Given that the average working day is 9 hours long, 12 hour days would be classed as "light" over here. Most UK studios would push right up to the limits of the WTD, meaning 16 hour days. Anyone whe opted out of the WTD, can expect to not go home at all on a regular basis.

It was only a few years back, where I did up to about 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. All because the incompetent management,took on over a months worth of changes, with only two weeks to do them in.

These are the management types who don't see a problem with it, because at 6 o'clock every night, their day is finished. Come weekend, they won't be sat at their computer like the "real" workers.

Finally quitting this sham of an industry, is the best decision I have made for years.

Thanks for your enlightening, if saddening message, Lee.

Lee is absolutely right. This is the norm. I've seen artists who put in a mere 9-10 hour day called slackers. This is encouraged by management everywhere who maintain a normal 9-5 and "make up" for it by catering some food or showing up one weekend to make it look like they are grinding, too. They make promises based on an assumption that their workforce will give up their free time, time with family, and their health all for the sake of an unspectacular wage, and when employees burn out many studios simply turn them out and get new recruits, no matter what they have to promise (and not deliver on.)

Ahh this is what makes the free market so great. If you dont like the job leave, find a job somewhere else.

I must say, this gives the industry as a whole a real bad impression. As an aspiring designer who is now a post-grad looking to get in to this industry, I think I may start looking into other work avenues.

It's not surprising that developers are finding it hard to acquire talent when you hear these unethical stories.

shame!

The problem is that more people are not complaining about this. I'm sure if enough people complain about video games working condition, big boys on top would have to do something about it.

I mean this kind of situation I only hear couple of people complain about gaming industry working condition.
if its really that bad I'm sure majority of people will complain.

@LeeB
I sugguest you start working on works that will make your portfolio look good.
Don't let this kind of news bring you down man.
Team Bondi incident happened in Australia man not UK/US.

follow your dream

This is what private unions are for people.

In 6 years working in the Industry I have maybe only had one 60 hour week and spent maybe 10 total weekend days in the office (and none of them were full days). I hear the stories and see some of my fellow coworkers burdened with tasks, as Atlas was burdened with planets. But ultimately I think blaming "poor" management for having to work weekends is not sufficient. I've never encountered a manager who hasn't been willing to work with me and my schedule if I let them know, ahead of time, that there will be problems, or that we don't have sufficient time to accomplish these tasks. I will agree that there are circumstances that are somewhat unavoidable, like having to help out in areas outside of your jurisdiction, but you can always say "no"

I work about 11 hours a day (japan).
And most of my coworkers work even more, some even stay to sleep some nights.
The only problem I see with this, is that after the 8 or 9 hours, I'm not even half as efficient.
Bugs that should take minutes to figure out, end up taking a few hours.
I will of course keep working 11+ hours a day, but not because I think it's better for me or my company (it isn't).

Who thought it was any other way?
That's the game gentlemen.

Big corps are still running the world like a slave factory.

Glad to see some devs speaking out against it though, cause there's been too many broken games with the "release now, patch later" mentality". I'm assuming these kind of working conditions are in part of why that happens.

this article makes no sense neither does the whole situation as a developer you sign up to have 12 to 16 hour days its no different in america or in austrailia. when you are in school to be a developer one of the first things you learn is that deadlines have to be met and a company will torture you to get it done. as a former vice president of the wisconsin madison chapter i think someone is just trying to get hits

Same drill here (France). We've got a normal day work sitting anywhere between 7-9h, but find myself pushing 12, 14 even 16h a day in those crunch periods, that can go for months : last minute changes, deadline jump 3 weeks in advance, gotta deliver a playable for a press tour you'd never heard of 2 weeks before, etc.
Mostly, the workforce is expendable, as if anyone was just a standard part replacement for anyone. "You should be thanking us for working here, on that game, mate. It's a privilege, when so many are knocking on our fucking door to come in."...said to me one of my previous bosses. Sad part is, he's right in his way : when a freshman is seen as valuable as a seasoned professional, for for half the price, why bother coping with people that *want* things, like, say, a private life, when you just can grind, grind, grind those kids without a wife, a home, or whatever could make them less efficient.
Of course, the kids'll end up completely broken or burned up, but who cares? There are plenty where it came from.
Obviously, saying no isn't an option, having those overtime hours payed a fleeting dream, and in a country when you don't need your two hands to count the number of studios where you can work, the grapevine is to be accounted, you can't afford to be flagged as "the guy who doesn't want to work nights & weekends".
Oh, and there's no union in France for the whole videogame industry. None.
Heck, "videogame development" isn't even a recognized professional status here, most companies and employees have to do with "arts & entertainments" or "industrial software development".

How can hours like this be legal? I used to work in the games industry and can confirm its neither fun nor well paid. Vote with your feet and get out. But it sounds like TB pushed people far past anything legal in most countries?

game industry is by far the industry with the least skilled management.
the amount of money that gets onvested in it is more than serious,but everything else is a joke.
Games themselves are a joke too...
it's basically a pissing contest between game companies and the artists are there to suffer endless changes in order to keep their project seemingly above the other ones.
When incompetent hacks like Brendan McNamara get showered with money things will inevitably spiral out of control.
Do not join the industry unless spending endless overtime hours doing tedious work is your idea happiness.
The management will always try to get away with it without paying you accordingly,and the more you're prapared to put your life on the line for their lack of planning and sound decisions,the more they will be dellusional.
Development cycle of 7 years is a clear proof of incompetence.

The problem comes in many forms and from many places.

Management is bad when they make project proposals with a third of the deadline that other companies do just to win the project, and then don't have the task-force to do it. They end up pushing their workers and in the end they will lose money.

Workers have to make stand, I've been in a company where leaving after 9 hours of work would get you bad looks from co-workers and hearing phrases like "You're working part-time now?". My answer to them and to anyone else was always: "I'm satisfied with the work I've done today and I've met the tasks I needed doing, have you?" To which most would simply not answer. Managment hated me and my main co-worker cause they had nothing on us. We did more work in our 9 hours than the other programming teams did in 12. They just didn't like the idea of us leaving at the official hour.

Its part of growing up as an industry to learn how to deal without excessive crunch.
Most of our management were inexperienced on our first games and we would have many 60-80-100 hour weeks on our first major project.
This was cut down somewhat as we learned how to better schedule, prognose and avoid rework and simply make better use of our resources.

Crunch still happens. We've not quite fought our way out of it on our 4th big title, but we are getting better every time.
More and more its becoming the time you spend taking a good game and giving it that spit-polish it needs to shine out on the market. It should not be to fill gaps in an unassailable schedule with a ridiculous feature-set.
The industry as a whole is getting older and wiser and more studios (and hopefully publishers) will learn that crunch is not the answer.
Leaving a company because of crunch is not the best answer for a lot of people. Finding a new job, that has the same salary, benefits or prestige might not be doable without relocating and a lot of us have families, so better scheduling and quality of life need to be focused on.

I worked for a chart topping company in the UK and we never crunched like this. Our crunch periods were like 10-8 ... some people stayed overnight, through their own choice (mainly because their journeys are quite long). The crunch lasts for about 2 months, but it's mild in comparison to these ones - it doesn't really feel like much of a crunch, especially with the entire year being so relaxed.

I've also heard of another leading UK developer who actually employs a 9-5 system, i.e. nobody is allowed to crunch (even if they want to). I'd like to see how that works though, as I think that programmers should have the freedom to finish their work otherwise they might lose sleep thinking about their unfinished code at night.

But to reiterate, there are top UK studios who don't do this.

LeeC22, If your going to quote the Maximum working time limit then at least get it right!.

The maximum working week is 48 hours, meaning just over 9.5 hours a day for 5 days a week.

While crunching for a few weeks at master, doing 12 hour days is pretty familiar ( have been in the games industry for 16+ years so I know what Im talking about ) it's still far too much. Team Bondi have been doing 12 hour days as regular for years.

I've worked for teams that crunch, and I've worked for teams that don't. Crunch is becoming frowned upon by the games industry work force and the sooner it becomes obsolete the better.

Brendans working practises are a travesty, He is a bully and whats worse is that he admits it!.

If you think that overtime is bad you should have seen the crunch on Epic Mickey. Some staff members crunched for over a year. Someone at IGDA should look into that too.

How was your experience with the teams that did not crunch? And how were the management able to sustain maximum productivity?

Its my current employer, mostly we self publish so we usually decide when the game is ready.

However, I will admit my 1st game here was an externally published title which had a some small amount of crunch where I worked 1 hour extra a day for about a month, the latest I worked was 8.30pm. This crunch was caused by external issues out of our control and was the 1st crunch the company had done in over 5 years.

The key to success here has been small, experienced teams that in effect self manage and have ownership of the games development.

We also have a very experience senior management team that deal with the running of the studio rather than game dev's trying there hand at it.

Hi.

I finally got out the games industry and went into teaching 2 years ago, best decisions of my life. There will always be young graduates that will take the jobs and get burnt out, they will learn the hard way. I have been through many situations where you do a 6 months crunch, than get fired when the games don't sell. I finally have my life back; I can see my wife and child and enjoy a healthy life. Instead of pizza's and Indian takeaways, honestly guys go and work somewhere else that’s a bit more stable and secure. I know people who could not do their job but got a pat on the back for working 12 hours a day. If you get your work done in the normal 8 hours you never get a pat on your back they always want more.

EA is changing (has changed?) this culture, at least in our studio. We routinely fill out anonymous surveys about studio life, and have the power to alter deadlines/features to a certain extent. I've worked on Saturday twice this year, which is similar to other tech companies outside the industry that I've worked in (including working for the federal government [US]). We still have the occasional late night, but it's an exception -- and again, other industries do this.

Perhaps this is why LA Noire was so damn late. I loved playing it, but this news jades me on it a bit. Hopefully Rockstar will fix the studio.

I've worked Aerospace, and medical, and telecom. The work practices outlined here seem almost purposely designed to be the worst possible. Doing this produce crap quality software with maximum staff burnout and is guaranteed to produce longer and worse timelines, and jsut about guarantees you'll NEVER hit a milestone on time wiht code complete and quality. Hasn't ANYONE in the games industry ever done any real software engineering?

Pardon me for saying so, but you guys are idiots for working in those conditions, when you could go elsewhere for better pay and stability, and actually make software that matters too.

@Kev: well that is a much more healthy crunch than what some teams call crunch.

Well at least I know there are other teams being productive without crunch because I have always questioned the idea that crunch is inevitable and would like to create the best working environment for my employees, taking the best bits of management from around the globe :)

For some reason I found myself looking up the definition of Moloch yesterday due to watching Metropolis where there is a scene where this giant head is kinda eating the workers of the city:

"In modern English usage, 'Moloch' can refer derivatively to any person or thing which demands or requires costly sacrifices."

I'm not sure what the IGDA can do about it besides issuing a statement of some kind and generating industry interest in QoL issues. From reading the IGN article, it appears that a lawsuit to do with unpaid overtime was what made EA thing long and hard about changing their ways.

Personally, I think the long work hours all stem from what one person (Erin Hoffman, EA Spouse) so aptly said in the article:

"...they put their money on an idea guy, not a game designer."

It's one thing to have a grand vision, it's another, to know how to go about making it a reality and whether you can make it a reality to begin with. Otherwise you waste a lot of time and money -- not to mention "people" -- getting to the obvious.

--
http://sELFiNDUCEDcOMA.com

let's just say that there are more McNameras in the dev world than not. IDGA? What power / say do THEY have? Lol..

I've learned a valuable "golden rule" over these past 16 years in the industry. He who has all the gold, makes all the rules.

What a bunch of crybabies. Working from 6am to 10pm-midnight is quite the norm where I work. Nobody complains, at least its a job.

One question ... what do you do outside of work?

And FYI, 8 hour days was quite the norm when I was an code monkey in the games industry (just a few years ago for an extremely profitable developer), not to mention the generous bonuses and monthly perks.

I almost feel guilty when I hear employees who think it's the norm, it's like 1833 never happened :)

Though doesn't affect me if you don't understand how good 8 hour working days is, I just want to show you that there is something better out there. There are plenty of good jobs, even in the current financial crisis, that do not think it's more productive.

Maybe you've had it drilled into your head that everyone's productivity is constant in crunch, and that tiredness can be treated with caffeine. The truth of the matter is that it can't, caffeine increases stress in men for a start, and when you burn out they will just replace you with a new fresh blood who is young enough to accept any rhetoric they are given on crunch ...

... but by the sounds of it, you are happy where you are, so you've no reason to complain ;)

"Industry outrage at 'brutal' Team Bondi crunch"

Eh what? Yeah right - this is the jaded industry norm sadly.

I worked hard for years to "earn" my place in the games industry but I worked even harder to get out of it! Shame as I loved designing games and was quite good at it by all accounts - oh well excuse me if I had a life to live and was unwilling to work for *NO* extra pay 7 days a week for months on end.

Hope we see and end to meat grinders sometime soon so a real creative industry can flourish once more where now only a shadow of it's ancestor lives.

Oh well - I'd just say start up your own studio if you feel you are able to do a better job of managing people than your current employers...

Learning from other peoples mistakes is the most pain free way to learn, so you've seen and experienced all their mistakes so go and do it better, it's the only way our industry will improve in this regard...

If you need money then go chat to a VC and raise some/ lack of money isn't an excuse.

It would've been good if LA Noire bombed, but it has not. So they will carry on these shameful practices.

"Working from 6am to 10pm-midnight is quite the norm where I work. Nobody complains, at least its a job"

You are working 16hr days, and getting paid 8hrs. I hope you at least have some profit share / bonus plans because if you're just bending over and taking this as 'the norm'
then you have little respect for yourself.

A little crunch is manageable and sometimes unavoidable. Crunch as a long term tool to increase productivity just burns out the studios ONLY real assets very quickly and rather than a happy work culture there's an undertone of distrust, resent and dysfunction.

I am not even employed by a studio. I work on development.. well.. if my eyes are open and I'm not on the toilet or driving, I am working. I don't get paid, in fact I earn mostly scorn. I love every tedious second of it. Will gladly work on LA Noire 2thru7 in exchange for hot pockets and a camaro. Sleep optional.

I work for a major game studio, been working here for 6-7 yrs now. We do crunch hours when deadline is close ... but nothing like what they were doing. And, the management do actually thank their employees and understand the value of experienced programmers/artists (by a way of increasing salary/bonus)

Many ppl (including management in some other studios) think developers are just expendable,and can be replaced with cheap/fresh college graduates. But, that's why it takes a looooong time for them to finish a game. There are many other studios who appreciate exprience/skills of employees.

http://www.michaelkorswatchesbuysale.net/
Clearly it will pack a significant punch, properly want typically the nutritionally packed berry electricity, this is the way the actual garlic clove ought to be eaten. Should you have any queries or perhaps comments in my little Your Child Is able to see posts, remember to leave some comment beneath, I adored to read http://www.barbourjacketonline.net/
your comments. If you can't request, you might not discover what they are surely and may end having to pay way more for the auto than you'll have to. He'd far from learn about any sort of structural vehicles or referrals you intend nevertheless impose his will against both you and your crew http://www.barbourshoponlineuk.net/