vicchaned:

mrs-chief:

hey y’all i wanna let you know something about game dev 

it’s a fun, highly competitive field filled with people that are passionate about video games. 

But also it is plagued by unethical work practices, especially crunch time, where employees of studios can see 60+ hour weeks, sleep at their desks, and forego basic hygiene under the pressure of deadlines. 

There is a movement to unionize game development though, and get rid of these awful practices. 

I just want y’all to keep this stuff in mind when a game gets delayed, or there are bugs or glitches or any other sort of problem with a game. Developers, especially AAA studios, pump games out faster than we can play them sometimes, but at the expense of their employees. It isn’t fair to continuously demand immediate gratification from studios, because ultimately, that translates into parents not seeing their children for three days straight, or (unpaid) interns having mental breakdowns. 

Had a friend interning at a company and it was common for her to pass out at her standing desk. Mind you, she was an intern, not even a “full-time” employee. And on top of this, there’s the ongoing alcoholism problem. Not even out of school for game dev and I can see folks in my department developing this (lots of self-destructive people too; we applaud over working yourself which can lead to SERIOUS burnout and it’s seriously awful.)

Crunch time is an ongoing problem AAA studios are reluctant to tackle because it’s usually not the studio that sets the deadline for shipping the game out. The ones setting the deadlines sometimes don’t even fully understand the game making cycle or how long executing something conceivably takes. So yes, I really have little tolerance for entitled fans who wanna shit on the devs for delayed games because, they aren’t even in control of the development timeline and are forced to work obscene amounts and under conditions that can lead to some things like:

• Hospitalization.
• Over-exhaustion. There are stories of people getting in their cars to leave work only to realize they are physically incapable of moving their body. Or you know, in the case of my friend, passing out while at work.
• Obviously low quality of life. Like literally where’s your social life?? Nowhere, because your job has consumed your entire being. That’s honestly awful.
• Did I mention hospitalization.

Indie is more flexible but still your a one man band or a small group of people and hell you need to turn a profit or else, y’know, you won’t have money. Lots of people are rallying for ditching crunch time, the “necessary evil.”

Anyway tl;dr be kind to game devs because they normally don’t control release dates, and if you’re being a little shit stain about a game delay I WILL reach through the screen to bitch slap you.

((sorry for piggy backing on the post but I just got some THOUGHTS on this bullshit))