The problem of crunch time in game development

    I now get paid overtime and it is the greatest thing ever. I'm still full-time, salary, with benefits, but we're trusted to log our own hours each pay cycle (being treated like adults! imagine that!) and any hours over 40 receive full time-and-a-half pay. It means the company now has a financial interest in not crunching, but when deadlines come up and work needs to be done, you get compensated for it. Money isn't everything in life, but if you're working for free, especially if it's mandatory, you're being exploited.

    I've experienced two different kinds of crunch times in my short industry experience. This is how I've dealt with them:

    *Compulsory crunch time: One of the managers, who is too busy inflating his ego, overlooks the schedule, comes up to me on a friday night and "invite" me to come over the weekend. My answer: I'm not available.

    *"Voluntary" crunch time: Near a deadline, the lead comes to the team, express his concerns about the art not looking polished enough and asks if we want to come over the weekend to work on it. OR, I'm working on a feature that I enjoy a lot and I want to give that extra time to make it better. My answer: Sure, that would be fun.

    Here in norway there are laws and regulations regarding overtime. Dont quote me 100% on this but it goes something like this:

    You have the right to half an hour (unpaid) lunch if your workday is over 5 hours or something.

    37.5 hours is one weeks worth. (this is really a 40 hour week because of the half an hour lunch)

    If you are allowed/adked to work overtime you are entitled to 150% income on that. (this means that if you work saturdays that is all 150% income).

    The rest here might just be special to our work, but I doubt it:

    on holidays or on sundays after 2pm you are entitled to 200% income if you are working (this is overtime)

    If you are working 2 hours or more overtime you get free dinner (half an hour), and this time it is counted as work time.

    We dont have any dental plans (not customary in norway), but we have life insurance and we can purchase stocks for 80% of the market price once a year.

    Now that I think about I must be an idiot for leaving this place next week (not really)

    Now that I think on it, this is perhaps the reason why Funcom decided to move to canada. They probably couldn't stick to the norwegian overtime rules (there were a bunch of former employees making a fuss in the media a while back that funcom mistreated their employees).

    These laws exist pretty much everywhere in the developed countries, France and Canada have the same. The games industry simply chooses not to adhere to them.

    A friend of mine once told me of the crunch he did at Pandemic in LA. It was voluntary, and paid. He made 14K in a month to finish Lord of the Rings Conquest. Now that's overtime I can get behind.

    Here in Brazil we have the very same laws, problem is, the company will "cheat" and not report these properly, instead enforcing an in-house "hour bank" that never really works in the workers favor. The workers however feel like this is the way it must otherwise the studio will close due to the HR expenses, so we accept to work on these conditions lest not work at all.

    However just the other day they installed a new check-in machine that logs your time in the company using a fingerprint reader that is supposedly to make it harder for the company to cheat on their records. I can't imagine what will happen during the heavy crunches when we have to spend late morning hours in the studio and start having to go there and just "check out", come back to hour desks and work for more 6-8 hours...

    I don't mind crunching (or rather overtime) that much as long as it's on my own accord. Most times when I hear a producer suggesting overtime then it usually makes it have the opposite effect on me; I somehow feel that my personal investment in my work is being torn away by forcing me to do it. I also have the, maybe naive, point of view that working in a games company everybody should be responsible and flexible enough to get the best results and have the freedom to do it in the manner the deem best, which obviously is hard when you're working cross disciplines and have dependencies from others, and when you have a family waiting for you at home

    Anyway, like some of you have also talked about, I do my best work when everybody's left and there's no meetings or random conversations to distract the task at hand, and when you're motivated by what you're working on then that doesn't really feel like overtime.

    Quote from Furyo

    These laws exist pretty much everywhere in the developed countries, France and Canada have the same. The games industry simply chooses not to adhere to them.A friend of mine once told me of the crunch he did at Pandemic in LA. It was voluntary, and paid. He made 14K in a month to finish Lord of the Rings Conquest. Now that's overtime I can get behind.

    Yep, same rules in Poland but as far as I know in almost every country employers are braking that rules. It's a dead law, everybody knows that but nobody talks about that? Why? If someone will go to press or TV or even judge it means that he will lost his job and will be banned in the industry. If the manager sucks at planning time then just tell him to

    Quote from Mazy

    I don't mind crunching (or rather overtime) that much as long as it's on my own accord. Most times when I hear a producer suggesting overtime then it usually makes it have the opposite effect on me; I somehow feel that my personal investment in my work is being torn away by forcing me to do it. I also have the, maybe naive, point of view that working in a games company everybody should be responsible and flexible enough to get the best results and have the freedom to do it in the manner the deem best, which obviously is hard when you're working cross disciplines and have dependencies from others, and when you have a family waiting for you at home

    The psychology behind it is indeed interesting. As a freelancer/contractor i often work longer than 8 hours and on weekends too but it doesn't bother me that much because i still feel like a free man and i'm able to enjoy my work. But if someone demands from me to be there, effectively killing all my private interests and activities for that period it turns my stomach.

    it's not managers and arranged meetings that cause most of the problems, it's desk to desk distractions that slow you down the most, that being said it's essential to do it when developing a game. No talk Thursday is a dreadful idea unless it just nerfs arranged meetings perhaps ok for some industries but game dev is all about communicating.

    Well, technically it would be illegal for you to lose your job for making a workplace safety complaint(that is what this is - excessive overtime is OSHA/health code violation). Is there anything in your contracts that states you will be required to work overtime? Did you go through safety training for fatigue management (If in the US and working an overtime job, pretty sure it's an OSHA rule to take the fatigue training). As part of my job, I'm required to do 12 hours shifts indefinitely during our "crunch times" - but I'm in the nuclear power industry. Time is everything, we have a fixed time schedule to do our work(~1 to 2 weeks). But I get paid for the 12 hours shifts, not 150% or anything, but I at least get paid. Not getting paid and working long shifts/7 days a week, that is bullshit. Unless you guys working those shifts are getting well over $100k/yr, that is bullshit.

    Of everything, the one thing that truly puts the fear into employers is OSHA. they wield some big fuckin' sticks. Someone who is fed up with this shit/is going to quit anyways.. fuckin call up OSHA. Can't hurt.

    Until he reached his solutions I completely agreed, as for the solutions, no. Just no. No meetings is great. No face to face talking is a dreadful idea.

    With ns2 we don't get paid overtime because it can't be afforded. So we pretty much do extra hours on the game purely out of love of the project. I'm just glad I'm able to do this from home - I really don't think I'd enjoy this if I was stuck in a shitty game studio doing some console port or something for weeks on end. I like talking to my friends and family.

    Some once said to me "well if you don't like crunch time and enjoy seeing friends and family, maybe you are in the wrong industry." All I can say to that is suck my balls.

    How can you say that desk to desk interactions are the worst, then say that no talk thursdays is a bad idea?

    I mean, its not that hard if everyone agrees that after lunch on thursday, noone talks to each other. Noone sets up meetings and you are not allowed to poke anyone and if you do then it better be RALLY important.

    If you are poking someone and its not important then you shouldn't be there anyway. Management chasing you up every 5 mins, bad. You going and speaking to a programmer because a feature you need right now is completely fucked, good.

    Quote from Vilham

    If you are poking someone and its not important then you shouldn't be there anyway. Management chasing you up every 5 mins, bad. You going and speaking to a programmer because a feature you need right now is completely fucked, good.

    And thats something you cant deal with with a full week of preparation for the upcoming no talk thursday? really?

    You cant even work on something different for 4 hours?

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