Game developer abuses

[fuse]

Meant to share this when it came out, but People Make Games put out a video recently which focused on some of the abuse that had been seen within 3 indie studios. One of these (Fullbright) had already been talked about publicly and seen the person in question moving on from the studio, whereas the others (Mountains, Funomena) were still quite entrenched in these situations.



More people came forward to share their stories about those implicated, and to corroborate those that had already been shared. Yesterday this news broke.

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While it's not exactly a light watch, the whole video is worth watching and understanding. Rather than massive corporations making million-selling games for bros, lead by greedy corporate types, and allowing a rotten workplace culture to cascade down, these are indie studios, featuring people heralded as auteur types, making thoughtful, progressive games... that are causing serious harm to those around them.

[fishbowlhead]

Makes me feel sick.
£18m split by all those employees is nothing, but Bobby gets his £22m and the company gets bought for £70b.
The world has gone wrong.

The bottom line is, if you want things to change, you have to look at the governments and how they handle bonuses for staff employed by companies.

At the moment, a company pays your wages, then the tax from that, then all that tax again for the privilege of employing you, then if they give you a bonus, the bonus, the tax on the bonus then the tax again as its all lumped in as wages.

VS giving a bonus to a director, in the uk thats 7% tax, vs full tax for any bonuses given to staff.

So its not difficult to see why directors get large bonuses vs staff, its simply cheaper to do it that way. Im not condoning it obviously, just explaining why companies do it that way. Of course if the system was changed large cops would instantly abuse it and pay you all in bonuses to avoid the tax, which is obviously why the gov has never changed it.

[Asura]

While it's not exactly a light watch, the whole video is worth watching and understanding. Rather than massive corporations making million-selling games for bros, lead by greedy corporate types, and allowing a rotten workplace culture to cascade down, these are indie studios, featuring people heralded as auteur types, making thoughtful, progressive games... that are causing serious harm to those around them.

Yeah; main takeaway is this isn't just AAA; any level of the industry is capable of being ****ty. Small indies are really in danger of this too, given how some of them spend their entire lives in a "perpetually sinking ship" mentality, fighting constantly to keep above the waterline.

[Cassius_Smoke]

We have to understand that while MS fans are painting them as the white Knight, they have their own harassment cases against them and they aren't exactly open to having union staff. They're no saint.

[Cassius_Smoke]

A Callisto Protocol dev tweeted the following and the deleted it.

'I only talk about the game during an event. We r working 6-7 days a week, nobody’s forcing us. Exhaustion, tired, Covid but we’re working. Bugs, glitches, perf fixes. 1 last pass thru audio. 12-15 hr days.This is gaming. Hard work. Lunch, dinner working. U do it cause ya luv it'

Now, whether they are 'choosing' to work this way or not, the higher ups should not be allowing it.

[fishbowlhead]

A Callisto Protocol dev tweeted the following and the deleted it.

'I only talk about the game during an event. We r working 6-7 days a week, nobody’s forcing us. Exhaustion, tired, Covid but we’re working. Bugs, glitches, perf fixes. 1 last pass thru audio. 12-15 hr days.This is gaming. Hard work. Lunch, dinner working. U do it cause ya luv it'

Now, whether they are 'choosing' to work this way or not, the higher ups should not be allowing it.

If you want to create something, you need to sacrifice something else to be able put everything into it. This is just life, if your not willing to do it someone else will.

[Asura]

If you want to create something, you need to sacrifice something else to be able put everything into it. This is just life, if your not willing to do it someone else will.

There's a bit of give and take here. @Cassius Smoke has a point.

For me, there are two parts to this; the size/nature of the team and who actually benefits from the work.

I think people are free to crunch if they so choose. But that only works if there is absolutely zero pressure from above on them, and frankly, I believe in an organisation which is more than a handful of people, that's impossible to guarantee. So if it's an indie developer of 6 people, who are all equally crunching, that's a totally different situation to a big developer (where that should be seen as a failing).

The other part has to do with the benefit from the work. Again, at an indie, the staff take on all the hardship and maybe even some of the risk; however, they also benefit if the game is a success. If they make the next Beat Saber or Minecraft they might make life-changing sums of money. But if they're salaried employees, then that doesn't work (unless their bonus packet is absolutely enormous).

Most of all, I think the suggestion that you "have" to crunch for ages to make something good is flawed.

I've crunched on creative projects. In fact I spent a reasonable chunk of my 20s doing it (i.e. our week was supposed to be 40 hours, for months at a time we worked ~70) . Honestly I look back on it with disdain, and I've spent the last ~10 years doing everything I can to ensure that my team doesn't need to do that. We might pull a few extra hours/days in the week or two before a long-term deliverable, but that's a little bit at the very finish; not months and months of working evenings and weekends.

But the difference is that me and my team are salaried employees, and we don't stand to "get rich", no matter how good a job we do.

"Someone else will come along" - that's true. But that's also why the industry needs to strongly oppose it.

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons that so, so many games in the last 6 months have announced delays. With so many developers working from home, people can leave and switch jobs much more easily than before. Companies can't ask for under-the-table overtime now, because people can and will simply leave. You're also going to suspiciously see a lot of game projects quietly fail... Because no-one wants to work for a ****ty boss and they don't have to take it anymore.

[Neon Ignition]

It'll be very case by case I imagine. For Callisto Protocol, they've managed to build a decent level of anticipation for a new IP so I imagine there's some pressure to deliver it on time, but it equally might be the drive internally too as it would get steam rolled if it were delayed a few months. It's pretty much in everyone's interest for it to release on time but even though the dev messaged saying they had no issue with it there's clearly enough bad instances of crunch in the industry that a level of distrust is easy to understand too.

[fishbowlhead]

As long as they are getting paid for all the time and they are all agreeing to it, not mandatory forced free overtime, I don’t see an issue. Otherwise its just slave labour isn’t it.

[Asura]

As long as they are getting paid for all the time and they are all agreeing to it, not mandatory forced free overtime, I don’t see an issue. Otherwise its just slave labour isn’t it.

That's the thing; historically developers didn't get extra pay and were effectively forced, and that applies to many people in creative industries (outside of some parts of Film, which have pretty powerful unions).

We were only paid in "TOIL", which just meant you accrued holiday time for your overtime; but that usually just meant that the office would close down for 8 weeks after we delivered something to a client, and you got 2 months off. That was nice, admittedly, having those long breaks, but in truth it's bollocks because you're just being given the time off you would've had if you hadn't done the overtime.

Back when we were told we were going to crunch, you were never told by someone, directly, in an email, "you're going to work extra and not be paid for it", but if you refused, you would quietly be told that this will be "remembered", that you weren't a "team player", that you should "think about your future" and all that crap... And in some cases, people would be constructively dismissed, but in a manner which would prevent them from getting litgious about it. It was subversive and insidious.

And it was true, to a degree - what they said. If you sued, you had better be prepared to move to another industry, as no-one would hire you afterward.

Honestly it's a powerful motivator, especially when you're a young creative who is keen to get a foothold, and you see those around you doing it, people you respect. But ultimately it's exploitative. The CEO and Directors didn't do overtime; they were too busy on their yachts in Monaco.

[fuse]

I like the phrase "weaponised passion" that I saw floating round in response to this. Nobody's forcing you to do overtime, oh no, but imagine the dirty looks and the questions when you decide to leave on time, and the general career limitations you'll come up against following that. Isn't it also funny that the it's the guy looking to benefit the most, and that controls the structure and pay of everyone at the studio who gets to go bragging on social media about how his team work so hard "because ya luv it"? Taking talented folks, exploiting and causing mass burn-out among them sucks.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I've worked in a place like this. Come 5pm no one stood up. No one wanted to be the first one to leave, so no one did. Until the boss left an hour or so later.
You didn't get paid for that hour and you didn't get it back as toil.
Needless to say, I didn't give a **** and left at 5. I lasted 3 months and they told me I wasn't fitting in and got rid of me. A blessing. That place sucked.

[fishbowlhead]

That's the thing; historically developers didn't get extra pay and were effectively forced, and that applies to many people in creative industries (outside of some parts of Film, which have pretty powerful unions).

We were only paid in "TOIL", which just meant you accrued holiday time for your overtime; but that usually just meant that the office would close down for 8 weeks after we delivered something to a client, and you got 2 months off. That was nice, admittedly, having those long breaks, but in truth it's bollocks because you're just being given the time off you would've had if you hadn't done the overtime.

Back when we were told we were going to crunch, you were never told by someone, directly, in an email, "you're going to work extra and not be paid for it", but if you refused, you would quietly be told that this will be "remembered", that you weren't a "team player", that you should "think about your future" and all that crap... And in some cases, people would be constructively dismissed, but in a manner which would prevent them from getting litgious about it. It was subversive and insidious.

And it was true, to a degree - what they said. If you sued, you had better be prepared to move to another industry, as no-one would hire you afterward.

Honestly it's a powerful motivator, especially when you're a young creative who is keen to get a foothold, and you see those around you doing it, people you respect. But ultimately it's exploitative. The CEO and Directors didn't do overtime; they were too busy on their yachts in Monaco.

See this is where i differ as that's just slave labour and predatory behaviour, if staff are doing overtime, they get paid time & half for it, and i work more hours than them just to make a point that their not doing it alone while the boss is at home asleep (or whatever).

[Asura]

I've worked in a place like this. Come 5pm no one stood up. No one wanted to be the first one to leave, so no one did. Until the boss left an hour or so later.
You didn't get paid for that hour and you didn't get it back as toil.
Needless to say, I didn't give a **** and left at 5. I lasted 3 months and they told me I wasn't fitting in and got rid of me. A blessing. That place sucked.

This is how it starts. That's the problem.

Personally, I feel the absolute line - the point where staff should basically riot - is the point of "negative contingency".

For those not familiar with project planning, contingency is a percent you inflate your time estimates. So, you might say that across-the-board, you have 25% contingency; so if someone says a task will take a day, you give them 1.25 days. This reflects that people are usually optimistic, and can't always see every stumbling block, plus, everyone needs to take a piss now and then.

Negative Contingency is when your planning people go the other way, and they plan crunch into the schedule. So if you have a body of work, and you sum it all together and it says, I dunno, 100 person-days of work, they simply say it'll take 75 days and assume the team will work additional hours to make it happen. So your schedules end up planning in crunch.

That's the point at which the rot has set in and you need to either leave, or dissolve the team and start over.

See this is where i differ as that's just slave labour and predatory behaviour, if staff are doing overtime, they get paid time & half for it, and i work more hours than them just to make a point that their not doing it alone while the boss is at home asleep (or whatever).

I don't think we differ all that much; my point is that I used to work in that situation, now I actively oppose it.

[Brad]

I tell PMs to add 25% contingency to our estimates (optimism combat) and then add another 25% on for things we haven't even thought about but should have. This generally gives a quite good real estimate. If they push back on this then I re-estimate, including the contingencies in my estimates but the downside to this is the PM then thinks they were right not to add contingency