why?
why?
Yes, the Japanese are world leaders in work/life balanceTerrible working conditions. Perhaps Sony needs to step in and discuss adjustments with the ND leadership team in order to protect the workers.
Hopefully fans will acknowledge these issues and respond with their wallets when TLoU2 arrives. Be the change you want to see guys!
I'll wait for their response to this but if they decide not to address any of the issues I'll have no problem boycotting the game, fuck them.
These people aren't painting the fucking Sistine Chapel or recreating Michelangelo's David. These employees who "want" to make sacrifices are programmers and coders who have to look at a computer monitor for 15-16 hours a day. These people are contracted QA workers who make just enough money to make their job seem like it's worth a damn. The problem is that crunch is implicitly mandated; in other words, workers feel compelled to crunch not out of some vague feeling of achievement or contribution to some glorious creation, but because they know higher-ups will look poorly on those who try to have a good work-life balance.It's almost like talented people who are passionate about things want to make personal sacrifices in the name of their art and passions being as good as they can be? As long as its optional and paid for, is this a problem?
A lot of people in here have clearly never been lucky enough to work on something they care about or take pride in. You just work so you can do other things in life and make a living - good for you, but that's not the case for everyone. I'd also say if you have that mentality - you aren't someone naughty dog or rockstar would be interested in and I don't see how that's a problem. It's not your right to work for one of the best game developers in the world and it's certainly not like you couldn't earn better money elsewhere if you were talented enough. You buy into the culture or you object and move on. It's a young persons game to work in these environments.
So shut up and don't do a thing about it is what you're saying?My argument is that crunch happens pretty much everywhere. You don't need a PhD to understand the examples there.
I'm not talking about the poorer countries themselves I'm talking about the richer countries like Germany etc taking low paid workers from the eastern bloc paying them below miniumum wage (by claiming that they pay rent by stuffing 3 people in a tiny room yet somehow costing them 3 euro a hour), I'm talking about some companies that have people traveling 1000KM then only a few hours later because they weren't good enough getting fired and sent back.
There is systemic abuse of unskilled workers in many companies in Germany (and also UK where I've also worked).
As for the last point I know why the EU doesn't have pay regulation I was being a bit hyperbolic about that one, but at the same time if they did then the economy in the west EU would also take a massive hit so there's little incentive for it.
Think about it, games are more expensive to make and to have games take longer means more costs. What do you think is gonna happen when the consumer is less likely to pay more for games?
I have a feeling this will be posted at least once a page but...
There isn't in any studio, nobody is stupid enough to do that. There is other insidious ways to do it.There is no official mandate for crunch. There can be a significant amount of peer pressure, though. And that can include peer pressure from the people who are effectively your managers. Peer pressure comes from having a team of brilliant, talented, dedicated people working hard on a project together.
Fanboys exist.
PlayStation is based in the United States.
They reduce development costs/waste. Maybe they finally understand that all those extra features and details in games are actually not needed and less would do just fine? For example, spending months of work on "horse-balls-in-different-temperatures" -feature might not actually be needed in any game.
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Of course it's not needed but Houser is a perfectionist. Rockstar can also get away with one game every 6 years. Not many can.
100%Pretty decent article, and a comprehensive list of sources that cover all facets of crunch.
QA being treated like shit, peer pressure, some that just genuinely see it as not wanting to let the team down, burnout. Something needs to change in QA departments across the industry, because they don't even get paid the high wages to anyway justify it.
Sony prob doesn't care at all, nor would they step down and talk to ND about this, aside from it becoming a major pr issue. Japanese work culture is even worse.Terrible working conditions. Perhaps Sony needs to step in and discuss adjustments with the ND leadership team in order to protect the workers.
Hopefully fans will acknowledge these issues and respond with their wallets when TLoU2 arrives. Be the change you want to see guys!
It wouldn''t be hyperbolic at all.
For the actors, directors & other bigwigs, yeah. Less so for CGI artists, from my understanding, They get treated like absolute crap & have similarly crunchy work-culture. If anything, their job might be worse because nowadays CGI is so prevelent that there is just one project after the another with no end in sight (when one MCU movie that is 90% CGI is done, the next one is already waiting in line) vs. games that can have more reasonable development periods when the release of the next game is still years away (though endless crunch in this era of GAAS has done much harm to the traditional development cycle that offered some breaks).
My argument is that crunch happens pretty much everywhere. You don't need a PhD to understand the examples there.
I didn't. The people at Naughty Dog are frequently the absolute top people in the industry. They're the type of people who will go home and continue learning or working on their own projects after their day shift. That's fine, but it also means they are overly open to working late shifts, which means the people there who want to have more normal lives (I'm guessing QA workers are less passionate about late work than say concept artists) are going to be pressured into having that same level of devotion.
Nobody in a game studio is less passionate than others just because they work in a different department.I didn't. The people at Naughty Dog are frequently the absolute top people in the industry. They're the type of people who will go home and continue learning or working on their own projects after their day shift. That's fine, but it also means they are overly open to working late shifts, which means the people there who want to have more normal lives (I'm guessing QA workers are less passionate about late work than say concept artists) are going to be pressured into having that same level of devotion.
There should be a mandatory limit of hours worked in a day of 10 hours or so, with mandatory weekends. They could implememt the option for employees to request additional time that would need to be approved by a manager and include bonuses. Maybe that's not the exact solution, but there has to be something.
I mean in terms of extracurricular activity. Most artists go home and continue drawing. In my own personal experiences, QA workers wouldn't usually go home and do QA side projects. I didn't mean to say they care less about their work.Nobody in a game studio is less passionate than others just because they work in a different department.
I'm gonna step in here. I'm working 80 hour weeks. 80 fucking hours. It's killing me, I wouldn't wish this on anyone. I've gone to a therapist, had chest pains, anxiety attacks, whole 9 yards. I know in the past I've said some shit that makes it seem like I didn't care about crunch, but that was before I'd actually had to deal with it personally. Now I've got perspective and I'm so sorry. So quite frankly fuck ANY studio that lets this happen especially when you're already taking years to push out a product. I don't even work in the gaming industry, I'm doing shit that actually has to be done for the livelihood of others and I still don't like it. I'm under staffed and have very thin deadlines to get things straight for our employees. There's 3 people in my department currently attempting to work for almost 300. Shit sucks. But here's my difference I, unlike so few in these stories get paid 40 hours of overtime a week, I'm making myself do this as leadership so my younger team doesn't have to and once we get about 6 more people (I have interviews today) It'll be over. Crunch doesn't ever have to happen, weak and worthless leadership allows it to happen. You work 40 hours you go home. Salaried or otherwise. If you agree to overtime? Great. Shouldn't be forced or mandated. So again fuck ND and any other developer that puts some bullshit video game over the lives of the people you need to make it.
I'm obviously not ok with it. But it's always the same reaction and same replies, and I bet a lot of people here love to showcase "support" by posting on a forum but will be there day one for their latest release. It's hypocritical. Also, crunch happens fucking everywhere in the tech industry. It's a shame but it is what it is. Not buying product or services from these companies won't do shit to change this, as history shows.
They've released 3 (multiplatform) games since 2015 and two rather meaty expansions. They crunch though, hard unfortunately.CDPR is, like, 1/10th the size of Rockstar and somehow thay can get away with it.
Holy shit. I would be burned out after one week lol
I understand a bit of crunch can be needed prior to certain milestones now and then, but this is ... Just too much.
This just makes me think they really must have terrible managers at Naughty Dog. Like surely you would get better at your Managerial job after time and several games. Its kind of amazing honestly that they can continue to be this bad. Like treatment of staff is part of your job as management, its not just creating this game and making bank for their masters, its balancing that with the other real world factors.
24hr shifts is insane. How did it work exactly? One person does 24hrs, goes home and someone else comes in to do 24hrs and then the other person comes back after that one goes home?
And here we see pretty much why stories like these have little effect. Gamers will happily defend any kind of working conditions if they like the studio and games, and will even shit over the work of other developers with a more balanced work-life-balance for not being as passionate and details-focused as Naughty Dog or Rockstar are.
I know a lot of other QA testers in the speed running communities. just because it's not easy to perceive that they do stuff like that, doesn't mean it isn't happening.I mean in terms of extracurricular activity. Most artists go home and continue drawing. In my own personal experiences, QA workers wouldn't usually go home and do QA side projects. I didn't mean to say they care less about their work.
They've released 3 (multiplatform) games since 2015 and two rather meaty expansions. They crunch though, hard unfortunately.
You're assuming QA workers go home.I mean in terms of extracurricular activity. Most artists go home and continue drawing. In my own personal experiences, QA workers wouldn't usually go home and do QA side projects.
I can't imagine that the stories of 24 hour work days are in anyway uplifting to you and I truly hope things to start to improve across the board. Soon would be nice. :\100%
I'm lucky to be in a decent studio where QA is treated as a part of the development pipeline, but I constantly hear horror stories about it, and it's always kind of just looming there because of that.
The developer also claimed that they were reprimanded for missing a weekend shift and, in a different instance, for not working "at least 14 hour days". This was despite completing their "well done" work on time, the developer told COGconnected.
"I called Sony HR once (they have a hotline) asking what was this all about and they just ignored me [saying], 'You will get used to Naughty Dog's way of doing things,'" they said.
Meh, I would say it's more indifference than anything. No one is forcing folks to work there or to do crunch. It's stated it's not mandatory, and really even if it was, what are we supposed to do about it? Raise hell on a gaming forum? Tweet at ND employee? Outrage is often misplaced IMO, we're talking about an entertainment industry, a lot of these ppl love what they do and know what they are getting into.And here we see pretty much why stories like these have little effect. Gamers will happily defend any kind of working conditions if they like the studio and games, and will even shit over the work of other developers with a more balanced work-life-balance for not being as passionate and details-focused as Naughty Dog or Rockstar are.
Insinuating that management wasn't probably heavily implying or encouraging itPeer pressure is a stupid thing. Management should've stepped in.
Insinuating that management wasn't probably heavily implying or encouraging it
Funnily, it was also Cliffy B being critical of ND crunch that led to the "Most at Neogaf are cunts" Tweet. People didn't take it really well, that he was expressing his concern towards ND employee who was talking about sleeping at her work desk in preparation for E3. Good to see the attitudes have been changing a bit.GamesBeat: What do you remember most now about The Last of Us?
Hennig: I didn't work on it, since I was working on Uncharted at the same time. What I remember most about all the projects is how we just crunched, and it got worse with every project. It was weird for me because I was always in the midst of it myself. It was odd being on Uncharted and not being on The Last of Us and being able to objectively watch people crunching and seeing the effect it was having.
That cemented some of my desire to — man, if I ever get a chance, if I was ever to have a studio, I'd do it differently. That's not a criticism of Naughty Dog. I don't mean it that way. I just mean that — I don't know. You also just get to an age where you can only — doing that crunch time in the trenches, you start realizing how debilitating it is, physically and emotionally and psychologically and relationship-wise. Just wondering if we could do things differently, do things better.
Oh sure, they didn't get the full workforce behind them like TW3 and CP77 do. But apparently the team size for Gwent was still around 100 people, which entered beta in early 2017 and full release 2018 with an expansion in 2019. And of course they did a big overhaul for the mechanics in 2.0 patch too. It's around the same amount of people that Ninja Theory in example employs. I'm happy to get those smaller titles too and I would be more than fine waiting longer for the games to come out, if it led to more humane working hours. Unfortunately it's not just about the patience of gamers that can solve the problem.That's true, but I was referring to the idea that only big devs can afford to take it slow with their production cycles - CDPR is not a huge developer, but still manage to take it somewhat slow with their development (and still make money, thought that's mostly because how Witcher 3 was sicc). Also, out of those 3 multiplatform games you mentioned, only one was a real AAA title, Gwent and Thronebreaker were more like side projects in a sense. Hard to tell how much development resource those two took, but it's safe to say that it was waaaaaaaaay less than Witcher 3.
Other than that, yeah, they didn't avoid crunch too. That's the point btw., it's not the short dev cycles, it's just devs using crunch as a tool because they can. With CDPR things cited as the cause of crunch was bad internal organization and chaotic development process that caused huge amounts of workhours to be wasted. If there was a real consequence to crunch for them, that would be first thing they would work on to fix. Since there is little to no consequence for that so far, they don't care for things that cause crunch and then claim that it's just industry standard.
That's what it takes to deliver top-quality games in those 3-ish year dev cycles.