Question for the studio guys & girls
polycounter lvl 6
HomeWork 
Do you ever have to work at home on top of your working week ?
Often wondered if you guys shut-down once you get home or do you keep at it and work at home without pay.
Cheers
Do you ever have to work at home on top of your working week ?
Often wondered if you guys shut-down once you get home or do you keep at it and work at home without pay.
Cheers
Replies
same here
i would get in huge trouble if i would take anything home
I do know some senior texture artists could get away with working at home every once in a blue moon because they were just creating textures, but that is about it.
It's rare that I've seen artists work on job-related assets from home, but not unheard of. There was one concept artist I worked with who did plenty of extra work at home, but he was an exception to the rule.
I do however work on personal projects pretty often. We use VBS2 at work (ARMA tailored for simulations) and while I'm proud of the stuff I do for work, it often comes across as PS2 era graphics due to time constraints and engine limitations. In order to stay current I have to work on things at home because if my job ever falls through I risk being left behind by the industry.
I know of one senior artist who has worked from home (using no inhouse tools/tech/shaders etc), and one senior TA who works from home occasionally/evenings (with inhouse/NDA'd stuff) but they're pretty much the only exceptions.
e/ that said, I think I was in the studio for like 14 hours today
Over the years, I've seen publishers and studios get more serious about NDAs (non-disclosure agreements). There have been a few studios in the industry that had WIP projects killed on the spot by the publisher after leaks about the project, and this can lead to closure of the studio. The trickle-down effect of this is studios making it very clear to employees that leaking info about the project, or even taking work home, can be cause for termination.
I find it a bit silly that the game industry takes it's projects so seriously, since we aren't, like, trying to fight and win actual wars, but increasingly it does take them super seriously.
I never worked from home as in "remote working" though.
I cannot really take home actual project work, but I can do research and problem investigation. If there were no way to do that and if I had to stay in the office late then I wouldn't do all this for free. I have never encountered an office that was more comfortable than my home (or maybe I just have to rent shittier homes).
I have a hard time letting go of texturing.
In addition as many of you know, I lead the Black Mesa mod. This has often been a huge amount of extra after-hours time, but I've always balanced that by working on stuff that is different from my day job (design/UI/rigging/animation/scripting/etc) - so it keeps things fresh and exciting and I'm always learning stuff.
Since it was of the clock and not official, I can code at my own pace. Which is great when your picking up a new language and trying to write an art tool at the same time.
That ridiculously insane, canning a project and firing an entire team, just because you accidentally posted an image of a soldier on your latest project is a totally new ballpark of crazy.
That energy could be better spent elsewhere, like flexible cheap hours, community feedback, or MAYBE, and this is crazy, actually stopping certain communities from taking the actual digital assets and code your peeps worked on, form your software/game and using it for porn.
Crazy honestly.
However, i do occationally create something at home on a weekend and bring it in. But thats about the extent of it. it never works the other way around.
It depends on the studio though. For example, Pandemic was much more relaxed about it. I saw people with portable HHD behind their monitors at time.
I usually don't mind, it's usually technical stuff that interests me anyway.
Most of the time I've been asked to come in on off days or weekends, but those are very rare occurences.