I've been telling him that forever, but he doesn't seem to want to do anything about it.
Im highly confident that the Bond team wont be doing these kind of hours this year. I haven't personally worked really hard in forever, and neither have alot of people I know. LOTR had a fucked up evil regime. I see changes allready, and exec are clearly worried about the tarnished company rep. As they well should be. I still think the best way to handle this is to simply not do those kind of hours, en masse. Still no word from the inside on this story hitting the papers, but for once, Im actually looking forward to the next company meeting, 'cos Im dying to know what they have to say. Will let you know.
It's interesting to me that most games that feature 'forced' crunches at EA tend to be crappy. Catwoman, 3rd Age, the upcoming Goldeneye2. It's almost like the workforce are subconsciously saying they just dont give a fuck. Personally, I think a better way to say it would be to just not do the hours.
It'll take time, but EA are gonna lose this lawsuit, I just know it. They are clearly classifying artists incorrectly as exempt. So I wonder If they'll end up pushing their studios out of California. Interesting times in the industry thats for sure.
hopefully open statements like those by you, daz and soul won't get you into trouble with the bosses there.
i really can't understand how a company this large believes to get away with treating their only valuable asset, their employees, like that. i could understand if some start-up studio does crunch time on their first project(s) because of lack of experience in project scheduling - but i would have expected a very different handling of these matters from an industry-veteran like EA.
well, another company to put on the "never apply there, no matter how shiny it looks from outside"-list, i guess.
thomasp: or rather, don't apply if you're just starting up as a game artist. sounds like if you join as a lead artist or more of a management type, you will do pretty well...
just wondering, do all the people who order the employees to work weekends and stay until midnight, actually work till midnight and weekends themselves? Or do they go off home after telling everyone else to stay?
I know 100% what crunching for more than a few weeks would do to me. I'd snap. I was pretty close to snapping after a week in the military (where we worked similar hours), when I was dismissed. That's why I don't consider the games industry an option. Hell, the pressure of having voluntarily signed up for an amateur game project already gets me (because I'm afraid of spending my time away from the computer because I feel guilty for not working on the project even though I have almost no time to do so...).
MoP: Generally the managers that ask it tend to do it too yes. I wouldn't really agree with your statement though. The leads and management work just as hard as the noobs and vice versa. I put in way more hours than any of the other character modelers on Everything Or Nothing. Not only was I scheduled with the same amount of work as them, but I had all the various duties that come with being a lead too. Plus I tend to get in at 9.30. I always took work home at weekends and did a bit more then too. Silly when I look back. My insane commitment to that project however, was by choice. Which is a very different thing than being forced to.
My sentiment of not working too hard for a long time, is founded on the fact that I never worked on LOTR. As I said before, the 'regime' is different from team to team. And heck, SouL might freely admit that he's not done an awful lot for a couple of months now Im sure. Doesn't excuse what happened in the past though.
Heh. To balance out all the shit I've written... I will say that there are a lot of times when work can be fun.
On Everything or Nothing, the character team almost always had something to laugh at late at night. Hahahahahaha I'm not going to say what, but DaZ knows!
But that's only cause we all got along well with each other.
LotR late nights were very different. Late nights on LotR were very bitter 'cause I was usually at the other end of someone ranting away during dinner. Haha
Right now... I haven't done a damned thing at work. For the past month all I've been doing is strolling in around noon, popping in a Sex and the City DVD, and leaving at 6.
It's not all shit all the time. There are good times to be had. That mostly comes from the people you work with. Not so much what the company provides.
But that still doesn't mean we have to put up with horrible hours and bad management because we're having a few laughs on the side.
I worked at a major developer that took all this one step further and required the staff to lie on their time sheets, and put in 8 hours regardless of how much we worked.
I was a lil' nervous back then so I complied, but what was much worse than the overtime was the intituionalized fear that SouL mentioned. By far that was my biggest problem.
I agree, the ridiculus pep talks and free liquor doesn't mean a thing. I'll never fall for that again.
Excellent! Getting some serious press... I think the Seattle Times had a big article on it too, today at Thanksgiving a couple people in my family mentioned it.
AHAHAH SOUL, dude, Ea sound just like Ubisoft AHAHAH
WOW, Ya, Its insane, At first I put up with the same shit, then I realise, Woah, theres no way Im going to do thoses late night and weekend, so I didnt. I still was always in time for my deadline, and producing good characters.
But I got bad looks because I wasnt staying late or comming in weekend, Bahhh (and less bonus ya, and bad evaluation too, "Awesome art, but BAD ATTITUDE", because i wasnt staying late.)
Its quiete a poopish industry, I've seen, and I know many at ubi, that stayed sooo late and work weekend, because they think they will loose their job if not.
In ur time sheet, You had to put 8hours everyday, Even tho u were doing mad overtime. That is not only a money problem, bbut when u do this, theres is no way to realy calculate how much time it takes to realy do a project properly.
Of course, i had some good times here and there, great people , a lot of great people.
Bah, I quit earlier this month, tooo much work time , or none at all. Still Good experience , learned a lot, meet a lot of cool people, and saw alot on how the industry is Poopish.
After putting in a lot of crazy hours, I got a great bonus, but if I had to do it over again, I'd have gone home earlier ...
I used to be one of those elitist kiddies who sneered at the older folks who spent more time with their faaaamilies and liiiiives and all that bulllllshit than what really mattered, their art and their careers. Why couldn't everyone be as hardcore as I was?
Years later, I have high blood pressure and can't sleep at night. My chest and head hurt too much of the time and I'm overweight. I'm stressed and frantic yet I still don't get my way or call any shots. Nothing I make belongs to me, and I don't have enough energy left at the end of a long day to make anything that does.
Pooooor me! :P Sorry, I had to list my symptoms for my last paragraph to have a point:
I'm not blaming the companies I've worked for, only myself. I've been lucky, maybe even charmed, to have landed the gigs I've had. But even so, to get through this business intact, I've been thinking lately that the answer is to be merely a good employee, not a superior one. Be reliable and awesome and work hard -- for 8-9 hours a day, five days a week. You'll probably fail to get the trimphal reviews, which in my experience are reserved for the ultra-hardcore, but you'll keep your sanity and your health, and a few extra dollars a year won't save you from that aneurysm ready to pop through your temple. IMO.
The whole bonus thing pisses me off. It's fooled alotta my ubisoft friends into staying the long haul there when they can so 'easily' get better pay (Ubisoft employee's were so horribly underpaid) which would make up for the lost 'bonus'.
Recently completed a project on a tight schedule and I am suppose to receive a rather nice bonus for it. However, as my girlfriend pointed out, once you figure in the late nights and weekends the bonus probably wouldn't cover what I would have got if I was paid overtime instead.
At Black Ops, working on T3, we all got "points" for staying late. You got one point for every fours hours overtime, but it had to four consecutive hours. So you couldn't work two hours one night and two the next to recieve your point. These points were supposed to be turned in for a bonus at the end of the project. The more points you had, the bigger the bonus.
I'm sure you all can guess the end of this story. At the end of the project 80% of the team were laid off and zero bonuses were given out. Unless you get something in your contract, it's just an empty promise.
"Not everyone sympathizes with game industry employees, who sometimes pull down six-figure salaries.
"Go to (McDonald's) or a factory, then back to your air-conditioned offices with free coffee," one responder to last week's blog posting wrote. "
that line pisses me off, i've worked 3 years in a sawmill, 2 in a fast food resturaunt, and 3 in a grocery store, i've worked my way out of it, whoever wrote that must think that game jobs are just handed to the few special lucky people, and that its not really work, nice how it says some of game industry people make 6 figures, i bet some people who work higher up for mcdonalds make that,
Almost everyone I meet whom I tell about my occupation automatically assumes that I "play games all day". No wonder that 'responder to last week's blog posting' seems to assume that our jobs our luxurious and effort-free: everyone else does!
[ QUOTE ] We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year. We have resisted this in the past, not because we dont want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology companies, the kind of employees those companies attract and the kind of compensation packages their employees prefer. We consider our artists to be creative people and our engineers to be skilled professionals who relish flexibility but others use the outdated wage and hour laws to argue in favor of a workforce that is paid hourly like more traditional industries and conforming to set schedules. But we cant wait for the legislative process to catch up so were forced to look at making some changes to exempt and non-exempt classifications beginning in April.
[/ QUOTE ]
Interesting that they consider artists to be "creative" and engineers to be "skilled." I'm hoping they're just ignorant to what putting quotes around a word really means.
Additionally, he's saying that creative and/or skilled people don't want to be paid for overtime? That they'd rather get an occasional bonus or something? Pretty out of touch. And that sounds to me suspiciously like 'If you want overtime, we'll make you hourly employees with set schedules. So take your salary and shut up.'
My first industry job went as far as to not only demand the ridiculous amout of hours be put in, but also hired most of it's artists (including me) as what they called "full time freelance" artists. Basically means we were hired on as consultants, and got no health benefits. On top of that, most of their artists (including me) only got paid around 25k or less.
It was a glorius day when thirteen of the fourteen 3D artists working there at the time (including me) quit (some quit right there on the spot, others gave their one or two weeks notice) on the same day. I've been told that the employees are treated much, much better ever since.
Frank - the "skilled" and "creative" bit is in there because that's how federal (and I would imagine CA State) labor laws are written. You can make pretty crappy wages but be an exempt employee if you are either considered "creative" or "highly skilled".
Pretty funny how he left the quotes in there though... the whole tone of that memo sounds pretty belligerent and defensive, and they steadfastly aren't taking any responsibility for the fact that there are other studios out there whose crunch time doesn't even come CLOSE to what theirs is like
Whats problematic to me about the "creative" label, is that it suggests that artists are these sort of free spirits that have control over their own workload, approval and finalling process and ultimately hours. The reality however, is that they make what they're told to and when. And its finished when someone else says so. So it's a complex issue.
Indeed the tone was unsurprisingly pretty defensive Andy. However, for the phrase "the heart of the matter is a core truth" to be uttered from him is pretty staggering when all we usually here at company meetings is 'number one people company'. Somehow I doubt we'll be hearing that phrase for a while.
[ QUOTE ]
"And all for what? So that you can make a video game? A video game that has a 90% chance of failure, no matter how great your personal contribution. So that some fat kid can sit on his couch all afternoon instead of going outside to play Cowboys and Indians? So that you can walk by a box in the bargain bin and nudge your buddy in the ribs to let him know you created some insignificant piece of artwork buried deep somewhere inside that CD where no-one you know will ever see it? And you yourself will probably never even play the game. After working on it so long and so hard you only hope to forget the experience and move on to the next chapter of your life. And even if your game does become a success, what does that hold for you?
Can you trade in that success for anything worthwhile? The most you can hope for is that the bullet entry on your resume will buy you another job doing the exact same thing, working the same long hours, but for a different company. And round and round game developers go, until they become burnt out and leave the industry, taking all their accumulated talent with them, to be replaced by a new batch of bright eyed and bushy tailed, yet inexperienced developers. It is no wonder there are so many crappy games. It is the same reason there are so many crappy hamburgers at McDonalds. Same business model."
[/ QUOTE ]
Man that quote made me so depressed when I read it at work. I had to actually step away from my computer and go outside to take a drive. I think alot when I drive. This whole thing is getting crazy man. I want to be in the game industry. I want to make games for the rest of my life. I want to be an artist working in greater and greater capacity as my career matures. So far I have been very proud of what I do, and the fact that I can earn a living for me and my small family by doing what I love.
This industry is so young, I know that we who are in the industry now will be the "Stan Winstons" and " Ray Harryhausens" of the next generation. Getting "Life time acheivement" awards and whatnot. But that's the future. Shame on whoever thought up "crunch" why did we all get into this business? The love of games. The thought that we might make something that inspires a child the way we were inspired.We gotta get back to basics man. Remember what's important. Man I feel like Jerry Macguire.
It's up to you If you want to get all depressed by that quote Josh. However, well written and thought provoking though it is, remember: it's also looking at 'working in the bizz' from a very particular ( and pessimistic ) perspective. Sure, the way it's described in that paragraph is one way to look at it. But its the authors view. And just as valid as 'we get paid good money to make Art for videogames'. I went back to London in April at the same time 'Everything Or Nothing' was released. Im walking down Oxford street and a London bus drives past with a massive ad for the game with my artwork all over it. I poked my mate in the ribs and pointed at the bus, not the bargain bin. And said "I made that" with a childish proud grin on my face.
The fact that all this shiat has come out in the last few weeks HAS to be a good thing. Im highly confident that change will come from it all.
On the publicity front, I have more interesting news that I will share with you all early next week so that you can catch it in time.
My wife's parents went out and bought and XBox just to play the game I worked on and see what I did in it. My neighbor's daughters eyes lit up when I said that I worked on video games. She thought it was the coolest thing ever. Stuff like that makes me glad to be in the industry. Even with all the stuff that's going on, it's still a cool place to be.
[ QUOTE ]
On the publicity front, I have more interesting news that I will share with you all early next week so that you can catch it in time.
[/ QUOTE ]
You're pregnant!?!?!!1
Actually, along that line and keeping with the theme of "why it is/isn't cool to be in the industry" ... if you've got a kid going to school, and all their friends are playing the latest game on whatever platform is flavour of the month, your kid will be able to say "hey, my dad/mum made that!" and will quite possibly become very cool very fast.
I reckon, if you're a parent and work on computer games, as long as you're not at work 24/7, you will probably be a cool parent to have for kids of a certain age... way better than "my dad's a lawyer" or whatever, IMHO
The response from Rusty was pointless. Sure he said, "We know we have problems" but the solutions he laid out had nothing to do with the issue at hand. The stuff he said that was currently changing was nothing about over-worked employees and missed compensation. Not one bit. I had PR people for reasons like this, beating around the bush and being uppity to try and distress an issue.
I am really impressed that you folks who have to do the crunch thing can still create game art when you are working more than 8 hours a day and more than 5 days per week.
There are a couple of things that I really love to do but if I were forced to do it so much then I would end up producing crap, hating the work nd hating my life.
I wonder what the results are from EA's "Talk Back Survey".
Daz, has EA done those before and if so what were the results like?
Mop: The advantage of having a kid is not that making games makes you the 'cool dad', by default, you are the 'cool dad' because you are the type of person that still has enough youth and fun in them that you can relate to a kid like a playmate as well as a father.
The real advantage about being a parent in this industry is you have a constant reminder of what is truly worthwhile and what is not and this reinforces the realisation that you are not your job, that when those games are molding away, your kid is still growing into a confident and happy young adult.
This is a subject I have spent serious time considering.
They do the talkback survey ever year ikraan. Its just most years they only have about a 40% of staff actually take the time to do it. This year it was 80.
It rocks having kids, especially being able to be aware of what's going on while it's happening. Although I think any good parents feel the same way, regardless of their occupation... I guess this industry just keeps us a bit more in tune with what childhood is all about.
About that quote, ultimately for me the end result isn't what matters, it's the process that does. If I'm not enjoying it as I go, then that's the sad part. Kind of dovetails back into the parenting thing.
Replies
Really; a lot of us have lived through similar stories, there are better places for you out there.
Im highly confident that the Bond team wont be doing these kind of hours this year. I haven't personally worked really hard in forever, and neither have alot of people I know. LOTR had a fucked up evil regime. I see changes allready, and exec are clearly worried about the tarnished company rep. As they well should be. I still think the best way to handle this is to simply not do those kind of hours, en masse. Still no word from the inside on this story hitting the papers, but for once, Im actually looking forward to the next company meeting, 'cos Im dying to know what they have to say. Will let you know.
It's interesting to me that most games that feature 'forced' crunches at EA tend to be crappy. Catwoman, 3rd Age, the upcoming Goldeneye2. It's almost like the workforce are subconsciously saying they just dont give a fuck. Personally, I think a better way to say it would be to just not do the hours.
It'll take time, but EA are gonna lose this lawsuit, I just know it. They are clearly classifying artists incorrectly as exempt. So I wonder If they'll end up pushing their studios out of California. Interesting times in the industry thats for sure.
Scott
Scott
Oh well, Im just trying for a couple of years for the experience before going off to grad school. Hopefully with a small developer.
i really can't understand how a company this large believes to get away with treating their only valuable asset, their employees, like that. i could understand if some start-up studio does crunch time on their first project(s) because of lack of experience in project scheduling - but i would have expected a very different handling of these matters from an industry-veteran like EA.
well, another company to put on the "never apply there, no matter how shiny it looks from outside"-list, i guess.
just wondering, do all the people who order the employees to work weekends and stay until midnight, actually work till midnight and weekends themselves? Or do they go off home after telling everyone else to stay?
MoP
My sentiment of not working too hard for a long time, is founded on the fact that I never worked on LOTR. As I said before, the 'regime' is different from team to team. And heck, SouL might freely admit that he's not done an awful lot for a couple of months now Im sure. Doesn't excuse what happened in the past though.
On Everything or Nothing, the character team almost always had something to laugh at late at night.
But that's only cause we all got along well with each other.
LotR late nights were very different. Late nights on LotR were very bitter 'cause I was usually at the other end of someone ranting away during dinner. Haha
Right now... I haven't done a damned thing at work. For the past month all I've been doing is strolling in around noon, popping in a Sex and the City DVD, and leaving at 6.
It's not all shit all the time. There are good times to be had. That mostly comes from the people you work with. Not so much what the company provides.
But that still doesn't mean we have to put up with horrible hours and bad management because we're having a few laughs on the side.
The wheel keeps turning
I was a lil' nervous back then so I complied, but what was much worse than the overtime was the intituionalized fear that SouL mentioned. By far that was my biggest problem.
I agree, the ridiculus pep talks and free liquor doesn't mean a thing. I'll never fall for that again.
-R
http://home.comcast.net/~dpattenden/images/FrontPage.jpg
WOW, Ya, Its insane, At first I put up with the same shit, then I realise, Woah, theres no way Im going to do thoses late night and weekend, so I didnt. I still was always in time for my deadline, and producing good characters.
But I got bad looks because I wasnt staying late or comming in weekend, Bahhh (and less bonus ya, and bad evaluation too, "Awesome art, but BAD ATTITUDE", because i wasnt staying late.)
Its quiete a poopish industry, I've seen, and I know many at ubi, that stayed sooo late and work weekend, because they think they will loose their job if not.
In ur time sheet, You had to put 8hours everyday, Even tho u were doing mad overtime. That is not only a money problem, bbut when u do this, theres is no way to realy calculate how much time it takes to realy do a project properly.
Of course, i had some good times here and there, great people , a lot of great people.
Bah, I quit earlier this month, tooo much work time , or none at all. Still Good experience , learned a lot, meet a lot of cool people, and saw alot on how the industry is Poopish.
b1ll
I used to be one of those elitist kiddies who sneered at the older folks who spent more time with their faaaamilies and liiiiives and all that bulllllshit than what really mattered, their art and their careers. Why couldn't everyone be as hardcore as I was?
Years later, I have high blood pressure and can't sleep at night. My chest and head hurt too much of the time and I'm overweight. I'm stressed and frantic yet I still don't get my way or call any shots. Nothing I make belongs to me, and I don't have enough energy left at the end of a long day to make anything that does.
Pooooor me! :P Sorry, I had to list my symptoms for my last paragraph to have a point:
I'm not blaming the companies I've worked for, only myself. I've been lucky, maybe even charmed, to have landed the gigs I've had. But even so, to get through this business intact, I've been thinking lately that the answer is to be merely a good employee, not a superior one. Be reliable and awesome and work hard -- for 8-9 hours a day, five days a week. You'll probably fail to get the trimphal reviews, which in my experience are reserved for the ultra-hardcore, but you'll keep your sanity and your health, and a few extra dollars a year won't save you from that aneurysm ready to pop through your temple. IMO.
Lame!
-R
I'm sure you all can guess the end of this story. At the end of the project 80% of the team were laid off and zero bonuses were given out. Unless you get something in your contract, it's just an empty promise.
"Not everyone sympathizes with game industry employees, who sometimes pull down six-figure salaries.
"Go to (McDonald's) or a factory, then back to your air-conditioned offices with free coffee," one responder to last week's blog posting wrote. "
that line pisses me off, i've worked 3 years in a sawmill, 2 in a fast food resturaunt, and 3 in a grocery store, i've worked my way out of it, whoever wrote that must think that game jobs are just handed to the few special lucky people, and that its not really work, nice how it says some of game industry people make 6 figures, i bet some people who work higher up for mcdonalds make that,
I had a taxi driver once say that all I did was sit on my arse all day.
We are looking at reclassifying some jobs to overtime eligible in the new Fiscal Year. We have resisted this in the past, not because we dont want to pay overtime, but because we believe that the wage and hour laws have not kept pace with the kind of work done at technology companies, the kind of employees those companies attract and the kind of compensation packages their employees prefer. We consider our artists to be creative people and our engineers to be skilled professionals who relish flexibility but others use the outdated wage and hour laws to argue in favor of a workforce that is paid hourly like more traditional industries and conforming to set schedules. But we cant wait for the legislative process to catch up so were forced to look at making some changes to exempt and non-exempt classifications beginning in April.
[/ QUOTE ]
Interesting that they consider artists to be "creative" and engineers to be "skilled." I'm hoping they're just ignorant to what putting quotes around a word really means.
Additionally, he's saying that creative and/or skilled people don't want to be paid for overtime? That they'd rather get an occasional bonus or something? Pretty out of touch. And that sounds to me suspiciously like 'If you want overtime, we'll make you hourly employees with set schedules. So take your salary and shut up.'
Frank the Avenger
It was a glorius day when thirteen of the fourteen 3D artists working there at the time (including me) quit (some quit right there on the spot, others gave their one or two weeks notice) on the same day. I've been told that the employees are treated much, much better ever since.
Sounds like that would have been a satisfying day indeed Ribking!
Pretty funny how he left the quotes in there though... the whole tone of that memo sounds pretty belligerent and defensive, and they steadfastly aren't taking any responsibility for the fact that there are other studios out there whose crunch time doesn't even come CLOSE to what theirs is like
Indeed the tone was unsurprisingly pretty defensive Andy. However, for the phrase "the heart of the matter is a core truth" to be uttered from him is pretty staggering when all we usually here at company meetings is 'number one people company'. Somehow I doubt we'll be hearing that phrase for a while.
"And all for what? So that you can make a video game? A video game that has a 90% chance of failure, no matter how great your personal contribution. So that some fat kid can sit on his couch all afternoon instead of going outside to play Cowboys and Indians? So that you can walk by a box in the bargain bin and nudge your buddy in the ribs to let him know you created some insignificant piece of artwork buried deep somewhere inside that CD where no-one you know will ever see it? And you yourself will probably never even play the game. After working on it so long and so hard you only hope to forget the experience and move on to the next chapter of your life. And even if your game does become a success, what does that hold for you?
Can you trade in that success for anything worthwhile? The most you can hope for is that the bullet entry on your resume will buy you another job doing the exact same thing, working the same long hours, but for a different company. And round and round game developers go, until they become burnt out and leave the industry, taking all their accumulated talent with them, to be replaced by a new batch of bright eyed and bushy tailed, yet inexperienced developers. It is no wonder there are so many crappy games. It is the same reason there are so many crappy hamburgers at McDonalds. Same business model."
[/ QUOTE ]
Man that quote made me so depressed when I read it at work. I had to actually step away from my computer and go outside to take a drive. I think alot when I drive. This whole thing is getting crazy man. I want to be in the game industry. I want to make games for the rest of my life. I want to be an artist working in greater and greater capacity as my career matures. So far I have been very proud of what I do, and the fact that I can earn a living for me and my small family by doing what I love.
This industry is so young, I know that we who are in the industry now will be the "Stan Winstons" and " Ray Harryhausens" of the next generation. Getting "Life time acheivement" awards and whatnot. But that's the future. Shame on whoever thought up "crunch" why did we all get into this business? The love of games. The thought that we might make something that inspires a child the way we were inspired.We gotta get back to basics man. Remember what's important. Man I feel like Jerry Macguire.
The fact that all this shiat has come out in the last few weeks HAS to be a good thing. Im highly confident that change will come from it all.
On the publicity front, I have more interesting news that I will share with you all early next week so that you can catch it in time.
On the publicity front, I have more interesting news that I will share with you all early next week so that you can catch it in time.
[/ QUOTE ]
You're pregnant!?!?!!1
Actually, along that line and keeping with the theme of "why it is/isn't cool to be in the industry" ... if you've got a kid going to school, and all their friends are playing the latest game on whatever platform is flavour of the month, your kid will be able to say "hey, my dad/mum made that!" and will quite possibly become very cool very fast.
I reckon, if you're a parent and work on computer games, as long as you're not at work 24/7, you will probably be a cool parent to have for kids of a certain age... way better than "my dad's a lawyer" or whatever, IMHO
Sigh.
There are a couple of things that I really love to do but if I were forced to do it so much then I would end up producing crap, hating the work nd hating my life.
I wonder what the results are from EA's "Talk Back Survey".
Daz, has EA done those before and if so what were the results like?
Mop: The advantage of having a kid is not that making games makes you the 'cool dad', by default, you are the 'cool dad' because you are the type of person that still has enough youth and fun in them that you can relate to a kid like a playmate as well as a father.
The real advantage about being a parent in this industry is you have a constant reminder of what is truly worthwhile and what is not and this reinforces the realisation that you are not your job, that when those games are molding away, your kid is still growing into a confident and happy young adult.
This is a subject I have spent serious time considering.
Im gonna have a baby! yay!
It rocks having kids, especially being able to be aware of what's going on while it's happening. Although I think any good parents feel the same way, regardless of their occupation... I guess this industry just keeps us a bit more in tune with what childhood is all about.
About that quote, ultimately for me the end result isn't what matters, it's the process that does. If I'm not enjoying it as I go, then that's the sad part. Kind of dovetails back into the parenting thing.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4206253