good point Snacuum. Noted, seriously. Watching closely this stuff, truly concerned, because I care for the people who make Rockstar Games, I spend a lot of time with their work. I air my cynicisms in the hopes to see the whole spectrum, tend to get more info from a controversial view than a passive or aggressive view, either or.
What if we start a Rockstar Relief Fund and help them to Walk Off comfortably? That would be so cool for industry peers and fans to bail out the employees and get them some help with moving, or mounting a case. Just sayin.
This almost never happens. You get to be lead in a company by being a "team player" which is code for not rocking the boat (even when it's unfair). And most leads don't want to jeopardize their salaries or positions to stand up for their underlings.
Thats a gross generalisation. :P
I'm all for rocking the boat, I think as a Lead it's your job to bring up concerns and protect those under you.
Sorry to be crass but fuck worrying about salary.
If people don't know they are skilled enough to get another job, maybe the aren't skilled enough for the one they have.
Being a Lead implies you are a leader, someone who will help navigate through the highs and lows of managing a team and hopefully do it in a way that enables both those under and above you to have most of what they need.
The way I think about it is you have a team of skilled professionals under you who's job it is to finish work tasked of them, nothing else, they are the sharp end of the stick, the most important assets in the company.
As for Leads, we are enablers, we are in charge of managing scope and tasking the work required.
As such the approval of workload is every leads responsibility. If you are not being asked to approve scope as a Lead...you are not a Lead, you are a scapegoat.
When asked to do more than is feasible Leads need to show/explain why if they believe there is a high risk of failure. Lying and saying it will be fine and expecting your staff to do overtime because of your inabilty to man up is a spineless move.
Luckily I have a good Art Lead and Producer who trust their staff. As such we have never once gone over budget or scope. More importantly we hardly ever do over time or crunch.
Leads should 'always' go on the record when they believe there department cannot deliver the scope/deadlines.
Why would you not do it? Especially since you will be the one both parties blame when your staff needs to work weekends for a month...
It is always better to rock the boat and take the heat than sit back and let it slam into an iceberg and be the cause of everyone elses misery...just because you didn't have the stomach to be a decent human being.
I'm all for rocking the boat, I think as a Lead it's your job to bring up concerns and protect those under you.
Sorry to be crass but fuck worrying about salary.
If people don't know they are skilled enough to get another job, maybe the aren't skilled enough for the one they have.
Being a Lead implies you are a leader, someone who will help navigate through the highs and lows of managing a team and hopefully do it in a way that enables both those under and above you to have most of what they need.
The way I think about it is you have a team of skilled professionals under you who's job it is to finish work tasked of them, nothing else, they are the sharp end of the stick, the most important assets in the company.
As for Leads, we are enablers, we are in charge of managing scope and tasking the work required.
As such the approval of workload is every leads responsibility. If you are not being asked to approve scope as a Lead...you are not a Lead, you are a scapegoat.
When asked to do more than is feasible Leads need to show/explain why if they believe there is a high risk of failure. Lying and saying it will be fine and expecting your staff to do overtime because of your inabilty to man up is a spineless move.
Luckily I have a good Art Lead and Producer who trust their staff. As such we have never once gone over budget or scope. More importantly we hardly ever do over time or crunch.
Leads should 'always' go on the record when they believe there department cannot deliver the scope/deadlines.
Why would you not do it? Especially since you will be the one both parties blame when your staff needs to work weekends for a month...
It is always better to rock the boat and take the heat than sit back and let it slam into an iceberg and be the cause of everyone elses misery...just because you didn't have the stomach to be a decent human being.
OXy: I think Mike kind of mispoke there, which i know he corrected in a later interview after those GDC talks. It isn't that we are required to work 60+ hours a week (contractually, it does only state 40), its that we do, and willingly do so because we all love our craft. There are plenty who do their 40 and thats it, but when the shit hits the fan everyone buckles down. It is a full on genuine love for what we're doing that keeps us going, and a pride in what we do that makes us work hard.
Sure, no one likes to crunch. Scheduling has definitely improved so that there aren't traumatic crunches anymore (we rarely go 6 day weeks, its only by choice), and there is a strict "no work later than 2am" policy.
I'm all for rocking the boat, I think as a Lead it's your job to bring up concerns and protect those under you.
You and Mop may be right, but even if it is a gross generalization, the solution to crunches isn't just more leads with backbones. (also good stuff, makes Krome sound like a really nice place to work)
It's going to take a concerted effort of
1) Regulations, with outside the company people you can report abuses to, with hefty fines to penalize abusers. This is what largely seems to keep most 1st world companies from using children for labor anyway. :-) And arguably what seems to keep most EU companies from abusing working hours quite as much as American studios.
2) Unions to put negotiating power for salaries, perks, credits, profit sharing, all the positive value stuff into the hands of the workers. Again with a union rep outside the company you can talk to without fear of repercussions. (it does work like this in Iceland in the game industry, probably a few other countries also, and I saw it used to quite a good effect while at CCP)
3) More workers refusing to be abused. I don't like putting all the responsibility into the individual because situations can easily be stacked against them by life, finances, and the company itself, but more people do need to treat multiple 60+ hour weeks as ridiculous.
4) Never going to happen, but stricter regulations on universities, so that not every single school can offer a game art degree with no industry recognized standard for who should pass or not. One problem is a market completely flooded with students who now owe a large amount of money and need to take a game job to pay it off, who are absolutely unqualified, but have a degree anyway. It gives the appearance to some (managers) of far too many applicants to replace their current ones with.
If we just wait for companies to grow a heart and the long term outlook required to treat low level employees with respect and compensate them fairly, most of us will be waiting a long time. There will always be the few companies that recognize these things, but then there are 50 more that don't because they just don't have to. Sure they will eventually fail financially when they can't hold on to people, their quality and deadlines slip, and the market doesn't buy their products, but in the meantime there are all those employees who've had the quality of life sucked out of those years.
12 hour workdays every day? thats insane. get yourself a decent non-game industry job, with a pay you can live on, and work freelance, on a mod or on a indie game. making games is a lot more fun when its your hobby, instead of when you're forcing yourself to work way past your breaking point.
trying to push yourself over your own physical limit will cause you to do less work, while simultaneously causing you to spend more time working. plus that all-important love for your work withers away, which affects the quality of the work you're doing.
personally, trying to push myself over my limit has only resulted in me just sitting around, staring at the screen, and rotating the model i'm working on for about 2-3 hours, and then search the web for more references.
on the other end, i end up rushing the work, and not putting the love and care neccesary into the details.
only if i'm really burning for something, am i able to really push myself on a 12-14 hour workathlon, AND deliver quality work.
"What if we start a Rockstar Relief Fund and help them to Walk Off comfortably? That would be so cool for industry peers and fans to bail out the employees and get them some help with moving, or mounting a case. Just sayin."
I'm unsure if you're being sarcastic, or strangely serious due to some obtuse change of posting tact.
Muzz, the scheduling problems (in my experience at least) usually come from trying to hit a moving target. Planning 2+ years out is not really possible when you are breaking too much new ground so dates get set and accepted which are simply meaningless. Top level management doesn't know they are meaningless, unfortunately, and want the schedule adhered to. Also, it takes a lot of willpower on the part of management to lock the scope and prevent feature creep (which are schedule killers).
Scheduling at the grunt level is almost never the problem. The grunts and their leads know how long things take, and can plan accordingly, but when higherups make changes and additions, they never appreciate just how much time is involved. Also, very few games are created in such a way that the game is playable early enough in the development cycle that people can realize "Hey, this isn't fun!" soon enough to fix it without a massive hit to the schedule.
What concerns me most is that I'm not sure the industry will ever grow up. The current practices tend to feed on the naive, use them until they demand a better QoL and move to a different industry, then find new suckers to take their places. How many people who place a high importance on QoL will make it through to a management position? How many of them would it take in a company to change the culture to a more sensible, less abusive one? I can't see it happening before I have to hit the old folks home, sadly.
Pearson, yeah i see, i guess i really dont have any idea about large games dev or large companies, as we only have about 30 peeps at where i work.
I guess im just spoiled getting to work on small scope games, with a studio that treats its workers awesomly.
I mean hell we take a day off every fortnight from normal work to break off into small teams to develop small experimental games that are there just for morale and to generate ideas...
I have heard from a few people who worked at high profile studios that these types of mega crunches are common place.
Then again I have heard from people in software jobs in general that this is common practice when close to the release of a big project. Especially common when dealing with government contracts or health care. Not really surprised as for most of my childhood my mom would work 10+ hour days most of the year in the software field so I guess its something I dont find shocking or will be to big of a problem when crunch time hits.
One trick that can help even at the art grunt level : is to always ask for deadlines, even for the 'oh it doesnt matter how long it takes' stuff.
If your superior is not good at scheduling and tend to not give precise milestone projections, it will force him to become better at it. If you are told, ooh just spend whatever time you want, write down that time on a piece of paper, have your manager/superior agree to it and stick it on your monitor.
Even if you don't work slower or faster than others, it will create the (well deserved) impression that you've always been meetiing your deadlines throughout the project.
If everybody was doing something similar, then art crunch would be less likely to happen (I think) because it would create a feeling of everybody constantly meeting their deadlines ; hence crunch would logically seem inappropriate to ask.
I think not much can be done about crunch at the art grunt level ; but at least if the lead is weak at scheduling, even art grunts can help him get better if they actively ask for short deadlines to be agrred upon all the time. I think the more silent one is, the more likely one is to be fucked in the back.
Also if someone asks you for an extra side task (oh can you do a few UI elements for me?), always answer, "Oh right well lets go check my lead and the AD to see how this fits inside my schedule". The request will magically vanish. Little details like that, if followed by most of the art team, create an atmosphere of professionalism, meaning that such an art team is less likely to be happy with staying late just for free pizza as a compensation.
Pior, that's not sneaky at all, that's just sensible.
Never take on extra work no matter how small it might seem without getting it put into some sort of schedule with a reasonable deadline. Otherwise stuff will just stack up and you'll have no excuses when you miss a deadline.
You and Mop may be right, but even if it is a gross generalization, the solution to crunches isn't just more leads with backbones.
A bit simplified and naive sounding I know but really its all just about communication, honesty and trust in the end.
If the same attitude exists in every level of management then there is no excuse for the crap that we read about with EA and Rockstar Spouses.
Preferably it should come from the top of course, it's so much harder to change culture if the owner doesn't see a need.
If we just wait for companies to grow a heart and the long term outlook required to treat low level employees with respect and compensate them fairly, most of us will be waiting a long time. There will always be the few companies that recognize these things, but then there are 50 more that don't because they just don't have to. Sure they will eventually fail financially when they can't hold on to people, their quality and deadlines slip, and the market doesn't buy their products, but in the meantime there are all those employees who've had the quality of life sucked out of those years.
I think any drastic reform to the industry would need to happen globally or you'll just see a tonne of studios moving to where they can screw with staff.
Hell, this happens in so many industries now. Regulations come in to enforce positive change in an industry and many companies move major work off to Africa, India and China and bleed the locals there dry.
Do you think that sticking up for yourself is a hindrance to getting a junior role in the first place? What I mean is even though you can do the work, some companies might look for the person who will do 80 hours and not get paid for overtime, etc. Maybe people are looking for robots? I get the feeling sometimes, that companies will overlook the older guy because the younger crowd are fresh straight out of uni. and will do whatever. Is there any truth in this?
Wow, I thought this type of stuff was in the past after the whole EA ordeal. And reading about 1 employee that has suicidal tendencies is pretty disturbing. Hopefully things get better before they get worse.
As for this case with Rockstar, "the proof will be in the pudding" as far as upper management is concerned. Will Red Dead Redemption turn a tidy profit, be mediocre, or fail miserably?
In the event of success they will probably do nothing and continue on with business as usual.
The big question is what will the upper management do if it fails? Will they just blame their employees and/or middle managers? or will they take a real deep hard look at their broken labor and scheduling practices.
At least to me Red Dead Redemption is looking like a pretty nice game, so it might prove to be commercially successful.
If anyone at Rockstar SD reads this, I hope you all get some good changes out of everything you've gone through.
Muzz: Yes, the Agile system is great. The art team at Mythic was transitioning over to it and while it was a bit rocky at first we really started hitting our stride. Seems like alot of the studios I've talked to have begun using the Agile system for their art teams as well.
I disagree with the overall theme of the article (we use a heavily modified version of Scrum) but if you read it you will see that what he's actually demonstrating is "inflexible production methods suck for games development".
Obviously if you implement Scrum or any sort of agile development method, as with any workflow, you have to be prepared to tweak it in order to optimise it. Lots of people seem to have bad experiences with Scrum because it's implemented badly (ie. in the case of this blog, everyone trying to follow all the rules to the letter even if they don't make sense).
As for this case with Rockstar, "the proof will be in the pudding" as far as upper management is concerned. Will Red Dead Redemption turn a tidy profit, be mediocre, or fail miserably?
this is a dangerous connection to make. So if Red Dead Redemption is a roaring success, then the management can pat themselves on the back and say 'lets do it again' ?
edit: maybe I misread you there: are you saying that's how the upper management will view things?
One trick that can help even at the art grunt level : is to always ask for deadlines, even for the 'oh it doesnt matter how long it takes' stuff.
If your superior is not good at scheduling and tend to not give precise milestone projections, it will force him to become better at it. If you are told, ooh just spend whatever time you want, write down that time on a piece of paper, have your manager/superior agree to it and stick it on your monitor.
Even if you don't work slower or faster than others, it will create the (well deserved) impression that you've always been meetiing your deadlines throughout the project.
If everybody was doing something similar, then art crunch would be less likely to happen (I think) because it would create a feeling of everybody constantly meeting their deadlines ; hence crunch would logically seem inappropriate to ask.
I think not much can be done about crunch at the art grunt level ; but at least if the lead is weak at scheduling, even art grunts can help him get better if they actively ask for short deadlines to be agrred upon all the time. I think the more silent one is, the more likely one is to be fucked in the back.
Also if someone asks you for an extra side task (oh can you do a few UI elements for me?), always answer, "Oh right well lets go check my lead and the AD to see how this fits inside my schedule". The request will magically vanish. Little details like that, if followed by most of the art team, create an atmosphere of professionalism, meaning that such an art team is less likely to be happy with staying late just for free pizza as a compensation.
Sneaky but it helps.
Not sneaky at all, simply sane and professional.
I've been in situations where i am expected to crunch, just because other facets of development (code, level design) are behind. The sort of "well everyone else is doing it" mentality, even when consistently meeting my own deadlines. Making sure you have well defined deadlines for everything you do, and not taking on random extra tasks on a whim is very important to avoiding getting locked into a situation like this where you can't really say you've been pulling your weight.
Hey Earthquake, speaking of that situation when you've been asked to do it even if you did meet your deadlines before.
Did you do it all? Or maybe came to the office, worked 8 hours on semi project-related things then 4 hours of personal work/netflix? Just curious to know how you handled the situation.
I remember the main God Of War character concept artist mentioning these weird times when code and gameart goes crunch for a build deadline, but the concept guys were keeping kinda low profile at the time because well they had no crunch to do simply because of the very nature of their work.
Im curious. how does everyone feel about helping others out with their work?
i havent worked in this industry yet, but from past jobs i have mixed feelings. I am all for helping others out if they need it. if they were just given to much work to begin with, or if i have time to spare and can help them out without jepordizing my work as well. Im all for it. Now, if i have to help someone because they dick around for half the day and just dont do their jobs, it bugs me to no end. I haaate bad work ethic. I tend to still help them, especially if someone higher up tells me to, but im not too happy about it if im doing their job cause they arent.
Even if they are friendly and good guys, always make the extra work request go through the person you report to. Simple! Now if there is something you think you can do to help even before they ask, thats a slightly different story. I would say if takes more than an hour, get it scheduled anyways.
I just finished crunch at work , and I gotta say it was not as bad as I thought it would be, Mainly due to the fact my leads always looked out for us.
Whenever we worked long hours 12+ shifts they would give us an option to either come in late or have the day off. That kind of treatment from our leads really helped mold the team into a family so whenever they needed people to come into work to do crunch everyone would volunteer because we knew that we were appreciated and looked after.
Seeing as this was my first industry Job I expected the crunch to be very stressful, but that didn't end up being the case. Crunch can suck but if you have Leads/Managers that genuinely care about there employees crunch can be a cake walk.
That's the way I would like to see crunch handled... when the upper management appreciates the hard work people put into their job and also knows that one can only do so many hours before rendered useless... so coming in late or having a certain day off sounds quite nice.
And as you said AE... when you and team feel appreciated, people are more willing to help more I think, as well as care more about the project and the team.
Do you think that sticking up for yourself is a hindrance to getting a junior role in the first place? What I mean is even though you can do the work, some companies might look for the person who will do 80 hours and not get paid for overtime, etc. Maybe people are looking for robots? I get the feeling sometimes, that companies will overlook the older guy because the younger crowd are fresh straight out of uni. and will do whatever. Is there any truth in this?
I cant find the article, but I believe it was in game developers magazine. EA? rep was quoted about being less willing to hire anyone over 30 because these people would have more outside activities like families and less willing to overtime.
In fact, its somewhat an aside, but that Masters of Interactive Media program that EA back in So-cal? Forget which university. I was in contact at one point with one of their students. He basically said the same thing about their program. The people whom choose who would attend were seeking people under 30.
Funnily enough, Fine Art Master degrees want or used to want older students whom had real world experiences. Oh, how the world has changed.
this is a dangerous connection to make. So if Red Dead Redemption is a roaring success, then the management can pat themselves on the back and say 'lets do it again' ?
edit: maybe I misread you there: are you saying that's how the upper management will view things?
Yeah, sadly I think that's exactly the connection the upper management will make. After all aren't they only concerned with the game making a huge profit? That's not to say profit is a bad thing, this is a business after all it needs profit from sales to operate and be successful, but If they were truly concerned about their employees health and welfare this situation probably wouldn't have come up in the first place.
I'm totally torn here, on the one hand I would like to see Red Dead Redemption turn out to be a awesome success. Maybe then those that put in all those long hours will get some compensation and the satisfaction of having put out a great game. But on the other hand if it does really well will the upper management really take their employee's complaints about quality of life issues seriously?
Admittedly I'm just a low level art grunt (unemployed atm too) so I have no idea what goes on in the mind of a company executive. I'm just trying to figure out how this all happened and what it would take for some improvements to occur at Rockstar.
It's really disheartening to read stories like this one. Like others here I had thought that many studios were on the right path to treating their workers fairly.
EDIT:
I'm by no means saying that the employees of Rockstar should attempt to tank their own game on purpose, that would just be horribly negative and lead to an even worse situation.
EarthQuake, my favorite is when your whole department has to twiddle their thumbs because another department is missing their deadlines. You have nothing to do, but you know crunch time is coming because you can't do your work until concept or design get done with their stuff. And even though your scheduled start date gets pushed back, the due date never does.
Slipsius, as long as your lead (or whomever reviews you) gives the OK for you to take on extra work for somebody, I say go for it. Be sure to mention during your review just how often you were finished early and helped out the rest of the team. If your coworker just wants you to help under the table, you could choose to do it or not, but never at the risk of missing your own schedule.
Yeah, sadly I think that's exactly the connection the upper management will make. After all aren't they only concerned with the game making a huge profit? That's not to say profit is a bad thing, this is a business after all it needs profit from sales to operate and be successful, but If they were truly concerned about their employees health and welfare this situation probably wouldn't have come up in the first place.
I'm totally torn here, on the one hand I would like to see Red Dead Redemption turn out to be a awesome success. Maybe then those that put in all those long hours will get some compensation and the satisfaction of having put out a great game. But on the other hand if it does really well will the upper management really take their employee's complaints about quality of life issues seriously?
Admittedly I'm just a low level art grunt (unemployed atm too) so I have no idea what goes on in the mind of a company executive. I'm just trying to figure out how this all happened and what it would take for some improvements to occur at Rockstar.
It's really disheartening to read stories like this one. Like others here I had thought that many studios were on the right path to treating thier workers fairly.
No matter how lame upper management may be I would still like to see all the hard work these men and women put into making the game come to profit. If not it could spell doom for the company meaning people could lose their jobs. Which may be good for some that way they have the ability to find a place they can be happy...but with the economy and current state of the industry...some people have families, you know? Plus I'm from San Diego and I'd hate to see another San Diego company go under. -__-
Yes there is that to consider as well. I also would hate to see another company go down. They DO need to make a profit to stay in business, that's what the executive's job seems to be all about, keeping the company afloat and making money to fund future projects. The trouble here seems to be that there is no balance between profit and the well being of their employees.
EDIT:
Who knows it could possibly be that the Rockstar is in bad shape and just really needs this game to ship by April. Maybe it's a all or nothing situation. It could be that's why the hard decision was made to make their employees work so hard, either that or go out of business. Hopefully this is not the way it is.
I know this thread has traversed itself enormously on the responses to the topic since being started.
Though what I can say aside from how illegal, and incompetent the management of production plays on behalf of how these situations play out.
I have a very good friend who works for one of the R* studios. From everything I hear from him is that... R* games in general has a poor set of proprietary tools that are made for their engine. Which more than half of the time are broken, or don't work properly. In the end, I am sure on behalf of every R* employee out there working. Will agree that they would rather settle for something much more simple and feedback effective such as the Cryengine or Unreal tech. Compared to what they currently use today, which takes years to iron out smoothly.
Personally, even if last minute changes come about, which they always will in some way/shape/form. I think it's about time the industry stops making/settling for tool technologies that aren't "down syndrome proof" for an artist/designer to pick up and get on the road with. Because so far from what Crytek & Epic games have done. In terms of leveling out the technical details for someone to just go to town with designing and integrating assets, ect. into their game engine.
It really has made a difference today, and knowing that everyday the games industry is competing with film for the visual comparison of "catchup". It's just a question to myself as to why in the hell someone who has millions of dollars to spend. Wouldn't spend it more intelligently for the resources that would save them money, and probably ship games more frequently.:poly142:
Perhaps it should be them who explain to our children and loved ones the absence of their increasingly frustrated fathers.
Do they not employ the womens?
I was with it until I saw it signed by the "...Wives of Rockstar San Diego employees". Although it's apparent that this was written by an employee, something is taken away from the message when you pretend that it's your wife complaining, and not you.
Anyhow, shitty circumstances indeed. We've all put in our fair share of crunch time, and hopefully most were well compensated for it. I feel for any of you in this situation.
Watching it so much on the web, I wrote about this again on my site to wrap it up and flip the script around to the other direction, I'm convinced. A contrast in opinion never sways the scorned. This is more than a case of to each his own responsibility to quality of life.
All of you guys talking about bad experiences and look at the gamasutra posting now, it's pretty scary to think that some of the funnest games I've ever made have very sad people behind them today.
I hope everything goes well, for everyone involved. Even in the face of writing it off 'hey, it's not me' the message rings strong from even other people unrelated to rockstar at all - that says something.
There is still the option of cutting off the brick and mortar of course.
And did anyone put any thought into my suggestion of a relief fund raising? What if from now on this happens and we raise relief - not for the employee to quit and go somewhere new, oh no, but to cover the modest signing bonus of replacement management with someone who can better budget the time of their team without ripping them apart when they don't meet promises they didn't make in the first place :poly142:
As a company, the more times you circle the block the easier it is to guess how long each trip takes.
If you make your employees miserable they will make miserable games.
It's one of the reasons I've stayed where I'm at.
- Stable employment with above average pay.
- A company that values its employees.
- If it ever came to a raise freeze, it would be company wide from the highest levels to lowest.
- Bonuses are based on company performance and is shared company wide.
- A reasonable schedule.
- Everyone here works hard and knows their job. No one jacks around and then cries "I need more time".
- Everyone goes out of their way for everyone else and office politics are next to non-existent.
For me its not always about what titles are attached to your name but how you're treated. I think too many of us have horror stories because we where drawn in by the titles and failed to interview them when we where being interviewed. We live, we learn then we get wiser and EA won't hire us heh. It seems to be working out so well for them...
I cant find the article, but I believe it was in game developers magazine. EA? rep was quoted about being less willing to hire anyone over 30 because these people would have more outside activities like families and less willing to overtime.
.
I cant beleive that they would be so openly age-ist. Would they also not hire women because they are worried about them having periods and missing work and would they prefer to hire certain races over other because they believe that they are harder working... Its speaks volumes that a rep would even feel comfortable enough to speak openly like that.
Hey Earthquake, speaking of that situation when you've been asked to do it even if you did meet your deadlines before.
Did you do it all? Or maybe came to the office, worked 8 hours on semi project-related things then 4 hours of personal work/netflix? Just curious to know how you handled the situation.
I remember the main God Of War character concept artist mentioning these weird times when code and gameart goes crunch for a build deadline, but the concept guys were keeping kinda low profile at the time because well they had no crunch to do simply because of the very nature of their work.
In this instanced i refused to do it. I asked for an updated schedule and told them i would find a way to get it done on time, but i would not arbitrarily spend more time at the office just because the rest of the cool kids were doing it. Of course there was nothing specific for me to actually do, so i never got an updated schedule. I dont remember exactly how it turned out, i think i just ended up staying in a little later than usual out if pity for the other guys, but none of the crazy 12 hour days stuff. In my situation i knew there was very little chance i would be fired, so its not an option for everyone.
Rockstar has been doing this for years. Before any recession, although I'm sure it doesn't help. They did it in Vancouver too. I left and watched from the outside as a lot of my friends got depressed and physically ill. It's like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome. If they ever fail to make popular games they'll collapse in an instant.
I don't have the time to read the entire thread, so my post goes back to the first few pages.
it's quite sad to see the games industry trench fighters facing the same issues as tv animators. I can relate to you guys doing stupid hours in 'crunch time' we had similar stuff in a production. There were so many ridiculous things that would come down from management, and if you had a problem with it, you'd get the same threat "There's 20 other guys just waiting outside to get in if you don't want the job."
How can one enjoy life living like that? It's absolute insanity. Historically the talk of unions in animation usually resulted in entire productions being shipped off overseas and then everyone on staff laid off... or in animation's wonderful underhanded way, not renewing artist's contracts next time around.
While working for an animation studio, I was told to come in on weekends because our department was behind, even when we had no work to do because the department before us was behind because they were understaffed. So we lost 3 or 4 weekends just sitting there probably doing about 10 hours work total that could've been done on the monday following.
Right now, i guess games has one leg up on animation in that games artists aren't yet paid by the asset... in animation we were paid by the frame, not including revisions, so imagine having a scene sent back for multiple revisions because the storyboard artist fucked up and the director can't make up his mind, you get paid once for it.
Great article, Jacque - thanks for posting. I really like the 48 minutes of flow concept they mentioned. Think I'll try this and see how effective it is.
I mean what are people really worried about with a union?
Paying for the union. That's what worries me.
People, please give quite a bit more thought to what unions actually are before throwing the "if we were just unionized, then this wouldn't be an issue"
Unions are only as strong as the commitment their members have. You'll never see that level of commitment form everyone already in, much less people looking to get into the industry.
$116/ year is a pittance that gets made up if you work approx. 3 extra/background
jobs per year (there is about a 36% rate difference for union vs. non-union for this
specific type of work -- i.e., extra/background roles)
as for the 1-time $2277, you don't pay it till you land a speaking part, and only if
you're serious about acting as your career...so call it a 'barrier to entry' if you will,
but a necessary one to weed out those that choose it as a profession.
The union laws also create a number of other standardizations that frankly do not
happen for those not in the union...things that do not happen for the same actor
on the same job that is non-union.
If this were the case for game artists, I'd jump at paying (and getting a guarantee)
for oversight against worker-abuse via 'crunch' caused by mismanagement.
People, please give quite a bit more thought to what unions actually are before throwing the "if we were just unionized, then this wouldn't be an issue"
I'd gladly pay that amount. If there were unions in place every single person in the game industry that works in low level positions would be making at least that 2,277 more, and most likely a lot more. Games make a ton of money, and only a very small fraction ends up back in the pockets of the actual developers.
I don't know a single SAG member that would complain about the fees, and I know a ton of SAG members from when I lived in LA.
Replies
What if we start a Rockstar Relief Fund and help them to Walk Off comfortably? That would be so cool for industry peers and fans to bail out the employees and get them some help with moving, or mounting a case. Just sayin.
Thats a gross generalisation. :P
I'm all for rocking the boat, I think as a Lead it's your job to bring up concerns and protect those under you.
Sorry to be crass but fuck worrying about salary.
If people don't know they are skilled enough to get another job, maybe the aren't skilled enough for the one they have.
Being a Lead implies you are a leader, someone who will help navigate through the highs and lows of managing a team and hopefully do it in a way that enables both those under and above you to have most of what they need.
The way I think about it is you have a team of skilled professionals under you who's job it is to finish work tasked of them, nothing else, they are the sharp end of the stick, the most important assets in the company.
As for Leads, we are enablers, we are in charge of managing scope and tasking the work required.
As such the approval of workload is every leads responsibility. If you are not being asked to approve scope as a Lead...you are not a Lead, you are a scapegoat.
When asked to do more than is feasible Leads need to show/explain why if they believe there is a high risk of failure. Lying and saying it will be fine and expecting your staff to do overtime because of your inabilty to man up is a spineless move.
Luckily I have a good Art Lead and Producer who trust their staff. As such we have never once gone over budget or scope. More importantly we hardly ever do over time or crunch.
Leads should 'always' go on the record when they believe there department cannot deliver the scope/deadlines.
Why would you not do it? Especially since you will be the one both parties blame when your staff needs to work weekends for a month...
It is always better to rock the boat and take the heat than sit back and let it slam into an iceberg and be the cause of everyone elses misery...just because you didn't have the stomach to be a decent human being.
Damn man what is all this sense your talking ?!?!
Makes me want to work at Krome!
Sure, no one likes to crunch. Scheduling has definitely improved so that there aren't traumatic crunches anymore (we rarely go 6 day weeks, its only by choice), and there is a strict "no work later than 2am" policy.
You and Mop may be right, but even if it is a gross generalization, the solution to crunches isn't just more leads with backbones. (also good stuff, makes Krome sound like a really nice place to work)
It's going to take a concerted effort of
1) Regulations, with outside the company people you can report abuses to, with hefty fines to penalize abusers. This is what largely seems to keep most 1st world companies from using children for labor anyway. :-) And arguably what seems to keep most EU companies from abusing working hours quite as much as American studios.
2) Unions to put negotiating power for salaries, perks, credits, profit sharing, all the positive value stuff into the hands of the workers. Again with a union rep outside the company you can talk to without fear of repercussions. (it does work like this in Iceland in the game industry, probably a few other countries also, and I saw it used to quite a good effect while at CCP)
3) More workers refusing to be abused. I don't like putting all the responsibility into the individual because situations can easily be stacked against them by life, finances, and the company itself, but more people do need to treat multiple 60+ hour weeks as ridiculous.
4) Never going to happen, but stricter regulations on universities, so that not every single school can offer a game art degree with no industry recognized standard for who should pass or not. One problem is a market completely flooded with students who now owe a large amount of money and need to take a game job to pay it off, who are absolutely unqualified, but have a degree anyway. It gives the appearance to some (managers) of far too many applicants to replace their current ones with.
If we just wait for companies to grow a heart and the long term outlook required to treat low level employees with respect and compensate them fairly, most of us will be waiting a long time. There will always be the few companies that recognize these things, but then there are 50 more that don't because they just don't have to. Sure they will eventually fail financially when they can't hold on to people, their quality and deadlines slip, and the market doesn't buy their products, but in the meantime there are all those employees who've had the quality of life sucked out of those years.
trying to push yourself over your own physical limit will cause you to do less work, while simultaneously causing you to spend more time working. plus that all-important love for your work withers away, which affects the quality of the work you're doing.
personally, trying to push myself over my limit has only resulted in me just sitting around, staring at the screen, and rotating the model i'm working on for about 2-3 hours, and then search the web for more references.
on the other end, i end up rushing the work, and not putting the love and care neccesary into the details.
only if i'm really burning for something, am i able to really push myself on a 12-14 hour workathlon, AND deliver quality work.
I'm unsure if you're being sarcastic, or strangely serious due to some obtuse change of posting tact.
Scheduling at the grunt level is almost never the problem. The grunts and their leads know how long things take, and can plan accordingly, but when higherups make changes and additions, they never appreciate just how much time is involved. Also, very few games are created in such a way that the game is playable early enough in the development cycle that people can realize "Hey, this isn't fun!" soon enough to fix it without a massive hit to the schedule.
What concerns me most is that I'm not sure the industry will ever grow up. The current practices tend to feed on the naive, use them until they demand a better QoL and move to a different industry, then find new suckers to take their places. How many people who place a high importance on QoL will make it through to a management position? How many of them would it take in a company to change the culture to a more sensible, less abusive one? I can't see it happening before I have to hit the old folks home, sadly.
I guess im just spoiled getting to work on small scope games, with a studio that treats its workers awesomly.
I mean hell we take a day off every fortnight from normal work to break off into small teams to develop small experimental games that are there just for morale and to generate ideas...
Then again I have heard from people in software jobs in general that this is common practice when close to the release of a big project. Especially common when dealing with government contracts or health care. Not really surprised as for most of my childhood my mom would work 10+ hour days most of the year in the software field so I guess its something I dont find shocking or will be to big of a problem when crunch time hits.
If your superior is not good at scheduling and tend to not give precise milestone projections, it will force him to become better at it. If you are told, ooh just spend whatever time you want, write down that time on a piece of paper, have your manager/superior agree to it and stick it on your monitor.
Even if you don't work slower or faster than others, it will create the (well deserved) impression that you've always been meetiing your deadlines throughout the project.
If everybody was doing something similar, then art crunch would be less likely to happen (I think) because it would create a feeling of everybody constantly meeting their deadlines ; hence crunch would logically seem inappropriate to ask.
I think not much can be done about crunch at the art grunt level ; but at least if the lead is weak at scheduling, even art grunts can help him get better if they actively ask for short deadlines to be agrred upon all the time. I think the more silent one is, the more likely one is to be fucked in the back.
Also if someone asks you for an extra side task (oh can you do a few UI elements for me?), always answer, "Oh right well lets go check my lead and the AD to see how this fits inside my schedule". The request will magically vanish. Little details like that, if followed by most of the art team, create an atmosphere of professionalism, meaning that such an art team is less likely to be happy with staying late just for free pizza as a compensation.
Sneaky but it helps.
Never take on extra work no matter how small it might seem without getting it put into some sort of schedule with a reasonable deadline. Otherwise stuff will just stack up and you'll have no excuses when you miss a deadline.
A bit simplified and naive sounding I know but really its all just about communication, honesty and trust in the end.
If the same attitude exists in every level of management then there is no excuse for the crap that we read about with EA and Rockstar Spouses.
Preferably it should come from the top of course, it's so much harder to change culture if the owner doesn't see a need.
I think any drastic reform to the industry would need to happen globally or you'll just see a tonne of studios moving to where they can screw with staff.
Hell, this happens in so many industries now. Regulations come in to enforce positive change in an industry and many companies move major work off to Africa, India and China and bleed the locals there dry.
In the event of success they will probably do nothing and continue on with business as usual.
The big question is what will the upper management do if it fails? Will they just blame their employees and/or middle managers? or will they take a real deep hard look at their broken labor and scheduling practices.
At least to me Red Dead Redemption is looking like a pretty nice game, so it might prove to be commercially successful.
If anyone at Rockstar SD reads this, I hope you all get some good changes out of everything you've gone through.
I disagree with the overall theme of the article (we use a heavily modified version of Scrum) but if you read it you will see that what he's actually demonstrating is "inflexible production methods suck for games development".
Obviously if you implement Scrum or any sort of agile development method, as with any workflow, you have to be prepared to tweak it in order to optimise it. Lots of people seem to have bad experiences with Scrum because it's implemented badly (ie. in the case of this blog, everyone trying to follow all the rules to the letter even if they don't make sense).
But that's a bit off-topic
this is a dangerous connection to make. So if Red Dead Redemption is a roaring success, then the management can pat themselves on the back and say 'lets do it again' ?
edit: maybe I misread you there: are you saying that's how the upper management will view things?
Not sneaky at all, simply sane and professional.
I've been in situations where i am expected to crunch, just because other facets of development (code, level design) are behind. The sort of "well everyone else is doing it" mentality, even when consistently meeting my own deadlines. Making sure you have well defined deadlines for everything you do, and not taking on random extra tasks on a whim is very important to avoiding getting locked into a situation like this where you can't really say you've been pulling your weight.
Did you do it all? Or maybe came to the office, worked 8 hours on semi project-related things then 4 hours of personal work/netflix? Just curious to know how you handled the situation.
I remember the main God Of War character concept artist mentioning these weird times when code and gameart goes crunch for a build deadline, but the concept guys were keeping kinda low profile at the time because well they had no crunch to do simply because of the very nature of their work.
i havent worked in this industry yet, but from past jobs i have mixed feelings. I am all for helping others out if they need it. if they were just given to much work to begin with, or if i have time to spare and can help them out without jepordizing my work as well. Im all for it. Now, if i have to help someone because they dick around for half the day and just dont do their jobs, it bugs me to no end. I haaate bad work ethic. I tend to still help them, especially if someone higher up tells me to, but im not too happy about it if im doing their job cause they arent.
what about everyone else?
Whenever we worked long hours 12+ shifts they would give us an option to either come in late or have the day off. That kind of treatment from our leads really helped mold the team into a family so whenever they needed people to come into work to do crunch everyone would volunteer because we knew that we were appreciated and looked after.
Seeing as this was my first industry Job I expected the crunch to be very stressful, but that didn't end up being the case. Crunch can suck but if you have Leads/Managers that genuinely care about there employees crunch can be a cake walk.
And as you said AE... when you and team feel appreciated, people are more willing to help more I think, as well as care more about the project and the team.
I'm glad it went well AE, congrats buddy!
I cant find the article, but I believe it was in game developers magazine. EA? rep was quoted about being less willing to hire anyone over 30 because these people would have more outside activities like families and less willing to overtime.
In fact, its somewhat an aside, but that Masters of Interactive Media program that EA back in So-cal? Forget which university. I was in contact at one point with one of their students. He basically said the same thing about their program. The people whom choose who would attend were seeking people under 30.
Funnily enough, Fine Art Master degrees want or used to want older students whom had real world experiences. Oh, how the world has changed.
http://journeyguy.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/dilbert2006040261702.jpg
Yeah, sadly I think that's exactly the connection the upper management will make. After all aren't they only concerned with the game making a huge profit? That's not to say profit is a bad thing, this is a business after all it needs profit from sales to operate and be successful, but If they were truly concerned about their employees health and welfare this situation probably wouldn't have come up in the first place.
I'm totally torn here, on the one hand I would like to see Red Dead Redemption turn out to be a awesome success. Maybe then those that put in all those long hours will get some compensation and the satisfaction of having put out a great game. But on the other hand if it does really well will the upper management really take their employee's complaints about quality of life issues seriously?
Admittedly I'm just a low level art grunt (unemployed atm too) so I have no idea what goes on in the mind of a company executive. I'm just trying to figure out how this all happened and what it would take for some improvements to occur at Rockstar.
It's really disheartening to read stories like this one. Like others here I had thought that many studios were on the right path to treating their workers fairly.
EDIT:
I'm by no means saying that the employees of Rockstar should attempt to tank their own game on purpose, that would just be horribly negative and lead to an even worse situation.
Slipsius, as long as your lead (or whomever reviews you) gives the OK for you to take on extra work for somebody, I say go for it. Be sure to mention during your review just how often you were finished early and helped out the rest of the team. If your coworker just wants you to help under the table, you could choose to do it or not, but never at the risk of missing your own schedule.
No matter how lame upper management may be I would still like to see all the hard work these men and women put into making the game come to profit. If not it could spell doom for the company meaning people could lose their jobs. Which may be good for some that way they have the ability to find a place they can be happy...but with the economy and current state of the industry...some people have families, you know? Plus I'm from San Diego and I'd hate to see another San Diego company go under. -__-
EDIT:
Who knows it could possibly be that the Rockstar is in bad shape and just really needs this game to ship by April. Maybe it's a all or nothing situation. It could be that's why the hard decision was made to make their employees work so hard, either that or go out of business. Hopefully this is not the way it is.
Though what I can say aside from how illegal, and incompetent the management of production plays on behalf of how these situations play out.
I have a very good friend who works for one of the R* studios. From everything I hear from him is that... R* games in general has a poor set of proprietary tools that are made for their engine. Which more than half of the time are broken, or don't work properly. In the end, I am sure on behalf of every R* employee out there working. Will agree that they would rather settle for something much more simple and feedback effective such as the Cryengine or Unreal tech. Compared to what they currently use today, which takes years to iron out smoothly.
Personally, even if last minute changes come about, which they always will in some way/shape/form. I think it's about time the industry stops making/settling for tool technologies that aren't "down syndrome proof" for an artist/designer to pick up and get on the road with. Because so far from what Crytek & Epic games have done. In terms of leveling out the technical details for someone to just go to town with designing and integrating assets, ect. into their game engine.
It really has made a difference today, and knowing that everyday the games industry is competing with film for the visual comparison of "catchup". It's just a question to myself as to why in the hell someone who has millions of dollars to spend. Wouldn't spend it more intelligently for the resources that would save them money, and probably ship games more frequently.:poly142:
I was with it until I saw it signed by the "...Wives of Rockstar San Diego employees". Although it's apparent that this was written by an employee, something is taken away from the message when you pretend that it's your wife complaining, and not you.
Anyhow, shitty circumstances indeed. We've all put in our fair share of crunch time, and hopefully most were well compensated for it. I feel for any of you in this situation.
All of you guys talking about bad experiences and look at the gamasutra posting now, it's pretty scary to think that some of the funnest games I've ever made have very sad people behind them today.
I hope everything goes well, for everyone involved. Even in the face of writing it off 'hey, it's not me' the message rings strong from even other people unrelated to rockstar at all - that says something.
There is still the option of cutting off the brick and mortar of course.
And did anyone put any thought into my suggestion of a relief fund raising? What if from now on this happens and we raise relief - not for the employee to quit and go somewhere new, oh no, but to cover the modest signing bonus of replacement management with someone who can better budget the time of their team without ripping them apart when they don't meet promises they didn't make in the first place :poly142:
If you make your employees miserable they will make miserable games.
It's one of the reasons I've stayed where I'm at.
- Stable employment with above average pay.
- A company that values its employees.
- If it ever came to a raise freeze, it would be company wide from the highest levels to lowest.
- Bonuses are based on company performance and is shared company wide.
- A reasonable schedule.
- Everyone here works hard and knows their job. No one jacks around and then cries "I need more time".
- Everyone goes out of their way for everyone else and office politics are next to non-existent.
For me its not always about what titles are attached to your name but how you're treated. I think too many of us have horror stories because we where drawn in by the titles and failed to interview them when we where being interviewed. We live, we learn then we get wiser and EA won't hire us heh. It seems to be working out so well for them...
I cant beleive that they would be so openly age-ist. Would they also not hire women because they are worried about them having periods and missing work and would they prefer to hire certain races over other because they believe that they are harder working... Its speaks volumes that a rep would even feel comfortable enough to speak openly like that.
Isn't that pretty much SOP for 'equal opportunities monitoring purposes'? You certainly come across that kind of thing a lot over here.
In this instanced i refused to do it. I asked for an updated schedule and told them i would find a way to get it done on time, but i would not arbitrarily spend more time at the office just because the rest of the cool kids were doing it. Of course there was nothing specific for me to actually do, so i never got an updated schedule. I dont remember exactly how it turned out, i think i just ended up staying in a little later than usual out if pity for the other guys, but none of the crazy 12 hour days stuff. In my situation i knew there was very little chance i would be fired, so its not an option for everyone.
http://www.sirlin.net/blog/2009/11/5/making-games-faster.html
Anyways, I'm thinking of boycotting Red Dead Redemption on principal.
it's quite sad to see the games industry trench fighters facing the same issues as tv animators. I can relate to you guys doing stupid hours in 'crunch time' we had similar stuff in a production. There were so many ridiculous things that would come down from management, and if you had a problem with it, you'd get the same threat "There's 20 other guys just waiting outside to get in if you don't want the job."
How can one enjoy life living like that? It's absolute insanity. Historically the talk of unions in animation usually resulted in entire productions being shipped off overseas and then everyone on staff laid off... or in animation's wonderful underhanded way, not renewing artist's contracts next time around.
While working for an animation studio, I was told to come in on weekends because our department was behind, even when we had no work to do because the department before us was behind because they were understaffed. So we lost 3 or 4 weekends just sitting there probably doing about 10 hours work total that could've been done on the monday following.
Right now, i guess games has one leg up on animation in that games artists aren't yet paid by the asset... in animation we were paid by the frame, not including revisions, so imagine having a scene sent back for multiple revisions because the storyboard artist fucked up and the director can't make up his mind, you get paid once for it.
Great article, Jacque - thanks for posting. I really like the 48 minutes of flow concept they mentioned. Think I'll try this and see how effective it is.
Paying for the union. That's what worries me.
People, please give quite a bit more thought to what unions actually are before throwing the "if we were just unionized, then this wouldn't be an issue"
Screen Actors Guild - $2277 to join
http://www.sag.org/content/steps-join
And $116 a year
http://www.sag.org/content/paying-dues
http://blog.nealwood.com/2007/03/07/why-unions-suck.aspx
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=why+unions+are+bad
$116/ year is a pittance that gets made up if you work approx. 3 extra/background
jobs per year (there is about a 36% rate difference for union vs. non-union for this
specific type of work -- i.e., extra/background roles)
as for the 1-time $2277, you don't pay it till you land a speaking part, and only if
you're serious about acting as your career...so call it a 'barrier to entry' if you will,
but a necessary one to weed out those that choose it as a profession.
The union laws also create a number of other standardizations that frankly do not
happen for those not in the union...things that do not happen for the same actor
on the same job that is non-union.
If this were the case for game artists, I'd jump at paying (and getting a guarantee)
for oversight against worker-abuse via 'crunch' caused by mismanagement.
I'd gladly pay that amount. If there were unions in place every single person in the game industry that works in low level positions would be making at least that 2,277 more, and most likely a lot more. Games make a ton of money, and only a very small fraction ends up back in the pockets of the actual developers.
I don't know a single SAG member that would complain about the fees, and I know a ton of SAG members from when I lived in LA.