[gameprogrammer] Re: crunch time
- From: "Harrington, Timothy" <tharrington@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:20:26 -0500
Ask your employer if they would be willing to double your pay for double
the work load. The entertainment industry standard for production
positions is 50 hour work weeks. Crunch time happens in the final weeks
of production naturally and is geared toward loose ends being tied up
and tuning, so crunch time is actually 'fun and challenging' not blood,
sweat, and tears.
If the employer has not ramped up production staff accordingly, they may
not have faith in their product and are willing to lower quality
expectations to get the product (game) completed and into manufacturing.
Again my reference to the entertainment production industry, following
production the crunch team would be given a kick as paid vacation
(Hawaii rings a bell).
Jeanie Novak covers the issue of "Crunch Time" in her book, Game
Development Essentials - companies in constant crunch is synonymous to
under staffed. Under staffed usually also indicates underpaid and under
funded.
Rules for the entertainment business are different when it comes to
overtime, however, the difference here is that you are producing a
software product that has royalty base included depending on your
employment status. In many cases, if you are an hourly worker with
royalties, you get paid your base hours then work crunch for deadlines
without additional guaranteed compensation - however incentives and
royalties will generally compensate the difference. Salary employees are
screwed - it's about the job and not the hours. Bonuses should be
better, though.
I would also say that crunch in the final week or two of production is
totally acceptable - require steak and potatoes and beer every night!
Anyway that's my two sense worth...
Search Game Industry Overtime Issues - there are some interesting
articles from 2005 forward on the subject...
fTH
-----Original Message-----
From: gameprogrammer-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:gameprogrammer-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Alan Wolfe
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 9:08 AM
To: gameprogrammer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [gameprogrammer] crunch time
Heya,
I'm fairly new to the game industry, just hitting my one year mark
earlier this month, but being a long time ameteur/indie game developer
having been doing it for about 14 years now on my own.
Our producer just asked that we work 90 hour work weeks until further
notice, and we have been working 3 months solidly at 60 hours a week,
with a couple months before that of crunch like that on and off. We
of course are getting still only paid for 40 hours and are promised "3
days paid vacation" at the end of this project. This is a fairly
reputable company w/ aprox. 60 employees and our upper management are
industry vetrans of aprox. 20 years each (and some of them you would
surely know about!)
I knew about the unpaid overtime going into game programming but 90
hour work weeks seem a bit excessive.
What's been everyone else's experience, is 90 hours just par for the
course sometimes or is that beyond reasonable in a modern day
"professional game shop"?
Im curious to hear what people at different companies have experienced
and what the overall climate of the industry is regarding crunch time.
Thanks a bunch,
Alan
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