I would like to start the week by referring to a couple dramatic articles about the worst side of the game industry. The kind of stories that actually force companies to back down and turn around how work is done. As far as i know, things have changed for the better for EA. If the same is going to happen with Rockstar is still out in the open, first reports tell no immediate positive effect other than the promise of an extended time-off after production.
Back in the days when EA spouse was a hot topic it was quickly followed by the even more interesting report of events by Joe Straitiff as he experienced them while working for EA. Since then, it is said that EA has made major concessions and leaps forward to secure employees are treated fairly and crunch times are very limited. I can not really confirm or deny this, since i’ve been working in an EA studio that was bought in 2006. It was promised to us that we’ll continue working as we’ve always done. However things did change of course, there’s no way a big corporate entity who bought a small development shop is not going to have no or just a little effect on the team and how it’s working. Some things changed for the better, for example we finally got air conditioning, upped our server farm, hired a full-time system administrator and got access to a huge knowledge base and useful tools. Others changed for the worse, for example i’ve already mentioned how much i hated the employee rating system. It felt way too corporate and formal for our tastes. Overall i can just confirm what everyone who has ever worked for a big company already knows: how you feel about your work and how your work / life balance turns out to be like is highly dependent on the studio or department you work in, and of course the team and how they work together (or not).
A month after the EA spouse letter, Noel Llopis wrote his 2-part article “All work and no play makes Jack a dull game developer” which is by far the best summary of issues, myths and recommendations anyone has ever written on the subject. Make sure you read both part one and part two. I do, however, disagree with him that sleep deprivation might actually help for design and art, as they “have some of that touchy-feely creative mystique” as he puts it. It does not hold true as it is not creative art or design that is forged but often art is developed with certain technical and gameplay constraints, tools need to be used efficiently and numbers juggled. The same goes for designers who regularly juggle with numbers, navigate excel sheets of varying complexity, and always have to keep side-effects in mind with whatever they’re planning to do. So it’s not typically a touchy-feely kind of work that you perform as artist or designer and is subject to the same issues a programmer feels. Besides, even programmers have and need those intuitive, creative moments so they’re not all number crunchers and byte eaters either.
These issues were unfortunately debated again just recently, as Rockstar spouses made similar accusations about the working conditions at Red Dead Redemption developer Rockstar San Diego. The article itself was terribly written and received numerous bashings because of it. And i would say mostly because people feel it’s such a big issue and worry that the terrible writing could have a detrimental effect on the cause. If you read the Gamasutra article, don’t forget to concentrate on the comments. It currently ends with a statement from self-proclaimed Rockstar San Diego programmer Code Monkey after Rockstar apparently has promised employees an extended time-off after production is completed. He says:
“My apologies go to Rockstar for not anticipating that anything I said here could possibly have a negative impact of some kind.”
I can’t shake the feeling that that’s not the end of the story.
The Rockstar San Diego debacle is still being discussed on Gamasutra. One user called Joel Payne posted a very enlightening and true statement that i wanted to reproduce here:
“You have a bunch of over worked talents that are creatively gimped at work because of the constant redirection (rather lack of direction) a project takes at work while secretly, at home, they build there own projects as a creative outlet from the frustrations they have at work or they lose there wives because they’re so burnt from overwork that they become useless to the families they go home to.”
So very true. I wonder how the titles would sound if you put them his way. For example: “Creative Redirector” – “Art Redirector” – “Technical Redirector”. I like that idea! 
To add one more thing to this discussion: i tried to remember what my worst crunch was, at least in terms of time spent. I’ve experienced two very hard crunches. The first was my first project (of course). I put in maybe 10 weeks or so with 6 days a week and about 10 hours per day. I’ve had regular 60 hour weeks. The game? Armorines: Project SWARM for the Gameboy Color. Anyone remember that? No? That’s ok. Because, really, after 10 years the chances that the game you worked your ass off for is being remembered is around 1%. And even in that case, what do you have to show for? Oh yeah, i worked on that title. Gee, really? You should know: it does not matter!
Now you’d have to consider some more things if you relate that to your own experience: did that project open you doors to a better future? Probably not. Did it earn you a big bonus? Very unlikely. Royalties even? Hell no.
So consider what you sign up for is to do a job. If you think it makes you rich or famous, think again. But usually our loyalty to the game we’re creating is killing us even though it is rarely justified.
However, i have one positive aspect coming out of it: since we’ve been a great team 10 years ago and had a lot of fun while spending time, sometimes even nights to finish that game i still remember it fondly. Just know that: personally, i didn’t feel pressured to put in all that effort and time. I did it because i really, really wanted to. Because i was passionate (first game, remember?).
After the game was released we were in a limbo for 3 months. Completely underworked. It was among the most painful time in my work life. For days on end i rearranged the words in the design document i was writing. Boring. But: it turned out to be a good thing because for one, this is the only title i’ve ever been credited as Game Designer (whoop-dee-duu!) and working on that project was a snatch. Not much overtime, it just flowed. And it’s still the title i’m most proud of: Dave Mirra’s Freestyle BMX for the Gameboy Color.
The second worst crunch i experienced was shortly before the release of Spellforce: The Order of Dawn. Interestingly another first: the first project i worked on for my second employer. I joined the team early 2002 and the game was released late in November 2003. My first year was actually easy going … the problem was just: where was it going? Beginning 2003 the pressure increased because the game had to come out the same year and thus discussions raged about the proper direction of the game. But one thing was clear: we had to shift production up by two gears. Among the team members who worked during that time we still feel like the game only came together in the last 6 months before release. Something that’s not unusual to hear from developers, especially when the remaining months leading up to release were crunch time.
But compared to my first big crunch i mentioned above, this one was different in that there was a certain amount of inherent pressure. We knew the situation from the publisher side and that they put pressure on us and that lead to people being asked to stay over the weekend to finish this or that. Of course we did that but not unanimously. You see, this team was maybe ten times larger at about 50 people in the last few months. And while most worked their asses off, others just did 9-to-5 days. If i remember correctly, the status quo was always that it would be viewed positively if you did work long hours but no one was really forced to, unless the “Kacke war am dampfen” (german saying equalling to: “when the shit hits the fan”, literally translates as “the shit was steaming”). 
Anyhow. I remember the night we finished the Gold Master and i was one of the few staying in, waiting for the final greenlight that the FTP transfer was complete and the game had been checked for any A-Bugs. At around 4 am in the morning i went home for a 70 km ride and when i arrived in Frankfurt/Main after a speedy ride home over an empty highway, i got stopped by the police. I was driving 90 km/h in the city where only 50 km/h is allowed. After having checked my papers, my breath and instilling some bad conscience they eventually (had to, as no radar measurments were taken) let me go and let me drive the remaining 300 meters to my apartment. I was too sleep-drunk but also excited to have completed the project to be driving carefully. Plus i did not expect the spanish inquisition to wear green with blinking blue lights.
But one final word: even though it was a hard crunch, it was also handled relatively fairly (especially considering what seems to be going on at Rockstar San Diego). We could take off the hours we’ve spent overtime. I doubt that everyone did, no, i’m certain that a few didn’t take them on that offer at all and it’s probably not been a strict quid pro quo, eg. each hour overtime balanced with an hour off – that was simply because most people didn’t care to write down their overtime, so mostly it was just guessing and from the company’s side: perceived amount of work put in that project. Obviously that lead to some amount of unequal treatment. If you happened to be coming in early, and thus leaving “early” like at around 8 pm then you probably didn’t get such a good deal out of it. On the other hand, some few employees thought they deserved more time off but we all were wondering what the hell for? Since time was never recorded, things could never be proven. In the end, even though we were treated rather fairly it wasn’t perceived as such by a majority of the employees and it only added to the infighting between different departments that was already a part of our daily work.
No one (department) wanted to be the ones to blame while at the same time everyone wanted to do their best, the team dynamics turned out to be not in the interest of the whole team or the project. The energy was there but fluctuating around and no one was able to channel it creatively. It did work in some localized areas where people stuck their heads together and could work in relative isolation but once you needed to cross department boundaries you really had to rely on goodwill or personal relations with someone in order to get things done (quickly & efficiently). And where that was the case, things went actually rather well. However, in some extreme cases some of that lead to outbursts that were heard throughout the corridors and left each of us in a state of confusion and dismay. Since we typically did not know what triggered it, discussions spawned. Accusations were made. Rumors spread. Rinse, repeat. The moral of the story being: not good for team morale. And it was hard to fix that. As a matter of fact, i believe it was never really “fixed” as there was always an unhealthy tension among employees and/or towards management. The good side was that most learned to be professional about it and those that didn’t, left or had to leave (or both). For me personally though it meant that while we were acting professional, we’ve never had a very emotional high or low ever again and the corporate feeling was never as tight as i remember it to be at my previous (first) employer. Whether that can be attributed to the team being much bigger or simply corporate culture is hard to say. I do know that when we worked in smaller teams, especially on prototypes, it felt a lot better so i would tend to favor bigger team size as the bigger culprit but then again, in those teams the team culture was also quite different naturally.
Now i’ve said a lot of things that may not portray my employers in the best light. So in their defense let me say this: it could have been much worse and all of the above is my subjective opinion and i do not regret these times. It provided me with invaluable experience and know-how that serves to guide my future towards something exciting.
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