The problem of crunch time in game development

[e-freak]

it sucks in your twenties as well. but i guess we are already on the edge of getting rid of crunch time. it's a symptom of an industry finding it self and learning it's on value. with a broader layer of senior people getting into management, rather than a bunch of motivated kids with an outside manager, the understanding of what can be done and in what time frame will get into companies.

[Bunglo]

Gabe Newell touches on staying extra hours/days a bit at around 17:40:

[Steppenwolf]

a full 70 consecutive days spent at work

Seriously i have no idea how you coped with that. I would literally go insane. It's like open imprisonment.

[Serenius]

Maybe it's a corporate America thing, but any positions that aren't customer service or bottom-tier entry level positions require more than 40 hours a week. Just going up one rung in the ladder from where I am ups the amount of time spent working from 40 hours to 60-80 hours. The guys at the top are pretty much always in work mode unless they're on vacation. With that in mind, I'd happily work crunch any time it was asked for if it meant making games instead of something far less gratifying.

[insta]

Maybe it's a corporate America thing, but any positions that aren't customer service or bottom-tier entry level positions require more than 40 hours a week. Just going up one rung in the ladder from where I am ups the amount of time spent working from 40 hours to 60-80 hours. The guys at the top are pretty much always in work mode unless they're on vacation. With that in mind, I'd happily work crunch any time it was asked for if it meant making games instead of something far less gratifying.

Move to sweden! xD

Also, what about jerking off or even inserting smal small pelles into your urthera= thats more satisfyruing that crncH 0but seriousluy tho i dont mind if if im into iot (i mean the crunch ;:PP)

/////end of thread

[KungFuSquirrel]

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.

[Minos]

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.

[Skjalg]

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)

[Skjalg]

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).

[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.

[Sentura]

where are you leaving to skjalg? germany?

[Gloglebag]

Why doesn't the government enforce the fucking laws then. the solution is not overtime, it's giving devs more time.

[arhurt]

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...

[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

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.

[mjens]

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