Now the part relevant to the topic: Despite working crunch, one of the best ideas, “Nicholas the Traveller”, and some other ideas like the “Zaishen Menagerie” were done by PASSIONATE employees in their SPARE time.

“Boss, I have a great idea!” -”Superb, feel free to implement it in your spare time!” – “Oh this is so lovely, thank you!”

Enthusiast, passionate young worker bees will burn out quickly in such an environment. This corporate culture to look for and hire “passionate” workers is something the IGDA has to stop.
Or we will have soon young geeks paying for the “job of their dreams”.

We cannot blame the management for hiring such potential super workers, but this is just asking for immoral exploitation that will happen in such an environment.

Thanks god I am neither passionate nor working in the games industry. :>

@SsandmanN: I’m in Europe, too. And in IT. And I constantly see friends with the same problems I’ve been mentioning .

But oh well, we’ll see how our endurance is !

More often than not, it’s the big guys that think they can get away with this sort of HR abuse, since they feel they can count on the next year’s bumper crop of victims who just want to work in games (in their companies). EA, Blizzard, Epic, that sort of thing.

The notion that you need to keep an employee after 18.00 has to be pretty strongly backed up, and you will still have to parlay with the employee in question about it.
Apart from making project deadlines and such, working hours, overtime and benefits are pretty well adhered to, again I say, in the renowned, high-tier firms.

There was one time a boss of mine made a joke to another employee about him eating on his desk. The answer was quite sharp – “What do you expect me to do? Starve? Do you want to starve your workers to death?” Of course he was joking as well, but you see that pretty much any move against a worker’s benefits is met with very sharp resistance, in most developed European countries.

And in the end it is true that it is the long-distance runners who win those races, not the sprinters. Which, ironically, was the motivational speech of my previous employer, who was crunching us with 12 hour work shifts

Problem is, I’m now seen in my job as an odd one, who does not play by the rules. They don’t see the fact that I achieve as much as the next guy. They just see that at 18h30, odds are good I’m leaving.
So, i’ve tried to make ME the rule, not the exception, by talking to my colleagues, explaining WHY I want to have a life outside.

95% don’t understand me… They have… Ah, what’s the name of those things for horses so they only look forward? Well, suffice to say they are able to rationalize doing it.

There’s an old saying: slow and steady wins the race. Having a successful career is all about pacing and getting your work/life in proper balance. I sympathize with your situation and I think you are doing the right thing by sticking to your guns. You know your priorities. Stick to them and you’ll do fine!

There’s always a few idiots in each workplace that have no life. They work obscene hours. They are usually social misfits in poor health with no lives or family to come home to. The problem is that management sees this and thinks: “Hey Frank, why can’t you be more like Dave? Look at him, he’s a very hard working employee.” People like him are the outliers yet they are seen as the example of a “good worker”.

Let me be clear, I’m all about working hard and working smart. As Scott Jennings so eloquently said increasing everyone’s work time by a factor of 1.5 does not work and is unsustainable in the long run.

Because I just read that the planned big “April content update” of Guild Wars is delayed to May… someone asked on the official Guild Wars Wiki why one developer (Linsey Murdock) does not post that much anymore:

“Right now Live Team is in crunch mode on the April build. Some days I don’t even have time to eat or sleep, so finding time for the wiki is tough.”

Oh my. Now you know why they need “passionate” people. Crunch really seems to be the norm.

Passion is really a code word for “I’m willing to work 60-80 hours a week”. Forget about your health, your life, your family and friends you must give every ounce of your blood, sweat and tears just so you can make a video game that some idiot reviewer can trash in 30 seconds.

Ever wonder why the video games are so crappy these days? They are made by zombies — good people that are pushed to the edge of exhaustion. A person with a brain and a soul would never stay in the video game industry and accept that kind of mental and physical abuse. I wonder how many great people could be making video games but refuse to put up with the exploitative working conditions imposed by the industry?

To all of those “soldiers” in the video game industry that think that crunch is just a part of doing business and a reality. Come back and see me in 5-10 years tough guy. We’ll talk then and you can tell me how rosy your life is. There’s a reason why most people burn out after 5 years in the industry if that even last that long. It’s people like Mike Capps and the corporate culture that like vampires sucks the blood out of warm fresh young bodies entering the industry.

They are also of great use in several industries, like the game industry. Tell people they have a dream job and let them go forward in their job. They probably do not miss what they miss to see and experience left and right, it is called life.

But unlike Horses, Humans use their mind to betray themselves: They tell themselves and everyone else they are doing a dream job, they are passionate about it and so on. Because if they would actually think about their situation, the “dream” to work in the games industry would turn into a nightmare.

And so they crunch and crunch and crunch and still do not meet deadlines. I also fear it burns people out, and makes them dumber. Hard to communicate with people outside of work if everything you know is your work… plus some experiences you made before you worked in your “dream” job.

“Right now Live Team is in crunch mode on the April build. Some days I don’t even have time to eat or sleep, so finding time for the wiki is tough.”

Oh my. Now you know why they need “passionate” people. Crunch really seems to be the norm. Reminds me of Mel Gibson’s “Passion of Christ”, including flogging and cruxification.

I recommend better project management and some compassion for the workers.

It took me some time, and an alert from my body to wake me up. I go home much earlier now, and only stay late when I’m really involved in what I do.

Problem is, I’m now seen in my job as an odd one, who does not play by the rules. They don’t see the fact that I achieve as much as the next guy. They just see that at 18h30, odds are good I’m leaving.
So, i’ve tried to make ME the rule, not the exception, by talking to my colleagues, explaining WHY I want to have a life outside.

95% don’t understand me… They have… Ah, what’s the name of those things for horses so they only look forward? Well, suffice to say they are able to rationalize doing it.

I just hope, HOPE that when our generation will be in a position of management, some at least will try to change “how it’s done”. And that the next will continue. And so on. We can change people, one at a time, until we reach critical mass…