When you work for a games company and end up working 12 hours a day 7 days a week, this is the fault of one person - the producer. Its the producers job to see that this doesnt happen, a good producer has a schedule, and knows how to stick to it, features get reveiewed, and if neccesary cut back or dropped. The producer should arrange things so that peole can work as productively as possible, without needing to work late.
The idea that games are always late and over budget and need you to work nights is crazy, and its one that some less professional dev companies perpetuate in order to get 100 hours work out of people whilst paying them for 40 hours.
I dont care if your name is Carmack, Molyneux, Meier, whatever, if you have gone 30 hours without sleep and its 4 o clock in the morning, you are NOT writing good code, and almost certainly introducing more bugs and making it worse.

Unfortunately most game coders have a ''macho'' thing about having worked really late, which they think makes them look cool. I would much rather brag about selling X units of a game that took 5 days 9-5, rather than admitting i had to kill myself in order to finish something...

Anyway the short answer is that yes, some coders DO work those crazy hours, and some (like me) tend to complain if pressured to do so. If you have a good producer, you can usually make the case to them that its in everyones long term interest if you work sensible hours, so just make sure you quiz the producer about this in the interview

http://www.positech.co.uk

Doesn't it also depend upon the revenue that is generated?

9 hour days and 5 days/week are fine for game companies that get a comfortable flow of revenue from their releases. But if the company doesn't get enough revenue fast enough, they have to jam as hard as they can to release games as quickly as possible to keep their heads above water money-wise.

Can the producer be blamed for this? If you call it the company's problem if they can't seal decent deals with their publishers, and they have to pay salaries with money they don't have, then there are going to be lay offs if production/revenue isn't high enough.

I don't work in the games industry myself, I'm just curious! What's your viewpoint on that?


[edited by - Waverider on August 22, 2002 2:38:45 PM]

The whole point of producers is to deal with issues like that! I''m not saying its easy, im just saying that its not the coders fault.
When a game is given the go-ahead, the producer will take the advance payemnt, work out how long this is going to last, and schedule the game to be made within that time period assuming reasonable work hours.
If the advance isnt enough to make the game, then any economics student will tell you that what you have there is not a viable business. Thats when you make people redundant/look for a better advance/cut back the scaope or quality of the game.
What you dont do is tell everyone they will work 40 hours a week, yet take on a project where you know they will need to work 60.

If a dev company isnt getting enough revenue flow then that company isnt viable, maybe they make crap games, maybe they negotiate bad deals, but pretending its all ok when people are ''living'' at the office is just denial.

Any other industry would recognise that their business model is flawed, but the game industry seems to rely on just forcing everyone to work longer hours.

http://www.positech.co.uk