This is maybe a little worse than average, but not entirely unusual... The industry has always been unstable, but in the last couple of years it's gone from bad to near-meltdown. Not sure if new hardware is going to save it this time, or just make things worse...” – “bluescrn” (stackexchange)
“Mike Capps, head of Epic, and a former member of the board of directors of the International Game Developers Association, during the IGDA Leadership Forum in late 08, spoke at a panel entitled Studio Heads on the Hot Seat, in which, among other things, he claimed that working 60+ hours was expected at Epic, that they purposefully hired people they anticipated would work those kinds of hours, that this had nothing to do with exploitation of talent by management but was instead a part of "corporate culture," and implied that the idea that people would work a mere 40 hours was kind of absurd.” – costik (playthisthing.com)
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“Being a newlywed myself at the time, I worked only briefly (2-3 years) on a large studio project before burning out after "crunching" (ha ha, 8 month crunch...) from March to October my last year there before being laid off when the project got sold to a different publisher. Through it all, I noticed that the majority of my co-workers seemed to thrive while I languished. There was the usual grumbling in the break room, or the death-march atmosphere when everyone slogged into a meeting, but like a fraternity hazing ritual the pain elicited competition rather than sympathy. It became a pissing contest, who could live the most abject life and still show up and get some work done. Hard to compete, then, against the miserable 42-year vets with terrible marriages or the perpetual man-children with no social or personal life.” – Cojack
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“… I'm one of the industry wash-outs. I lasted almost exactly five years to the day at what was then one of the last great independents, but the truth be told, I was done long before I quit.
Crunch-time goes far beyond developers dropping the ball on milestones and the occasional week of 10-12 hour days. In trying to keep things general enough to not point fingers anywhere, the project that destroyed me involved a 10 month death march working 60-90 hour work weeks (no overtime paid out, no banked time in lieu).
Admittedly some of this was due to having out-sized ambition for the project, some minor direction changes, and feature creep pushed from above, but ultimately it was the financial collapse and implosion of one publisher, and the need to meet the financial reporting quarter of the next that resulted in the soul-destroying crunch.
The personal cost to me:
* 60+ pound weight gain over 10 months (took 3 years to lose)
* serious chronic back pain that stuck around for 6 months after the project ended.
* loss of friendships and relationships because I essentially vanished for a year
* burning out on a career that I honestly loved
The cost to the company:
* They awarded me one week of paid vacation when the game shipped...“ – “Inspector Fuzz”
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“This is an issue our own Ben Kuchera has thought about at length. "I've been told that people who write about the business all want to be developers and make games," he told me. "It couldn't be any less true. We get to tour these studios and see how the people who make the games live. They seem to always be tired, the offices are dimly lit, and people are sleeping on cots." He points out that while many developers have benefits such as gyms and cafeterias onsite, that just drives home the idea that you're never supposed to leave.” – Andrew Groen
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“Average time in a job at a single company or average time in the industry before total burnout?
Since the industry is project based job length tends to be directly associated with product cycles.
The is often the result of the post ship layoff. Companies tend to dump staff once a project ships since they don't need a full production team for pre-production on the next project. Now the nicer companies tend to use temporary contract hires for short term production staffing needs. This lets the employee know that they likely don't have a paycheck when the project ends. However the big publishers regularly cut even full time staff once the xmas games are sent to manufacturing.
The other piece is that when finishing up a title employees are more likely to look around at other options. If you've just shipped your third football title and are burned out on the genre you tend to wait until the game is done and then find another job somewhere else.
While there are some devs that have spent an entire career at a single company, what is far more common is finishing 1-2 games at a developer and then moving off to another one.” – “wkerslake” (stackexchange)
“My experience, in numbers:
- 10.5 years (starting in summer 2000)
- 6 studios. 3 redundancies, a 4th looking likely.
- 4 moves, to jobs in new towns/cities
- 8 shipped titles (4 in the first 3 years)
- 3 cancelled console projects
- 8+ platforms (GBA,DS,PC,Xbox,PS2,Wii,360,PS3)
- Team sizes ranging from 6 to over 100
- 1 case of severe burnout/depression...
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Here are some links for additional information:
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