You know, I'll bet the people at Stardock and Gas Powered Games figured that a bit of downtime after launching Demigod would be no problem at all.Originally Posted by checker
We should ask Brad. Oh wait, he was smart enough to just agree with one of the many position summary posts and he stopped checking the thread.
However, I do think there was talk about live teams and how the intense times are different for different parts of the team and that needs to be managed (even the evil Capps talks about this), so I think you need to try again to find something we haven't talked to death yet! :)
Chris
... Seriously? People can't handle the epic heat so they should get out of the epic kitchen?
I feel sometimes like the relationship between game companies and employees is a little like a battered spouse to their abuser: "I'm prepared to take these beatings for the sake of the children.".
I think Capps is still wrong on crunch, he is free to do what he likes in his company but it frustrates when he tries to spread that agenda further out through positions in the IDGA.
I think its sad that the hiring policy at Epic excludes staff who would like to be out the door at 4 all the time, they've excluded a section of the populaton based, not on passion, but based on their ability to work those hours.
Far more of a problem is the widespread practice of crunching for months and months with little (a new one I've heard about this week is 'defered payment for hours worked' - you'll probably get your hourly wage for doing overtime but only after the project is over) to no compensation.
I don't personally like Epics games, I don't like the sound of the culture at Epic, and lord knows I've argued like fuck with EpicBoy. I also think crunch does not work, and is counter-productive.
BUT
Epic (AFAIK) is a private company. They aren't secretive (far from it) about their culture. They seem to be successful and no-doubt have a lot of applicants for each job.
There is no forced labour or slavery going on, and people are free to join and leave that company.
They could quit epic to go work at a more 'life-friendly' company if they found it was a better fit for them.
So really... I'm wondering if we are all effectively bleating at someone about how they cook their own food. Really, what does it matter unless you are somehow forced to work at epic? It's a free country, Epic have their culture just like EA and Blizzard do.
I guess there should be concern that young fresh-faced kids might be taken advantage of and work unhealthy hours, but they are all adults, and I don't see a long queue of ex-epic people talking about how they regret working there.
Just musing...
Oh I agree, and I expect by now Epic must be very self selecting - only people that fit the mould are going to stick around. I don't have any problem with Epic organizing their buisness like this, they aren't exploiting the staff that are there because they are compensating them massively (Double your salary in royalties?). I only have a problem with Capps taking roles in the IDGA and pushing for the model across the industry, people will listen to him and say 'This is how games are made, the IDGA is saying it' and Bam the whole industry is half baked version of Epic Games.
I just think its sad in a more wistful sense - for the games that they make compared to the games they could have made. The level of polish that Epic puts into its games speaks to their talent. However, I maintain its impossible not to develop a partial group think when your staff become only people with a certain lifestyle ( I know that people at Epic have different hobbies but they are clearly all the kind of people who believe passion equals staying at work till 2am ).
Hopefully Epic will announce a wildly innovative, sensitive game soon and prove me wrong.
Let me interject and say that, personally, I think working until 2am is stupid. Seriously. I would much rather people go home and get a decent amount of rest and come back refreshed in the morning. That said, I'm not going to actively discourage someone who wants to do that because they're really into whatever they're working on. We had to make a call on what time was the absolute max you could stay in the office and management decided on 2am as that line in the sand. Some guys don't show up to work until 1pm, so it's not completely outrageous for some people.I know that people at Epic have different hobbies but they are clearly all the kind of people who believe passion equals staying at work till 2am
A major component of all the recent anti-crunch talk is that crunch has expanded well beyond something you do right before shipping and is something many companies do at each vaguely defined milestone. If the short-term productivity boosts of "reasonable length" crunches are lost to downtime after the crunch is over, I still believe most crunch is wasted and is done just because the companies involved are too blind to take a step back and see that they're stuck in a crunch/slack-off cycle that is really no more productive than if they just worked a reasonable schedule consistently.
In any case, I'm not going to trust any study that shows short-term crunch is a net positive if they don't also measure the result of said crunch as well to prove that there is no lingering after-effect impact, because humans aren't robots.
That's why only lazy, shiftless people have kids.
If you make that "guaranteed deferred compensation", I'd agree with you.
But as I understand it, the bonuses at Epic are not guaranteed, they are at the company's discretion. A guaranteed version of the same thing would be residuals (with the necessary audit rights to enforce them).
There are examples of promised post-ship bonuses or profit sharing being reneged upon (and on successful games) in this field. Moreover, they are almost invariably based on remaining with the company after the product, and that moves them (at least in my opinion) into being more of a retention tool.
If programmer X and programmer Y both put in equal crunch on Big Successful Game Z, and both contribute roughly the same towards its success, they should ideally receive equal deferred compensation. However, if programmer X stays with the company, and programmer Y leaves, under every non-guaranteed deferred compensation plan I've ever seen, programmer Y stops getting that compensation, regardless of the reason for the departure.
That's where I'm coming from as well.
I'm enough of a fan of capitalism to believe that companies can do almost what they want, as long as they compensate well and fairly.
But the compensation should be based on the work put in and stuff the employess have power over... not a lot of other factors beyond the employees power to control. If you work the hours and do a good job, you get your compensation. Not "sorry, but mangement decided to do a PS3 exclusive, which turned out to be a bad call" or "you did a great job, but marketing dropped the ball, so sorry" or you having to stay with the company.
I took a paycut when I left the tabloid business as well as a cut in other benefits (free phone, free internet, free newspapers, an extra week of holiday, expensive retraining) in order to work magazines. These benefits were guaranteed, but it was expected that I sometimes worked late, didn't show up for some important family thing because of a storys development etc.
My current job pays less, but we have the luxury of being a lot of people working on one magazine (compared to our competition) which means little to no overtime, no work weekends and what little overtime there is is imediately compensated in extra free time. A lot of people with families prefer the lower pay and accepts that they'll never win any journalism prices in order to have more time with the family - from a moneymaking perpective we are a better business than the newspapers even without overworking employees.
But the important point is that even at the newspaper the more family unfriendly workplace had to compensate us and the rules were very clear about how (thanks to a strong union) - and whether the paper made money or not had nothing to with it.
Hey there is that EVIL Union word again....
Just sayin'
isn't that a bit chaotic though? If someone who goes home at 2am breaks the build, or breaks the code in some obscure way, how do the 10am start guys feel about being unable to talk to him until early afternoon?
That stuff must happen now and then?
I know. I love to drop it casually in conversations with Americans.
Well, typically when we're in crunch if you break the build, you get a phone call and you're coming back in to fix it.isn't that a bit chaotic though? If someone who goes home at 2am breaks the build, or breaks the code in some obscure way, how do the 10am start guys feel about being unable to talk to him until early afternoon?
That stuff must happen now and then?
Or even more irritating is waiting for 2hours for someone to come in, when you'd want to talk about how to solve a certain bug.
I thank the Great Lord of the Dark for working with developers that have a life, and prefer to be at the office between 9 and 5.
How long do your builds take? Is your continuous integration that slow to run a build and an automated smoke test that a dev would be tempted to commit code and then leave the building?
Breaking a build that way would earn a whipping on any of my project teams!
Last edited by Tortilla; 04-25-2009 at 02:43 PM.
There's always at least one. Even if it only takes as long as they need to make it to the parking lot. It's also quite viable to have a build that runs but one element (gameplay, UI) is broken in such a way that the build is unusable and it can take a couple of minutes for QA to decide it's a global issue that needs to be immediately resolved. Precious minutes they can spend turning off their cell phone because its dangerous to talk and drive lolololol
Sigh.
Builds can take hours. Things happen all the time. Maybe someone edited some code and forgot to check in a new file they made. It works great on their machine and they figure it's fine.
Continuous integration that continuously builds. You know within 20 minutes if the build is broken.How long do your builds take? Is your continuous integration that slow to run a build and an automated smoke test that a dev would be tempted to commit code and then leave the building?
Breaking a build that way would earn a whipping on any of my project teams!
Again, this thing with people working until 2am and getting called back in for breakage is only during crunch. During normal work if someone routinely breaks the build and goes home, they have a sit down with their lead about how to stop fucking up.
I completely agree.
Chris
Sounds like investment banking, expect you're probably paying them less.
Don't forget the part where they get to work on interesting creative problems that will hopefully become the foundation of the preeminent art and entertainment form of the 21st century, as opposed to working on boring number crunching code for a bunch of frat boys who get paid more than you, disrespect you, and oh yeah, whose industry has gone from something that used to at least try to help others create value, to a blood sucking leech only creating inflated value for itself, that cries to the government when its utter egomaniacal cluelessness catches up to it every 15 years.
Chris
Here's a helpful guide for repliers. Please choose one:
1. Fuck you, preying on people's interest in working on games is exploitation, and shouldn't be counted as compensation! And they all leave after 5 years!
2. Fuck you, quant work in finance is cool and interesting, way moreso than games!
3. Fuck you, I get to go home at 5pm and see my family, watch tv, and play video games!
4. Fuck you, ________________________________________________!
Last edited by checker; 04-25-2009 at 06:15 PM.
Fuck you, I get paid overtime for crunch?
No, I think we're talking about guys making computer games here.
Right, and games do everything in real time. Don't kid yourself about advances not being made in this field.No, I think we're talking about guys making computer games here.
Ah, right, my mistake. Silly me!
Chris
Preeminent entertainment form? Quite possibly. Certainly one of the major entertainment forms.
But before I buy "preeminent art form", I need to see some evidence. What game, in the past 40 years, would you consider art? (As opposed to containing art).
I will be very surprised if, of the top ten works of art created in my lifetime, any of them are games.
NOOOOO lets not make this are games art argument.
And I pick 1.
How many people that are crazy talented have you known that have left the industry..and in my case, my friends all seemed to end up in TV and Movies...I wonder why...
Because that's where they really wanted to be?and in my case, my friends all seemed to end up in TV and Movies...I wonder why...
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