Even better one:
Gaf strikes again, never disappoint. This is hilarious
Even better one:
I still get weird looks when talking to new trainees when I scoff their "it's only for this weekend, a last sprint is all is needed". Personally I've reached the point where I don't even give a rat's ass and I'd rather see the company go underCompanies know what they're doing when they hire young people. They are naive and are just excited to be "part of it". Most have no basis for comparison as to what's realistic in the 'professional' fields. Most don't have the confidence to speak up. It's like a cycle of abuse, and everyone becomes complicit in it. Often it isn't an evil manager scheming to enslave workers, it's that they went through the same BS and they don't know any different. Or they simply don't have the management skill or sensitivity to mold the project into something sustainable on a human level.
It's hard to adequately describe the debilitating affects of working like this over an extended periods of time. Take a reasonably healthy person, then put that person into that grinder of no sleep, too much coffee, too much stress, bad food, for weeks and months on end, and there is a very quantifiable physical cost. Then there is the mental cost -- the complete exhaustion, the depression, the extreme mental fatigue.
Like I said before, anyone going to boycott Ryse...anyone complaining starting a union?
Complaining about crunch is becoming like a past-time for people..
You also run into the fact that crunches are for different "goals". Let's suppose it's a 2.5 year cycle dev, shipping for a November release: how many "stable builds" would you actually make within those last 11 months?Yeah half a year of crunch would be ridiculous. Is that standard? The most I've seen is Prolly 3 weeks to 1 month in my field where things get crazy.
If only you had read the rest of the posts on this page you may not have ended up looking so foolish.
Plenty of people who actually work in the industry have weighed in on the issue right here in this thread and agree with what you call 'hyperbolic bullshit'. I think you'll find their excellent posts about just how damaging and avoidable crunch time can be enlightening. While crunch is endemic to the industry, bragging about it as if it's something to be proud of is another issue altogether.
Complaining about people complaining is becoming a past-time for you. Are you starting your own forum?
He compared crunch time to child labour. Sounds pretty hyperbolic to me.
The fact is that any industry you could care to name, from publishing to marketing to insurance or banking, has this issue, feigning outrage on Twitter for the sake of having n opinion isn't exactly constructive.
I just find it ridiculous seeing people pile onto this bandwagon, claiming that the tweet was 'boasting' about the mistreatment of their workers is patently ridiculous; the very idea that a company would willingly make such a huge PR blunder is nonsensical.
Checks my current work, compares that to my previous work.The fact is that any industry you could care to name, from publishing to marketing to insurance or banking, has this issue, feigning outrage on Twitter for the sake of having n opinion isn't exactly constructive.
He compared crunch time to child labour. Sounds pretty hyperbolic to me.
The fact is that any industry you could care to name, from publishing to marketing to insurance or banking, has this issue, feigning outrage on Twitter for the sake of having n opinion isn't exactly constructive.
I just find it ridiculous seeing people pile onto this bandwagon, claiming that the tweet was 'boasting' about the mistreatment of their workers is patently ridiculous; the very idea that a company would willingly make such a huge PR blunder is nonsensical.
Heh
Who is 'he'? Have you just condensed all the posts by former and active employees in the industry down to one thing you find silly?And no, it doesn't exist in most other industries. Banking having crunch time? Are you high? The reason people are bothered is because it isn't the norm in other industries.
They're going the extra mile to make the project they're working on even better because their producer did not. You could get the same effect by building another month into the schedule; few people would object to that.
That's what crunch is, at heart: Programmers bailing out management. At the other level, though, it's management having to promise the earth to publishers to secure money. And publishers want to spend as little as possible, of course, in part because profitability is so volatile in this industry.
It's a vicious circle, and breaking it is nontrivial.
Really a thousand posts on this? Maybe if Team Ico had 11,500 crunch dinners that game would not be vapor ware. I have no stock in the success or failure of Ryse, and I have seen nothing that makes it a killer property worthy of excitement. But there is nothing horrible about the tweet. They worked their asses off to get a game ready for a new consoles launch, and gave out an interesting statistic to represent just how hard they worked to get it done.
Your anecdote from your mother outweighs what everyone else has said in this thread? Try working in a few industries yourself first. Then come back when you are a bit more experienced.'He' is the person I originally quoted, don't try and twist what I'm saying.
Well my Mum worked in the City for 25 years and I can categorically tell you that an equivalent crunch time does exist in other industries, despite your flippant dismissal of the idea. I'm not condoning it, but any industry with shit loads of money riding on the success of a certain project, or a certain deal, is going to have a 'crunch time' of sorts.
The reason people are bothered is:
A: they've experienced it first hand and find that Tweet in bad taste considering the working conditions during crunch time
or
B: standard gamer outrage over an issue they barely understand, recycling second hand opinions to bash a game/developer they dislike.
My problem is with the B group, the sort of people who equate the practice to child labour, which was what initially inspired me to post, because comments like that are offensive, not constructive, and depressingly typical of the knee-jerk response a lot of gamers seem to be inclined towards.
Your anecdote from your mother outweighs what everyone else has said in this thread? Try working in a few industries yourself first. Then come back when you are a bit more experienced.
And asking you to clarify 'he' is not twisting anything, learn what words mean.
yeah i removed the anecdote because it's not constructive, but on a personal level I can tell you how much of her family life she missed to work on important contracts or deals. It was lots, so the idea that there's nothing similar about the two practices just seems bizarre.
If that's how the tweet had been presented I don't think people would have been so upset. It's only because the tweet seemed to be flippant about the amount of overtime their employees were being forced to work that people got so upset. As an employer that's not really something you should be making light of.They worked their asses off to get a game ready for a new consoles launch, and gave out an interesting statistic to represent just how hard they worked to get it done.
Long working hours are not crunch time. No other industry I can think of has anything like crunch time besides maybe a few others in the entertainment field.
If you sign up for 60 hour weeks, you expect to be compensated for them. If you sign up for 40 hour weeks and then are told to do 80 hour weeks it's a bit different.
My problem is with the B group, the sort of people who equate the practice to child labour, which was what initially inspired me to post, because comments like that are offensive, not constructive, and depressingly typical of the knee-jerk response a lot of gamers seem to be inclined towards.
If that's how the tweet had been presented I don't think people would have been so upset. It's only because the tweet seemed to be flippant about the amount of overtime their employees were being forced to work that people got so upset. As an employer that's not really something you should be making light of.
As I said earlier in the thread, any industry where you have to deliver a product on a schedule has crunch time.
Maybe, sometimes, when needed. Not as a matter of course. Not as ubiquitously as it is an game development. It is not planned in before work starts, it is not bragged about.
To suggest otherwise is to be utterly dishonest about it. Ask architects/engineers how crunch time would work in the construction industry.
Ask computer hardware engineers. It's there. Meals, too, and they are appreciated.
LOL, okay. So two industries are broken so you think that makes it common and acceptable. Nice work.
Throwing more people into a project in hopes that will cover deadlines is a management problem and barely works. Management, unsurprisingly, is hard, thats why so few people get it right and software development industry is run by people who are just winging it.I've been on projects that meandered without delivery dates or deadlines. That's no fun, either. Employees like to feel that they are actually delivering a product. And no business can stay in business with those sorts of projects.
Deadlines produce crunch times. I honestly think it is unavoidable. Perhaps the length and extent of crunch time could be mitigated with better management. But sometimes you simply can't throw more people at a job because the work can't be divided any more. So what's the answer? More deadlines so that work is done more evenly rather than backloaded? It probably just means longer projects, though.
wow at the Twitter backfire.
To be fair though, most of those backfire comments are because this is a Xbox one game.
If you say that from the start, the project just won't get funded.
So what you're basically saying is that unrealistic projects have unrealistic goals, and the only way to get it done is to lie, get funded with the undeliverable goals, and the push everyone hard enough to make that goal happen, at the expense of the talent and resources that you can burn up.If you say that from the start, the project just won't get funded.
I've been on projects that meandered without delivery dates or deadlines. That's no fun, either. Employees like to feel that they are actually delivering a product. And no business can stay in business with those sorts of projects.
Deadlines produce crunch times. I honestly think it is unavoidable. Perhaps the length and extent of crunch time could be mitigated with better management. But sometimes you simply can't throw more people at a job because the work can't be divided any more. So what's the answer? More deadlines so that work is done more evenly rather than backloaded? It probably just means longer projects, though.
If you say that from the start, the project just won't get funded.
So what you're basically saying is that unrealistic projects have unrealistic goals, and the only way to get it done is to lie, get funded with the undeliverable goals, and the push everyone hard enough to make that goal happen, at the expense of the talent and resources that you can burn up.
Seems awfully short sighted.
Going to join GAF crunch defense force.
I think they're lucky getting fed while they hash out the rest of the development on this game. I also don't see why it is difficult to see that that crunching in this industry (while not at all praised) is just part of the job. Development being as project oriented as it is, can be swayed by so many variables. You can't always blame management. I tend to think back to college as well as my time in the military where you sometime have to burn that midnight oil to make sure projects get out on time.
There's a difference between, "well fuck, that didn't work, and we're now behind schedule" vs. "this component takes 3 months to make, but since we need to keep the budget down to 2 months, we'll write that in, and just plan the crunch".Going to join GAF crunch defense force.
I think they're lucky getting fed while they hash out the rest of the development on this game. I also don't see why it is difficult to see that that crunching in this industry (while not at all praised) is just part of the job. Development being as project oriented as it is, can be swayed by so many variables. You can't always blame management. I tend to think back to college as well as my time in the military where you sometime have to burn that midnight oil to make sure projects get out on time.
The gaming industry has a lot of factors at play that make the severity of the crunch far worse than others. You've got an overabundance of talent that will work for peanuts just to get experience. The industry chews these bright-eyed grads up and spits them out the other side with regularity. The problem isn't necessarily that there is crunch. That's expected with deadlines. It's the regularity and the total lack of compensation on the part of the publisher/developer that is the problem.
See, in most every industry other than gaming, it's no secret which companies require you to spend more than 40 hours a week on the job. Witness Glassdoor's 'work/life balance' rating bar. These companies can either up their compensation or fail to do so and deal with a decreased level of available talent. How much talent is the gaming industry missing out on or failing to cultivate by having these sorts of practices? You can't see something you've never had. Why do the most celebrated games often come from development houses that attract top level talent and generally avoid crunch time where possible?
Publishers and developers treat the release date like the holy grail, cutting, crunching, trimming their way down to the wire. Maybe if the industry developed a little more reasonable attitude towards ship dates (this is something digital can help with) then this problem wouldn't be so large. Double the problem if you are publicly traded company. It's also too late to unionize. The major players like Sony and Microsoft would have to basically come out and say they won't allow games made with non unionized labor for such a thing to gain traction. The TV and movie business has unionized guys on the production side, despite tight deadlines, and the result is a wiser use of allocated resources. There's no incentive to do so in an industry where you can shove cheap talent into the fire as fast as you can hire them.
The industry can change. People just need to stop seeing crunch as 'unavoidable' when it's really a symptom of poor management and poor labor practices.
The gaming industry has a lot of factors at play that make the severity of the crunch far worse than others. You've got an overabundance of talent that will work for peanuts just to get experience. The industry chews these bright-eyed grads up and spits them out the other side with regularity. The problem isn't necessarily that there is crunch. That's expected with deadlines. It's the regularity and the total lack of compensation on the part of the publisher/developer that is the problem.
See, in most every industry other than gaming, it's no secret which companies require you to spend more than 40 hours a week on the job. Witness Glassdoor's 'work/life balance' rating bar. These companies can either up their compensation or fail to do so and deal with a decreased level of available talent. How much talent is the gaming industry missing out on or failing to cultivate by having these sorts of practices? You can't see something you've never had. Why do the most celebrated games often come from development houses that attract top level talent and generally avoid crunch time where possible?
Publishers and developers treat the release date like the holy grail, cutting, crunching, trimming their way down to the wire. Maybe if the industry developed a little more reasonable attitude towards ship dates (this is something digital can help with) then this problem wouldn't be so large. Double the problem if you are publicly traded company. It's also too late to unionize. The major players like Sony and Microsoft would have to basically come out and say they won't allow games made with non unionized labor for such a thing to gain traction. The TV and movie business has unionized guys on the production side, despite tight deadlines, and the result is a wiser use of allocated resources. There's no incentive to do so in an industry where you can shove cheap talent into the fire as fast as you can hire them.
The industry can change. People just need to stop seeing crunch as 'unavoidable' when it's really a symptom of poor management and poor labor practices.
LOL at the guy saying that this is disgusting. All studios do stuff like this at crunch time.
An innocent and lighthearted tweet leads to 20+ pages where the word scum is being thrown around. This is Xbox One.
An innocent and lighthearted tweet leads to 20+ pages where the word scum is being thrown around. This is Xbox One.
An innocent and lighthearted tweet leads to 20+ pages where the word scum is being thrown around. This is Xbox One.