(angry face emoji)
lol
I see what you mean, but they have no place in actually bringing in real legislation, their job is to simply report the news, expose it happening etc. People deserve better I agree, but this is helping in getting more exposer to this issue to even help when some day someone wants to introduce some bill to protect game developers or something. So its not just complaining for the sake if it, they are crying out in hopes that the right people hear it to introduce bills to correct the issue.
I think its wrong to even make it seem like the people crying about it, are now task with changing it as if they are legislators or something. Their job should be to just create games, not lobby for different laws. At the very least such news articles can get to the right place where someone can do something about it, but i don't its fair to make it this either or on developers.
Yeah, I suppose so. The real issue here though is the AAA game industry accepting it and wanting to change. But to be quite honest, I don't see that happening, at least not any time soon. Though of course I'd love for it to.
In my experience in the industry I knew several veterans that basically reacted saying, "You work for the game industry, it's awesome, you should feel excited, and lucky to be here!" Which is pretty gross. Also talked to other vets that talked about how a lot of higher ups look at QA as an incredibly expendable team that can be easily replaced because "people always want to work in video games." There's a lot of gross mindsets that exist within the walls.
The thing is, when I say that the AAA game industry needs to accept it and want change, I say that because of their workflows and everything. Because with how the standard AAA workflows function, they always claim they never "want" crunch to happen, but that realistically crunch would potentially occur before specific mile stones, and submitting for cert / shipping. It's almost like they save areas of development for it. That they'd rather crunch the employees they have and hire for that project, rather than hire more to reduce the chances of crunch to save money and reduce the extra cost of development.
Crunch is terrible. The fact dmthat is a common practice doesnt make it any better.
Coming from someone that worked in the past for 30+ hours with no sleep.
It's not for everyone, and honestly, that's the easiest way to say it. Not saying it makes it any better, just stating the fact that it is something that exists, and has existed there for over 20+ years. It's deeply embedded in a lot of work flows.
This is also coming from someone that has crunched in the AAA industry at two different studios and on multiple projects. At one, our work day started at 10AM, scrum at 11AM, and when in hard crunch we'd leave anywhere between 3AM-7AM, only to return at 10AM and do it all over again until we met our goal. The weekends as well, though that was typically 7/8/9AM (whenever you could make it as early as possible) to 5/6/7PM. At the other, the work day started at 9AM, scrum at 10AM, and when in hard crunch it was more of the same. Along with similar weekend schedules as the previous gig. When I was contract, I was paid time and a half, and that made a lot of it easier. When I wasn't contract we had multiple free meals, drinks, etc. This was all in my experience as QA of course, as a QA tester, senior QA tester, and QA manager.
When I transitioned into Community Specialist/Manager crunch didn't exist at all. Unless I wanted to help QA, but it was never mandatory.
Over the years it bummed me out because I realized how many things I missed out on as a result of crunching. But at the time, I made the most of it, and honestly had a great time as I was spending it was some of the most talented and awesome people I've ever met.