Association states the health of workers is 'crucial'
Game development trade body Tiga has called on studios to remain watchful of their developers’ well-being during inevitable crunch phases.
The group’s CEO, Richard Wilson, implied studios shouldn’t shy away from hard work, but added that crunch periods should be kept to a ‘bare minimum’.
“Many people in many different industries sometimes work long hours, including farmers, lawyers and medical consultants,” he said.
“People in game development can also work long hours, but crunch is something that obviously all developers want to avoid.
“The game developers who work in our studios are the industry’s most important resource – they are the talent that create the games that companies sell and which the public enjoy.
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“It is crucially important that CEOs and MDs nurture their talented workforce and care for their health and well-being.
Tiga’s comments come in the wake of revelations that some staff at New York studio Kaos have been forced to work minimum 10-hour days, sometimes for six days a week.
Details of the situation can be found here.
Wilson concluded: “It’s vital that games companies project manage game development effectively and efficiently and keep crunch periods to a bare minimum.”
How about a Union for Developers?
The whole "devs are our most vital resources" speech is total BS for companies like THQ.
Big publishers "most vital resource" are the IPs of successful series and marketing networks (including news websites controlled by smooth indirect corruption), the rest is just interchangeable assets.
And customers (aka "players") don't give a damn about that, so don't expect any PR damage for *insert-big-publisher-name-here*.
Everytime there's a drama/debate about the QoL (a la ea_spouse), it's the same thing all over again :
- a few papers are wrote here and there in decent news websites
- we got 2 or 3 well-written blog posts from experienced professionals, who accurately describe the situation
- some people call for a hypothetical "Union Time !" that will never happen
- then 1 month later nobody care about that anymore because soem other news took the headline
edit : today jan 27, 2011, the QoL drama is already dead.
An industry making (a lot of) money will never consider its human employees its "most vital resource".
Tiga is just trying to save the public image of its industry, to be able to pull a "it's not always like that" line to gullible newcomers.
