Uncharted 3 Required "Brutal" Working Hours

[lacktheknack]

Maybe Valve Time should be standardized. As a son of a man who did some mind-boggling overtime for no extra pay (up to a hundred hours a week) for a year, I hate it when I read about this.

 

[Alandoril]

To do away with crunch is come up with realistic launch targets in the first place.

 

[oldtaku]

Well at least there's the substantial profit sharing, right? ... Right?

 

[antipunt]

Please tell me they get paid for these additional hours...

 

[TheAmazingHobo]

Please tell me they get paid for these additional hours...

Unlikely.
Devs usually get some vacation time after crunch (though nowhere near the hours they actually put in) or some other kind of bs compensation. Actual one-to-one pay for crunch overtime is pretty much unheard of, as that would be insanely expensive and defeat the entire purpose of crunch, which is saving money by shortening the dev cycle.
But hey, they are "doing what they love".
Without getting paid for it and by doing significant damage to their health and personal life.
So that´s fun.

 

[Jumplion]

No, because its an artistic industry. Moviemakers regularly go through hellish conditions and hours to see their product done. Show me a movie where the actors didn't end the shoot exhausted and I'll show you a bad movie. Same with the theater, sculpting, music - virtually any creative medium wherein an artist has any sort of deadline will see them putting in extra hours - not because they're forced to, because they choose to for the sake of their art. The only people who don't put in the extra hours are the people who don't care.

And I'll remind you, Sony let two equally important titles get delayed from the exact same period (Twisted Metal and The Last Guardian). How does that factor into "The Publisher chained Naughty Dog to their desks and withheld food)

Being an artistic industry doesn't mean that it acceptable for people to do insanely long hours without real, tangible, compensation.

Sure.. they are passionate about their art, all artists are.. that's why many artists, except the truly insanely fortunate ones get treated like dirt. Because artists forget the basic transaction taking place when you work for someone else. Time = Money.

Now, those in these industries can tell me all they want that "its normal", "all artistic industries are like this" etc, etc, etc.. but I'm more bothered about those coming into the industry, all stary eyed, and being taught that this practice is acceptable by those who have been forced into it themselves. I'm more concerned by the long lasting, ongoing, health and psychological issues for the people involved.. and the relationship issues of course.

Those who become used to such employer abuses rarely speak out, because it is normal to them.. and artistic industries have a constant supply of new, desperate, talent willing to take the place of those who burn out.

That is absolutely true. This practice of extensive crunch time is really just depressing and it has an adverse affect on the games that these developers produce. Publishers think that it's okay to push their employees like this because they think of them as disposable. After all, there's always some naive budding game developer coming out of college, let's run him dry until the next batch arrive.

Because of this kind of crunch time, burnout does happen often. Think about in the movie industry, we've still got some really old people working diligently in the field. Spielberg is over 70 years old for god's sake and he's still kicking it. Will Wright is barely pushing it anymore after, what, only 30 or so years in the industry? This kind of crunch time harms the workers, taking away their social life, giving them pisspoor health conditions, but in the end it doesn't matter because they're just disposable to the publishers. Not only that, but most of them don't even get compensated for their overtime, and even if the game sells well many times the publishers either screw over the developers out of bonuses or the pay percentage is leaned to their favor.

The occasional crunch time is fine, sometimes shit happens. But we've heard reports of, what, 8 months of nonstop crunch time with 100+ hours a week for some games and people just accept it because "Hey, they're doing what they love!" or "Eh, it's how it is!" That is bullshit, there is no excuse to treat your workforce like crap and just because they enjoy what they're doing for a living does not remove their right of not being exploited like cheap laborers or something.

 

[-|-]

That is bullshit, there is no excuse to treat your workforce like crap and just because they enjoy what they're doing for a living does not remove their right of not being exploited like cheap laborers or something.

Their right of not being exploited? They are being paid to do a job - a job for which they voluntarily signed an employment contract that presumably defined their duties and possible hours of work. If people find they don't like the reality of working long hours near project dead lines, then they can always find other jobs.

 

[Jumplion]

That is bullshit, there is no excuse to treat your workforce like crap and just because they enjoy what they're doing for a living does not remove their right of not being exploited like cheap laborers or something.

Their right of not being exploited? They are being paid to do a job - a job for which they voluntarily signed an employment contract that presumably defined their duties and possible hours of work. If people find they don't like the reality of working long hours near project dead lines, then they can always find other jobs.

1. Often times they are not paid for doing over time, hence not being paid for their job.
2. Even then, few other creative industries would allow employees to sign themselves in a corner via a contract. If an employee has to sign a contract that allows them to be exploited to this extent, something is wrong.
3. Crunch time does not only happen near deadlines, often times they are continually done as we have seen with games like that one Lord of the Rings game and L.A. Noire and their 80+ hour work weeks just continually. This goes into how publishers view these developers as disposable laborers, not creators.
4. This is the "it's just how it is!" excuse that does nothing to change the situation.
5. These people signed up to create something, not to be treated as disposable trash. It's not the "reality of working long hours", it's the indecency of resorting to that in the first place. The "Pre-Production Problem" [http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-pre-production-problem] episode of Extra Credits briefly touches on crunch time and how proper planning would rightly avoid the whole problem in the first place. So much of this (for lack of a better word) "pro-crunch" talk is directed at the wrong place.

 

[-|-]

1. Often times they are not paid for doing over time, hence not being paid for their job.
2. Even then, few other creative industries would allow employees to sign themselves in a corner via a contract. If an employee has to sign a contract that allows them to be exploited to this extent, something is wrong.
3. Crunch time does not only happen near deadlines, often times they are continually done as we have seen with games like that one Lord of the Rings game and L.A. Noire and their 80+ hour work weeks just continually. This goes into how publishers view these developers as disposable laborers, not creators.
4. This is the "it's just how it is!" excuse that does nothing to change the situation.
5. These people signed up to create something, not to be treated as disposable trash. It's not the "reality of working long hours", it's the indecency of resorting to that in the first place. The "Pre-Production Problem" [http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-pre-production-problem] episode of Extra Credits briefly touches on crunch time and how proper planning would rightly avoid the whole problem in the first place. So much of this (for lack of a better word) "pro-crunch" talk is directed at the wrong place.

I did have a long reply to all those points, but it essentially comes down to the same thing. If you don't like where you work, quit and find something else. If you think 'the way it is' is awful, then start a company and do it differently. Everyone has a choice: accept things or not.

(I'm not pro or anti crunch btw)

 

[Jumplion]

1. Often times they are not paid for doing over time, hence not being paid for their job.
2. Even then, few other creative industries would allow employees to sign themselves in a corner via a contract. If an employee has to sign a contract that allows them to be exploited to this extent, something is wrong.
3. Crunch time does not only happen near deadlines, often times they are continually done as we have seen with games like that one Lord of the Rings game and L.A. Noire and their 80+ hour work weeks just continually. This goes into how publishers view these developers as disposable laborers, not creators.
4. This is the "it's just how it is!" excuse that does nothing to change the situation.
5. These people signed up to create something, not to be treated as disposable trash. It's not the "reality of working long hours", it's the indecency of resorting to that in the first place. The "Pre-Production Problem" [http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/the-pre-production-problem] episode of Extra Credits briefly touches on crunch time and how proper planning would rightly avoid the whole problem in the first place. So much of this (for lack of a better word) "pro-crunch" talk is directed at the wrong place.

I did have a long reply to all those points, but it essentially comes down to the same thing. If you don't like where you work, quit and find something else. If you think 'the way it is' is awful, then start a company and do it differently. Everyone has a choice: accept things or not.

(I'm not pro or anti crunch btw)

I couldn't think of a word to really describe it, best I could really come up with.

An artist shouldn't have to come to a decision of either doing what they love or not being treated like dirt for it. The whole issue of crunch time is a product of many other things, from poor planning to abusive publishers. If we simply accept it, nothing will change and conditions will never improve, and that leads to bad games. I do intend to start up my own company in the future, don't know how that will work out in the long run, but I would hope to combat unnecessary crunch time by planning properly and unifying the team.

 

[gphjr14]

If these people are working more than 40 hours a week they need to be given overtime. Considering the money Naughty Dog is going to make off this game there's no excuse other than they're greedy and uncaring about the individuals that are making them millionaires.

In general developers have no right to ***** and moan over used game sales and piracy when they can't give their employees time and a half when they're working their asses off.

 

[antipunt]

Please tell me they get paid for these additional hours...

Unlikely.
Devs usually get some vacation time after crunch (though nowhere near the hours they actually put in) or some other kind of bs compensation. Actual one-to-one pay for crunch overtime is pretty much unheard of, as that would be insanely expensive and defeat the entire purpose of crunch, which is saving money by shortening the dev cycle.
But hey, they are "doing what they love".
Without getting paid for it and by doing significant damage to their health and personal life.
So that´s fun.

That's pretty lame. So why is being a dev worth it again?....