Great article by Ian Williams. 10 years after the EA spouse scandal, the games industry is still exploiting its workforce and burning through talent and creativity. It's a good, long and thorough read which I suggest to read in full. I took out some small quotes from it below:
On how consumer expectations, among other things, drives crunch
On how crunch harms the project:
The acceptance of crunch
On the role of IGDA
On how some developers would like IGDA to function more like a union:
More at the link: http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ustry-exploiting-workforce-ea-spouse-software
But, a decade after EA Spouse, it’s questionable how much has actually changed. Statistically, things appear better. In 2004, the IGDA – the only large organisation advocating for labour rights in the US games industry – started a regular “quality of life” survey in response to the EA controversy, polling staff on working standards and practices. Its latest numbers from the 2014 report show a decline in intensity.
“Over the last decade, the average amount of crunch time worked has dropped, with 19% of 2014 respondents indicating they haven’t crunched in at least two years compared to 2.4% of 2004 respondents,” says Kate Edwards, the IGDA’s executive director. “Also, 38% of the 2014 respondents reported typical crunch times of 50-69 hours per week compared to 35% of 2004 respondents reporting crunch times of 65-80 hours per week.”
But the take from Edwards is of the glass-half-full variety. Despite the drop in intensity, the industry baseline is that only one-fifth of industry workers don’t crunch at all, and nearly two-fifths still crunch more than 50 hours a week. Furthermore, current and former industry workers interviewed for this feature revealed deep dissatisfaction with crunch and a sense that, even if it’s not as acute as it was a decade ago, it’s still worse than they can tolerate.
On how consumer expectations, among other things, drives crunch
The pressure comes from consumer expectations, as well. With development budgets ballooning, failure can be catastrophic, so the temptation can be to pack in more features – more cool stuff – to appease the demanding audience. This leads to the twin spectres of crunch and layoffs, as studios grow to accommodate ambitious ideas, then downsize or collapse when the resulting game fails to make a profit.
“Generally I feel crunch most often results from the conflict between manpower, consumer expectations and quality of the product,” says an engineer currently working at an EA studio. “It’s the classic two-out-of-three question: you can’t have good, fast and cheap; pick two. There are certain levels of consumer expectations and quality you can’t sacrifice, so manpower gets hit, both in temp workers and in overtime across the board.”
On how crunch harms the project:
Crunch in this sort of working environment becomes a self-perpetuating problem. In Fred Brooks’s book on software management, The Mythical Man-Month, he posits that the more people added to a software project, the less efficient the whole team works, which then extends the project further. Recent data collected by the Games Outcomes Project and shared on the website Gamasutra backs up the view that crunch compounds these problems rather than solving them. The multipart study examined how work practices affect game review scores. In conclusion? “Crunch does not in any way improve game project outcomes and cannot help a troubled game project work its way out of trouble.” And yet the industry still defaults to crunch when a deadline looms.
The acceptance of crunch
“There is a survey question – in the DSS IGDA survey 2014 – that asks respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, ‘Crunch is a necessary part of game development’,” says Legault. “If we look at the responses to that question for people who identified as students and people who did not, we see a quite striking difference. The majority of non-students (55%) disagreed or strongly disagreed to the statement that crunch is necessary. Among student respondents, 26% agreed or strongly agreed that crunch is necessary. Only 38% disagreed or strongly disagreed and over a third (36%) could neither agree nor disagree. There is a higher level of initial acceptance to the notion of crunch.
“Arguably this is what the industry relies upon – the ability to continually take on young and willing new entrants, and to replace those who burn out or otherwise leave for something else. It is fair to say that students and young new entrants to the industry do see crunch and unpaid overtime as price of admission – as ‘the way it is in games’.”
The industry insidiously aligns crunch with passion. It’s a message that is readily apparent in any number of job postings or recruitment videos: if you love games you need to put in the hours. But this combination of passion and expectation can create intolerable pressure. “It’s absurd. It burns out our most passionate workers,” says Tanya Short, head of Kitfox Games. “It makes them believe in the martyr syndrome and pushes out all of those voices that literally cannot afford to give away their personal lives.”
On the role of IGDA
The Canadian researchers were more sympathetic to the IGDA’s predicament than Kazemi or the workers spoken to for this feature. “In its current form, the IGDA is funded by studios and can’t in any way play the role of a union, and couldn’t be expected to do so,” says Legault. “Their primary focus is to promote the industry and support individual workers through training, networking and professional development initiatives. The IGDA relies on volunteers and the activity of its members to join Special Interest Groups on particular topics… The IGDA does not have the resources, or the independence from studio executives, to act like a union.”
On how some developers would like IGDA to function more like a union:
Right now, this change in management approach is reliant on the entrepreneurial spirit of a few forward-thinking studio heads. To negotiate an industrywide change in labour conditions, workers are increasingly looking to collective organisation. The IGDA’s 2014 survey reveals 56% of respondents want unionisation: whether or not the organisation wishes to serve in that role, its constituency is clearly ready for more direct action.
More at the link: http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ustry-exploiting-workforce-ea-spouse-software