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Bungie, Big Huge Games, Certain Affinity, Zenimax, and more join TakeThis to combat crunch and mental illness in the industry [+ data]

Sawneeks

Sawneeks

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Oct 25, 2017
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First posted on Polygon by Campbell, "Working group of game companies announces plan to tackle crunch and workplace stress"

That the game industry has a problem — usually shorthanded as "crunch" — is well documented. But a new initiative has been launched that seeks to seriously address the specifics.

Take This, a not-for-profit dedicated to addressing mental health problems in the game industry, today announced a working group made up of five games companies: Big Huge Games, Bungie, Certain Affinity, Wooga and Zenimax. Human resources leaders from the companies will work with Take This on addressing the game industry's excesses.
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Company representatives will share data and will meet with Take This once a month to discuss how to resolve mental health issues associated with game industry specific problems like crunch, job security, diversity and online harassment.

Crevoshay added that a number of game industry companies had been approached, but declined to participate. "Some people are nervous about taking part, some don't feel like they have the resources to commit, and some are dealing with challenging situations in real time," she said.
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While this is great news and I'm very happy to see companies taking positive first steps toward combating this issue, I also wanted to discuss the White Paper that TakeThis published. It's an overview of various data that has been collected over the years in regards to the industry and covers diversity, mental health, and more. I'm still reading through it myself but you can find it here on TakeThis website.

TakeThis State of the Industry 2019

Some bits I've already found interesting are:

Only one-third of developers remain in the industry for 10 years or more.

53% of game developers report that "crunch" (working more than 40 hours per week over an extended period of time) is an expected component of their employment, with less than 18% reporting overtime compensation for exceeding 40 hours a week of work.
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In 2019, only 19% of respondents from a survey of game developers identified as female in the United States.

In the same survey, only 32% of respondents did not identify as Caucasian or European.
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There are growing concerns over mental health stressors related to how individuals and companies navigate online harassment and provide support and/or validation to their employees and fans (Van Zoonen et. al., 2016; Farokhmanesh, 2018).

Mental health professionals have voiced concern over problematic gaming among extreme players. While the WHO added Gaming Disorder and Hazaderous Gaming to the new edition of the ICD in 2019 (Park, 2019), the current state of research does not fully support gaming addiction as an independent clinical disorder (Aarseth, et al., 2017).
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And much, much more.
 
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5taquitos

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Oct 27, 2017
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I can't trust company-led initiatives driven by PR to take meaningful steps on their own.

Unionization is a must.
 
Dest

Dest

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Isn't Bungie known to have and always had a ton of forced crunch? This seems a bit like the fox guarding the hen house.
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Reminder that up until recently they were owned and operated by Activision.

edit: wowee the pile was real. yes, i'm incorrect but forgive me for believing they were because you can't they certainly seemed like it was just more activision bullshit since destiny 1 came out
 
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Sawneeks

Sawneeks

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Isn't Bungie known to have and always had a ton of forced crunch? This seems a bit like the fox guarding the hen house.
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In the article it discusses that TakeThis is working with the listed companies on how they can improve their own work environments. Seems like Bungie knows it may have a problem and is looking into how to work on fixing it.
 
ASaiyan

ASaiyan

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Oct 25, 2017
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Good. Overworking your employees isn't just immoral, it's decidedly economically inefficient. Crunch is harmful to everybody in the value chain. The AAA industry needs a dramatic rethink of its workflow and business model if it is to survive long-term.

Hopefully we actually see some changes at these companies, and more publishers sign up too.
 
Nuclear Detergent

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Oct 29, 2017
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Are you saying that some 80% dont get paid overtime when they crunch? That's insane, and unfair. Form a union they should.
 
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Sawneeks

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PeskyToaster said:
I guess it's a good step but I'd prefer robust labor laws and unionization.
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Agreed. I do think more legal protection should be in place for employees but I do think this is a great first step. Especially in regards to data as well, it's something we can point to as a reason why this will not work (aside from it being immoral)
 
Asbsand

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Isn't Bungie known to have and always had a ton of forced crunch? This seems a bit like the fox guarding the hen house.
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Crunch =/= mental health issue. Sure, it can lead to it - that's why you'd want to avoid it. Imagine being a BioWare employee under Anthem. If you get depression and anxiety and it gets worse because of crunch what's better? Not being able to go to anyone but your perhaps dismissive HR manager or team Lead, or go to a psych that your company pays for and get help and comfort in that.

Not saying it excuses crunch. You're right with the analogy but by itself it shouldn't be a bad thing to adapt this.
 
Toa Axis

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Isn't Bungie known to have and always had a ton of forced crunch? This seems a bit like the fox guarding the hen house.
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Bungie has been working for years to reduce crunch - Halo 2's notorious crunch almost sank the project entirely, and ruined employee health and morale. Bungie even internally considered Halo 2 a failure because of this, even though it saw wild commercial success.

In terms of large studios, they're known to be pretty great too work for nowadays.
 
Castamere

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I think Unions would help game development so much. They could start having multiple shifts with reasonable hours instead of heavy crunch which will allow fresh minds to tackle problems. One person working 18 hours straight isnt helping. Development would change for the better.
 
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Sawneeks

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Cheezeman3000 said:
I don't believe such a company exists. The best you can hope for are lower levels of crunch.
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You should listen to Jason Schreier's talk with Dave Lang on the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast. They talk about how Iron Galaxy works to avoid crunch and does so pretty effectively. They do have mention some minimal crunch but they have since worked past that and haven't had an issue.

The episode is called, "How One Big Game Studio Avoids Crunch" if you're interested.
 
higemaru

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Nov 30, 2017
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"let's do it ourselves before the govt gets involved" seems to be "we've got six months to fix this before a bill gets passed" so i look forward to Take-Two v. Smith in December.
 
Velocity:Design:Comfort

Velocity:Design:Comfort

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Asbsand said:
Crunch =/= mental health issue. Sure, it can lead to it - that's why you'd want to avoid it. Imagine being a BioWare employee under Anthem. If you get depression and anxiety and it gets worse because of crunch what's better? Not being able to go to anyone but your perhaps dismissive HR manager or team Lead, or go to a psych that your company pays for and get help and comfort in that.

Not saying it excuses crunch. You're right with the analogy but by itself it shouldn't be a bad thing to adapt this.
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I agree with you, I just thought it was ironic that bungie is championed in this initiative. I have no takes or anything about the other listed companies.
 
Slayven

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Oct 25, 2017
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It should be a a completely third party entity with no ties to the companies.
 
Conkerkid11

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Nuclear Detergent said:
Are you saying that some 80% dont get paid overtime when they crunch? That's insane, and unfair. Form a union they should.
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Yeah, this is the most bullshit part of it.

It's not enough that they're working an unhealthy number of hours, but on top of that, they don't even get the benefit of overtime that most other jobs provide.
 
Cheezeman3000

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Sawneeks said:
You should listen to Jason Schreier's talk with Dave Lang on the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast. They talk about how Iron Galaxy works to avoid crunch and does so pretty effectively. They do have mention some minimal crunch but they have since worked past that and haven't had an issue.

The episode is called, "How One Big Game Studio Avoids Crunch" if you're interested.
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Awesome, will have to check it out. I know Nintendo has said they avoid it too, but we haven't heard from any actual devs, only their PR people, so I'm not convinced they have no crunch.
 
Velocity:Design:Comfort

Velocity:Design:Comfort

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Sawneeks said:
In the article it discusses that TakeThis is working with the listed companies on how they can improve their own work environments. Seems like Bungie knows it may have a problem and is looking into how to work on fixing it.
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Sorry if I come off thinking this is a bad initiative, I don't at all. Doing literally anything is better than the doing nothing about it that happens right now. But Riot said the same about sexism and I don't think anything really changed until they were further exposed. These posts say it better than I could:

Slayven said:
It should be a a completely third party entity with no ties to the companies.
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5taquitos said:
I can't trust company-led initiatives driven by PR to take meaningful steps on their own.

Unionization is a must.
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halfjoey

halfjoey

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Dest said:
Reminder that up until recently they were owned and operated by Activision.
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Everyone piled on you like a bunch of assholes without explaining the Bungie and Activision relationship.
Activation was the publisher for Bungie, both companies were self managed but each company probably affected the other in different ways. It's possible for the publisher to pressure the developer into crunch, but I don't know if that was the save between Bungie and Activision. Each company has deadlines and targets they want to hit. I'm sure there was a struggle between Bungie and Activision causing one or both to want out of the relationship.
 
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Sawneeks

Sawneeks

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Sorry if I come off thinking this is a bad initiative, I don't at all. Doing literally anything is better than the doing nothing about it that happens right now. But Riot said the same about sexism and I don't think anything really changed until they were further exposed. These posts say it better than I could:
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No worries, I get you. It's fair to be a bit apprenhensive given that we've seen the PR talk before and not seeing any actual change or benefit from it. But with this I feel it's too early to really judge? We may not even see the results of this as it would be mostly in-house at Bungie.

Guess I'm taking the optimist approach to this.
 
Blue Ninja

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Velocity:Design:Comfort said:
Isn't Bungie known to have and always had a ton of forced crunch? This seems a bit like the fox guarding the hen house.
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Iirc, Bungie's been crunch-free since they started developing Destiny 2.
Dest said:
Reminder that up until recently they were owned and operated by Activision.
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They never were. Crunch was a big part of their culture back in the Microsoft days, but after they went independent and had to crunch for several months to ship D1 they abolished it altogether.
 
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Sawneeks

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MatrixMan.exe said:
This. It's often tiring reading this place as a result.
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Honestly this is part of the reason I posted this. Not only to give this more attention but in a hope to try and better re-frame conversation here. As is evident already, we have a lot of folks from the industry who view and post on Era and I'd rather this place be somewhere that everyone can participate in the discussion.
 
Gabbo

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Slayven said:
In an ideal world the companies would be taken orders from the such an entity. Their running and funding the thing opens it up to cronyism
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That would be my fear too. If the devs dont like what they see/hear, they walk away and the industry goes dark on the issue and conditions dont improve or get worse.

OR

They make empty gestures to the public about all their changes, this work group folds, again nothing has actually changed.
 
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