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Ryse crunching team served 11,500 dinners by ship date #rysefacts

Foxix Von

Member
This is absolutely disgusting. As someone who wanted to get into the animation side of things of the entertainment industry it was exactly this kind of bullshit that pushed me away pursuing that goal. I just kept hearing horror story after horror story about how terribly these companies can treat their employees. Completely disgusting.
 

UNCMark

Banned
OuSGIrk.png

Russ Pitts? More like Russ Shits. Am I right?

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Paz

Member
I'm actually physically disgusted by many of the responses in this thread making light of ridiculously excessive crunch & the fact that the management is taking pride in it. Have nothing more to say because I would just get myself banned.
 
Come on guys. If you wanna make fun of people on twitter at least grasp that they aren't outraged at the giving out dinner part, but at the crunch time that requires employees to stay overtime long enough to amass that amount. Then you can talk about how software crunches are normal and defend why it would be hard to prevent it.

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Horp

Member
Terrible responses by people. First off, why so serious? Second, it doesn't matter how well organized you are; there will always be a crunch period. Got time to spare when the game seems pretty much done? Don't worry the graphics guys have already convinced the lead designers that that latest cool thing they invented is a MUST have, and the game can't ship without it :)
 
I don't see how people can call this distasteful without knowing all the details.

We do know they are being fed on Crytek's dime.
Maybe they are being paid for the extra work they are being putting in.
Maybe some of these employees actively volunteered to be on the crunch staff.

I'm not going to jump on Crytek for something when I don't know all the variables. I don't think anyone else should either.

If there needs to be a general discussion about working conditions for game devs that is one thing, but there just isn't enough information given to be outraged about.

All I can see is Crytek served up a whole hell of a lot of food to their crunch staff.
 
I swear no one complaining has worked on a major project for anything before. Every job I've had has had some kind of a crunch time. It kind of sucks but it happens. Bragging about it was stupid but I don't know any business with good enough management to avoid a crunch for a deadline. It always happens, no matter how good the manager's intentions are.

I worked for 5 years in "AAA". I can accept some crunch, but a lot of it (and what has gone on this year with friends) is terrible. A friend of mine couldn't come to my birthday party (just drinks and fun times, really) on a Saturday because he was at work until 3AM. Fuck that noise.
 

TriGen

Member
It's a reality of the industry that isn't going away. The tweet wasn't a good idea but condemning the studio for it is over the top. Those meals are some of the only breaks these teams get. The teams know they have to crunch and look forward to stuff like this. Bragging about it is dumb but a team that didn't have catered dinners during crunch would be absolutely beaten down.

I feel the same about this.

They shouldn't have tweeted it in a "hey, look at this!" way, but developers do crunch -- and it's even more serious when you're dealing with a new console launch. And, yeah, I think having people working late and not offering to cover their meals would make things worse.

So, bad on them for tweeting it. But I would guess every studio aiming for the XBO or PS4 launch is crunching and working overtime.
 

Dance Inferno

Unconfirmed Member
Crunch inevitably happens on any project, but some studios thrive on it. Some very big famous studios, which I have people TOLD ME in person "I'd rather be homeless than work for them" even though it'd look great on their resume.

It's easy to throw around big statements like that, but I bet you absolutely 0% of the people who have made that statement would not pick working for the "evil" large company rather than being homeless. Throwing around this argument to prove a point doesn't help your case at all because it is so transparently wrong. It's easy to make a big statement; it's much harder to actually follow up on it.

Those people, those programmers, those artists, those QA people, don't get to see their family. And this twitter jockey is making light of that. FUCK THAT

I spent two years working a 100-hour-per-week job and I know first hand how painful and soul-crushing that kind of schedule is, but at least with developer crunch it only occurs for the last few months of a project. If this schedule was something that developers worked all the time, then that might be something to get outraged over, but crunch seems to be a regular, albeit disliked, part of the development process.
 

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
So is Patrick Klepek a fanboy or just angry because it's X1 exclusive?

Half of the initial respondents are in indie games or the software development business. Are they fanboys or just angry because it's X1 exclusive?

So because they work in software development or are indies they are automatically not biased?
let me state again, this is twitter. Sorry but these comments dont scream of people that they're as reasonable as you think they are. and i dont know patrick klepek, who could be one of those people having a stupid argument in the youtube comments when it comes to the internet for al I know.
 

lord pie

Member
The problem is this suggests a real problem for the developer.
Working late is common in the industry, sure, but not to this extent.

Typically, having a meal provided will usually have the catch that you are doing X extra hours unpaid (I know one dev where it's 3 hours).

The thing is, not everyone crunches. Typically half the team or less. People have families, commitments, etc - and for some people an 8 hour day is already exhausting if their work is highly taxing mentally or emotionally. There is always a point where you are no longer going to be productive, and luckily many people have learnt to recognise that point.

Thing is, it isn't too hard to make some educated guesses here. Assume the core team is 100 people, and of those, *on average* they stay late every other night. So that's an average of 50 people every night (which for most developers I know would be a *lot*).
Ok? so divide the dinner count, and you get 230 days. 230 days.

That's 46 working weeks. Pretty much a year of solid crunch for at least 50 people. I think this is utterly unacceptable, even for a high profile launch title. For any title.
 
What's the cause of video game development crunch anyways? Ideas being too ambitious for the time allocated? Not enough employees? A lot of time being wasted early on? Why hasn't this sort of thing been eradicated yet?

Its a mix of everything. As Graphics requirements go up, more time is needed to get to those graphics. With more processing power and newer architectures an exponential more amount of time is required to add in the extra features and crush bugs. As scale goes up, the amount of time goes up. Gamers have become picky in that they want things that are ambitious, and if they aren't ambitious then they wont buy them. With scale going up they need more employees to attempt to keep any schedule on the project.


In addition to all of this, the main cost in development is your employees which have salaries of 50-120k (at which numbers they are still underpaid for what they do). Publishers and Developers struggle to make a profit on the games they release now, so they can't take risks by hiring more employees because that costs adds up over time Most development houses have between 50-200 people which for a project the size of a game is extremely small. In order to cut crunch by any meaningfull amount, they would have to hire another 50-100 people which then has the effect of doubling budgets of the game and making it even more harder to turn a profit.

Then after this you finally factor in management which is more often than not terrible, and then this alone is a topic that can span many many pages. Its a whole slew of problems.
 

Rubius

Member
The outrage isn't admitting crunch, but pointing it out as a point of pride. The Twitter account person likely does NOTHING to contribute to the product and is just an AP that orders pizza each night before she goes home for the day.

I've worked crunch. 7AM to 9PM on WEEKENDS. It's a fucking drag. And here you have a person trying to point out how awesome they are for buying us fucking dinner?

Given the choice between seeing my family or getting free dinner, I pick my family.

He's saying that they work hard on the game and are willing to do overtime. That's what crunch mean. "Hey look, we stayed outside of regular hours because we want the game to be awesome" is what she tried to say. It's a drag, yeah, but it comes with the job. I dont complain that I have to wash toilets if it's my job. You know crunching is in the job description, so really it's not a surprise.
Nobody got told "Okay, I know we never do that, but you HAVE to stay here for 5 more hours.".
Sure, you dont WANT to do crunch, but it's in the job. If you dont want to crunch, dont go in a crunching job. There is plenty of 9-5 jobs out there without any crunching.
 

JABEE

Member
Terrible responses by people. First off, why so serious? Second, it doesn't matter how well organized you are; there will always be a crunch period. Got time to spare when the game seems pretty much done? Don't worry the graphics guys have already convinced the lead designers that that latest cool thing they invented is a MUST have, and the game can't ship without it :)
I wonder how much of it is about just making the game better. It's always difficult to put aside a creative work and move on from it.

I think the Tweet was stupid, but I don't feel disgusted by it or feel like I need to tell everyone else to be disgusted by it. The person posting on that Twitter is not the CEO of the company or even a major stakeholder. It's probably some guy who works with all of the people working really hard on the game.
 

Rubius

Member
Let me tell you some stories about my days in the military...

Yeah, long shifts are not a surprise to anyone. Hell, at least they got a paid lunch. I wish I got that when I did a double shift of 16 hours, going home for 8 hours and coming back for an another 16 the day after.
 

Furio53

Member
Its a mix of everything. As Graphics requirements go up, more time is needed to get to those graphics. With more processing power and newer architectures an exponential more amount of time is required to add in the extra features and crush bugs. As scale goes up, the amount of time goes up. Gamers have become picky in that they want things that are ambitious, and if they aren't ambitious then they wont buy them. With scale going up they need more employees to attempt to keep any schedule on the project.


In addition to all of this, the main cost in development is your employees which have salaries of 50-120k (at which numbers they are still underpaid for what they do). Publishers and Developers struggle to make a profit on the games they release now, so they can't take risks by hiring more employees because that costs adds up over time Most development houses have between 50-200 people which for a project the size of a game is extremely small. In order to cut crunch by any meaningfull amount, they would have to hire another 50-100 people which then has the effect of doubling budgets of the game and making it even more harder to turn a profit.


Its a whole slew of problems.


This is the issue. It isn't just hey look we serve meals occasionally.

I've been through some nasty crunches. 5 months of 6-7 days minimum of 12 hrs. Usually lasted to 14-15 sometimes more. I could give a flying fuck about provided dinners. Gee thanks. That sure makes up for the time I'm not having a life outside of work. You don't eat the dinner then go home. You eat the dinner then work 5 more hours.

Them sharing a "fun fact" is a pretty disturbing sign about the acceptance that the Quality of Life in our industry fucking sucks for a lot of people.
 

netBuff

Member
He's saying that they work hard on the game and are willing to do overtime. That's what crunch mean. "Hey look, we stayed outside of regular hours because we want the game to be awesome" is what she tried to say. It's a drag, yeah, but it comes with the job. I dont complain that I have to wash toilets if it's my job. You know crunching is in the job description, so really it's not a surprise.
Nobody got told "Okay, I know we never do that, but you HAVE to stay here for 5 more hours.".
Sure, you dont WANT to do crunch, but it's in the job. If you dont want to crunch, dont go in a crunching job. There is plenty of 9-5 jobs out there without any crunching.

This is a really bizarre statement: Unions have fought for better job conditions in many industries, saying "get another job" isn't a reasonable defence for bad treatment of the employees by the employer.
 
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