Ok, so I was reading the Salon article about Dai Katana, and it seems that everything I read about the game industry says that they all work 17 hour days, and love it. I would love to do professional game programming one day, but I have a daughter, and she comes first. So, here are my question - - Do _all_ professional game companies have these outrageous schedules? I''m talking about at least semi-major companies, not garage projects. - Since they do everything on computers, isn''t this a perfect work-at-home kinda job? But I''ve never heard of anyone doing that, even in the early stages of a game, where things can be done seprarately. - Don''t people burn out? It really is putting the cart before the horse (I''m just starting to learn C++), but I was curious. Thanks in advance for your insight, Chris

The book Game Architecture and Design covers this subject rather well.

The authors say that the days of game developers working 12-17 hours a day, 7 days a week are coming to an end. They say that the game development industry is becoming more and more like the business development industry... and that it''s a good thing.

If you think about it, the way things are currently being done isn''t too efficient. People cannot work 80 hours weeks for months at a time and remain consistantly productive. People do burn out, and once they do, they''re basically useless.

As for working at home, this might work but communication is VITAL for the success of any development project. Working at home makes communication between the team members difficult. Nowadays, development teams can be made up of anywhere from 10-50 people working on one project... can you imagine how difficult it would be for 50 people to communicate efficiently if they''re all working at home?


Josh
http://www.jh-software.com

At the moment in the industry, I''d say its mostly dependant on where you''re working. That is, if you have a bunch of dumbasses for management and unreasonable expectations for the game, then you''ll have to end up working extra hours. In general though, I personally believe its possible to develop a game without having to burn yourself out.

Working at home simply isn''t feasible. You have to be able to communicate with other team members, deal with publishers, have high speed access to the net, have access to your own internal network for source control, etc. You really need to be there.

I started in the industry around mid ''97. I came onto a project that was about a year out. Its was fairly rough - the last 2 to 3 months were all midnight-3am type of days. That was bad. The game shipped in May ''98, and I went on the expansion pack (as the sole programmer) which shipped in October. That was fairly rough, but not too bad. Maybe 3 weeks of real hell. After that, I managed to be lead programmer on the sequel which had a 1 year schedule, and shipped in Sept ''99. I did my best to try and make sure we didn''t have much crunch time with it, and in fact, we didn''t. Maybe 2 weeks all told of long days near the end. Not bad for a full 1 year project. After that project shipped, I moved onto another game which was due out about a year from when I joined it (Oct ''99).

So all told, I''ve seen about as intense a schedule as you can expect from game development. 3 crunch times (not counting demos) in 2.5 years. With another pending in about 8 months. It _is_ rough dealing with this, but with proper planning you can save yourself pain. And if you manage to work your way into a lead position, be a complete hardass and whip everyone into shape. They may not like it at the time, but they''ll thank you in the end

Hi,
you will have to work longer when being a game programmer. But I don''t think the people IonStorm enjoy working 17 hours a day 7 days a week. IonStorm is in the need to get Daikatana finished and working so much is normal in the weeks before getting gold.

CU

Graphix Coding @
Skullpture Entertainment
http://www.skullpture.de

I''d have to echo that Dai Katana isn''t a good example.

I worked in pharmaceuticals for a while during an FDA audit. If you had done an article about my department at that time everyone would have said that they working 17 hours a day too. One guy once went home and literally realized he had a meeting to go to and got right back in the car to go back to work. And yes people burned out. Some of them burned out really badly. We had heart attacks, ulcers, you name it. But it was good time to be non-exempt.

I think the only difference between game development and any other industry is that the crunch times come more often for game development. And I''d have to say mostly due to poor management. Either not giving reasonable milestones or getting the programmers to put in a resonable days work every day. As people are getting better at managing these projects, these kinds of major crunches are decreasing.

There are also a couple of good articles on this web site about team management, and they include some examples of both good and bad management. Check in the Previously Featured Articles section for links. Hope I was somewhat helpful




- null_pointer
Sabre Multimedia

i think it''s the love of the ''game''(in this case coding)
I''m not a professional coder, but sometimes i love coding, and can go on and on and on!

Gotta add my two cents on this. Basically the entire development process is a big swing - you may start out at 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, but you always end up doing the "eat, sleep, breath, " thing in the end. Daikatana is a pretty bad example, mostly because *everyone* there is completely burnt out on the game. It really makes a difference which game you''re making. If you are making a game that is going to be the next bestseller, and you''re loving the code, it''s loving you back, your team is getting along, everything is clicking, etc, then you probably aren''t gonna get burnt out. You''ll probably even enjoy it all. On the other hand, if you know you''re making crap (believe me, you know!), then you''re not gonna enjoy it. It just hurts to wake up and think about going to work. As for the work at home, I don''t think it would work, as daveb mentioned, since communication is an impassable obstacle. It just won''t work. That''s my insight to this topic.

Pythius