How has the corona virus affected your work arrangment?
polycounter
So far in Montreal, it seems likely that most studios are seriously considering remote work for a short period, though this might be extended.
As a freelancer I've always had flexible hours so besides my day job that might also face a bit of a dry spell, its work as usual.
Has the corona virus encouraged your studio to consider a remote work arrangement? Once the madness ends, do you feel that this arrangement should continue if it works out well for everyone?
As a freelancer I've always had flexible hours so besides my day job that might also face a bit of a dry spell, its work as usual.
Has the corona virus encouraged your studio to consider a remote work arrangement? Once the madness ends, do you feel that this arrangement should continue if it works out well for everyone?
Replies
And
No, because working in isolation is a shit way to work as a team.
Moving to remote would be beneficial, though I'm not sure how heavily invested studios are on their budget for the space they are renting, so that is a massive amount to lose.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-03-10-building-ori-and-the-will-of-the-wisps-with-80-people-working-from-home
To be honest I am not thrilled at all at the prospect to work from home for the next couple of weeks - and I used to work freelance. Communication is affected, infrastructure is affected, our office has a far better light solution and desks than what many of us have at home, having your workstation 'invade' your home and having family life instersecting with your work space are also serious issues (not to mention security risks). There are also people who work less efficient without some supervision and disicipline that comes with having a team around you. Overhead is already increasing significantly just to organize it all.
There is also a huge difference sending people home that you know from your day-to-day work to signing on people to work remotely that you barely met in some interview situations.
So I am certain that there won't be a big change. None of these insights are new. There is a certain move to have more and more people working remotely, but this crisis won't make a significant impact on how this develops and definitely won't replace big studios anytime soon IMO.
You can give instruction by email or text based messaging quite effectively but you can't throw ideas around or deal with less tangible concepts like effectively at all.
I just hope the quarantine doesn't take that long
Since we're split across a couple different studio locations and have a a number of remote employees we were already set up for remote work so the transition was relatively easy.
There are some things that I like about working from home but as others have already pointed out, there are a lot of advantages to working together in person that I wouldn't want to lose permanently.
Working from home has some benefits, but is not the ideal dream scenario that many imagine it to be. It takes discipline to maintain focus and not get distracted by household duties. It's isolating and lacks opportunity for spontaneous creativity, jokes and camaraderie. It's especially tough with the malaise of the Coronavirus hanging over everything. People tend to want to be around friends and family during a crisis, which is exactly the wrong thing to do right now.
I just hope governments are backing company's to be making enough breathing respirators to go around because while its great to self isolate at some point we need to be able to move around again which is just going to cause a spike again and then we will have to back in isolation again.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/infection-trajectory-flattening-the-covid19-curve/?fbclid=IwAR1g7Fhj3lWpg_e53gPrUZLUCj2lejsuU6sAAee4pQua-G31n8oDnmUtPos