Is crunch required?

[Unofficial Who]

Given the confusion about whether or not Rockstar employees were forced to work overtime (paid or unpaid) and ethics of either persuading staff to work extra or forcing creatives to down tools I thought it might be wise to break out this thread for talk about this and previous instances (EA Spouse 2004, RDR Spouse  2010, Telltale 2018.)

 

I was going to put together a megapost but this is moving so fast it's probably best to start talking about it here.

 

Have at it!

[Unofficial Who]

First of all the RDR issue.

 

There's an updated article here

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-18-rockstar-allows-employees-to-speak-out-on-100-hour-week-controversy

 

Rockstar Games is continuing its efforts to assure that it does not enforce 100-hour weeks on its workers by encouraging its current staff to weigh in on the issue.

The controversy arose from an interview with studio co-founder Dan Houser, claiming people were working 100-hour weeks at various times in 2018. He later issued a statement clarifying that his comments had referred to a small team of senior employees, including himself, and that anyone working this extensively did so voluntarily.

Nevertheless, it has sparked a debate across the industry as to whether such intense working conditions are necessary to create a title as ambitious in scope as Red Dead Redemption 2, with developers earlier this week sharing their own crunch experiences.

Now Rockstar has allows its staff to offer their own thoughts on the matter, giving their perspective on the company's treatment of its staff.

 

Vivianne Langdon, a tools programmer from Rockstar San Diego with three and a half years at the studio, seems to have been the first to speaking out, saying in a Twitter thread: "Rockstar has granted permission for us to speak frankly about this issue on social media. I want to stress that this is is my uncurated personal opinion, I am not being compensated for this post in any way and am making it voluntarily. I'm only going to speak to my personal experience.

"I have never worked more than maybe 50 hours a week (and that's a rare occurrence), but I generally work about 2-6 hours of paid overtime per week. I'm 'non exempt' so my overtime pay starts at 1.5x salary and scales to 2x after 8 hours of OT in a week or 12 hours in a single day, in accordance with California law. Also, I have only been asked to work on weekends once or twice in my entire time at Rockstar on the Tools team."

Langdon notes that the few occasions where she has worked late are "generally because I'm in the 'zone' and don't want to stop until I finish some tricky problem", stressing it is "not the result of anyone forcing me to stay later or giving me impossible deadlines."

She adds that Rockstar has been "incredibly kind and supportive", and that she as "always felt listened to, valued and respected by the team and this was not changed by my transition."

Finally she reiterated that this Twitter thread was solely to share her personal experience and she doesn't want to "diminish any others' stories should they arise" or "imply that this industry is perfect."

 

I suspect some of the issues that have raised this have been with Dan Houser failing to read the room with earlier comments.

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-15-rockstar-has-been-working-100-hour-weeks-on-red-dead-redemption-2

 

A broad outline was completed the following summer, with rough scripts for the game's story and missions ready by autumn 2012. But it seems the workload has ramped up significantly this year as Red Dead Redemption 2 finally approaches release.

Dan Houser said that the team has been "working 100-hour weeks" several times in 2018, later adding that compared to previous Rockstar projects, "This was the hardest."

His brother Sam told the site earlier this year: "We've poured everything we have into [Red Dead Redemption 2]. We have really pushed ourselves as hard as we can."

The result is a game that Dan claims is 65 hours long (although five hours of content have actually been cut) and boast 300,000 animations, 500,000 lines of dialogue recorded by 700 voice actors, and even more lines of code.

 

He later clarified https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-10-15-dan-houser-we-have-some-senior-people-who-work-very-hard-purely-because-theyre-passionate

Here is Houser's statement in full as shared with Kotaku:

"There seems to be some confusion arising from my interview with Harold Goldberg. The point I was trying to make in the article was related to how the narrative and dialogue in the game was crafted, which was mostly what we talked about, not about the different processes of the wider team. After working on the game for seven years, the senior writing team, which consists of four people, Mike Unsworth, Rupert Humphries, Lazlow and myself, had, as we always do, three weeks of intense work when we wrapped everything up. Three weeks, not years. We have all worked together for at least 12 years now, and feel we need this to get everything finished. After so many years of getting things organized and ready on this project, we needed this to check and finalize everything.

"More importantly, we obviously don't expect anyone else to work this way. Across the whole company, we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they're passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release. But that additional effort is a choice, and we don't ask or expect anyone to work anything like this. Lots of other senior people work in an entirely different way and are just as productive - I'm just not one of them! No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard. I believe we go to great lengths to run a business that cares about its people, and to make the company a great place for them to work."

 

 

 

 

 

[Harsin]

They had a decent discussion about this on the SuperBestFriendCast. Two of the team used to work in games QA and had plenty of horror stories to share about how managers manage to coerce people into feeling obligated into working stupid hours. Right now Rockstar seem to be trying to change the story into look we don't force people to work 100 hour weeks. Of course they don't, I imagine that's illegal. Influencing people to do it, that's a different story though.  I thought Dan Houser's attempt at salvaging his boast about 100 hours was very telling when you looked at his language. Some choice excerpts:

 

Quote

...we have some senior people who work very hard purely because they’re passionate about a project, or their particular work, and we believe that passion shows in the games we release...

 

Implication being that if you go home at your actual specified finishing time you're not 'passionate'. Wonder how that will look at the next appraisal?

 

Quote

No one, senior or junior, is ever forced to work hard...

 

Again, guess those bums who go home after 40-50 hours aren't working 'hard'.

 

You may think I' being picky, but I've seen this kind manipulation first hand. At the moment Rockstar are in full on damage control mode and 'allowing' staff to share their stories. Maybe the staff there truly feel that they can say what they like with no danger to their future career prospects. Who knows? I truly hope that the it's a nice place to work and that they improved since the previous documented horrors about working there. Nevertheless, I think that' it's a good thing to have  a light shone on these practices, even if it upsets some of the 'I just want to get hyped for a product' gang, so good on UO for starting this thread.

[matt0]

MASSIVE DISCLAIMER: I have no fucking idea how AAA game development works, this is just idle speculation.

 

I have a feeling that to keep making "bigger" games ( in terms of the environment, the amount of hand crafted content, vocal and motion capture performances etc.) at higher fidelity we're starting to run up against human limits over hardware limits.

 

There's the Ubisoft method of just throwing more and more people at each game, having multiple studios working internationally on the same game. This must raise huge organisational problems, and I think you can see the hiccup in them adopting this approach with the botched release of Assasin's Creed Unity. I don't hear about crunch when it comes to games like Assasin's Creed Origins and Odyssey, but that could just be good PR on Ubisofts part.

 

The Rockstar approach seems to be more angled to make the people you've got work harder, therefore crunch. Although I've got to assume they're increasing the size of their teams too.

[Unofficial Who]

Maybe the industry has started to learn from previous workplace cases such as EASpouse

 

Original blog post here from 2004 https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

 

Our adventures with Electronic Arts began less than a year ago. The small game studio that my partner worked for collapsed as a result of foul play on the part of a big publisher -- another common story. Electronic Arts offered a job, the salary was right and the benefits were good, so my SO took it. I remember that they asked him in one of the interviews: "how do you feel about working long hours?" It's just a part of the game industry -- few studios can avoid a crunch as deadlines loom, so we thought nothing of it. When asked for specifics about what "working long hours" meant, the interviewers coughed and glossed on to the next question; now we know why.

Within weeks production had accelerated into a 'mild' crunch: eight hours six days a week. Not bad. Months remained until any real crunch would start, and the team was told that this "pre-crunch" was to prevent a big crunch toward the end; at this point any other need for a crunch seemed unlikely, as the project was dead on schedule. I don't know how many of the developers bought EA's explanation for the extended hours; we were new and naive so we did. The producers even set a deadline; they gave a specific date for the end of the crunch, which was still months away from the title's shipping date, so it seemed safe. That date came and went. And went, and went. When the next news came it was not about a reprieve; it was another acceleration: twelve hours six days a week, 9am to 10pm.

Weeks passed. Again the producers had given a termination date on this crunch that again they failed. Throughout this period the project remained on schedule. The long hours started to take its toll on the team; people grew irritable and some started to get ill. People dropped out in droves for a couple of days at a time, but then the team seemed to reach equilibrium again and they plowed ahead. The managers stopped even talking about a day when the hours would go back to normal.

Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week.

 

Nine years later

 

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2013-03-28-ea-doesnt-get-enough-credit-says-ea-spouse

 

"To me they've learned one of the biggest quality of life lessons in the industry, but nobody really focuses on it," Hoffman said.

A pair of EA employees attested to that during the post-talk Q&A session. In particular, an EA Tiburon employee said he just wanted Hoffman to know her speaking up had an effect. The team produces two games a year (NCAA and Madden NFL), but it doesn't work weekends anymore. And even when the work does ramp up, they get by doing 50 hour work weeks.

[Unofficial Who]

On the other hand from Telltale this year

 

 

[SozzlyJoe]

One of the big problems seems to be that it is never NOT crunch time.

[Capwn]

I've worked at 3 game studios for around 10+ years

 

First one was 2005-2009, second was 2010 and last was 2015-current.

 

First studio was a size of around 50. Company formed by a small ground of mid 20's guys, super ambitious and hard working. Actually the entire studio was almost all under 30's with NO parents at all. Would work from 9am to something like 10pm pretty often. Then from time to time there was serious crunch where we would be working through the night and in one case handed in work at 6am. They even bought mattresses for us. Weekends too from time to time. Quite mad looking back at it but I was just so thankful for the opportunity to get my foot in the door in an industry I love. Without this job where I worked on the most popular titles on my CV (to this day) I may have never made it to where I am now. I don't really regret it, I just LOVED my job and there was just so much to learn. I had a great setup to get good at my craft there.

 

Second studio was a size of around 200. This was actually more relaxed, rarely stayed beyond 8pm. 

 

Finally my latest studio of around 50 is easily the most professional  company I've worked for. I rarely see people stay beyond 6pm (or 5pm as they let you start early if you wish) which is refreshing. I think it's partly down to it being a more diverse team with many parents, they are very pro-life outside of work. As well as great producers/tools for managing tasks. We crunched during the early days, something like a week or two every 3-4 months but even that would only be until 8pm-9pm. The last few years however when we were bought out by a big publisher that really changed. I often hang back an extra hour just to wrap things up neatly and because I enjoy experimenting but now it's so good, people rarely stay late even near milestones. When I'm often the last person to leave I look around and wonder why the younger staff are not hanging back making the most of the opportunity, I am sure if you encouraged them to stay late till 8pm and beyond they would be outraged at the thought of it because they have never known that world. That's how it should be. The young have wised up it seems. 

[misterSquare]

I posted this on The Chaos Engine (games industry only forum), but its relevant here too so please excuse the re-post if you've read it already:

I work at R* North. I've been here for 7 years now, I'm currently a senior programmer. I'm the only programmer in my department that still supports GTA: Online, and I also work on RDR, meaning that the past four years I've been juggling deadlines for both projects simultaneously. Looking back over my timesheets for 2018, there were 6 weeks where I worked 50+ hours (only barely, for the most part), and 8 times when I came in for one or more hours at the weekend (I never came in both days). Most of those weekends were just popping in for an hour or two (I live a 15 minute walk from the office, so it's no big deal) to fix an issue that cropped up in builds that we were submitting to Sony/MS. My worst week was 61 hours, I'd say my average is 42-ish. In a year where we shipped both RDR and the GTA Online club DLC (which was massively complex), I don't think that's too bad.

I've always maintained that my work/life balance is a hell of a lot better than my 6 years at Codemasters, where we were shipping a new game every 9-12 months. I remember a lot of 2am finishes and full weekends working from that time, although I was a lot younger (and single) back then and just took it on the chin. I've learn my lesson from those days, and won't ever stay late just to keep up appearances - if I'm tired, I go home, and since I've been at R*, nobody has ever questioned my attendance record. I've never seen an email telling me to do an enforced amount of overtime - we get the occasional 'This is the final push!' emails from the top brass, but that's it.

Having said that, I can't speak for other departments. Of the disgruntled tweets I see, a lot seem to come from people who were on the content creation/level design team, so it is possible that there were/are localised problems that I'm not exposed to. Among the programming team at least, most folk are veterans (I still feel pretty junior despite being here for years) and many have families, and I've never been aware of an issue with programmer churn or folk regularly burning out.

[Unofficial Who]

There's a myth that crunch time is a thing that MUST HAPPEN! Apparently not though as some dev's have attested to. These might not be AAA titles but loads of them are fun. So if you are thinking of voting with your dollar take a look here.

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/10/16/rockstar-crunch/

 

Quote

“If you made a game without crunch, feel free to reply to this thread!” Jan Willem Nijman of Vlambeer said yesterday on Twitter. “Everybody else: get your hands on some crunch-free games…”

‏
In came replies from developers behind games including Minit, Loot Rascals, Guacamelee!, Wandersong, Cultist Simulator, Sunless Sea, Lieve Oma, Regency Solitaire… good stuff. That’s just a handful I know well enough to highlight and recommend, so do go see JW’s Twitter thread for more. It’s not a comprehensive list, of course, but it is good.

 

And that tweet link

 

 

[Wools]

I worked in the games industry for around 10 years, in games testing, tools testing, level design and design.

 

Worked over 100 hours for several weeks during my first big game development role. At the time, I wasn't forced to but I was a contractor so was paid for hours worked, was young so had no idea about working practises (Had to be told by a producer once to go home) and felt unbelievably lucky to join my favourite developer so was more than happy to.

 

As time went on, I was fortunate enough to move into tools testing and was spared any long hours as the main game team took that brunt.

 

As I moved into design, I was excited and wanted to prove a name for myself so worked weekends to get levels made and write design concepts. Then it went back to 100 hour weeks.

 

All my overtime wasn't forced but a mixture of wanting to make the best game and a creative atmosphere combined to want to make the studio your life. However, after I stopped contract gigs and went full time, I was never reimbursed for my time, we signed a contract saying that wouldn't be necessary at the places I worked at. I stopped in the industry about 6 years ago and glad I did. Looking back, it triggered all my anxiety, made me fat and in some ways, I do feel I was taken advantage of. I'm proud I helped make some great games and look back fondly but the need to make great games requires dedication and sacrifice.

 

In some ways, I bet that every single great Video game or Film required real sacrifices by the team to get made. Maybe that atmosphere encourages some real great work, but there's no question it's unhealthy looking back or from the outside.

[dataDave]

This is a problem associated with all desk jobs.

[Quest]

No it fucking isn't.

[CrispinFoetus]

I was under the impression crunch was rewarded with a lengthy break and bonus upon completion, but with DLC now this seems not the case, which sucks.

[Unofficial Who]

6 minutes ago, CrispinFoetus said:

I was under the impression crunch was rewarded with a lengthy break and bonus upon completion, but with DLC now this seems not the case, which sucks.

 

Either working on DLC or getting laid off is the impression I got.

[Bojangle]

14 minutes ago, Fallows said:

This is a problem associated with all desk jobs.

Cool. Close the thread, discussion over.

[Unofficial Who]

11 minutes ago, Fallows said:

This is a problem associated with all desk jobs.

 

It shouldn't be.

 

For some annecodotal tales there's a couple of threads in off topic

and

 

 

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

Thank GOD you can all stop killing my RDR2 boner...

[Eighthours]

Crunch sounds awful, but over at Polyphony Digital everyone works 10 hour weeks (if they even want to come in) with a jacuzzi break every hour.

[barkbat]

Over at Valve, the Half Life 3 team do 10 minute weeks. One time it was a full hour but that was because of a Windows update.

[mushashi]

If you are making an epic monster or a yearly iterative game with a hard deadline, probably.

 

It's kind of telling that the only replies so far from game devs self-identifying that they've worked on non-crunch games were indie developers doing smaller titles. If anybody working on Jonathan Blow's last epic chime in on that Twitter thread, I will be surprised.

[Capwn]

1 hour ago, barkbat said:

Over at Valve, the Half Life 3 team do 10 minute weeks. One time it was a full hour but that was because of a Windows update.

 

Oh that's good, that may inspire a molydeux tweet.

[rafaqat]

1 hour ago, Fallows said:

This is a problem associated with all desk jobs.

 

This is a problem associated with shitty management that allow people to work silly hours or work crazy hours themselves and then get upset that the rest of the team isn't pulling their weight.  Nothing to do with desk jobs. 

 

Work normal hours.   Set deadlines based on normal work ours plus some buffer (because shit WILL happen and delay you).  Make sure you have people in key positions that enforce this. 

Don't be scared to go back and ask for one or more of more time/money/cut down on features.    Although if you'd planned it correctly it in the first place you're highly unlikely to need to do this,.  Lastly, tell the creative types that want to experiment with features midway through the project to get on with the actual shit you all agreed to do or give them a fixed amount of time to try something and then make a decision .  Anything else is a wish list item that you can do if you have time.     Too many heroes in the industry that revel in saving the project etc.  They're a risk to you and the project for when they eventually break themselves. 

 

Do the above on enough projects and they pretty much just run themselves as your organisation/clients/publishers get your way of working. 

[Shimmyhill]

1 hour ago, Fallows said:

This is a problem associated with all desk jobs.

 

Happens on Fast and Loud every build, no desks inbuilding cars - must be all jobs ehh

[Mr Cochese]

If you create a culture where overtime is expected then your workforce will become so frazzled that the time they'd normally take to do a regular day of work will just expand from 7.5 or 8 hours to 12, then 14, then 16 hours as they make more mistakes and need longer breaks. It happens every time.

[ScouserInExile]

I worked in games from 1993 to 2004. Crunch time was a normal feature at every place I worked from a hardware manufacturer (Sony, in fact, there's no point being coy) where we'd work long shifts to get first party stuff tested to small developers where trying to hit deadlines would mean virtually never leaving the office for weeks on end. At least at Sony we got paid overtime. The rest of the places, it was just expected and we'd get food bought for us, at most. At one developer, I was moaned at by the producer because I fell asleep at my desk at 3am, having been in work since 8am the previous day.

 

The most profitable was Eidos - at one point we were testing 8pm to 8am so the developers could work 8am to 8pm to get us something to test. Each shift was 11 hours of time and a half (anything after 9pm was overtime, even if you hadn't done a full day prior to that) and weekends were all double time.

 

I could only do all this when I was single, I couldn't do it now. A lot of it was caused by incompetent management - not least because hardly anyone was vaguely professional, it was virtually treated as a hobby for a lot of people I worked with. And, looking back, none of it was worth it - I never really worked on anything of note. I feel it's worth pointing out that, of the ten companies I worked for or with in my time, only one still exists...

[Stanley]

2 minutes ago, ScouserInExile said:

I worked in games from 1993 to 2004. Crunch time was a normal feature at every place I worked from a hardware manufacturer (Sony, in fact, there's no point being coy) where we'd work long shifts to get first party stuff tested to small developers where trying to hit deadlines would mean virtually never leaving the office for weeks on end. At least at Sony we got paid overtime. The rest of the places, it was just expected and we'd get food bought for us, at most. At one developer, I was moaned at by the producer because I fell asleep at my desk at 3am, having been in work since 8am the previous day.

 

The most profitable was Eidos - at one point we were testing 8pm to 8am so the developers could work 8am to 8pm to get us something to test. Each shift was 11 hours of time and a half (anything after 9pm was overtime, even if you hadn't done a full day prior to that) and weekends were all double time.

 

I could only do all this when I was single, I couldn't do it now. A lot of it was caused by incompetent management - not least because hardly anyone was vaguely professional, it was virtually treated as a hobby for a lot of people I worked with. And, looking back, none of it was worth it - I never really worked on anything of note. I feel it's worth pointing out that, of the ten companies I worked for or with in my time, only one still exists...

That does sound like extremely poor management, you could have just tested the stuff the developers had worked on the day before during the next day, that would cut down on overtime or the need to for anyone to work unsociable hours. Would also have made it easier to communicate directly with the development team. 

[Hitcher]

You can't be forced to work overtime (paid or unpaid) unless you're a pussy.

[amc]

Get on Rocky there.

[Stanley]

4 minutes ago, Hitcher said:

You can't be forced to work overtime (paid or unpaid) unless you're a pussy.

Easy to say until you find yourself in a position where it's become custom and practice and you feel bullied.