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Quality of life in the game industry

Started by August 25, 2005 02:41 PM
23 comments, last by d000hg 19 years, 5 months ago
I have only worked for one game developer so far, but here's my experience.

Working in QA was hellish during crunch time, but working on the game team, I found the hours to be very reasonable. I was working standard 8-9 hour days 90% of the time. The culture was very much, "if you are hitting your targets and producing quality work, then you don't need to work overtime, unless we're in crunch time". If I found something very difficult, and I was running out of time, I might voluntarily work a bit of overtime to get it done.

I think things would be a bit different if I were a lead, but to be honest with you, I don't ever want to be a lead, I'd be happy just working on the team as a subordinate. My career is important to me, yes, but I'm very mindful of the fact that I work to live, I don't live to work. I am passionate about this industry, but I want to have a life outside of work, and my employer was always very reasonable about that.

I think it's sad when people get to the stage where work is the only thing in their life. For a start, I think it has to impact negatively on the quality of their work. I know I work faster, and produce better quality work, when I'm happy and have enough free time to myself for recreation outside of work.

I have come across people high up in the industry, who thought that more hours = more quality work on the project, and this is just not true in my opinion.

During a crunch period, there'd be times of about a month where I'd be working 12 hour days to get everything done on time. I didn't really begrudge the company this though, because they were very reasonable about hours normally. Also, if you enjoy your work, then during a crunch period you'll probably find that you WANT to work extra hours, in order to create the best quality product that you can. At least that's the way I felt. I get a buzz out of having to work really hard to hit a deadline.

I think the worrying thing is, not all games companies are like this, and I often wonder if I ended up working for a company, where the culture is 12 hour days, would I have the backbone to say no? Being as I am still pretty low-down in the industry, I'm not sure that I would. I would like to think I would though.
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Original post by Anonymous Poster
First off, I never said what I was paid (just that it was less than before I went to this job - per hour).

I know. I was making an assumption based on the generally prevailing opinion that the game industry doesn't pay nearly as much as the financial industry. Since you're an AP, would you mind telling us how much you were making on your entry level gamedev job, and how much you're making now?
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Original post by Anonymous Poster
Third, I'd have to make double my salary for more than a decade to form the type of company I'd need to get my designs made if I were going to self-fund.

You don't have to start a game company to be in an environment you'd enjoy. Furthermore, you can find partners to share the risk and the financial burden. Anyway, this is a whole different topic.
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Original post by WillC
I love my job, I get paid well for it, and I don't work long hours.

I'm curious, what's "well"? Is it above or below the alternative in a financial industry?
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Original post by CoffeeMug
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Original post by WillC
I love my job, I get paid well for it, and I don't work long hours.

I'm curious, what's "well"? Is it above or below the alternative in a financial industry?


I going to answer that by inventing some new types of currency.

Lets define the units of money I get now as Game Development Pounds (GDPs), and the units of money I could earn if I were in the finance industry as Finance Industry Pounds (FIPs).

For me, 1 GDP equals approx. 4 FIPs. In other words I would have to earn at least 4 times as much in the financial industry to compensate for the mind-numbingly boring work that I would be doing.

I think, at best, I might manage to get twice as many FIPs as I get GDPs (if I had the same level as experience in financial programming as I do now in games), but I have no desire to make the switch.

For me, it's much more important (actually essential) that I'm doing something I really enjoy, than to be earning stupid amounts of money.

[Edited for bad maths]

[Edited by - WillC on September 2, 2005 11:29:47 AM]
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Original post by Anonymous Poster
quick question, are working conditions in EA any good. I heard it both ways, that people work 10-12 hours a day and I heard it another way saying it was comfortable and it was the usually 8-10 hours a dat, so im kinda lost on that one. But i did see some really nice benefits etc etc EA offered


EA have a number of different studios, from what I hear from friends and acquaintances working at a number of them, quality of life at each varies massively.

Usually quality of life at any games company depends on quality of the studio manager and middle management (producers, leads) - in particular how well they listen to and understand their people during scheduling, whether or not/how much they mislead their own bosses (or publisher) over scheduling (such as lying about how complete a feature is to cover their own back), and how well they manage change control. Feature creep without adequate change control and bad/innaccurate/overly tight scheduling are the two main causes of killer crunch times.

Simon O'Connor | Technical Director (Newcastle) Lockwood Publishing | LinkedIn | Personal site

I'm afraid to say where I worked, because I'm pretty sure that I signed something which prevents me from saying nasty things about it. It was a small company known for one or two games that did ports of big name titles. It was bought out shortly before my arrival by Big Publisher A.

I worked on a team that was just starting. I worked normal hours for most of my stay there, however, towards the end, it became obvious that our team wasn't hitting the milestones (the leadership on our team was horrid), so Big A started taking a more active interest in our team. We'd receive new milestones literally for the next Monday on the previous Thursday. While I didn't have to work the weekends (my milestones were painful, but doable in two days), the rest of the team had to work long hours and weekends to hit the milestones. I quit around this time, but pretty much the whole team was in constant crunch, just six months into the project. The game was cancelled a year later (well, that's when it was announced at least)

One of the other teams at the place was just finishing up a movie license (it was based on a game they did a port to previously). They literally lived at the company. They actually had people come pick up their laundry. They slept there. They never went home. They had to finish the game to coicide with the movie release. They were finishing up the last month or so when I started, so I don't know when the crunch started. They got two weeks time off after it was finished, then came back in and started working on the sequel.

Yet another team had yet another movie license, but it was to coincide with the DVD release of a movie (and was one of the worst games I've ever played). They were never officially in crunch, but during the entire six months I was there, they were working weekends and 12 hour days. They didn't get holidays off either. Technically, not crunch - they didn't get meals catered or their laundry picked up - but there was unbelievable pressure to work long hours anyway. They didn't force you. They never said "you have to be in on Saturday", but you did anyway.

I started the company at the same time as someone on this last team, who was from Finland. My wife became best friends with his wife. She had no car and knew little about America, but was left alone for a majority of the time. He would frequently not come home at all, or if he did, just long enough to take a nap and shower and head back in. I felt so sorry for her, and for such a bad, bad game that was $10 within two months of release...

This is just one company, and you're milage will vary considerably based on your position on the team and the capability of your management. Even between three teams in the same company, it was a very different experience. None good, of course, but I'm sure they must exist out there somewhere (though I've never personally heard any names of these companies). Anyway, if you want to go into the game industry, avoid the bad teams at all costs. How do you find the bad teams? Beats me. I never did.
--Sqorgarhttp://gamebastard.blogspot.com
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The culture was very much, "if you are hitting your targets and producing quality work, then you don't need to work overtime, unless we're in crunch time". If I found something very difficult, and I was running out of time, I might voluntarily work a bit of overtime to get it done.


I interned at a game company a couple of years ago that was developing a AAA title for PC, and the situation was similar. Most days it was 10am-7pm (9 hours, not so bad although I would have preferred 9am-6pm). The last couple of months of the project, we had 9am-9pm, 6 days a week, but that didn't last for too long so I didn't really mind it much. It was tough for people with wives/kids but at least it beats companies in "eternal crunch mode". I don't really have anything to compare with, but I think that company is probably one of the better ones in this regard, they even gave generous bonuses on milestone completion, which is at least nicer than "good job, here's a pizza".

roos
The first developer I worked for I started at the bottom. It was a 9 - 6 day with an hour at lunch, finishing a bit earlier of Friday - just under a 40-hour week. Every month or two there might be a few late nights - up to 8 or 9 - and even a bit of weekend work. It wasn't forced, people gave as much time as they could afford.

The place I'm interviewing at now works a 37.5 hour week and the overtime sounds similar.

These are both in the UK - I think the US is generally a bit worse.

But if you work in a normal job and code at home on your own game for 3 hours then your working day is 3 hours longer than your company claims - games programmers do it because they want to make games, which is one reason why the pay is generally a bit less - more competition for jobs.

Just check the company and ask them how often overtime happens, and how bad those periods are.

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