Over time discussion cont'd
mod
Hey, so I was reading that overtime thread, which actually had some really good discussion going on, but when I went to click page 2, a message popped up saying i had a new message (which i did) and it said the page wasnt there. And now I cant find the thread. Was it deleted or am I just going crazy? What happened on the second page that would have made it get deleted?
Replies
I saved page 1 anyway, for reference! I've often had difficulty articulating my thoughts on the subject but some of the contributions echoed my sentiments exactly.
I messed up and had the thread ticked off for pruning when I was cleaning up the spam posts from lastnight. It was a fantastic discussion and was never intended to be removed.
What this means is.
- That thread is permanently deleted. It was marked as spam and tossed in with a lot of other threads.
- The author of the thread was banned but that is being rectified right now.
As I said, I completely fucked up with this mornings prune. Typically I go over the list with a fine tooth comb but this morning I was being hasty and made a mistake.
By all means, please continue the discussion on the topic over time in this thread (I will rename it) and let everyone know that Adam is a tool who should have a coffee before cleaning spam.
I like this method of OT:
-It's not mandatory for all employees to work OT, but if you are working OT you should do it on a specific set of days in a week (Tuesday's and Thursday's for instance).
This way, everyone works OT on specific days and no one is at the office when its empty and thsoe who are working OT are doing so because they feel they're work will be better for it, but not because they need to have their ass in their seat.
This.
Ideally we try and just close threads so that they can still be read up to the point where we felt the need to end the discussion. The only threads we out-right delete are spam threads. This, hopefully, is transparent to you guys and you never see the spam before they go live (there's 100's of them in a week).
If a thread is deleted, please PM me directly.
That hasn't been my experience at all..
I think its seductive to blame management because it sounds good to call the executives incompetent or whatever, but I think even the BEST managed projects are prone to crunch. It's not unavoidable... but I don't think it's always the fault of the management.
Good managers don't or CAN'T always see two/three years down the road...especially in such a volatile and changing industry as games... and being a good manager is probably *more* about adapting than about planning.
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Now, that's for short bursts of crunch or for that last/final push before a deadline... for crunch that goes on for six/nine/eighteen months though, well, yeah...there's something totally wrong with the formula there. It's just abusive.
Well, to continue the discussion, I`ll first touch on the first point. The OP had said he was talking to his dad about unpaid overtime in the industry, and that he couldnt come up with a good reason of why it happens. And that he doesn't accept the typical reasons given. ie - its a creative job that takes time, and "thats just the way it is". Comped time isnt the same as being paid for it. Comped time doesnt pay the bills.
JasonLavoie mentioned that no AAA games can be made without OT. Which, first of all doesnt really stay on point with the OP. He wasnt talkign about OT. he was talking about unpaid OT.
I personally believe that every. single. game. can be made without OT. But, companies dont want that to happen. People doing crunch. sometimes up to 80 hours a week. If they did that for a year, worked 80 hours a week, and put the game out in a year, well, the same game could be done in 2 years, working 40 hours a week. aka, no OT. But, companies want them out faster so that stock holders are happy.
Jason and I were just talking about it, and he had a good point. If companies were forced to pay OT, OT would probably diminish but a crap ton. Planning would be better, and companies would make sure the shit gets done.
All that being said, I dont think the industry right now is going to change. All the companies that dont pay OT, or have a lot of OT. They arent going to change. IF the industry is going to change, its going to come from those starting their own companies who really believe in quality of life and believe that it can be a 9 -5 job. The people who believe that paying OT is the right thing to do. That treating your employees well is the right thing to do. But the large companies out there right now? I dont see it changing. Sad fact, but ya.
In some companies I heard that it doesn't matter when you come in or leave, you just need to make sure the work is done that is assigned to you for that week. I like that method.
unless the work assigned to you for that week is guaranteed to take significantly more than 40 hours, which is all you're getting paid for. which, Again, falls into the planning category at best and the abusive category at worst
I'm all for a laid-back scheduling environment - I prefer to come in and leave at whichever times work for me - and it should be my responsibility to get the work done in the time I put in. If, however, I've got more work to do than I have time for, I can come in earlier, leave later, and work weekends - but unless I'm getting paid for that extra time it's a lot harder to be ok with being handed more than I can manage.
On the days where I'm in a groove and I just want to keep working to get ahead - sure, i'll clock out and keep at it a while longer. But that's all on me, nobody expects it of me, nobody asks me to do it. In a larger company I could see how this could generate it's own momentum of expectation, though - and I like Adam's idea of regulating that activity to certain days or times, so it doesn't get out of hand.
I suspect that a lot of the unpaid overtime of the "not required but expected" category is perpetuated more by peer pressure than management. You could find yourself in a situation where the majority of people are putting in extra time for free, without being told to and without WANTING to, just because everybody else is. (social learning)
Since most companies are setup with salary based compensations... it *could be* unlikely that the backend of the company finance profile system does not currently have the means to track Employee->Hourly Wage->Hours worked. (Obviously, this could be implemented)
Though, without this measure... It's interesting to see how companies compensate their employees for OT work. It can speak loudly to how the studio is perceived and the working culture there.
Not always the case. I worked on a salary base for one studio that did actually ask us to keep weekly timecards to be handed in. They did not recognize time put in as OT unless "authorized" - which is something I've seen other studios do as well.
Where things got shifty was when the producer would ask people to come in and put in extra time on the weekend - but apparently was not official "authorization" so it would never get counted. Unfortunately, they monitored keycards being used to verify if people were actually putting in core hours, but they would look the other way for weekend or OT key-ins/outs.
On the flipside, I've been at places that really stressed against OT because they didn't have an official system in-place for tracking hours and if they did ask for it, they would compensate it with free time after the project, or through OT pay
^ Also this is correct, this is why I started the thread. It was interesting to speak to someone who doesn't know/doesn't care about video games. It's a very different perspective, like trying to explain something to an alien... or in this case an electrician.
Oh, absolutely! Bad management CAN cause crunch...my apologies if I implied otherwise.
I'm just saying that isn't always the cause, nor does crunch ALWAYS mean the managers/management were bad. I guess it's a rectangle isn't always a square kinda thing (?).
how much time will crunch take off of a projects completion time?
is 1 month of crunch equal to say, 2 months of non-crunch? does working 3 months of crunch mean the game is ready 6 months earlier?
if that's the case... i honestly cannot fathom why people go into crunch mode unless
1. the goalposts are moved and publishers want to release early.
2. the management is piss-poor and so when a project should have been ready to go a month or two ago, it's now coming up on overdue.
what i mean to say by this, is that studios that "plan" their crunch times, are only perpetuating a cycle which could, and should be eliminated. that studios who force this kind of behavior on their workforce are only doing a detrimental service to them. and that if they plan their project properly, it can still be released in a timely manner (6 months later i guess) and actually look BETTER, due to not having a burned out workforce.
i believe that unless you're paid for it, overtime should be completely voluntary... this is where your michaelangelos and your mozarts will come in... those will be the guys who stay an extra two hours each evening just to make sure their particular pieces are badass. i believe that the people who WANT to grow personally and professionally will work their asses off to get there, and the ones that don't want to, won't do that... the game will still be released, it will still look great, it will still sell well... but you will probably see more personal and professional growth within your studio.
http://skizzers.org/scorp/pc/overtime_polycount.htm
Aye no worries, I got what you were saying. I was just pointing out to folk how blatantly it can be management.
Of course other times it can be things like publishers hurling boxes of spanners into the works, so management and devs have to deal with that.
But I believe crunch has become such a commonality of our industry that studios plan crunch time into normal development now. The last few months of development are just expected crunch time. Weather your studio has good or bad management, crunch is just expected to get the game done. And depending on how good your management is, crunch could range for like 2 months to 9 O_o
for example:
crunch in the last couple of months of development to get all the extra stuff everybody wanted in there and working well in time for release is great.
Crunch to fix a few problems that have been bugging everybody is fine.
Crunch because if the game releases in two months at the current rate of work it'll be broken as hell - that is not so good.
Crunch because somebody with no actual knowledge of what's going on or how things work has suddenly demanded something be added or implemented that makes no sense or is a huge pain in the ass is probably worse...especially if that ends up getting canned anyways.
- Bad planning
- Lack of team talent (ie; they cannot hit their own deadlines)
- Studio taking on a larger project than they could possibly handle
We didn't crunch at Turn10 (microsoft) at all. Across 2 projects, Forza 3 and 4. They limited us to 10hrs of voluntary overtime that we could use IF we wanted, to add extra polish. But it really wasn't needed. Everything was perfectly planned, everyone had the skill to hit their estimated deadline, everything was (spookily) butter smooth. I've never seen that at a studio before.
At Timegate, we've crunched very little. Final pushes for show demos and such, mainly. But everyone hits their deadlines on time so things just get done.
This is also lack of planning - if your team lacks talent, you should miss one or two deadlines, but by then the fact that your team isn't just as good as you/they think should have made it into your estimates. If your team lacks talent and you demand too much, who's to blame? And yes, unfortunately, the easy way out in most manager's heads is just : OT (aka work harder, not smarter).
However if they just need a bit more time, you can look into optimizing your process to make more time for them. Well defined hand-over procedures between stages, well defined responsibilities, naming conventions, QA checks throughout the pipeline, etc. can reduce time wasted and make more time for art creation.
I've seen this happen a lot. That's what I meant originally by "producers promising things that they probably shouldn't". The publisher will throw something out there, producer will say "yeah, no worries" cause they don't want to hurt the relationship and whatnot, but turns out that "no worries" is an extra week of work. Then what happens is that you just get shit done, without OT, but that means that other aspects of the game suffers. So then all of a sudden you're facing some milestone where you need to get a fuckton of things done that were carry-overs from the last milestones, and you just have to crunch. The company can't get it extended or get more money because it's an agreed-upon milestone.
The other thing is also, like was said before, that we're so willing to do it, that they plan OT into the schedule to begin with. But OT is supposed to be as some kind of "oh shit" thing in case stuff goes wrong. Only now it's scheduled, so a 3-month scheduled OT can turn into a 6-month "crunch" if some oh-shit thing happens during or before that scheduled time.
Skyrim, COD, Deus Ex, and a plenty whole set of other games are pretty good examples of where it's a game-game, it doesn't have an overtly big thing going on, and infact, is pretty primitive by many standards (the copy-pasta nature of Skyrim, COD reworked elements from previous templates, Deus Ex linear and choppily animated world, etc), yet people bought those games more then say Spec-Ops The Line, Sleeping Dogs, etc, or games that tried putting everything on the forefront down to the smallest detail, to the script.
Maybe studios need to take a step back, and realize having a game that allows your character to simply hide in the shadows instead having 10 different gimmicks that dictate if you're going to be spotted or not, or having my character be able to choose 10 different responses instead of 3 with voice acting which is the equivalent of an angry Man/Woman with the emotion of a cocktail umbrella, is more fun and hence, more likely to sell.
As for crunch itself, I have to say toolsets are one of the reasons I can think of. Seriously, you would think in this day and age we would have much better solutions to saaaay modeling in your traditional software...
Yeah crunch is a fact in any game studio unfortunately, but making sure your employees don't feel like there being used is something that most people forget.
I don't mind doing crunch especially if what im working on looks awesome in the end and that people enjoy it when the end product comes out. But when i am forced to do "Mandatory" crunch to chase milestones due to bad management and a poor contracts it really frustrates me especially when the higher ups that made and signed those contracts are leaving at normal hours.
being told "hey this happens at all studios" is not a real justification to why the team has to work crunch, management needs to take responsibility for there fuck up and fix the issues or re-negotiate the contract with the publisher.
If you treat me right and make sure that you try to avoid long sustained crunch periods and do everything in your power to make sure the crunch is not too rough on the entire team i have no problem doing crunch to make the game better.
but dont give me promises of a raise and time off while you work me like a dog and just throw excuses in my face.
what it boils down to, is goal shifting. and you can replicate this on a personal level, as artists. how many times do we see, or even comment ourselves "where's your reference? where's your concept?"
this is IMPORTANT!
during the early stages of the development of a game, concepts and ideas get fleshed out, just like a character artist would work up a concept of what they want to make next. and just like a character artist will want to better themselves by creating something challenging, a development team will have challenges they need to overcome too. so PLAN for it, and devote some time to overcoming those obstacles.
but the single most important thing, is to not change what you are making. keep your end concept, and end goal the same. when someone from up-top comes in and says "hey here's a great idea, how about we do x"... you should probably think to yourself "does that fit into the design philosophy of this game? will we have to overhaul shit to get it in? or will it slip seamlessly into, and augment what we already have?"
unless it fits into what you have, and augments it, then you should probably leave it out! just like when a solo artist starts changing the idea of what they're making halfway through... shit just ends up going bad!
so many times you see it on a solo, personal level. that someone "just starts a project" without a clear goal, without a plan. and inevitably they get stuck somewhere in the middle, not entirely sure which direction to go in.
now, i'm not saying problems won't come up mid-way. of course they will. even that happens on a personal level, with an individual piece. there are problem areas where a little research might be needed to figure out a solution... some more time needs to be devoted to the problem. but THATS OKAY! because your end goal is still the same, all that needs fixing is the problem. fixing the problem won't cause you to have to redo entire chunks of work, it won't cause you to have to change your concept or outcome. it just takes a little more time. and that's fine.
but when you start to introduce a new idea, it changes your concept, it changes your outcome. it causes entire chunks of work to become obsolete or need redoing to fit the new design. and THAT is why so many studios end up with brutal crunch periods.
they don't have a clear direction, they don't have management who can stand up and say "sorry, we'll put that into the next game". and from what it looks like, they think it's normal to accept this way of thinking.
Reposting what I said as well:
IMO this idea that being passionate about games negates the burdens of unpaid overtime, its really a toxic mentality.
Its really not about your passion, not about how much you love games or how hard you're willing to work or how badass/hardcore/awesome you are or any of that stuff. Its simple self respect. If you come up with reasons to justify doing extra work without being paid for it, you lack self respect. Thats what it comes down to to me.
Until we curve this mentality that forced overtime is just part of the way things are done, we are going to continue to collectively be taken advantage of.
Anyone here have any suggestions? I'm not new to crunch but I am hoping to avoid it this time around.
The thing is we're being handed down our schedule from people who haven't ever touched a 3D app or even know much about art in general. I understand if it's a budget thing or even a release date needing to be hit but perhaps scope of the project should be evaluated at that point.
get your admin/management workflow nailed down beforehand if you can (art workflow should be clear already I hope). avoid internal re-takes. don't review assets when they're done but have constant reviews to ensure people are on track and as little time as possible is wasted when errors are spotted.
Make sure people know what they're supposed to do. Have someone always around who can help people who're stuck. Make sure people know beforehand how to continue once they run out of work. Nothing worse than a guy idling because he doesn't know what to do.
Also make sure that people have "filler" tasks while they wait for other tasks to complete. You really want avoid idle time as much as possible.
Set up responsibilities and who does "small tasks". We had a project once where modelers wouldn't want to skin and animators wouldn't want to edit the geo (because they're not modelers). Imagine the back and forth that happened when we had to insert an edgeloop... you don't want that.
Pass out concise printed checklists and guidelines people can have on their desk to give their assets checks before they deliver them for review - again, avoid time for re-takes, back and forth and ensure some quality standards.
We can all throw anecdotes into the ring, but it would require industry wide studies to truly prove if crunch is the result of bad management most of the time, or rarely. My personal opinion is most of the time, but I only have 11ish game cycles to go on, which isn't very much compared to the number of dev cycles just in the last 3 years. Similarly even the most experienced of us in the thread can't possibly make objective opinions with how few companies we have first hand knowledge of out of the total.
I doubt many of us anti-crunch people would care very much if the overtime was compensated with dollars (since I can't pay my rent with vacation days or shitty pizza). And unlike those "perks" they actually cost the business money, and will thus force them to be more careful with asking for it.
If your business plan can't survive without exploiting your laborers to work for far less than they negotiated in salary, then it's a shitty business plan that doesn't deserve to succeed.
*or was it activision?
My last studio, I was on £15k, had to travel 80 miles a day (1hr30 mins there, 1hr30 mins back from West Yorkshire to Cheshire) and then Crunch comes along,...minimum of 3 extra hours to qualify for a take-out meal (and be grateful for it!) and this is no poor company btw. Not mention breaking british employment law!
ea spouse
and the original blog post: here
old news now but still good to read up on if you haven't
Woah. That is incredibly shady dude.
it doesn't specifically say games industry, but it lists the other portions of the "entertainment" industry in the last exception, and it seems the california courts agreed that games are part of that list.
there is also care in the bill to point out that anybody who basically makes content for digital media - and anybody working in a softwear dependent field who isn't an engineer or programmer does not fall into the exempt category when it comes to over-time pay.
indidentally, anybody making less than 41/hr (in california) is not eligible for the exemption either. that number was written in 2000 or so as well, and is supposed to be adjusted annually, so i've got no idea what it is now...and i'm not sure if it applies to salaried employees, though i immagine it still does. (that's roughly 80.5k/year)
was that the infinity ward case? or was that just bonuses?