Epic VP Says "Passionate" Developers Are Cool With Crunch

[Mortuorum]

Someone needs to link him to The Trenches [trenchescomic.com] and have him read a few of the stories there. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of them were from Epic employees.

EDIT: I worked for people like this guy. He is a "I live to work" instead of a "I work to live". What's wrong is when the first type doesn't recognize that the second type exists and just assumes everyone else is lazy.

Link no longer works

Here you go. These are mostly tales from QA folks (the true dark underbelly of game development), but crunch time is a foul practice borne of incompetent, self-serving management.

And people wonder why I'm such a cynical bastard.

 

[jurnag12]

"My dad was a doctor, and he put in more hours than most developers. Firemen and policemen work just as hard, but they just don't have blogs writing about it."

Well gee, might that be because they spend their long hours SAVING LIVES instead of programming video games in a nice, safe, comfortable office?

 

[Albino Boo]

So your suggestion for competing with China is top reduce the right, work place safety and pay of of worker to that of a third world country?

If you don't compete on cost and your production becomes to expensive you go bust. Just look at the 8000 Peugeot car workers who just lost their jobs yesterday, they all had the right to 35 hour working weeks, with long mandated holidays and retirement at 60. The only problem is that made the cars to expensive to buy and the plants closed. Rights cost money and if the cost of your rights makes the product to expensive to compete then you lose your job. The same thing happened to the US car industry and they got a massive taxpayer bailout and in return the workers had reduced benefits. If they hadn't agreed to reduction of their rights they would be out of job. The games industry isn't going to get tax payer bailouts, it doesn't employ enough poeple in vital swing states, if they become uncompetitive their jobs will be in china and India buy the end of the week.

 

[Xersues]

Snip

You very much speak truth. As a former developer and a technical project manager, it is the company's responsibility to make sure the services they offer make sense to market and for its employees.

When employees are proud of what they do, they'll make something come true, satisfaction is worth more than money. Granted you HAVE to be taken care of, or working there will not make sense. It's a hard balance, but companies that don't outgrow their thinking will find ways of balance.

I've often found rewarding teams with freedoms like the ability to create their own specs, their own daily schedules, passion projects, that are earned on merit is worth way more than money to employee retention. You *should* pay proper market value of course, but everyone is motivated differently.

Employees are especially motivated to see their management working right along side them during crunch time because it's a company goal they believe in. Not some back-breaking chore to make some one else richer.

Of course, the only way to make real money is to be a corporate cock-sucker, so what do I know. Just ask EA/Activision how they do it.

 

[matrix3509]

Who wants to bet that Mark Rein goes home to his family at 6:00 every day without fail? This guy wouldn't know overtime work if it bit him on the ass.