60+ hours work week still the industry norm?

[Dan Lawrence]

Crunch is how management gets more work done without more paying for more people.

I'd argue that a lengthy crunch pretty soon leads to less work overall being done than there would have been without the crunch. The tiredness starts to bleed over into the regular working week making those hours less and less productive. Instead I'd say that overtime allows middle managers to present the illusion of 'we're working as hard as we can' to the upper management, while the reality is that less work is being done. Its all about appearances not actual 'short-term efficiency gains'.

[Kyle Wilson]

What he's really saying is that some crunch will be necessary to get the game beyond shippable and into "great" status. He's advocating small bursts of crunch at milestones rather than a huge one at the end...

That leaves me with two questions. (And I really am curious here, not accusatory).

How much crunch are you talking about? All the data I've seen suggests that after two weeks of 40+ hours, employees become less productive, and that it takes them several more weeks to recover.

Also, if the crunch is driven by the ambition of the team and not inaccuracy in the schedule, why is it top-down and team-wide instead of on an individual basis by people who want to do a little extra?

I'm a lot more likely to believe any claim that "crunch works great for us at company X" if it actually comes from a programmer or artist than if it comes from a producer. :)

[WarrenM]

I actually earn much more as an indie than I did at Lionhead.
just saying :D

Right, but that wouldn't be the case for me unless I created the next Bejeweled or something. :)

Crunch is never a technical or creative necessity. Crunch is how management gets more work done without more paying for more people.

That's the cynical view, sure. Again, I'm no fan of crunch but it has it's place in the short term.

Also, bear in mind that I'm not talking about 16 hour/7 day a week death marches here. I'm talking about 10-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. It isn't insanity or anything and can be sustained for a month or so before shipping. It's long but it's not soul crushing.

Kyle

How much crunch are you talking about? All the data I've seen suggests that after two weeks of 40+ hours, employees become less productive, and that it takes them several more weeks to recover.

At the end of the project, it can be a few months of extended hours. It ramps up generally. We start with 10 hour days, and then after a few weeks throw in an 8 hour Saturday and during the last few weeks it may crank up to 12 hours a day during the week.

We get comp time afterwards and are financially compensated as well so I know my attitude will differ from those who get jack shit for crunching.

Also, if the crunch is driven by the ambition of the team and not inaccuracy in the schedule, why is it top-down and team-wide instead of on an individual basis by people who want to do a little extra?

My understanding is that it's viewed as demoralizing to have certain people crunching while others are allowed to leave. I can see that but I don't wholeheartedly agree with it. If I'm caught up and I want to go home, I believe I should be able to. However, in my experience there is almost always something you could be doing to move the game closer to shipping.

I'm a lot more likely to believe any claim that "crunch works great for us at company X" if it actually comes from a programmer or artist than if it comes from a producer. :)

Oh, no doubt. And you won't hear me saying that crunch is awesome and that I love it. However, I do think it's a necessary period at the end of a project that can last a month without adversing affecting anything or anyone.

A 6 month death march? Die in a fire.

A month of extended hours to get the game as good as it can be? OK.

[Dave Weinstein]

If I recall correctly, the crossover point of 60 hour weeks is 8 weeks. That is to say, after 8 weeks of 60 hour weeks (and this is for manual assembly labor, not creative work), the team working 60 hour weeks has produced less total than the team working 40 hour weeks.

Henry Ford was not a humanitarian. The 40 hour work week has a century of research behind it at this point.

Reference Article: http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

[Aeon221]

The beatings will continue until morale improves!

And I hear the boss is a master beater!

[Reldan]

In large-scale projects, however, the final month or two typically is where all the disparate elements are finally coming together and you're having people going over the whole system looking for leakage at the joints.

This is also where I can see crunch as having benefit. There are a myriad number of dependencies between everybody's work, and as a result people need to work until their pieces function properly so they don't hold back others. There are any number of situations where Joe's team's extra 4 hours of work results in not wasting Sally, Bob, and Sue's teams combined 100 hours of sitting around waiting for Joe to get his shit together.

[NoWayJose]

Also, bear in mind that I'm not talking about 16 hour/7 day a week death marches here. I'm talking about 10-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. It isn't insanity or anything and can be sustained for a month or so before shipping. It's long but it's not soul crushing.

But that depends on your outlook. For a single guy, it's bad but mostly it's about your personal morale. For a married guy, it's about eating dinner at work while your wife eats dinner alone in the kitchen. That gets old very quickly, much more quickly than a month (I have no idea about your marriage, EpicBoy, but I got married because I like being with my wife). For a married guy with children, it's soul crushing after a week. I don't like seeing my kid for an hour in the morning, and that's it. I want to play with him, help with homework, talk about our days, etc. - all the fun and essential evening activities my dad did with me.

It's not just bad management at that point to ask for crunch - it's immoral and unethical. And the reason for that is that crunch is unnecessary. There is absolutely no reason to crunch on any project - ANY project - other than mismanagement. There are always features that can be cut. There are always art passes that can be foregone. The trouble is that most creative directors view every title as a chance to make a triple-A game, and cannot possibly comprehend the concept of cutting one of their brilliant ideas. Which is fine, that's their job. The job of the producer is to reign that in by constructing a reasonable schedule and forcing the creative director to prioritize correctly, and to keep re-visiting of assets and features to a minimum. Of course, people will read this and assume that the quality of games will decline. Some will. But others will be just fine, as designers, coders, and artists start to understand the necessity for planning and execution without the luxury of the "well, let's spend a few months developing this feature and then throw it in the game and decide if it works" mentality that I've seen on a multitude of projects, in a multitude of studios.

I'd also mention that not all titles are going to be AAA. Scheduling and budgetary restraints make that a reality. But even on those titles, I've heard of unreasonable crunch as the team felt "motivated" to try and get a metacritic score in the 90s. That's ridiculous. It's not going to happen, and meanwhile you're burning out the team, straining families, and fostering even further resentment between management and employees.

And I'd also like to address EpicBoy's assertion that partial crunch (ie. some people working later than others) causes morale problems: too bad. If you feel you need to stay late to get your work done, or improve it to some quality level you've decided is necessary, more power to you. My priority is working hard during the day and getting home at a reasonable hour. I'm in this industry for the long haul, so killing myself for a couple of years to ship some game that no one will be playing six months from ship date isn't going to be a priority for me.

[Johan A]

How much crunch are you talking about? All the data I've seen suggests that after two weeks of 40+ hours, employees become less productive, and that it takes them several more weeks to recover.

Thats my experience as well from working as a developer for the last 15 years. And thats just productivity, not to mention the impact on someones life.

Yes I've crunched alot in my life, and the "you have to work 12h/day for the next 12 months" was one major reason why I left Funcom.

[mandarin]

In our experience the benefit of crunch has more to do with the excitement and attitude of the team and less to do with the total volume of work hours. I tested this theory on our last project but cutting work hours and enforcing these cuts. The excitement/attitude felt the same as a crunch--we wanted to wrap things up and cram in as much as we could--but we went home at 3:30. And it worked pretty well!

Crunch also changes worker mindset from blue sky to limited resources. If you feel you only have so much time left on a project you begin to optimize your decisions. Maybe feature X requiring Y hours of production isn't worth it, or 90% of X can be accomplished with 10% of Y.

We're an indie data point, so maybe this changes things (we're six people, so it's not like we're a single-man operation or anything).

We did this on Blush, which was an 8-week game:

http://vimeo.com/3427308 (trailer)
http://blurst.com/blush/ (play)

The weekly project breakdown was:

- Week 1, prototyping (2 people), 10-6 M-Thu
- Week 2, prototyping (2 people), 10-6 M-Thu
- Week 3, production (6 people), 10-6 M-Thu
- Week 4, production (6 people), 10-6 M-Thu (I took this week off)
- Week 5, production (6 people), 10-6 M-Thu
- Week 6, production (6 people), 10-3:30 M-Thu
- Week 7, production (6 people), 10-3:30 M-Thu
- Week 8, production (6 people), 10-6 M-Sat

Fridays have always been experimental days (random tests or hobby projects).

Since then we've permanently slashed our work hours. It's hard to quantify exact numbers, but we aren't losing nearly as much output as we're gaining in personal time. The nonlinear gain of crunch goes in the other direction, too. I don't expect we'll raise our hours to full strength (8 hours M-Thu) anytime soon, even with our 8-week production plan for 2009.

If we can make this work other companies can, too. Yeah, we make smaller games, but we feel it's still a big feat to pull off any of our projects in 8 weeks.

-Matthew

[Damien Neil]

At the end of the project, it can be a few months of extended hours. It ramps up generally. We start with 10 hour days, and then after a few weeks throw in an 8 hour Saturday and during the last few weeks it may crank up to 12 hours a day during the week.

So, let's say that you get twice as much done during crunch time as you do otherwise. (You don't, of course.) You're saying that you could completely eliminate crunch by extending your development schedules by a month or three?

[Kyle Wilson]

If I recall correctly, the crossover point of 60 hour weeks is 8 weeks. That is to say, after 8 weeks of 60 hour weeks (and this is for manual assembly labor, not creative work), the team working 60 hour weeks has produced less total than the team working 40 hour weeks.

Clinton Keith comes up with this graph from tracking the effects of overtime on Darkwatch:

[Damien Neil]

The most interesting thing about that chart: Week 1 is a 40 hour week. Weeks 2-5 are 60 hour. The most productive 60 hour week was only about 30% more productive, despite being 50% longer.

[WarrenM]

So, let's say that you get twice as much done during crunch time as you do otherwise. (You don't, of course.) You're saying that you could completely eliminate crunch by extending your development schedules by a month or three?

You often can't extend the schedule. Your ship date is locked down and you have to hit it or you miss black friday/xmas. That's something only games like GTA or Metal Gear Solid can do and still survive. Marketing is usually rolling months in advance of you shipping and if you miss the date, it's pretty much wasted effort.

But as far as productivity goes - at the end, you're fixing bugs. Reams and reams of stupid little bugs that are clogging up the database. Cover is broken here, coverslip isn't available at this location, some z-fighting there, this mesh looks like it's being lit weird, this mesh has collision and shouldn't, there's a little gap between these 2 meshes, this view could use some optimizing, etc. This is the stuff that can be fixed when you're tired with little consequence. That's why the crunch at the end is about polish and getting the game as solid as possible - it is NOT about adding features. Nobody does anything especially creative during this period ... and you don't want them to. It's about stopping the jello from shaking and about getting the game ready to hit shelves.

Yes I've crunched alot in my life, and the "you have to work 12h/day for the next 12 months" was one major reason why I left Funcom.

That's the kind of crunch that I'm happy to agree with you guys on. That's stupid and unproductive. That will kill peoples motivation and cause them to quit.

A few months at the end of the project? That's expected - it's time to SHIP.

The most interesting thing about that chart: Week 1 is a 40 hour week. Weeks 2-5 are 60 hour. The most productive 60 hour week was only about 30% more productive, despite being 50% longer.

When people crunch for extended periods, a LOT of time gets eaten up with talking in the halls and surfing the web. They make their 8 hours of work extend to fill 12 hours but not really getting any more done. That's why it's important to manage the length of crunch. A motivated team CAN be more productive in short bursts.

This is also where I can see crunch as having benefit. There are a myriad number of dependencies between everybody's work, and as a result people need to work until their pieces function properly so they don't hold back others. There are any number of situations where Joe's team's extra 4 hours of work results in not wasting Sally, Bob, and Sue's teams combined 100 hours of sitting around waiting for Joe to get his shit together.

Yep. It's a period where communication is key and if you need to ask someone a question about something it's awesome to have them there rather than have to wait until the next day.



At any rate, thanks for the responses, but I think I'm done responding in this thread. I can see idiots like NWJ starting up with insults and insinuations and it's only going to deteriorate from here. I am not here to defend crunch. I've said many times that I don't like it but I DO view it as necessary thing to ship a top shelf game.

Again, this it's sustainable for a month or two. Beyond that, and it's stupid.

[Tortilla]

That's the cynical view, sure. Again, I'm no fan of crunch but it has it's place in the short term.

Also, bear in mind that I'm not talking about 16 hour/7 day a week death marches here. I'm talking about 10-12 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. It isn't insanity or anything and can be sustained for a month or so before shipping. It's long but it's not soul crushing.

I don't think I'm being cynical there. I've worked both ends of this in my time, both dev and PM, so I've seen (and in few cases helped push for) crunch. I've never seen any crunch have ANY benefits beyond letting a team do more with less resources and adapt to deadlines in a fluid situation. From a management perspective that's a big benefit, to be sure, but it's purely a resource benefit.

There are valid business cases for crunch, and I won't deny that. As you've noted, some employers make it worth the while of the devs to put up with work conditions that call for some crunching from time to time. But please don't try to sell me on some rah-rah management BS that crunch is how teams achieve some creative epiphany or sharp technical focus that couldn't have been accomplished within regular office hours if the project was more adequately resourced.

[Tortilla]

This is also where I can see crunch as having benefit. There are a myriad number of dependencies between everybody's work, and as a result people need to work until their pieces function properly so they don't hold back others. There are any number of situations where Joe's team's extra 4 hours of work results in not wasting Sally, Bob, and Sue's teams combined 100 hours of sitting around waiting for Joe to get his shit together.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! That's the business case for crunch right there. That's where management has to realize that's is way cheaper to have Joe's team work OT than it is to idle a bunch of other teams. And that's okay if the compensation structure and employee expectations are built to handle the idea that crunch will be called for.

[Reldan]

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! That's the business case for crunch right there. That's where management has to realize that's is way cheaper to have Joe's team work OT than it is to idle a bunch of other teams. And that's okay if the compensation structure and employee expectations are built to handle the idea that crunch will be called for.

In my company crunch is expected, we know it's coming, and when, and typically for how long, and also why. We also are paid overtime, and typically are encouraged to take vacation for a week or two afterwards.

I will say that I've worked here for 3.5 years now, and for the first three years I was single and this last half year I've been married. A couple years back I and several others basically destroyed ourselves working to make up for some poor management decisions made on the project I was on at the time. I put up with it then, but wouldn't now.

Hell, I'm technically crunching right now - I'm just waiting for our DBA to get a damn index put on a table so I can get the rest of my shit done tonight.

[Damien Neil]

Hell, I'm technically crunching right now - I'm just waiting for our DBA to get a damn index put on a table so I can get the rest of my shit done tonight.

The reality of crunch time: Most of it is spent surfing the net.

[WarrenM]

But please don't try to sell me on some rah-rah management BS that crunch is how teams achieve some creative epiphany or sharp technical focus that couldn't have been accomplished within regular office hours if the project was more adequately resourced.

I never attempted to do that.

The reality of crunch time: Most of it is spent surfing the net.

Long term crunch, yes. If that's happening with short term crunch, you're working with people who don't give a shit.

[Brad Wardell]

I typically work 40 to 45 hours a week during most of the year but during a major crunch time I'll work about twice that.

My productivity scales until around 60 hours a week. After that, it gets into diminishing returns. But often times, it's not about pumping out code but rather simply increasing the communication within teams that requires so many hours.

[Tortilla]

Hell, I'm technically crunching right now - I'm just waiting for our DBA to get a damn index put on a table so I can get the rest of my shit done tonight.

If you'd engaged your DBAs earlier in the process for some collaborative data modeling and exploration of your usage of the data model, that index would already be there . . .

Yeah, I have strong DBA roots :)

[Tortilla]

I never attempted to do that.

Sorry, that wasn't directly to your address but I wasn't clear about that. I quoted you because you quoted Rod, and it was Rod's comment that was setting off my BS-O-Meter

[NoWayJose]

At any rate, thanks for the responses, but I think I'm done responding in this thread. I can see idiots like NWJ starting up with insults and insinuations and it's only going to deteriorate from here.

I'm not sure who I'm supposed to have insulted, other than to call management who relies on crunch to finish projects "incompetent." I stand by that assessment, though I will re-iterate that many of those producers may prove to be quite resourceful and responsible should the option of crunch without compensation be taken away. The fact is they simply haven't had to worry about it as they have this great option available to them without immediate consequence. I certainly never called anyone an idiot! Was it that I commented that I didn't know your relationship with your wife? I don't! I assume (and hope) that it's similar to mine: you enjoy spending time with her and would rather do that than sit in front of a desk at 8pm. If not, then that's fine, too. I just know which I'd prefer. If you misinterpreted that as some sort of dig at you and your wife, I apologize for not being more clear. Will you apologize for calling me an idiot?

I am not here to defend crunch. I've said many times that I don't like it but I DO view it as necessary thing to ship a top shelf game.

Again, this it's sustainable for a month or two. Beyond that, and it's stupid.

In my opinion, saying crunch is necessary to ship a top shelf game and that it's fine for a month or two IS defending it, as I'm of the opinion that it's possible to ship a top-shelf game without it. It's been done in the business before. If events outside the team's control (ie. a massive hardware spec change on a project already underway, etc.) then while crunch MAY be mandated, it should be compensated. But that's a huge difference from what you're espousing, which is crunching during beta, when it's all bug fixing and polish. In fact, this should be the easiest part of the project to schedule without crunch. It's very simple to track how many bugs you're clearing a day and plan accordingly.

[Tortilla]

I typically work 40 to 45 hours a week during most of the year but during a major crunch time I'll work about twice that.

Good on you! There is nothing in the world more annoying than managers who trot out the door at 5 minutes to 5 during a mandatory crunch.

[rei]

I wonder what Duke Nukem Forever's team does on a development cycle so long.

[nlanza]

My understanding is that it's viewed as demoralizing to have certain people crunching while others are allowed to leave. I can see that but I don't wholeheartedly agree with it. If I'm caught up and I want to go home, I believe I should be able to. However, in my experience there is almost always something you could be doing to move the game closer to shipping.

The flip side of this is that it's demoralizing as hell to be ordered to come in on Saturday even though you blew past your bug targets just because some of your slacker coworkers are hopelessly behind.

My last job did this -- months-long crunches with mandatory Saturdays, godawful "catered" dinners brought in during the workdays, table-thumping motivational speeches by executives who were nowhere to be found during those late hours they told us were critical, etc, etc.

It was a startup building pretty complex software, and definitely had the "if you don't come in late you're letting down the team, if you quit you're even worse" attitude.

I left, and now I'm somewhere where crunches are very short -- a few weeks at most, usually with really nice food brought in, very healthy cash bonuses for the extra work, and a general understanding that needing to crunch is a management fuckup.

It entertains me to see that the old place never managed a release on time, had horrible problems with bugs and quality, and recently had 40% layoffs.

The current place hits basically every deadline with minimal crunch, releases good software, and rakes in cash.

People who tell you need long crunches might as well be trying to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

[Tman]

I'm a software manager - not gaming, but in business for going on 15 years now. I've seen every project there is to have. New technologies, new hardware, new software versions. Regulated, non-regulated, you name it. I've worked with teams as small as 5 and up to 70.

The number of crunches I've seen in the past 10 years is twice. One was because of technology failing late in the process and having to find an alternate technology and the other was a team that let bugs get out of control at the late stages.

It all comes down to planning - a manager who has seen these types of projects should be able to accurately estimate each milestone - prototyping, alpha, beta & RC1. At each milestone you replan based on what you learned the previous milestone. You have 3 basic tenets - resources, features & time and it's your job as a manager to figure out which of those three are static and which ones can change. If you are on a project where they say none can move - it's time to find a new company to work for because they are being woefully unreasonable and have no business being upper mgt.


At no point have I have planned for crunch time. To plan for crunch time just reminds me of the poster "lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part"

[Reldan]

If you'd engaged your DBAs earlier in the process for some collaborative data modeling and exploration of your usage of the data model, that index would already be there . . .

Yeah, I have strong DBA roots :)

Or maybe when he rebuilt the table this morning he could have put it back on there since we'd already concluded we needed it earlier in the process. Perhaps when I specifically asked if the index had been added and was told it had been 4 hours earlier he could have actually checked instead of assuming it had been done and feeding me BS.

But yeah, blame me when you have no idea what the sitch is.

[Tortilla]

Or maybe when he rebuilt the table this morning he could have put it back on there since we'd already concluded we needed it earlier in the process. Perhaps when I specifically asked if the index had been added and was told it had been 4 hours earlier he could have actually checked instead of assuming it had been done and feeding me BS.

But yeah, blame me when you have no idea what the sitch is.

I always give DBAs the benefit of the doubt because I've seen what horrible things devs will do to them ;-)

I'm sure there's some good reason he's done what he's done. Though from the story you tell, it sounds like maybe he was just really distracted and worried about whether the short bus would be on time to pick him after work.

[Hechicera]

thats very very true. But my experience is that young kids joining the industry still see working 12 hour days as some romantic/macho thing to be encouraged.
Maybe part of it is 95% of the workforce being men. Are women as keen on crunch as the guys?

It depends. I'm a female programmer/DBA/AI/Modeler(math) from the non-gaming world. I've seen my share of crunches.

Many women will look at the profession or industry and simply avoid it. But you knew that, the issue is with the women who went in anyway.

Women that do go into it will often be willing to crunch for a few reasons. If it is a start-up, there is the monetary lure. This may be less true with games, but I could see scenarios where it might happen. If they went into the area knowing it's workload they may have done so since they have an attraction to the material that is stronger than any desire of self-preservation. So, they are the type that would do this work until they drop, regardless of conditions. There is also a bit of pressure when you are the only, or even one of the few, women working on the technical side of the house. People tend to judge all female's technical skills, ability and desire to do this kind of job based on your performance. Not fair, but it happens. So you are under pressure to do whatever is needed, plus a little bit more, just to be sure. Either they feel they have something to prove, or feel the weight of representing their sex.

So, if a woman does go into the field, I would assume she would crunch. And if in a crunch, she would also, for a mix of one or more reasons, go full out.

[Charles]

Not that I entirely disagree with you, Charles, but telling the people above you to go suck it can make for a tense and uncomfortable work environment. That is arguable, even in the face of results. Team unity and coherency is just as important as anything else. If some people are refusing to crunch while others see a need and are willing, it puts team members at odds with each other and that's just as harmful as any other problem really.

I am much more subtle when interacting with the people above me. I maintain a good work environment above all things. The worst it gets is when management is frustrated that they can't force me to do something I don't think is good for the game. Sadly for them, I always back it up with unassailable positions which are reinforced by the people around me.

If I recall correctly, the crossover point of 60 hour weeks is 8 weeks. That is to say, after 8 weeks of 60 hour weeks (and this is for manual assembly labor, not creative work), the team working 60 hour weeks has produced less total than the team working 40 hour weeks.

Henry Ford was not a humanitarian. The 40 hour work week has a century of research behind it at this point.

Reference Article: http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

This. This needs to be read. I linked it earlier.

Anyone arguing that crunch is necessary sickens me. There is unavoidable crunch in software, yes, but it is a few weeks before a major milestone, and it is to fix very specific issues, and nothing else. Beyond that it's BS.

IF people want to do extra work, that's fine, but they need to realize that past a certain point they are doing less quality work and they won't even realize it. Even if you "want" to do 60 hour weeks, the simple fact is that after not long, you are going to be producing less quality work than if you'd stuck to a 40 hour week.

As was said above, this has fucking science behind it. Sticking your head in the sand doesn't make it go away.