“I just don’t think people who have to work a thousand bucks a year need protection.”

missing one hundred thousand in that quote

Make no mistake - this guys is an A grade ****hole.
His summary of this whole affair is - as usual - taken from a 'management' perspective and never a work force one.

Thx

Enough said really. Pachter, who gets paid a fortune to work 9-5 and make wildly inaccurate predictions about the direction of the industry and never gets held to account no matter how many times he's wrong, tells developers to STFU because they're not working a 9-5 job.

I've always suspected Pachter comments on things he knows nothing about, but now it's proven to be true.

"The thrust of Pachter’s opinion is that game development tends to remunerate staff, often lavishly so, through bonus schemes."

Yes, I remember getting my first lavish games industry bonus. In fact, I still have the cheque, along with the letter from the bank telling me that it'd bounced.

''Pacter predicted that LA Noire made around $200 million in revenue, and that the Team Bondi management will have a studio profit pool of around $5-10 million.'' That's right Mr Pachter, the management get the bonuses.

The talent pool rarely if ever get's reasonable renumeration for extra effort. In my experience when the bonuses turn up so does the artist/designer/coders P45 and the bosses Porsche.

The average salary in the industry isn't very high unless you are the small clique at the top. It's true that the buck stops with these people for direction and decisions, but surely the skilled artisans ought to be rewarded for the sacrifice they have to take for the weeks or months of extra hours. Other industries in skilled tech and creative areas reward individuals far better than games. Why does this industry assume it's better/different than others? It's egotistical and immature and pushes experienced and talented staff into different roles in other industries. This isn't what makes a succesful business and shows the games biz at a development level for what it is. A revolving door of 30-40 somethings (which studios should be based around), and being replaced by 20 somethings willing to work for very little and looking forward for the late night pizza's as bonus.

Not that the analyst Mr Pachter cares about this of course when analysing bottom lines.

Put up or shut up seems to be his message ... and he seems to list huge bonuses as the reward for crunching. But here's the thing: most people don't get huge bonuses and crunch is a result of crappy management. Pachter's attitude is that of a clueless git, sitting behind an analyst's desk, talking about stuff he knows nothing about: in short, a bureaucrat. Get out of my office, ye jerk!

His comment about bonuses would be okish if there was job stability but in game dev it's not unusual to have mass layoffs when a project ends and only a core team getting bonuses. Been there and seen it happen plenty of times,
especially with small to middle size developers.

"The thrust of Pachter’s opinion is that game development tends to remunerate staff, often lavishly so, through bonus schemes."

Having developed videogames for over 20 years (ever since I left school), I can confidently say that all my bonuses above my salary were totally eclipsed by a single redundancy payment I was given when a company closed. Given the amount I was 'awarded' was the basic minimum by law, and I'd only worked there a few years, you can work out why we are all driving rusty Ford Fiestas and not Ferraris!

We usually look at the random bullshit that comes out of this guy's mouth and ignore it, but not this time.
WTF does this guy even know about game development. He should be held to task over these insulting comments.

Mr Pachter might be interested to hear the story of the crunch I did for my first game. I did 640 hours overtime (in addition to the 640 hours normal time) in 16 weeks. I got a £2000 bonus, or to put it another way, less than a minimum wage for those overtime hours at an hourly rate. Yet Mr Pachter thinks that makes me extremely well paid?

Of course, I was lucky. I got a bonus! Not everybody does. In fact lately it's more likely that you'll get made redundant at the end of a project than get a bonus for it.

Happily, in my second game I had more leverage and more experience and did four hours overtime in the entire year (though I didn't get paid for it at all) and since then I've been able to manage my time similarly well... part of which has involved making sure I don't end up working at slavepits like Team Bondi.

It's pretty easy to say that those who work in the game industry shouldn't bitch about working long, unpaid hours when you don't work in the industry yourself. Michael Pachter is an ass, pure and simple. He make extraordinary claims, nearly all of which are complete crap and people still listen to him? He's a joke.

Anyone who ends up working and not getting paid for it is justified in being uproarious about it. Unpaid labor is slavery.

A quick search online reveals that Mr. Pachter is an investment analyst who seems to specialize in the game industry, at least publicly traded companies. His perspective on this issue is informed by his experience with the industry - an earnings analyst with fairly good ratings for his industry.

He certainly has access to information about profits and bonus structures but that information stops at the bottom of the spreadsheet and distribution of bonus are not widely shared even within company let alone with outside analysts.

I've been in the industry since 1991 working for developers and large publishers on both small, hardcore and casual games and crunch time is epidemic in our industry, but that shouldn't be misinterpreted to be a necessary part of the mix. I've worked on many projects that had reasonably short crunch times and often with make-up time given that wasn't taken out of my official PTO. Sometimes, and yes infrequently, there were bonuses but the size of those bonuses never aligned with quantity of OT and they were never very large for the production team.

The bottom line is that Mr. Pachter is quite knowledgeable about our industry in areas that have given him access to the numbers that he quotes. His opinions offered here are a classic example of misinterpreting the map to be the territory. His comments appear to come far away from the territory on which he professes knowledge.

Patcher should resign after this idiotic analysis. Clearly doesn't have a clue about anything to do with game development.

Sorry, but I'm really not seeing how Pachter's opinions on the game development process are noteworthy enough to be reported on by the games-industry press. Until you've actually shipped a game, your opinions on the game development process are worth about as much as those of my Grandmother. I look forward to reading an article in Develop about "those games that make you do the violence and give you the epilepsy"

No layman would ever dream of telling an engineer how bridges should be built, nor would their opinions be considered credible enough to be printed in an engineering-industry magazine. How is this any different?

I completely understand your point, Bryan, and the editorial team had discussed whether the claims deserved further coverage.

What decided it for us is the message Mr Pachter has put to tens of thousands of GameTrailers viewers, many of which are aspiring and hopeful game developers.

His message is: Join the industry with the expectation that you'll work beyond a forty, fifty and sixty hour week. It's normal. If you do so, you'll make a ton of money.

Develop feels that such a message, whether it's right or wrong, deserves to be viewed from a different light and cross examined. We want those same readers to know the voice of the industry too, as presented on this comments page.

Hope that clears things up.

Rob.

It is particularly important to publish comments like these in a venu like Develop-Online.

Patcher has the ear of investors and so he speaks from a perspective far from the trenches of development and yet in the bedroom of many of the industries executive leadership who absolutly affect your daily (work) lives in the trenches. Much of the overtime imposed on development teams comes from the boardroom not the shop floor.

As unpleasent as comments like Mr. Patchers are, his message is unfortunalty shared by many of the people signing our checks (even if those are not bonus checks). It is good to get the dialog flowing. Too many in the trenches also take overtime as normal cost of being a developer. Hopefully the conversation might make some of our coworkers take a second look at what is "normal" as well.

how right he is!

trust me man if the video game industry is really that bad, I'm sure you will hear A LOT of complaints from one of your favourite game developers.

the problem are people man, you will always get the wrong ones who complains about their job duty and how it flows!

I recently switched jobs, and within no time managers there already liked me because they see how hard worker I am. Then you get others who are not 'diligent' enough, they just wanna come to work, do their cheap hours and go home.

These people do not understand the meaning of working had or working for a job you like doing.

I know the Team Bondi guys have all right to complain but seriously working over time is not a complain and should NOT even be a complaint. Especially when you are a supervisor or above (manager+), you would have to work over time to keep your business running smooth.

Don't people work over time during christmas?
don't people work over time during summer period?

exactly man! These guys just wanna go to work, do their contracted hours, go home and get paid.

Yes it is annoying doing over time, but in the end eventually it will end. It is not something you do forever!
Compare the over time hours to people working 7 days a week doing 13 hours. Or compare these to people at Foxconn, no wonder why those guys commit suicide.

in the end Micheal Pachter is right, overtime is expected in the gaming industry.
I say overtime is expected IN any career!

and people....I really don't know why you are disagreeing with Pachter.

Seriously he is right.
In any career you do, you have to do overtime in order to be successful.
If you think he's looking at it from a management perspective, he's still right. If you think he hasn't done overtime, no need to judge because you haven't experienced his job.
Any career you do, expect working overtime.
Even for movie actors, people judge them that their jobs are easy, no it isn't. You have to go through massive training and they also have to work overtime just to get a take done.

Life is not easy man.
If you think life is easy then you must be rich.
I come from a bad background and in order to be successful, you have to work hard.

Also Pachter said if you don't like the long hours, switch to another profession.

This is not the only fisco in the Gaming Industry.
Who remembers the reason why Itagaki left Team NINJA? Because he did massive over time in order to ship games, games being released every year. In the end he got no bonus for the overtime.

So what did he do? he obviously left. No point sitting around moaning and complaining to people that Tecmo did not pay him his overtime while still employed with them.

I was a developer for Treyarch before we were bought by Activision. We all worked our asses off, lost a lot of nights and weekends to crunch time. You know what it took for us to get bonus pay? A class action lawsuit. Game publishers and Mr. Pachter can go to hell.

Sorry, I feel the need to counter this myth that overtime is a prequisite for success.

In the short term, yes, overtime can increase productivity, but in the long term (more than a few weeks) overtime actually harms productivity. Work overtime for long enough, and eventually you reach the point where you'd have got more work done by just working 9-5 hours the whole time.

Human beings are not robots that produce work at a constant rate, they get tired, they make mistakes. You absolutely do not want programmers who are tired and overworked working on your game, that's a recipe for bugs and bad decisions.

Also, it should go without saying that it doesn't follow that someone who works 9-5 doesnt' work hard.

"If you think he hasn't done overtime, no need to judge because you haven't experienced his job."

Sorry, with all due respect, the man has not shipped a single game. His opinions on game development are completely meaningless.

Xino, why are you unable to get your work done in normal hours? If you are incapable of accurately estimating how long a task will take, or too incompetent to complete those tasks within the time allotted, working overtime does not make you a hero, it makes you a failure. Do not tar everyone else with your own inadequacies.

I'm done with Pachter. If gamasutra publishes anymore of his garbage analysis articles I'm boycotting them. Any publication 'that's for the industry by the industry' should realize this guy does not deserve any further coverage.

I have never received a bonus that came close to reimbursing me for my overtime. I have received completely arbitrary amounts of 'time off in lieu', if anything.

And to all the 'unpaid OT martyrs': if a company announced a project with paid overtime you would be the first to email your resumes in.

Should point out that this is the third Develop article, of thousands, that tags Michael Pachter. Two of those are cross-examinations of what he's said.

Again, as explained above, we covered this due to a wider objective of putting his comments in perspective.

In most cases we are very keen on avoiding analyst quotes.

So I understand where you're coming from and appreciate the feedback.

Pachter, this is very out of touch with the reality of working in the games industry for many, many people. Just to address some of the ideas you bring up in the video: UK average dev' salary 32,000 GBP. Equiv' to 52,000 USD / year. So talking about six-figure salaried-people having enough compensation to render complaints about relentless overtime moot doesn't cover the majority of devs, not even in the 60,000 USD average US of A. http://www.develop-online.net/news/33686/Revealed-Average-UK-dev-salary-at-32k

I could probably link to any number of Pach Attack! videos citing how publishers compensate for the 10-odd games that don't recoup their development costs with the one or two hits that far out-earn them. So the few that are hits will be able to reward their makers with bonuses. Pity the majority that earn no bonuses and likely face studio uncertainty, downsizing, project cancellation and redundancy.

Finally let's talk more about how working weeks longer than 40 hours are actually less productive than 40-hour work-weeks over the long haul: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html

I agree that prospective developers should soberly consider the facts about working conditions in the industry. As someone in a role which is partly an educator facing the audience of GameTrailers, Pachter you should paint a more typical picture of the conditions and compensation in games. (I do get the impression you are playing "devil's advocate" in the video tho'.) Yes, perhaps there are untold riches awaiting the incredibly lucky few who can aggressively seek promotion and strategically relocate for the right career moves. But what of the social and personal sacrifices to steer your life that way? And how is a 20-something graduate supposed to comprehend what the cost of those ambitions really means at that level of life-experience? Money isn't everything.

Rob means that this is the third article we have ever run about Pachter - not the third out of thousands. Thank god!

We're always loath to cover anything he says. Consider it a mild boycott. But he's such a force, so adored by US press hungry for content, and actually used by a few publishers, that it's necessary to police him. If people like that are such a platform for soundbites, they need to be held accountable to all of them.

My take is that this view fails, of course, to understand the issue at a fundamental level. That's why it needs exposure, scrutiny, and yeah, mockery or satire. Maybe he'll learn from the reaction here and across the web. (The man has incredibly thick skin, though...)

One thing I can be sure of: if publishers/employers felt obligated to pay overtime after 40 hours, there certainly would be a lot less development cycles that demand a stretch of 40+ hours a week work. Just ask UK teams like Curve or Relentless that have built this thinking into the core of their business.

I take it Mr. Pachter is aware that unlike film or TV for that matter, game Devs have no formal entitlement to royalties ? In fact titles I have worked on voice-over actors got more royalties than devs that put in thousands of hours of unpaid over-time. Because their contracts and the negotiating position of their "guild" (aka union) made it so.

Since business men are, well business men, they will not pay royalties unless they are bloody well forced to.
Paying over-time keeps everyone mostly honest. Producers and publishers know how much their game is actually costing. Scheduling cannot be based on a whim and a prayer any more.

If Mr. Pachter actually spoke to developers and saw how many have lost family and health with little or no reward due to unrelenting crunch, maybe he would not be so blase about the issue ?

Develop, does us all, game developers around the world a favour, please do not publish this man's nonsense in future. Maybe you can help stand up for developers rights to a decent living and a decent quality of life ?

you know...I actually worked for Lovefilm.com for 3 days, at winter time. Even though I didn't do long hours or over time. Working in the terrible weather was atrocious, I couldn't even feel my balls and various body part because of the snow and how cold it was, yes we had to stand to pitch to customers.

I originally was going to quit the second day but I was convienced by a colleague to try 1 more day and see how it felt. I only worked half a day on the third day.

I left without saying anything to the employer. -I didn't get paid- and did not care as long as I was out of the damn sales job.
So what's the comparison to this "working over 40hr?". Well I had to quit a job I'm not comfortable with working in all weather conditions, and money I wouldn't guarantee to make because it's a "Sales Job".

So yea...if you hate long hours, go find a 4hr job, cleaner or contracted hour job.

If you want to get into a career, EXPECT to sacrifice hours of your live for diligence towards the company.

If you hate your job, "Quit Your Job". As Nike always say on their causal top wears.

Also on contrast towards certain people who whine about jobs.
In the retail warehouse job. there were 2 people.
1 person hated working over time and complained to me how he hated the job and hates doing over times. Yea he boasted he goes clubbing all the time before work.
2 person was working over time after 12 o clock when his shift has already ended. He wasn't happy about it but did not complain, yet he was still respectful to me.

Which one of them is more diligent? Obviously the second guy trying to raise his reputation up, understand what it means like to work hard and shows diligency.

The first guy was purely lazy, he wants the easy way out all the time and wants easy job while he waste half his life doing something nonconstructive.

Even though you are working over time, wouldn't you like to work over time doing what you love doing? because I believe that's one of the goals of life, doing what you love doing.

and finally, no need to bash Pachter for what he says. If you want to blame someone, blame the gaming industry. This is how things work, you either work with it or quit it.

Some people here are complaining that people complain about working overtime.
I haven't seen anyone here complaining about that, the complaint is that it's unpaid.

If you're paid for overtime, that's perfectly fine. Nobody here would complain about that.
but what happens when it's unpaid? It means that you're working for a company who is saving money, by not hiring more people, or by not paying you for a few more months.
And guess who keeps that money? the company does.

I understand that most profits come after the game is sold, but as people say here, most don't even get bonuses, or they are so low that they don't matter.

free OT? bad
bonuses for OT? better (if true)
paid OT? no problems

Bonus culture? BONUS CULTURE?

Could this man possibly be more ignorant of the industry he supposedly analyzes?

Pachter is correct maybe once every fifteen times he opens his yap (and it's usually on such Nostradamus-like gems such as "the new Mario will sell a lot").
Put simply, he knows next to nothing about the video game industry, but he appears to be the only person in the financial world who talks about them so people keep running to him for a soundbite. The sooner the media picks up on this, the better the discourse surrounding the games industry will be.

"Work overtime for long enough, and eventually you reach the point where you'd have got more work done by just working 9-5 hours the whole time."

Indeed, and the software industry got the metrics to prove this!

What happens is - let's say you're in bug fixing period 2-3 months out - you actually increase the number of bugs, as people get more and more tired while while being in deep crunch time. Which simple gets you into a vicious never ending circle.

That's right, force your staff to do over time above a certain limit, and your'll see project progress go towards zero real quick.

Instead use focused 3-4 weeks crunch / overtime at strategically choose points in time; set achievable goals, follow them closely and keep the total over time pr. employee under control. That'll get you to the finish line!

12-18 months crunch is both sweat-shop tactics and a very bad(stupid) process to field.

Numerous research studies have found that for anything beyond simple physical activities, money is a "negative reinforcer"; not having it is a problem, but above a certain threshold it fails to motivate. Creativity and achievement are the best rewards for tasks involving even the slightest intellectual component. This is why (when it is allowed) academics, nurses, etc, and game developers are willing to put in long hours for lower pay than might be expected. Where the task is forced into a battery hen treadmill, this important motivator is eliminated. Crunch time has its uses, setting the creative juices flowing - look at Apollo 13 for an extreme example - but this should be emergency activity (where there's goodwill through necessity not planned. Adding cash may temporarily alleviate issues, but is no substitute for the time lost, which if it accumulates results in less productivity and staff turnover. To expect long hours or "get out of Dodge" just shows Pachter's immaturity. To tack on the "we don't need no union" sentiment - wholly unsupported by his arguments - shows how desperate his position is. I think we should go straight out and form one! I've called for it's need before, I think. Most HR departments see unions as a necessary thorn; painful but often needed to highlight major problems they can't always see themselves. Wage negotiation is a small part of what unions do.

Xino, I pity you. You're part of the problem

It's sad to see people who actually agree with this uniformed crap, because "that's the way it is". The bonus myth has been dispelled above and the truth is that after 40 hours, you're working for free. And on an Excel spreadsheet, free employees are good math to bad management.
The fact that exploitation is a common practice doesn't make it not exploitation. Only by making overtime not free is there any incentive for management to think twice before requiring it.

"It comes with the territory". I suppose you fully condole young Hollywood starlets submitting to "the casting couch" to get roles too? Because it comes with the territory?

Of course it would be worse to work at Foxcomm. It could always be worse. But the existence of something worse doesn't mean it can't get any better.

"Kiss a** while you b*tch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you"

Xino, you are Michael Pachter, and I claim my $5.

“If you want to be an hourly employee, go build automobiles, and what will happen is they’ll close down your plant some day and you’ll be out of work."

Sure, because as we've seen through the last three years, videogame developers are immune to economic recessions. No studio closed laying out thousands of developers right? ;(

Is there any analyst out there who isn't a moron? If I were an investor I wouldn't lend my money to these guys :

@Rob and @Michael@Develop

The problem is that this tool is given "air time" and his opinions are usually reported as fact, but there is never any time given to offer up an opposing view. The 90% of the time when he gets his analysis wrong is never reported either.

How about you offering an official platform for someone to rebutt his statements publicly?

If you think that you need to "ship a game" to be able to comment on how the industry works, I think you are wrong.

I've met many financial analysts who have no idea how games are made yet opine on them; I've met more people who make games who have no idea how games are financed, how investors are persuaded, where margins are made or where the real costs of the games industry are incurred (typically less than 30% of them in development, often much less).

I don't agree with Pachter at all. But I think that the people who think he has no right to comment because he has never made a game are misguided and blinkered.

The problem isn't about getting paid overtime. Unfortunately, for people working in the computer field a company is not required to pay overtime (this is for US, not sure about Australia). The real problem is that the longer you work people the lower quality the work is. I currently don't work at a game company but where I work you are not allowed to work over 55 hours unless an emergency forces you too. The reason they did this is that people noticed that code, documentation, meetings, etc. were beginning to deliver lower quality returns when teams worked long hours. For some time the company actually lost money because large amounts of time were spent fixing mistakes that were seen in the low quality work.

When the company went to the 55 hour Max work week they noticed fewer issue of rework because the teams were not physically drained from working 80 or more hours a week.

There will always be times when teams have to work a little longer in a day but it is not in the company's best interest to encourage long hours because the quality of work will eventually cost money and in most cases it will cost more than renegotiating the deadline of the project.

Plus, companies need to do better jobs when negotiating on the deadlines to put in filler time to account for unexpected delays. If you have to add a few weeks or months to your timeline initially it generally will work out better for the company and the employees because you don't work the employees to the point where they deliver bad work that has to be fixed later.

Crunch, the likes we saw at TB, is down to bad management and incompetence, and nothing more. It's not a 'neccecary evil'.

What we, as developers need to do is set the example. Prove that games CAN be made on time and within budget, without burning people out in the process.

Then we can be the ones saying...

"Well, all these other companies manage to produce great games without the crunch, why the hell would anyone work for you?"

“Sweatshops should have unions but games studios, which tend to pay people a lot of money, shouldn’t,” he said.

LOL - what planet is this guy on, most of the shop floor in games dev earn well under average wage. And he days of generous bonus are, sadly, long gone.

Games industry workers should have union membership by default.

Making people to work for free is slavery - pretty sure thats illegal.

This is a general media (TV/games/etc) problem. It is an exploitation of talent which is propagated by the talent pool. These industries offer an 'allure' (something they hone and keep alive) to people that working in it is a privilege, and that one should be grateful merely for the opportunity. We buy into this mindstate, and offer our services for cheap and for free. These companies have HUGE intern bases, and they just use up people and suck up their energy, spit them out, and take in the new crowd. They outsource to freelancers in barely legal contract methods, ending contracts before and renewing after they have to pay any kind of benefit at all. Yet we keep taking these gigs. In many ways, it is up to us to take a stand and to only give our services where it is appreciated, and if it is not, to strike out on our own and avoid this vampire of an industry.

Guys like this who justify something being bad because it's always been bad are true morons.

So how do we move away from this exploitation of the skilled workforce? History shows that any industry as it matures moves the skill base and production lines to cheaper countries. So it's nothing new to games really. The problem is of course how do we keep the creative skills here, treat staff with respect and grow a business? I have seen many highly skilled artists move out of the industry due to the outsourcing of work. These people will not return of course, which in turn annoys the studio bosses who then complain about a lack of skills in the workforce! Truly amazing and truly blinkered, how can any of us turn our passion into a career and base a life around it when treated with such contempt by the Pachter's of the world? So yes, breaking this circle and changing attitudes is what's at the heart of the problem. As to 'Xino', I'm not sure that allowing for a sweat shop working culture is in anyway applicable to the western working 21st century.

"If you think that you need to "ship a game" to be able to comment on how the industry works, I think you are wrong.

I've met many financial analysts who have no idea how games are made yet opine on them"

You don't need to develop games to have a valid opinion on games themselves or the industry, no.

But to have a valid opinion on the process of developing games itself, you do need to have actually developed a game. Otherwise you're speaking from a position of ignorance.

Brian, you're 100% right.
I had a programmer on my team once that you could set your clock by. 5:30 and all you could see was a spinning chair and a cloud of dust.
But this chap was THE MOST RELIABLE coder in the building. His work was reliable and bugs were unheard of.
Tired staff make expensive mistakes - really it's a no brainer. Managemet really need to listen to the guys on the shop floor who are doing the WORK and stop selling their staff out to satisfy the publishers.

Okay then, so I have my team of skilled developers, deserving of the utmost respect and praise. A world-class team who despite my obvious managerial incompetence I somehow managed to select and hire and sign then an amazing project for.

When this unquestionably talented team fails to deliver on their own schedule - the one they've been involved in creating and providing feedback on throughout the development of the game - and the result of that failure is that the game might not hit it's release date and will miss it's already-paid-for marketing campaign and become a commercial failure, probably leading to the end of the company and the loss of everyone's jobs, what should I do? Ask them to work a little harder for a while to try to get back the time that they lost, or send them home and hope for the best?

Obviously sending them home means that the publisher won't be paying the final milestone and therefore the staff probably won't get paid, but it's all about maintaining the 9-5 hours, right? Otherwise I'm a bad manager.

Honestly, it would be great if people posting here had even the smallest amount of appreciation for the other side of the problem. Yes, long crunch periods burn out staff and should be avoided as much as possible, but all crunch is not avoidable unless all team members become 100% predictable - and missed deadlines or buggy and unpolished games kill companies.

There doesn't seem to be any real arguments in this article for why "Full-time game developers shouldn’t complain they have to work unpaid overtime". The article is just full of differently formulated versions of "The problem is common, so it's not a problem" which is non-sense. Read more in my blog post: http://shotgundentist.com/blog/crunch-can-and-should-be-avoided/

We have the industry we deserve in this country and that more and more people are turning to indie development is both a symptom of developers believing they can do better and the result of many companies failing to try and address the issues of crunch. There is a clear problem if the average game developer lasts 7 or 8 years before leaving to go to banking/software/whatever. Many of my peers have left for improved salary, better working conditions be that by changing industry or country!

It's interesting to read the above posts. Most have a "bad management" perspective. Seemingly thinking that development studio owners are the ones making millions of dollars while the artists, coders, etc. are getting the short end of the stick. I can assure you that running (and owning) an indie dev studio is far from that. I've owned a studio for over 5 years and everyone on my team has made more money than I have during that time. I've also put in as much or more overtime than they do. When I finish my "day job" I go home and deal with the non development side of running a studio. i.e. paycheques, cash flow, receipts, books, banking, bills, etc.. We made a couple of console projects for a big name publisher that were an awful experience. Not because I pushed the team but because the publisher was completely unrealistic and just stopped paying us milestone payments even though we delivered what was in the contract and at times more. The publisher threatened to cancel the project. We could have sued but the studio would have closed first and litigation takes years. None of my team missed a paycheque but I sure did. For more than a full year. Did they do a lot of hours? Unfortunately yes. But not because of bad management. It was purely publisher driven. In the end both games shipped on time and one even generated some royalties that we saw 2 years later. Unfortunately no bonuses were paid simply because we had to hire more people on the projects than were budgeted. Every start up studio I've seen who declares "no overtime" has either gone out of business or has changed that policy. It doesn't work. The reasons are many i.e. unrealistic publishers, creative aspects of the industry, etc.. Before you go off and put the blame on "bad management" you need to understand the dynamics of this industry. It's easy to blame management but most of the time that's not the issue. Developing games is a combination of fixed price budgeting and creativity. A difficult mix. But so are all creative industries. I come from the music industry where everyone puts in long hours and certainly doesn't get paid overtime. My wife works in the film/tv industry and puts in long hours without overtime pay. I've written a book for a flat fee publisher advance and if I counted the hours it would probably work out to less than a dollar an hour. If you work in a creative industry, hours worked are not the criteria, the end product is. People who buy games either love the game or don't. They don't rate the number of hours developers have put into the project.

Like the Ghost of Christmas Present's warning to Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol", these developers, analysts and management folk need to be careful of where their decisions are going to lead them and the people effected by their decisions.

If management continues to push the limits of what is "expected" from an industry that really isn't all that large, history tells us that they're creating a breeding ground ripe for union intervention. And once you get a union in there, that's bad for everybody, and the gaming industry in the West is doomed.

You can push people only so far, and if you expect people to work 60-80 hours per week when you sign them up, there will eventually be consequences. Consequences where the only winners are in China and India.

No pay = no work. Why should you do a freebie for this man?

Contracts and negotiation should be standard courses in high school. People get screwed way too often.

It boggles my mind that this industry does not have unions. I know there are plenty of devs out there that think they are "so smart" and don't need a union, but how often do we hear of these horror stories? It's downright stupid at this point.

Also give credit where credit is due, unprofessional prick.

Related: http://www.youtube.com/wat​ch?v=mj5IV23g-fE

Harlan Ellison on working for nothing.

Mr Patcher, if you really are an analyst of the video game market I feel competent enough to take over your job any time.
Let's sum it up you are old and lazy, overlooking this business with stereotypes so your head can produce shite while our hand are supposed to make gold for you.

After all, we all are young, stupid and enthusiastic enough to get f**** sideways there is no harm in that is it?

Seriously, make this planet a favour and go hang yourself because there is no decent job for you where you would qualify.
As a gesture of good will, I may offer you a rope.

I'm currently not within the industry nor have any experience with it, but have a plan to start my own indie company within the next 5-10 years (well expand into indie games
by then) so the area greatly interests me.

Having read the article and the comments I have come to the following conclusion:

Overtime, where possible, should be paid for, whether that's via a bonus of an appropriate size or via a flat rate increase on salary.

However there are occasions where the funding is simply not there to pay the overtime and contracts/negotiations prior to undertaking a project should make this clear.

Bottom line, if a game is hugely successful and profits are sizeable developers should be entitled to a significant bonus, otherwise an appropriate amount based on available profits.

Managers, employees, freelancers and artists. With all do respect, you're all wrong.

we're all doing the things we love, bu we're not happy. That's what the management doesn't get. I love chocolate potato chips. If I had nothing to eat but chocolate potato chips, would I grow to hate them? Yes.

It all has to do with the work environment. If I'm having fun and doing something I love with people that also love it, I would put up with even some UNPAID overtime. But you can't expect people to work 50+ hours a week for months and not expect to get paid for it, on top of the fact that it's not a pleasant work environment.

Only in the games industry would this ever be acceptable. If the execs don't change something, we're going to end up unionized, and that will end us.

As someone who worked on the EA Spouse team, I can tell you that he's basically wrong.

Yes, highly compensated employees don't claim overtime. They don't need to. Anyone paid hourly is entitled to overtime, and that's roughly $80k and under.

Bonuses are ethereal. They're never real until they're in your bank account, and they're seldom significant. $200 million in sales does not equate to any kind of bonus for the team. The team is at the bottom of the pay chain.

This isn't finance, where you can expect $200k bonuses to be paid out predictably. This is games. Bonuses tend to fall in the $1,000 - $20,000 range if they happen at all, and even then it's very subjective.