IGDA on Quality of Life
This year’s Game Developers Conference will address an issue that has become a growing concern among the industry: the quality of life. Those of us in the industry know what this is going to be about. We work long hours for low pay, endure long crunch periods, and hardly get to see our families and friends unless we happen to work with them (even then, you hardly get to see them). Do we do it for the money? Of course not. Do we like our family and friends? Of course not. Err… Whatever.
The truth is, those of us in this wonderful industry do it because we have a passion for making games. We don’t do it for the pay. We expect the horrid hours. Many people have claimed to figure out how we can reduce the stress of game development. They generally indicate that better planning will remove the need for long crunch periods and those 100+ hour weeks toward the end. This, in short, is total crap.
Will better planning help us create games? Absolutely. That doesn’t mean we won’t enter crunch mode for the same period of time as always and spend 100+ hours a week at the office when gold is on its way. We won’t, because we don’t want to. We will sneak in extra features, extra content, extra fluff, and extra stuff. If there is more time for us to develop the game, we will use that time to add more to the game or polish it up. We will spend just as much time at the office, but we will get more done.
So that’s the developer side that is at fault. The other folks at fault are the consumers. Any game that takes more than 3-4 years to make pisses people off. Creating a massively multiplayer online game is a massive undertaking. Creating a game with thousands of hours of content in under 4 years is becoming more and more difficult. Consumers expect new features, flashy graphics, a ridiculous amount of content, no bugs (hahaha), and a well-polished game. As well they should. Can we blame them?
In order to create these games, we need a considerable amount of time. If we don’t have the calendar time to make them, we sacrifice our social life, sleep, and at times our sanity to create the game. In the end, making a massively multiplayer game is rewarding, and the quality of life doesn’t suck as much as outsiders sometimes think it does (but to aspiring game developers, know that it really does take a lot of dedication, patience, and many sacrifices).
Here is what Gamasutra has to say about the upcoming IGDA quality of life summit:
The issue of overtime practices and developer burnout has rarely been more discussed than it is now, thanks to the infamous “EA Spouse” LiveJournal posting and a class action suit against EA for withholding of overtime pay. To address these issues, the International Game Developers Association is holding a Quality of Life Summit at this year’s Game Developers Conference on March 8th, and has now released more information regarding it.
In particular, the keynote speech at the summit will be given by Steve McConnell, the author of Code Blue and Rapid Development. McConnell’s talk will cover constructive advice for managers and executives on how to improve the development process in order to minimizes crunch time and get better work out of satisfied employees. “Attendees of the
McConnell will not be the only speaker at the event (overseen by the CMP Game Group, the same company that owns Gamasutra.com); other talks will be hosted by industry figures such as Julian Eggebrecht of Factor 5, David Perry of Shiny Entertainment, Rich Vogel of Sony Online Entertainment, and others. A complete list of speakers and session topics is available at the summit’s website.
