hard labor is most satisfying at times!

The pay is certainly the best part, when I started I was 16 and got £4.50 an hour Must be close to £10 an hour when I go back this summer.

Quote from ginger_lord

The pay is certainly the best part, when I started I was 16 and got £4.50 an hour Must be close to £10 an hour when I go back this summer.

are you kidding me? people over here get £10 for working at a gas station..

unless you *cough* dont pay income tax *cough*

Where is here?

Presuming Denmark, find it hard to believe people pay 95 Kroner an hour for petrol station employees. Here its minimum wage (£5 something)

Oh and theres some law for manual labour so we pay less tax (or no tax...) or something. Most of the time its cash in hand anyway.

I was going to point out that the money itself isn't as relevant as the purchasing power of that currency in its own country. As such you simply cannot look at numbers alone and compare them between countries — their economies are completely different.

The most obvious example in the world right now is the ability for anyone to take a UK pound and immediately double its purchasing power by going to the US. That is, if I had enough money to buy GTA 4 in the UK, if I flew over to the US and took my money with me I would have enough to buy it twice. Yet that doesn't imply I'm more wealthy than my US counterparts — in the context of my own country I can't afford any more or less than they can.

But whatever the case, £10/hour isn't a bad wage at all in the UK. Two or three hours work gets you a game.

Quote from Thrik

I was going to point out that the money itself isn't as relevant as the purchasing power of that currency in its own country. As such you simply cannot look at numbers alone and compare them between countries — their economies are completely different.The most obvious example in the world right now is the ability for anyone to take a UK pound and immediately double its purchasing power by going to the US. That is, if I had enough money to buy GTA 4 in the UK, if I flew over to the US and took my money with me I would have enough to buy it twice. Yet that doesn't imply I'm more wealthy than my US counterparts — in the context of my own country I can't afford any more or less than they can.

But whatever the case, £10/hour isn't a bad wage at all in the UK. Two or three hours work gets you a game.

all true, and i never argued this. however i thought wages were higher in the UK. you guys have nearly the same VAT as denmark (22 UK vs 25 DK) and i presumed wages would reflect this better. i dont know how much you actually pay in income tax.

gas station clerks here do get paid around 100 kr/hour, which would be somewhere around £9-10; the minimum wage being around 75 or 85 kroners at least. all this at a high income tax (40%), given, but we also get the first ~40,000 kroner "free" before we start paying income tax.

...it makes me wonder, because whenever i am in the UK i dont notice a real difference in prices.

also, how much is a gas station clerk paid in the UK?

Next to nothing in most parts of the country. Wages around here where I live are very, very bad. I was getting £6 an hour for crappy night shifts. And that's a good wage for here.

VAT is 17.5% here, not 22% as well.

Minimum wage is like I said a tad over £5 and most menial jobs are that e.g. petrol station/supermarket/fast food/pub basic jobs. Most students fall over themselves to get a job with an amazing £5/hr rate.

I worked 36 hours straight to hit Quake alpha. This was about 4-5 months into nonstop crunch already; at one point I went two months straight going into work with no days off. Following that weekend for our alpha deadline, we got 2 days off (the ones who weren't there got to test for 2 days) and were crunching for beta immediately following, all the way through to ship another 5 months later. After we shipped, we were encouraged to used our built up vacation time - I didn't get any vacation for another couple months as I was working on the map pack and had been saving my vacation time to add onto paternity leave when my son was born, though I managed to get a couple days off to make a weekend trip back home for a football game that preceding August.

One guy on the level design team had a health condition that got worse during the stretch and he was on medical leave for about 4-5 months. When he came back he only lasted another month or two before leaving the industry entirely. Our lead designer had stress-related health issues come up as well, but he escaped to Valve a little before we wrapped up the 360 version.

Before I was hired and through my first few months I was an eager up-at-7 kind of guy. It's been nearly 3 years since that crunch and I still don't sleep normally (there are other factors too, but my schedule has never fully recovered).

Wow that sounds bad KFS!

Here at IO we are treated in a very fair way. There is crunch at the end of projects but far from to a degree where it's damaging peoples bodies. Outside of the crunchtimes we have a very relaxed schedule.

One thing is for sure, working here is an a lot less stressfull than back when I was trying to both do high school and manage a mod project at the same time. That was some really stressing years and it took it's toll on my physical and mental condition.

Quote from KungFuSquirrel

I worked 36 hours straight to hit Quake alpha. This was about 4-5 months into nonstop crunch already; at one point I went two months straight going into work with no days off. Following that weekend for our alpha deadline, we got 2 days off (the ones who weren't there got to test for 2 days) and were crunching for beta immediately following, all the way through to ship another 5 months later. After we shipped, we were encouraged to used our built up vacation time - I didn't get any vacation for another couple months as I was working on the map pack and had been saving my vacation time to add onto paternity leave when my son was born, though I managed to get a couple days off to make a weekend trip back home for a football game that preceding August.One guy on the level design team had a health condition that got worse during the stretch and he was on medical leave for about 4-5 months. When he came back he only lasted another month or two before leaving the industry entirely. Our lead designer had stress-related health issues come up as well, but he escaped to Valve a little before we wrapped up the 360 version.

Before I was hired and through my first few months I was an eager up-at-7 kind of guy. It's been nearly 3 years since that crunch and I still don't sleep normally (there are other factors too, but my schedule has never fully recovered).

Woh. Last part sounds very familiar. But it's very up and down all the time for me. Atm I actually have quite a nice sleep cycle.