Paul Wedgwood pulls no punches in his assessment of British game development
The UK game industry is a poorer working environment for the “continuous exploitation” of its development talent, the boss of a leading independent studio has said.
Paul Wedgwood, the founder of London studio Splash Damage, was unambiguous in his criticism of development traits that have crept across UK studios:
"If there's one thing we suffer from in the UK, it has been this continuous exploitation of game developer talent until we drive them into the ground and they become cynical and burned out and hate the industry."
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Wedgwood was candid about the practices at his own company.
“We suffer from the same challenges that every studio does, we crunch six-day, seven-day weeks sometimes: it can be really, really challenging,” he said.
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“But to be honest with you, when the studio isn't in crunch we still have people working six or seven days a week because they like what they're doing.”
Wedgwood said Splash Damage was nonetheless respectful of its team’s work/life balance.
He added: “If you're at the office and you're having fun, then you're on the right track whether you're working out of hours or not.”
Splash Damage is working on a least one project, with the upcoming title Brink being the only one discussed in public.
“But to be honest with you, when the studio isn't in crunch we still have people working six or seven days a week because they like what they're doing.”
Hmmmm, really Paul ;) I love my job, but that doesn't mean I don't have many things that I would prefer to be during during my weekends!
I love developing games, I also love my wife and children, I also love walks in the park, my parents, the dog, seeing a movie, reading a book, playing a game I'm NOT working on, etc. Close and lock the doors at 6pm and send people home where they belong!
They're over a year late with their current game and counting, and do tons of crunch time, though try to claim they don't actually make people do any. Nice one.
Finally someone had the balls to say it! Kudos.
Let's see how many people they let go when their current project ends. They'll be sorry as hell, yada yada yada.
But let's see how much they really care about their people then.
This isn't a response to this particular article directly but ...
When are people going to stop talking out of both sides of their mouths? When are we going to stop being OK with it?
I can't recall the last time I read an article about this subject where it wasn't summed up with, "But some people love their jobs." HELLO?
Does anyone hear what this boldly implies? How is this not amounting to all these articles claiming that anyone who doesn't enjoy working (for them) as much as they possibly can without wrecking their lives is simply lazy, untalented, or has a bad attitude? It's not only insulting, it's manipulative. Speaking of taking advantage of people...That in and of itself is taking advantage of people.
I'm not talking about any particular studio. I'm talking about this particular argument.
From day one we use this psychobabble to recruit people: 'Must have passion for games.' I.E. The gamer cult. 'Be subservient enough to follow even the most ridiculous of instructions. Feel yourself beneath respect. Be capable of being guilted into working 7 day weeks with no pay -- because that's what REAL team players do. You don't have the goods if you don't have that. Be lazy and surly somewhere else if you can't hack it.'
Sure, there's no doubt that someone who enjoys something will be okay for long hours at a time but THAT'S NOT THE POINT. People go into games because they want to make games. I don't think a large group of employees are confused about that. Since when was a game created out of one texture artist's willingness to sit at a terminal and paint walls 19 hours a day? You see what I'm getting at? Who cares, and why are they even doing that in the first place?
The fallback excuse is then, "Well, game development is a young industry ..." No it's not. It's just a disrespected and unprofessional industry. Those aren't the same things.
Explain to me how "straight" programmers can develop software all day long on technology that didn't exist 5, 10 years ago, and can work mostly regular hours, and often have the same product concerns, budget constraints, customer relation issues as games, yet it's almost impossible to cobble together a decent career in games. That's a much more interesting topic.
In my experience, this generation has seen a marked improvement in project management & as a result there's far less overtime & hey, I've even been paid for it or offered time off in lieu. Amazing.
Certainly infinitely better than the VFX industry were you're expected to dedicate your every waking hour to work to prove your passion. Personally, I've never equated subservience with passion.
For the same skills a good C++ coder can earn double in the City. Developers underpay them because publishers underpay developers. If more programmers wised up to the opportunities outside of games, conditions in the industry might improve.
Oh absolutely Pete, I myself did exactly that in 2004 and have never looked back. But it wasn't just the pay, I got treated with far more respect and people actually listened to what I had to say which was something that never happened in gaming.
This industry needs to wise up and understand that it cannot simply rely on inexperienced, keen as grass graduates to do the heavy lifting anymore.
You'd have to check the actual division of the cake between all parties to see, that the actual guilt lands on shoulders of "those greedy corporations", but... surprise surprise... it's the merry bunch which controls the distribution market and points of sale. They are eating more than they should, which leaves developers at least a bit hungry, and who is at the bottom of the food chain? Surprise again... the creative team. Why? Because we still suffer from the Great Communist Plan to see common worker's victory over an intellectualist - both in means of prestige and money earned. The whole world of intelectual property is sick and requires some serious healing.
