The Death March Problem of Crunch Time.
polycounter lvl 6
http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development.ars
I just ran into this article on Ars and thought some of you might want to see it and give your two cents.
I just ran into this article on Ars and thought some of you might want to see it and give your two cents.
Replies
Being only 23 I am young, wide eyed and stupid when it comes to matters of crunch. I totally enjoy it! I love what I do and love busting my ass along with others to make an amazing games people will enjoy and I can be proud of. So I dont mind crunching. Then again I am young, foolish and a lack of sleep just reminds me of college and high school which were not to long ago
But I know when enough is enough. When I start to feel that dip is productivity/creativeness/or effectiveness I leave. Nothing is worse then staying at work when you are tired and know what you are doing is not productive. It is better to bail out early, get some rest, go out in the sun and have some fun and come back refreshed. What would take your 2hours time when your just not feeling it could go by in a flash when your rested and ready.
Nice article though.
I read that somewhere before though. 40 hours is the sweet spot. Any less or any more work and things are getting more and more unproductive the more/less time you spend on them.
"He points out that while many developers have benefits such as gyms and cafeterias onsite, that just drives home the idea that you're never supposed to leave." .... call me negative, but this is exactly what came to my mind when people first mentioned company "campuses". I like it when my employer leaves me along on weekends and after work. Not that I don't love the company I work for, but I really like a clear divide between work and personal life.
--There was a mad, drunken rant here. I'll let you imagine it - you'll probably come up with something far more amusing than I did. Now it's gone. The moral of the story was "I'm getting too old for this shit"
So whats keeping me from not quiting tomorrow? Options, the fact that with my experience I have to respecialize in the movie industry (non existent here in Sweden) or a vizualization company. Chances to find a job are slim as they are, would have to study something else entirely or move to another department like managing or a producer title after a few years and shit on the people under me. Cause thats how this industry works.
Thats the point they have to make them look nicer. I read an article a little while ago about chinas electronic manufacturing industry. I cant remember the name of the company but its the biggest over there. They have these huge campuses where the workers live and work. Its all really nice they have all kinds of cool facilities(most dont really get used). They work for like ten/twelve hours a day or something.
Its what all these companys want. We must live, love and worship them.
Gross exaggeration aside though, the article makes some interesting points. I'd be really interested to see some statistics showing different studios, the games they've produced and the average hours that employees work there.
Also, that film industry comparison at the end doesn't make any sense - the games industry is still too young to say whether people are burning out/retiring at an earlier age. Plus, working hours on movie sets are often ridiculously long and arduous; it's just more intense crunching for a shorter period of time.
Yeah I though It began with an F. I'm not really on about the suicides I've heard they've been debunked(there less than the average for the number of people, compared to the country as a whole). Just the whole work ethos, and thats it a whole area where they have them all the time.
It's a poorly managed studio that can't produce a game with minimal crunch, someone fudged up when figuring out how many people to hire and or the scope of the game is not properly fitting the budget and the size of the team.
If people want to and enjoy working longer hours than who cares. You want people that are creatively driven and happy to do what they're doing. I know I've stayed late a few times because I was really into what I was working on and setting it down would drive me nuts all night until I got a chance to work on it again in the morning. But there shouldn't be any pressure from management or peers to work long hours and suffer. Management needs to take great big steps to make sure that pressure isn't felt because the product and the company suffers when its there. It's like cancer...
As a night owl, that's something I can only dream I'll ever achieve! ;(
Absolutely right. A little crunch is unavoidable. Things don't go right and time is always short. But crunching on every deadline on every game is ridiculous. Sadly pretty common. And those kind of crunches aren't accidents. Managers know that they can make these ridiculous deadlines and the production staff will stay late and get it done because they are happy to have a job.
When I was young and first starting out in games I figured crazy crunches were just part of the industry and no big deal. Looking back I realize just how wrong that mindset is. I've done the 12 hours a day, seven days a week for months on end crunches and it just isn't worth it. I was spending a majority of my life working on the vision and design of someone else. It will burn you out.
You look at games like uncharted, god of war, red dead etc and yes they are awesome but you know people worked tons of overtime to get them there. passion and creativity are great for making games and yes putting in that extra effort does usually make the game way better in the end, but eventually it becomes a fine like between extra effort and pure exploitation by greasy corporations.
I love how crunch is considered normal for us, especially when we dont get paid for our overtime unlike 90% of jobs on the planet where you do, and some people are putting in 60-80 hour weeks. so in some cases you are actually working for ~8 bucks an hour. people like to argue we make good money to begin with, but a 50-60k salary working so much overtime quickly becomes the equivalent of working at mcdonalds.
But they give us free food!? ok...a 10-15 dollar dinner is really worth an extra 3-4 hours of your time? seriously? I used to be all starry eyed thinking "im making video games yaaaay! ill bend over backwards to get the job done right!" now its more "fuck off, you should have planned properly, see ya!" and I feel horrible for feeling bad about being exploited, which is the fucked up part.
companies straight up avoid hiring extra people until it is absolutely necessary because they bank on getting 1.5x the normal work out of people with that extra .5 being completely unpaid and free to them.
And, beacuse the industry is steadily shifting to contract work being the norm, they can let those hard little workers go at the end of the project when their contract runs out and not even have to give them some bonus time off or any type of bonus at all. not to mention most contractors I know including myself dont even have the normal 5 paid sick days which is atrocious. get sick? that'll be 200+ bucks lost off you paycheque a day!
And then comes the corporate bullshit speeches to "rally the troops" lets waste an hour for a company meeting where they tell you to work harder, which you already know.
personally I am pretty much done with overtime, unless I reeaaaaly have to get something done because of something I fucked up or was dragging my heels on they are going to have to chain me to my desk. working a ton of overtime because a manager scheduled something ridiculous only makes them think they can get away with it and keep doing it instead of actually hiring/paying more people to balance the load.
I find if you put in an actual full days of work instead of spending 2 hours over the course of the day browsing the internet you shouldn't have to work much overtime at all. Making video games is fun and I love my job, don't get me wrong, but burning out or giving up your soul so some coroporate fucks can buy a new boat is atrocious.
(keyword is voluntary)
But if I'm doing vertex light bakes, for shitty environments, on a barbie game for the iPhone, it'll be a tough sell.
In reality, the rate of their employees committing suicide is lower than the national average by a significant margin. Foxconn is a huuuuuuge company. Statistically it's not surprising some of them would be suicidal.
With that said and speaking as an outsider looking in, the living and working conditions seem to be pretty bad, even by Chinese standards. If china in general did a better job of taking care of its people then a company might bet better equipped to find and deal with depressed workers, regardless of the living and working conditions.
Here at Bethesda, we have the "non-mandatory, but heavily encouraged" crunch mindset. Meaning, if you have milestone tasks that are running behind, you need to do whatever you can to get them done. I think that is completely fair and should be expected of anyone currently in, or thinking about getting into the industry. That being said, I am adamant about having my weekends to myself. I would much rather put in 12 hour days, 5 days a week, than work even 2 hours on a weekend. That is, by far, the easiest way to burn yourself out and make you hate your job. I need my recharge time. Obviously, I will work on the weekend if absolutely necessary.
At the end of the day, I don't crunch because I'm told to. I crunch because I want to give people a superb product that they will thoroughly enjoy. Sometimes that means putting in those extra hours to polish your work that much more, or in order to squeeze in that cool feature that you really want, but have no time to schedule it into a 40 hr work week. If that means I give up a dinner with the lady every now and again, so be it.
I thought the living standards were pretty good at Foxcon comparably they are probably the best compared to the other companys. They kind of have to be with the amount of exposure the company gets. They do deal with depressed workers, I believe they have free on campus counselleurs, not that, that sort of thing works though.
I've read about it myself, they work very hard to not show you how bad it really is. What you see and what really goes on there are two different things. Guess who get's to determine what you see.
I don't disagree with this statement, necessarily. However, it has been my experience that whenever I crunch, I'm given meals (albeit unhealthy)... and occasionally comp time. Additionally, how many of us are given so many more benefits at our studios that, I feel, make up for occasional added time at the office? Things such as drinks, snacks, fun events, 'lax schedule, fun work environment, etc. I think the work environments that we are, typically, provided with are very much worth giving a little extra back to our company and project. Your company doesn't need to provide these things to you. They do it because they want to provide a certain environment that is very much not the norm for most people in this world.
so don't do it - maybe designers and programmers can put the extra time in to make the game more fun but in the end the fans don't give a crap about the art (look at the success of angry birds and minecraft)
+1
Though, I wouldn't say "don't do it."
edit:
I'm not entirely sold on the "crunch only happens because of bad management/artists" mindset. Granted, this is probably true for most cases. I've found that a lot of the time people crunch to squeeze in extra features that will improve the end product. Things that were not initially planned. This isn't exactly a bad thing, and if the team is willing to put in the time, why not?
I know it's not a popular belief, but crunch is simply something you should expect in this industry. It just depends on how often, and to what extent. I don't mind crunch for the right reasons.
"I've found that a lot of the time people crunch to squeeze in extra features that will improve the end product. Things that were not initially planned."
Well wouldn't it be prudent then, as a matter of policy, to pad the production schedule for "unforeseen consequences" and other additional content not previously planned? Then when something comes up, you don't have to burn out your team on crunch, which might result in poorer quality due to worker fatigue and if everything does go according to schedule (I don't think this happens often), you look like heroes finishing the game early? I believe that is a freelancer tactic of "under-promise and over-deliver".
This... currently :P
I don't think that's true though. A lot of places will see you leaving at normal time while everyone stays behind crunching and think you aren't a team player, regardless of how fast or efficient you are. That's just how it works.
Why is there a need for crunch time, at all?
I mean really, the way I see it - more shit needs done? Ok, that means more shit needs done. Which means we'll take a couple more months to get this thing done, and then when we release it, it will be awesome, and we will be happy. Why the need to increase work hours? I mean, the only thing that helps is getting something done potentially faster, I guess. But I don't really see the point.
Is this some byproduct of ridiculously money-hungry management or business deals, that they HAVE to release a product in a certain month for the supposed super-peak time sales? I guess I can see wanting to get stuff nice to show for something like E3, but I know that's not the reason for crunch a good portion of the time.
Really, I mean we see small studios pop out fricking awesome games - things like Amnesia: The Dark Descent. And so far as I can tell they're super stoked at how well their game is doing, which is to say, still making a whole, whole lot less well than many, many, many other games that are released. But it's a darn good game and they can pay their bills and make more games and it seems like they're really pleased with that.
Personally I never really bought into the whole "time is money" bullshit. I understand what people mean when they say it, but it's like when you get these asshole TV stars who don't return for a new season because they wanted to cut their pay from 10 million to 8 million. IT'S STILL FUCKING 8 MILLION DOLLARS. Seems silly.
I concur.
4 years ago, I started working at a company called A2M. The artists that were working on a 'WET' were very typical 9-5 workers, who left when they had to, and did everything they could efficiently to simply get things done. (I did not work on that team)
Their management took note of the time estimates, scheduling, design needs, and budget, and gave them 2 weeks per character (relatively simple designs).
This is the tricky part:
In order to get the characters completed in this time frame, MASSIVE shortcuts were taken. All Normal Maps were baked in Zbrush using the Zmapper (awful). There was no Ambient Occlusion baked, and most of the optimizations were done after the normal map was baked, so there were severe normal tangent fuck ups.
Most skin tones were a flat peach, with a bit of film grain, and all specular was desaturated diffuse, that was darkened.
I was on ANOTHER team, but WET's character schedule was used as the template for scheduling on our project. So before I even had any input on time estimates, we had promised our client that we would have the main character functioning in game in 2 weeks.
They were expecting ZMapper Bakes, No AO, flat diffuse colours, plastic-looking shaders, and absolutely no care given into the craftsmanship.
So I worked at least 60-70 hours a week, and I managed to completely blow them away with the quality of the character. (At the time, the nonchalant artists blamed the tech and lighting, as a way to pass the buck for how bad the game looked).
So after developing some clout with my managers n directors, I was given the freedom to completely revamped the Character Art pipeline, and proposed 3-4 weeks per character (depending on character complexity, and much of what I said was very well received on that team. They felt the tradeoff in quality was far too great to pass up on a week of extra work.
So in terms of crunch, I honestly felt that voluntary investment of my OWN TIME was definitely worth it. What was more important than the salary, and the uncompensated hours, I got to demonstrate the right way to do things, and make something better on a more global level, and get a higher level of influence, and work on some stuff I'm relatively proud of.
We had studio crunch time at school on final projects, but that was understandable - time was just too short. But here in the industry, we have people paid to take care of that ...
However, if its because of artists (and/or leads) giving inaccurate time estimates over the whole duration of the project then the crunch is a backslash likely to happen. I also saw many artists saying they are okay with loose, soft deadlines. Thats pretty much the worse way to go at things in a production environment.
I'm happy I've been lucky so far and never had to crunch for a single minute... I think there is a bit of luck involved. But planning for things in advance and having solid time estimates in mind also has a part in it, I think...
(gotta agree with Choi too - its all a matter of sticking to priorities and giving realistic accurate data on the time it really takes to do a given task.)
I was mostly confused as to the scenarios it seems like happen here and there, where you essentially get managers telling everyone "Alright, for the next month, we're going to need you guys to come in extra hours - possibly some weekends. This is that standard crunch time, so suck it up and make it happen."
From what I gather it seems like it's largely a result of people promising things to people outside of development - clients, publishers, etc - and being silly/inaccurate with those promises.
Thanks for the responses, just something I was kinda wanting to clarify in my noggin.
Missing a prime release window can mean the difference between a success and a failure to the people counting the beans. If you consider that a studio's future with the publisher can be at risk then you start to see where crunch starts to come in. It's easy for us to say that a game should be released when "it's ready" and that the game will be better for it, but sometimes no one cares if the game is actually 10% better or not as long as it can meet/exceed sales expectations within the budgeted time. The 10% better game that is released after the holidays is not guaranteed to sell better than the game that is rushed to market in time.
Whenever the murming of "crunch" time starts around the office, I just shrug and keep on doing what I do. I know that even a moderate crunch is often counter-productive. Without clearly defined and reasonable goals set out before-hand, a crunch quickly turns into a death-march where this mistaken belief that if everyone is spending 80 hours a week in the studio, shit must be getting done; the project must be magically morphing into something more awesome that it could otherwise possibly be.
That's crap. Study after study has proven it to be crap. Almost every story about a studio going through extended crunch period or a death-march ends the same way. A shoddy game gets released, people are rewarded by being laid off, or the studio simply closes its doors. If they are lucky enough to keep working, they almost never reap even remotely compensatory compensation for the number of hours they've voluntarily given up.
I know my limits. I know what I can do in a normal work-day (9-6) and a normal work-week (M-F). When I don't know, I'm very comfortable saying "I don't know" and will err on the side of extreme caution with my estimates. I'm very clear with production or whoever is in charge of the schedule as to what I believe I can get done in the time-frame available and then almost always end up over-delivering. If I'm behind on something that mis-judged, then I try to work with production as soon as I realize I'm in danger of missing my targets. Most of the time, we can work out a solution that doesn't require any extra hours. The few times that it has, I have no issues doing whatever needs to be done to make it happen. If it's my problem, I fix it...and expect everyone else to do the same.
All said, I have stayed an extra hour or two many times to finish up something I was working on. I have taken a project home and worked on it over the weekend because it was something I was really into and couldn't wait 2 days to get back to. I've spent free-time thinking about a problem at work and playing around with different solutions in my head. I enjoy my career. I love making games. It's still magical for me to see something I've made working in a game.
I refuse to let someone else take that away from me.
Absolutely. But that's not crunch, and it certainly isn't a death-march. Mandatory overtime is one of the surest way to destroy the above ideals.
That's a clear sign to start getting the resume and portfolio updated, because best case scenario from that type of leadership is pretty damn bleak.
That's how it works at bad companies you mean. Those companies either are really bad at assigning workload or they do not value excellence.
Once upon a time we had some people who would roll in at 10-11am fart around until they took lunch at 12pm. Then around 1:30pm they would settle in and start working. Then at 5-5:30pm when most people where gone they would start to fart around again until it was time to go home at 7pm. At least that's what I saw when I was working those hours, and a lot of other people grumbled about the social butterflies on candy mountain...
Keep in mind we have core hours 10-3, which is the window for meetings. It doesn't look good if you constantly miss every 10am meeting or people purpose new meeting times only because "oh hey XXX is going to be in this we should bump it till 11:30 so they can make it"
Sadly the majority of those people all jumped into a new department that later had its plug pulled. Their project took 3x longer than expected. The nightly craft sessions after people went home didn't help. It was a double killer because not only was it easy to see why we where always running low on post it notes (giant murals), paper clips (giant spider webs) and tape (mind control helmets) but nothing says I spent last night printing out a rainbow, like a giant, half faded, rainbow hanging over your area and the only color copier in the office out of toner...
...Didn't we just get an email telling us to take it easy on the copier because we seem to be burning through toner like crazy? That's the perfect time to print out rainbows...
These guys also crunched like crazy and complained the loudest while doing it. Huh, maybe if you put in 8hrs of actual work for 3mo you wouldn't be sleeping under your desk...
Have fun at work sure, but also make sure you bust your balls and don't hang yourself with whatever freedom you're given.
Of course this isn't the case for everyone, generally someone that works closely with these people who is a dedicated worker will end up doing a lot of crunch because they have to take up the other's slack. We'll just call this guy "Gauss". =P
i assume you're talking about WAR?
dispite all the bad things in the game, i still have fun playing it, and i'm on my 4th major toon now (have 3 past rr80).
and yes, the art IS fantastic.
But im wondering, All these crunch periods you hear about, or even the ones you guys participate in. Are they mandatory? Or just "highly encouraged". because if its a company that just highly encourages it, aka scaring you that you will lose your job if you dont, but then at the end of the project, lays off most the staff anyways, is it really worth it? If they are gonna boot your ass to the curb anyways, screw it. leave at a decent time.
Also, when you guys work 12 hour days.... HONESTLY, how many hours of solid work do you actually get done? I was talking to a few buddies last night that are also in the industry, and we all said that on an average 8 hour day, we`ll get about 5 hours of solid work done. even some of their bosses and company owners have told them the same thing. being in a creative position is near impossible to get 8 hours of solid work done. its such a drain. so i could only imagine what 12 hour days must feel like. and if you arent actually working the entire 12 hours, and will probably get fired anyways, i dunno. i dont see the point in it. specially if you ahve family.
if its something you believe in, and love staying to finish up that next amazing asset, or get a new feature in game, alright cool, but if not. quality life sounds better to me....
Minor de-rail... I've heard plenty of MYTHIC horror stories 'round these here parts. However, WAR sucked me in so hard. Fantastic art, great design. All around loved that game. Kudos to anyone who put in the extra time to make that game what it is.
You may all now continue to hate crunch and yada yada yada...
edit:
@greevar: While I've never once been privy to information involving budget concerns and the like... I assume that it would be difficult to convince the investors the worth of padding the schedule for the off chance that you have extra features that you didn't originally plan for. If anything, I think that would scare investors.
The risk that you won't be able to hit the deadline goes down if you add padding.
The chance that you'll finish early and look like a hero, goes up.
The chance that you will be sitting at your desk ripping your hair out hooked up to a caffeine drip in the 11th hour, goes way down.
The chance that you can go home at a decent hour most nights, goes way up.
Of course padding the schedule so your people have plenty of "fuck around time" is probably a bad idea, you might of hired some people that make great frat buddies but poor co-workers. But honestly if they can get their work done to quality and on time, I don't care what people do.
Adding padding is not lying its covering your ass in case something goes wrong. It's something every freelancer and contract negotiator is taught to do and if they don't they're bad at their job.
Frankly I would be pissed if I was an investor and a studio cut out all the padding and only had time to do everything perfectly one time. That kind of studio is more likely to blow past deadlines and come crawling around looking for more money.
Hind sight is always 20/20 and at the end of every project you always wish you had more time to change things. Besides it doesn't go into the schedule as "THIS IS PADDING IF WE FINISH EARLY WE'LL BE AT THE STRIP CLUB".
How long will it take to complete these tasks?
2 days of "nose to the grindstone" + 2 day of "oh shit this doesn't work right" = 4-4.5 days.
If you get it done in 2 days you're a rockstar.
If you said 2 days and it takes you 4 you're on the short list to be let go.
What Dygert said. It's not lying about how much time you need, it's being realistic. In fact, it's being honest. Anybody who says they can do it perfect the first time and doesn't need any extra time for unforeseen issues is lying.