For developers, it's not all fun and games

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"Go to (McDonald's) or a factory, then back to your air-conditioned offices with free coffee," one responder to last week's blog posting wrote.

The business of fun
Computer games have gone from the plaything of geeks to a mainstream product raking in billions of dollars. U.S. computer and video game software sales grew 8 percent in 2003 to $7 billion--more than doubling industry software sales since 1996, according to the Entertainment Software Association trade group. Last year, more than 239 million computer and video games were sold, or almost two games for every household in America, the association said.

EA alone last year sold more than a million units for 22 game titles, including "The Sims," "Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets" and "Madden NFL Football 2003." The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has 4,400 employees worldwide and operations in California, Texas and Florida, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan, according to its Web site.

Making modern computer games can involve the work of a number of different specialists, including animators, software programmers and musicians. "The most talented people in the industry come to EA because we make great games. Additionally, we offer competitive salaries, bonuses, stock options, health care and a wide variety of other benefits and work environments that are second to none in our industry," the company said in a statement.

In addition, EA said it conducts a biannual survey, letting workers anonymously say where the company should make improvements. "We take this survey seriously because it comes from current employees who know first-hand what it's like to work for EA," the company said.

One current employee said he and co-workers responded to such a study in 2001, making it clear that long hours were a problem. But the employee, an image production specialist who asked to remain anonymous, said he recently finished working 80 hours a week for several months straight. He said his team is facing an even more demanding schedule. "If anything, it looks as if the crunches are going to get worse before they get better," he said.

The author of the original blog posting last week, the fiancee of an EA employee, added that EA recently said it no longer wishes to offer developers a few weeks off at the end of a project.

In an interview Tuesday, the author said she is looking into creating a "watchdog" Web site to keep track of workplace abuses in the game industry. She also said she was surprised by the outpouring of responses to the posting. "It was a powder keg. I didn't realize how upset everyone was about this," she said.

More than 2,000 comments have been posted in response to her essay, with a number of responders saying EA isn't alone in the way it allegedly treats developers.

The comments echo findings from a survey earlier this year conducted by the IGDA. Game development is "all too often performed in crippling conditions that make it hard to sustain quality of life and lead too many senior developers to leave the industry before they have had time to perform their best work," the association said.

Almost three developers out of five report working 46 or more hours in a typical week, according to the survey, and more than 95 percent of respondents said their company experiences "crunch" time. Over 18 percent of respondents reported having experienced crunches of two months or more, and more than a third of respondents said they work 65 to 80 hours a week during crunch time.

People in the game industry generally acknowledge that "crunch time," involving unusually long hours, is often needed before major deadlines.

But game industry employees argue that months-long crunches are too much. One former EA employee in Canada, who asked to remain anonymous, earned more than $100,000 as an art director but said the company expected an oppressive amount of work hours. He said he once worked for four months without a day off and put in 80 to 110 hours per week for about eight consecutive months.

EA uses a ruthless management style, the former employee said, recently firing nine people whose team delivered its game behind schedule.

Can they do that?

I mean forcing hours to these employees, instead of hiring more staff?

Or these people are just whining

I mean firing the staff who can't make a deadline seems reasonable to me. So maybe these people are just whining because they are scared that they can't make the deadline for the next game. i mean committing to a deadlline is important.

yeah right

A job is a means to an end, not the end itself. It is not your life, or it should not be, but something to pay for your life. Too many software companies see their employees as nothing but cattle. That is immoral.

More often then not, deadlines are imposed by bean counters who don't have the first clue about software.

[sunnymix]

ok. i'll give you a deadline

i want you to finish climbing mt. everest by the end of thanksgiving holiday. i'll give you two crew members but no tents. i want you to climb every day for 12 hours. you can't stop for a break. or eat. now take that, and finish that by the end of thanksgiving.

of course you can expect some whining.

People married too early

I think the problem is that people are getting married too early. If they know their workload is that much and cannot commit to both the relationship as a father, a husband and an employee, then they shouldn't have got married so soon. They should always consider everything before deciding on marriage.

Yeah, sterilize them all!

Take the time to read a small handful of the comments on the links in the story, there are many examples of people with 15 to 20 years in the industry still getting this abuse. If these people got their job right out of college (~21 years old), that would mean that even at 35 to 40 they would still not meet your requirement to get married and have children as they are still working the 12+ hours a day, 7 day a week shifts.

Also, one point that CNN's story failed to elaborate on is that most of these people are earning relatively little ($30,000/yr). Hardly a good wage as they are putting in twice the amount of time in jobs that require skill, talent, and determiniation, yet are earning marginally more than the janitor that cleans their cubes. On top of that, they have the cost of living expenses of those costal areas such as LA and San Fransisco.

With that factored in, there really isn't an end and would never be a point in their career to do those useless things like living a life outside of work, having a family, enjoying a holiday, or taking a vacation.

Wow, the point just flew right past you, didn't it?

Sheesh. 80 to 110 hours weeks, burnt-out employees and buggy software. Ya think the problem is relationships? Try again.

I can't even comprehend the logic of a company that expects high-quality work from an employee putting in sixteen hours a day.

Companies that operate this way are so short-sighted it isn't funny. I flat would not own stock in a company that operated in such a manner. Long-term, a disaster waiting to happen.

[chojinjia]

What a bunch of whiners!

Anyone who's ever worked in the videogame, software industry or internet startups knows this is the way things are done. When crunch time comes, you have to get your work done.

You get paid lots of money, good benefits, and sometimes perks like company stock and free food/drinks. If you don't like it, go work in an environment that has lower pay and more flex time. You can't have the high pay and benefits and want to work only 40 a week. Especially when we know there's a lot of surfing the web at work and playing videogames after hours to "de-stress".

The only thing I think the companies should do is institute bonuses. If a game sells really well, then the people on that team should get bonuses. Investment bankers work 80-100+ hours a week, but they get bonuses when the firm reaps profits; it should be the same here...

wake up

whiners? because we expect to be treated decently for our (actually pretty average) salaries? yeah, we "expect" a bit of crunch from a project, but really, 100+ hour weeks? no days off? for 3 months? thats not an expected crunch period, thats slave labour. alot of the things we now take for granted as violating out human rights in the workplace used to be "expected" as normal. off the top of my head, i seem to remember that sending little boys up chimneys, and rubbing salt into their wounds to toughen up their skin so they could climb better, was accepted behaviour not so long ago. it was expected of little boys. does that make it right?

i've worked overtime, i've stayed til 1 in the morning to get my work done, i've made sure the milestone got produced on time... but i only had to do this for maybe a couple of weeks total per project, and i never had to work weekends. the projects were relatively well managed, it didnt require working 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.

its a sign of the immaturity of the industry that this kind of exploitation is considered normal, and it doesnt help when people dismiss those with valid complaints as "whiners".

hey tough guy

Talk about macho.

Guys like this is one reason why I never tried to get into the video game biz. (The main reason is that I stopped playing video games.)

If you were the kind of guy who worked on cars for a living, you'd be the dude bragging about how many toxic chemicals he's inhaled, and explosions he's witnessed.

[tammyd57]

wah wah wah

I agree, if ya want the big bucks, don't cry about the work.

[mugwump64]

Stone Age Myth

It is an often told myth, that programmers who work longer achieve more. This is simply not true: There are lots of studies, that show that the productivity decreases dramatically, when programmers work for endless hours without a break. So, working overtime will help you in absolutely no way to reach your deadline. The funny thing about this, is the fact, that this "over-clocking" of workers only happens in immature industries like the gaming-industry: Without any sensible, proven metrics to measure the productivity of a worker, the only way an under-competent manager has to show his boss that he did everything to reach the deadline, is make his employees stay longer.

This situation is not likely to change, if management continues to ignore proven facts and the methods for developing software and measuring productivity remain on the poor level they are today.