Interesting article on "crunch time"

Reminds me of the time I had to do 84 daily shows a month. I was not a happy camper. Burned out after eight months, gave it another go, crashed in flames in 4 months. I am now creatively bankrupt, and feel like 10 years older. 

Naah   It's just in your head. A vacation of complete rest would set you back on track.

I for one wouldn't want to work in the gameindustry if that's the norm. I will work 8h/day and 40h/week OR 12h/day and 3-4 days/week.

When I worked at a warehouse we had 12h shifts. I had the nightshift....From 19.00 - 07.00. I almost fell asleep at 05.00 in the morning...just couldn't keep myself awake any longer....had to force myself by walking around and stuff.

The industry definitely still has a macho "if you don't want to be here 80 hours a week then don't be here" attitude (for the most part - this isn't true everywhere). This, in turn, gives studios the ability to plan out projects poorly and get away with it  time and time again. Since people WILL work overtime it means project schedulers have a large built-in buffer to cover mistakes in scheduling. There's just enough decent developers with only a couple years experience to keep the machine running. If that weren't the case then the industry would be forced to improve since the games simply wouldn't be shippable near the intended release date. Things are getting better slowly, but the "coolness" of working on games will always be a huge hurdle to overcome when it comes to improving quality of life.

Jon

Honestly, I felt like some of this crept into Stardock when it came to Elemental.  I saw the long hours that were being worked firsthand, such as the 2am patching.

I felt really bad for the crew having to work those hours, and I believe a good portion of the early bugs and issues were due to the hours being worked.

I'll say this: the hours you guys were working were the biggest red flag that made me expect that Elemental was going to be disappointing at launch.  I don't remember Stardock working nearly as long when it came to GalCiv II.  Yeah you had 10pm nights once/twice a week, but you guys at least seemed to get weekends.   I feel much more confident about games when the guys working on it get some sleep.

Also, with Stardock's open beta philosophy, it makes even less sense to crunch unless you need to make a retail deadline.  If you don't finish, it's not like folks aren't able to play something- and it's more important to get it right then get it out fast.  A delayed game will be forgiven if it's great, a botched launch is botched forever.

The main reason I never got into game development was because I enjoyed discovering the games.  I'm pretty savvy when it comes to computers and their applications but I saw early on that creating games, and playing were two very different things.  I've since realized that computers/computer games are my hobby and therefore do not want it to be my profession.  I had a friend that I grew up with playing video games.  He attended the Art Institute and graduated from their with a graphics degree of some sort.  He went on to California and I heard he landed a job with square/enix.  However his job was a game tester and had nothing to do with actual creation of the game.  After about a year or two of him doing that he came back home and I had ran into him.  During our talk he brought up the game testing and brought up how I told him that the design of games is really no fun.  It's all about playing them and discovering them.  This article truly backs my stance up.