I have been threatening for years to pitch a "How to Break Out of the Game Industry" panel for GDC.

When I decided (because, bluntly, the continual crunch burned me out) that it was time to leave the game industry, my path out was actually the fact that I had built a lot of tools for game development over the years. Look for points of congruence between what another part of high tech needs and what you have done in games, and take advantage of the halo effect that "professional game developer" has in the eyes of some people looking to hire, and find your way out.

Do you need to stay in your local area, or are you willing to relocate? Who do you know outside of games but inside of high tech? What sounds *interesting* to you as a career path to take? Where would you ideally like to live? What sounds like the most interesting thing to work on? Big company or small company, you ideally want someone you know and who knows your skills to be walking that resume in the door.

Start looking now. Write a resume for outside the game industry, and tune it and the cover letter for every job you are looking for. You just need to find the right position, it is going to be out there.

I will disagree with Tom, I would not have this discussion with your employer. When you have your next position lined up, give them two weeks notice. Having a discussion with them about it is far more likely to have your employment ending on their timetable rather than yours.

@OP, I hope you don't mind, but I cyberstalked a bit to get a good guess of who your employer is. From the looks of it, they do a lot of work-for-hire games, pitching low budgets to publishers to secure work, then splitting the company into 2 or 3 or more teams to pump out several super cheap ~8 month projects simultaneously? And they've been doing this kind of work for a while?
If my guess is right, then they're probably pretty stuck in their ways. I imagine any complaints about the conditions will be met with arrogance and scorn for your concerns. The suggestion that there could be a better mode of operation would probably be seen as an insult.
This wouldn't be some "have to do overtime to save the company" situation, it sounds like a company that's been stuck in that rut for so long that they've lost the perspective required to see the harm in it.

FWIW though, I worked on dev in the same sub-sector - hundreds of employees, almost entirely a never ending series of different work-for-hire games for different publishers, pitching stupidly low budgets at publishers just to secure work, short deadlines, etc... And I only did one day of overtime, because I was the lead and had to get a build out...

In my humble arrogant opinion, endemic crunch occurs because not enough staff are willing to say no to abusive working conditions, unless their colleagues are already doing so. Without a union movement to present a unified stand, or other role models to lead the way, it's hard to be *the guy* who takes a stand.

Unfortunately, the options are often "meet the publishers' schedule that we don't have the time or budget for, or shutdown the studio and lay everyone off." Sure, it's quite possible that this is because of managements' bad scheduling and negotiation, but the end result is the same: deal with it or be out of a job.

I've been in that position, and didn't do free work to save someone else's fortune. I went unpaid for months, sure, allowing the owner a interest-free loan on my salaries. But when we shipped the project, we all got our owed wages paid back.

Doing extra work for free to save a company and then not being paid for it... That's just management taking their staff for granted. It doesn't matter if you're on a salary instead of wages -- extra work hours should at the very least be repaid with extra leave balance. If everyone does 150% of their normal hours for two months to get a game out the door, give everyone a month of paid holiday after the project to pay them back.

If you want a job where you get a high salary that accounts for the fact that you're "on call" to do overtime with short notice, go into sysops.
If an employer wants to tell me that I, as a software engineer, fall into that same category, then it's clear to see that they don't respect me. Fair enough if they want to call me to put out a fire -- they're about to show the game to a publisher and my code is crashing -- I'm ok with doing genuine emergency work... But when a regular day is a permanent emergency... Just say no.

The worst thing is when many of the workers in these companies are fatigued and spend half their day on Reddit, but are still applauded for having great work ethic because they spend 16 hours in the office. Meanwhile, someone who actually does double the amount of work in a 7 hour shift is seen as a slacker. Unfortunately, just as in humans, I don't know of any cures for an autistic company culture.

... is this Melbourne? I'm now really regretting not taking advantage of any Melbourne-based job offers... ;)

Australia has legally enforced the 8/8/8 day AKA 40 hour week since the mid 19th century, and now the 38 hour week since the 80's.
It's slowly been degraded, with companies given the power to override law with employment contracts... But a few years ago we again made 38 hours legally binding, even if your contract says otherwise.
Coincidentally, today is Labour day here, also known as "Eight Hours Day"
AFAIK, lots of European countries have the same protections for workers.

So, I guess I'll weigh in. I left the game industry after almost a decade. You can find plenty of places outside of games that have interesting problems to tackle, and have a good culture amongst your team. Along with better pay, better hours and better benefits. Just go try the big tech companies, they tend to hire game programmers. So Microsoft, Google, etc. (Disclosure: I work for MS) One way to do it is to try to get hired for a MS game studio, then transfer. Worked for me.

I would most definitely not talk to your employer about the crunch issues. If you are part of one of those companies that abuse their workers with 'voluntary overtime' repeatedly, they really don't care, and once you are a known troublemaker/discontent, you'll just be more likely to find yourself laid off, and I've always found it easier to get a job when I've had a job.

That said, there are good places that don't crunch, or at least pay overtime crunch. California these days, after that last big lawsuit years ago, all the big companies there pay overtime. Blizzard, EA, and Activision all do. Has the side effect of hitting companies in the wallet, so they tend to not do it unless they have to. (The smaller companies do not, however, nor do small second-party studios)

also certainly enjoy the culture (and the lack of cubicles at some companies) and the flexibility that comes with it.

On the flip-side, as I said, I love the general culture. I don't like the culture of 'corporate' style companies. I don't want to be doing the exact same thing day-in, day-out (such as at a bank or something similar).

Your idea of corporate culture is way off. I work in finance institutions, investment banks and large news agencies. There are no cubicles, you can wear what you want, there is free beer, fruit, pizza, doughnuts, coffee. There is a book allowance, you can choose your equipment (mac , PC, iPhone etc..), there are ping pong tables, there are paint balling trips, office nerf fights. There is also very little crunch, the salaries are 2 to 3 times the salaries in the games industry and the is a lot more job security.

also certainly enjoy the culture (and the lack of cubicles at some companies) and the flexibility that comes with it.

On the flip-side, as I said, I love the general culture. I don't like the culture of 'corporate' style companies. I don't want to be doing the exact same thing day-in, day-out (such as at a bank or something similar).

Your idea of corporate culture is way off. I work in finance institutions, investment banks and large news agencies. There are no cubicles, you can wear what you want, there is free beer, fruit, pizza, doughnuts, coffee. There is a book allowance, you can choose your equipment (mac , PC, iPhone etc..), there are ping pong tables, there are paint balling trips, office nerf fights. There is also very little crunch, the salaries are 2 to 3 times the salaries in the games industry and the is a lot more job security.

It depends where you've worked. I worked for a company where everyone (even senior leadership) had cubicles and a strict dress code.

Generally speaking, the Business development (I do financial processing/Eviction automation) side of things has a much healthier lifestyle though.

Where I work now, I'd say on average we get free doughnuts/bagels twice a week. Employee birthday cakes every week at least, free coffee, no crunch (Actually optional. As in not required, or expected). Life activities like hiking, paintballing, a yearly simon says company wide competition.... All of that stuff is pretty standard in business dev though, honestly.

Compensation is obviously better than game dev, so when you transfer out, try to get at least 25% more than what you're making currently.

On the fulfillment side of things, you'll never be doing the same thing in business dev. Really. Businesses are always advancing and creating new features/reworking critical logic. Where I've been working the past year, I've launched 3 new products with maybe 10~ hours of overtime, which was optional and rewarded with a gold star on my office (lol), and a starbucks gift card.

If you look into getting into mobile or web development( facebook and such) crunch time is a lot less as release dates aren't strict and such. I used to work for places where crunch time was every 4-5 months and it would last for 3-4 months. Last two places I worked at only had to work overtime a total of maybe 10 days and that was me volunteering because of critical issues.

It all boils down to where you work.

Definitely depends on where you work. I work in mobile game dev and haven't worked crunch in the last 5 years...


As far as crunch goes, the only way to stop it is to change it from inside. Companies that can't profit from standard work hours should be allowed to fail spectacularly. Eventually managers and creative leads will learn how to limit scope. I have no pity for the herd mentality that accepts crunch time as acceptable.

(Edit) I came back to my post and felt it deserved more details.


OK. For those of you who have managed to get inside the industry already (congratulations!), YOU are partially responsible for getting rid of crunch. Things you should attempt to do while at the job:

- Earn respect from your coworkers by kicking ass at your job. But don't overwork yourself to accomplish this. Improve your efficiency rather than brute forcing your work. Respect is necessary in order to get other people to take you seriously.

- Don't blindly implement what you're asked to. You're not a cog in a machine - your ideas matter. Think about the problem and the design and look for things to make your life easier. Discuss different approaches with the person in charge of your feature.

- Is a feature ABSOLUTELY necessary? Would it harm the product if it was removed? If not, then it's a candidate to be cut from the game, and cutting features is the easiest way to reduce crunch.

- Try to avoid features which interact with lots of different parts of the code, especially if the benefit from implementing the feature is minimal. These kinds of things cause huge maintenance headaches and are usually the source of most bugs. Fewer of these means less wasted time, and that means less crunch.

- Never work in a vacuum. Always talk with your manager/peers about things. Other people will see things you've missed before you've spent time implementing something, and can save you from going down the wrong path.

- Think up ways to make *everyone's* lives easier. Programmers aren't the only ones suffering from unnecessary crunch time. Do the artists need someone to optimize an exporter so they don't waste time? Perhaps a data validation tool for the designers can prevent costly mistakes?

- There are always hidden inefficiencies in the development process. Perhaps your builds take a long time, but everyone has always accepted that as normal. Maybe it can be drastically improved?! Try to find and eliminate them.

- If you run into some kind of annoyance in the development process (build times, compile warnings, source control hassles, etc), chances are everyone else will run into it, too. It may be worth it to eliminate even minor annoyances as soon as possible so that you save everyone more sanity.

- Voice concerns to your boss! Always try to make your criticism optimistic rather than pessimistic. Control your delivery. Avoid sounding like you're whining.

Every studio is different, every project within the studio is different, every team within a project is different.

I've been at terrible places where crunch is mandated and happens every few months.

I've also been at wonderful places where crunch is unknown.

I've been at places where there was no "corporate culture", ask people about company activities and they'll look puzzled, wondering if you mean daily standup meetings.

I've also been at places with 3-hour lunch parties every month, movie screenings, BBQ, plus every single Friday the studio gave donuts in the AM and beer o'clock in the lunch room in the afternoon.

As for pay, while the game industry also tends to pay less than other industries, usually as software developers our pay is far above the average non-programmer wages. Since there are no unions that negotiate salaries on your behalf, your salary is whatever you negotiate. At the entry level people are terrible, they beg for the job for any money, and are often willing to take far less than the employer is willing to pay. This attitude harms everyone, devalues what companies are willing to pay. Fortunately after a few years people wise up and often start to demand a more reasonable salary for their skill set. Some of those negotiate the salary within the industry, others leave the industry and get it elsewhere. After about 5 years -- at least in my location on the globe -- if you aren't making six figures it is your own fault. Sadly many people never demand it, and companies won't give it if the developers don't demand it.

The game industry, even at the top end of programmer salaries, does not pay competitive wages compared to the rest of high tech.

It's simple economics. There is a talent oversupply, and that depresses salaries.

Aside from the well known big Silicon Valley companies, you can try to get hired at SpaceX. They appeared at previous GDC's and are really seeking game developers to work for their flight software, especially if they are good at low-level programming. They take their work seriously, but also pride themselves in standing out from the older, more bureaucratic aerospace companies which they argue are a lot slower in testing and validating software.