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Fresh Salt - Wages Edition Veteran Leader of GamerGate 04/18/2016 (Mon) 06:49:25 Id: a660eb No. 322438
Founder of WildTangent, Alex St. John wrote a piece about the gaming industry and wages - about how making games pretty much always includes a 'crunch time' to get the work done and how long hours are just part of the deal. Nothing new here you'd think - except what he wrote has generated a backlash from the usual suspects he didn't expect: >I just wrote a guest column for VentureBeat that apparently … has caused shock and outrage among lazy millennial hipster game developers Original article: http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/16/game-developers-must-avoid-the-wage-slave-attitude/ St.John's response on his blog: http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-slaves/ Blog response includes much salt in the replies and links to sites who have picked up the story, including kotaku/destructoid. A quick search shows up more - neogaf etc. Millennials - yeh hi. (Not archived yet -can't get it to work today)
>>322438 that's a pepper grinder
>>322597 They come in pairs. One salt one pepper. Sjws only use one.
>>322438 That was a great read. So many people who have never achieved anything in their entire lives are coming out of the woodwork to bash this chap and he is just BTFOing them left right and center.
Honest question: Why is the status quo accepted as a non issue? Why should we just accept the concept of crunch time? Why can't making a video game be a 9-5 job?
>>322758 The problem with that would be twofold- the first, how a staff is composed for a video game. Since most video games are group projects, with roles varying wildly in both effort and time, you wouldn't be able to hold everyone to the same schedule. It'd require an awkward amount of perfect communication to slap everything together without a hitch. Then, like I said, not everything requires the same amount of time, or can be completed at the same time, either; you're not going to have your concept artist and your QA team working at the same time because those are involved in two very different stages of production. The second problem, is that it only gets more complicated when you get to AAA games, because then you have entire teams working on multiple projects at once- you can't afford to drop in on a set schedule just for one game, because you have three more you've got to complete your role in. So you try to focus and clear one all at once (long hours) so it doesn't come back to burden you later on a different project. Another issue would be budgets. Outside of subscription games like MMOs, you'd be hardpressed to keep paying your team to show up 9-5 continuously through the year, especially since vidya finance is quite wonky- In a 'good' setup, you might have an influx of cash to start with (say, invested from a previous profit, or Kickstarter), maybe a little bit of cash from preorders, and then whatever you make selling the game. It's not a 'steady' amount, like other business, who can expect (x) amount every month/period/season. You get 'this' much money to work with and God help you if you run out money before the game is done. So to cut on unnecessary costs (and wages), sensible teams will work increasingly harder on a game until completion, only having the relevant staff on hand. (Again, you won't need your debug staff on board at the beginning of the game's production, or the concept planners at the end of the game's production.) 9-5 models are for businesses and companies that have a relatively stable flow of cash in and out. Video games are quite often make-or-break, requiring but a single fuck up for the community at large to crucify said game and result in piddling sales- and therefore, no profit. Games can't sustain a 9-5 model outside of the largest companies working on multiple titles at once- somewhere, where they have a 'safety net' of games to fall on in case one project goes awry. (Often times, you see this in the sense of 'yearly games'; Battlefield, Madden, Mario, Final Fantasy, the like- flagship series that can support a company even through fucking up something else.) It's just basic entrepreneurial skills and logic, especially when it comes to independent devs. And that's why you see such an outcry from the usual suspects; being an entrepreneur requires effort, a fair sense of risk and reasoning, and above all, the ability to break away from conventional business management, including things like cushy 9-5 schedules and regular paychecks. Some indie devs don't want to put in that effort, though. They'd rather much prefer to receive a cushy steady income from Patreon while putting out as little product in as long of a time frame, because it works. Look at Literally Wu; how many years has it taken to put out a game with PSX graphics and a port that, last I bothered to check, never happened? And spends most of his time shitposting on Twitter instead of doing actual work? And keep in mind he gets paid for this via Patreon. The idea of 'crunch time' horrifies these kinds of people, because not only would they have to get work done, they'd have to do it in a manner that doesn't drag it out for several times more paychecks than they should get for that amount of work. Getting paid for work, not time, is a real pain in the ass when you've build your life around the latter.
>>322611 Holy daddy issues
>>322438 >>I just wrote a guest column for VentureBeat that apparently … has caused shock and outrage among lazy millennial hipster game developers Never heard of this nigger. I like him already.
>>322758 9-5 jobs are horrible and soul destroying usually involves scorn from work colleagues,ridicule from superiors and mockery from customers.. Pray to the Gods you never have to endure working a 9-5 job for the rest of your life. I would think the big companies like EA or UBISOFT operate similar to 9-5 but small indies don't have to do that shit.
WildTangent? Oh yeah, I remember their shitty adware in Spybot Search & Destroy's list… what, 15 years ago?
Had to set a friend straight on this the other day. He read some rant about this article and how St.John is the bastard devil asshole etc. I had a lot of shit to explain to him about how game development cycles, salary, and a bunch of other things work before he understood why St.John is right. I'm not surprised lazy hipsters didn't realize they would have to work their butt off
>>322438 Reading this, the guy is talking about 80 hours a week, 120 hours a week, when the general population are somewhere between 35 and 48 hours per week of real work, and anything above that is just spreading a finite amount of productivity over a larger period of time. If you're not a car park attendant, doorman or some other warm body job where you're waiting to have something to do 90% of the time, then the majority of the population only have 50-ish hours of useful work in them. Loving the work and positive mental attitude isn't the key to building the endurance he apparently has, and if he's employing people on a corporate level, then he needs to recognise that it's something most people don't have and need specific training to get to that level. Maybe it needs to be put into corporate training, programming degrees or high school assignments, I don't know, but a graduate starting to learn it in their mid to late twenties is fucked. When you're a small start-up of enthusiasts, all hand picked, you can expect them to be consistently above average and treat them like they can be superhuman to push them to excel, when you employ hundreds or thousands, you get average, expect them to be great and you learn to plan your business around it. And for what it's worth, if the state of modern AAA games on release is the result of this guy's advice, fuck his opinion. I can't remember a broke on release scandal for a game made outside of America. Hell, the early 90s Microsoft he worked 120 hours a week for? BSODs out the arse. Railway engineers and other staff have strict regulations on their hours here in the UK, due to massive fatalities in an accident involving a faulty signal box where the engineer was clocked at having worked ungodly long hours. Programming requires a similar level of attention to detail, but the companies can shrug it off when the game is a complete shitshow because the players aren't in the mind set to return a game that's broke. If players don't want crunch, they need to get vocal about not being bothered if the date slips a little, and about being bothered if shit's busted. If reviewers and games journalists don't like it, report ethically and comprehensively on all bugs and shoddiness they encounter, rather than sweep it under the rug. Crunch will stop if we stop paying for it and excusing it, simple free market solution. If a company manages to make a game to a high standard without it shitting the bed on release with heavy crunch, then I'll start believing they're getting something right. Until then, I'm keeping my money and waiting for performance reviews after release.
>>322761 The reason why crunch exists is because of poor planning. At the start of the project, those in charge of the decision estimated that it would take a certain amount of time to complete. If they are wrong in their estimate, then that means they either have to crunch in order to meet their deadline, or fail to deliver the product on time/at all. This problem can be solved by simply estimating adequate time at the beginning, but nobody wants to do that because time = money, and the more money you demand, the less likely you're going to be funded. But the point about being an entrepreneur is valid. The only thing though, these aren't indie devs complaining about crunch periods. Nobody making solo titles from the bedroom of their parent's house is complaining about crunch. College students that get together to work on games after classes aren't complaining about crunch. The people who are complaining about crunch are people who are hired for an implied 40 hour workweek. Actual employees with actual contracts. People who say "I want to work for you in exchange for money", not people who say "Let's all get our friends together and make a game!" These people are not entrepreneurs.
>>322814 Yeah, crunch is ubiquitous enough that it's a matter of wilful ignorance at this point. You plan for it, you expect? You pay for it. Whatever estimate a dev gives for a game, add three to six months, or pile on more guys on day one. This is a known, expected factor, if you can't schedule for it by now, you dumb. The guy does mention that game dev employees usually get stock options and discounts, but it's far from the co-op system he seems to be implying it is and he even has an ex-employee in the comments saying those stocks aren't worth shit, so he quit and got a job in an industry that gives a shit.
>>322761 >Look at Literally Wu; I'd rather not… >how many years has it taken to put out a game with PSX graphics and a port that, last I bothered to check, never happened? And spends most of his time shitposting on Twitter instead of doing actual work? And keep in mind he gets paid for this via Patreon. That fake fucking _EVERYTHING_ has never worked a day in his whole worthless rich pampered life. His parents just gave him $400,000 after collage to create an animation studio that did fuck-all, before Flynt scammed his way into funding that shitpile Rev60, and has done fuck-all since. >>322806 >shitty adware in Spybot Search & Destroy's list A few years ago I was on a Volunteer Project where the chairman sent an important email to myself that the other volunteers with vid related in at the end while saying something like "Just dance and have fun" …which I didn't receive, because "safetydance" tripped the anti-malware filter. Missing that email (and it's replies) causes all sorts of problems for me and other volunteers for months afterword.
>>322808 What you're seeing here is the typical millennial special snowflake entitlement attitude (or at least those millennials who were raised to think they deserved every single gift they received, usually come from wealthy families who have the cash to throw at their little darlings) after the inevitable collision course with reality. My sympathy meter for them is at 10%. They expected that their bosses were going to coddle them the same way their parents and teachers did, and now it's biting them in the ass. I suppose the real fault lies with their enablers for raising and "educating" a bunch of useless delicate flowers, but there comes a time when you have to stop whining about how *unfair* everything is when it doesn't meet your expectations and take a good look inward to see what *you* are doing wrong. (Of course, that's where said parents/teachers also fucked up: teaching them that nothing is *ever* their fault, hence the constant falling back to the "privilege" conspiracy theory)
>>322816 >Yeah, crunch is ubiquitous enough that it's a matter of wilful ignorance at this point. You plan for it, you expect? You pay for it. Whatever estimate a dev gives for a game, add three to six months, or pile on more guys on day one. This is a known, expected factor, if you can't schedule for it by now, you dumb. Its notoriously difficult to account for software delays. As any software engineer will tell you, every single piece of commercial software ever written was delivered late and over budget. But your right to say that when the deadlines have come and gone, anyone expecting to work a 9-5 is fucking delusional. Unless your the cleaner or someone with no influence on the project.
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Posting here cos it's the total opposite. Ausfags may have heard of this guy -Dan Golding -writing about how vidya 'could be collateral damage in Australia's war on arts and culture': https://archive.is/e1M4u Wild Tangent's St. John is talking from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur -the approach of - 'You want to do this? Get off your ass and make it happen.' Meanwhile, Golding is waiting for (expecting) hand-outs and is hot-and-bothered that the funding may be cut - more the approach of - 'Cut the funding? Muh tax dollars! It's a War on Culture!'
>>322761 Insightful, I'm reading this at the last day of a patch development cycle for my company instead of coding(because I have team members addressing defects) and crunch time is a thing that is never going away. You start content chill, then the last two weeks are NO CHILL ALLOWED. Indie fucks will never understand this. Pajeet and the rest of his codemonkeys understand this, and thrive on it because it's why they have greencards and get to live & work in a country without designated shitting streets.
>>324709 TWO WEEKS? You fucktard, you know nothing. Try 6 months to a year of 6-7 day weeks and 12-16 hour days. That's how great games are made. If you think two weeks of "no chill" is hard, you might as well just leave the industry now and go make websites for old people. Ugh, just thinking about you being in my industry disgusts me.
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>>324709 That raises another point -outsourcing. Don't even need to move to the West. Think some guy in India cares about whether some hipster millennial can fit their work around their social life/social agenda? No chance. Hipsters keep complaining and the bigger companies may well just say 'Fuck it -source it all out to India' (or where ever). I think Google already outsources coding to India. Millennials be looking for a new job soon. >>324710 Ten bucks don't go far these days.
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Update: The idea of crunch has now resurfaced with this polygon article: Why I Worship Crunch - https://archive.fo/HMvuc Article tweet - (an article in praise of crunch) - and cue backlash: https://archive.is/6I5ly *more in pics 2+3 Cross posting from /v/ general - these were linked at the same time, but turns out both are from 2016: - waypoint.vice.com - The Curious Appeal of Crunch - [28 Oct 2016] - https://archive.fo/WR9Ue - Gamasutra - You're Crunching. So What Now? - [10 May 2016] - https://archive.fo/6aiJZ
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Also update 2: >>322438 Chive of 1st link in the OP: venturebeat.com/2016/04/16/game-developers-must-avoid-the-wage-slave-attitude - http://archive.is/MNnWM In the first line, he's referring to this article: venturebeat.com/2016/03/20/why-crunch-time-is-still-a-problem-in-the-video-game-industry - http://archive.is/jVO4L Chive of 2nd link in the OP: alexstjohn.com/WP/2016/04/17/wage-slaves [St. Johns response] - http://archive.fo/uUWNO
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More reaction to the polygoon article - crunch bad. pics/posts archive: http://archive.is/UBVge http://archive.is/gEiiq http://archive.is/vQ0AQ http://archive.is/1Ki4m
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>>331070 2 more from /v/ general - 1st pic is a search of 'crunch capitalism' judging by the bold text. not mine didn't see any archives They really hate the idea of crunch. Working to deadlines is not unique to vidya - 'crunch-time' happens everywhere. inb4 th-that doesn't make it right! deadlines exist for a reason - deal with it


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