If I were a mid-level manager at Epic, I wonder how I would handle internal politics at this time. So many competing objectives...
1. Focus on producing novel content to keep the game interesting, mixing things up enough over weeks/months, but without killing the core mechanics.
2. Hire lots of new employees, all while knowing that the popularity bubble may burst and they may need to be laid off in the near future.
3. Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.
4. Acknowledge that this lucky streak is unrepeatable, and that if the game falls out of popularity, there is likely no one to blame. But when it happens, the demoralization will hit hard and the layoffs are inevitable.
5. All this, while the company reaps huge profits.
> Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.
Hah.
I've know a few people on break-away titles(on the level of fortnight for an era) in my time in that industry. In most of those cases the employer or publisher had slipped in some sort of cap in royalties on a per-employee basis. So while their % cut of royalties was in the 7-figures they never saw anything above 6-figures.
Kudos on you for thinking this way but I'd be surprised if most of the people working on Fortnight are seeing more than mid FAANG compensation.
4a. Acknowledge that some companies have too many "lucky streaks" for them to be "lucky streaks" (e.g. Pixar, Valve, Nintendo, etc.). Attempt to build a work environment conducive to great creative work such that if there's any way to make this kind of success repeatable, at least we're putting the chances on our side.
When I was contracting (not for Epic) I always negotiated an hourly rate. When they called for overtime I loved it, the meta is to become 10-20% more productive by whatever metric they use but bill 50-100% more hours at 1.5x my already large bill rate. I can generally work for 6 months like this without any life changing burn out symptoms.
As much as it sucks to implicitly require people to work so many hours, i'd say it's OK in the short term if they were compensated accordingly (overtime or big bonuses), which according to the article they were (3x the salary?). Maybe someone more familiar with epic could enlighten me.
1) It's not short term. Fortnite is constantly adding new features. This isn't normal crunch before a game ships then relax after patching bugs, it's literally crunch every week.
2) The actual employees are paid very well via a profit share arrangement. To my understanding, the issue is when contractors are worked like this. I don't believe contractors receive overtime or bonuses.
edit: some below have pointed out contractors do receive overtime.
Yeah, I know someone who works at Epic specifically on Fortnite(as a new hire too!) and the money is well, fantastic. The base salary was very high for the games industry and then bonuses on top of it were in the range of 1-2x the annual salary itself.
Ah, I remember my first live game, where you think we'll just crunch for this release, it'll be fine. Then the next release comes and because you were crunching on the other it comes out half baked, so you crunch again and again and before you know it half the team that made it happen is gone and no one wants to work there. You see this mentality in a lot of mobile studios that we're started by ex-AAA employees. Hopefully they learn that you can't crunch a live game or you'll never stop crunching. Single release games eventually ended, a good live game can go on for a very long time. The next generation of mobile studios knew that and ended up having a very good policy of no over time... Well some did
I think they interviewed mostly people new to the gaming industry who don’t know how to manage their time under pressure, Epic isn’t an easy place if you’re not pretty senior, they expect you to know what to do with little guidance. That said they also see the company as being a marathon since it’s success isn’t certain and fragile, so it’s something they expect employees to take care of because it’s a unique place, maybe similar to how museum staff look after art work. No doubt it’s brutal with Fortnight’s success, and you will get fired if you’re not competent and pulling your weight, but that’s the industry they’re in, you can’t have a few people putting everyone else’s livelihood at risk, and they also compensate very well when they’re successful. So it’s not like some sweat shop, it’s more complex than the article makes it sound.
> I think they interviewed mostly people new to the gaming industry who don’t know how to manage their time under pressure,
So everyone who has to work long hours is just incompetent or new, or new and incompetent, and should just do the same amount of work in less time, duh? That's not how these high-pressure workplaces function. Even if you are a significant contributor and you are technically allowed to opt out of overtime, that doesn't mean everyone won't resent you for it, and that management won't interpret as a 'lack of commitment' when promotion or reviews come around. As a corollary, the recent rise 'unlimited time off' policies have been widely criticized because they often inadvertently contribute to implicit pressures to take less time off than before, because of the resentment, hostility and jealously. I've seen some companies rolling out unlimited time off with mandatory minimums which seems healthier, but I'm unsure how successful it has been.
> they expect you to know what to do with little guidance
Even good engineers need guidance, and guidance and training are especially important when you're doubling and tripling your workforce.
> so it’s something they expect employees to take care of because it’s a unique place, maybe similar to how museum staff look after art work.
This is a super weird analogy and makes no sense to me.
> and you will get fired if you’re not competent and pulling your weight
Where does the article say that Epic shouldn't fire incompetent employees? No one is saying that.
> but that’s the industry they’re in, you can’t have a few people putting everyone else’s livelihood at risk
Your response to a toxic work culture is just 'It is what it is, deal with it'? Don't you think we should have discussions about the human impact and damage caused by these intractable competing interests? And there's almost certainly a financial and business cost, it's just not as obvious to measure.
> So it’s not like some sweat shop, it’s more complex than the article makes it sound.
The article covers both sides pretty thoroughly, there's a litany of quotes from Epic PR addressing the claims and recounting their efforts to resolve them. I understand WHY these pressures exist, and it's clear the Epic want to do everything they can to leverage their transient popularity. But that's not to say they shouldn't be criticized or they shouldn't do better.
I might ruffle some feathers here but here it goes. Very much in the same manner some people refuse to eat inhumanely raised and slaughtered animals, buy diamonds or coffee from companies associated with slave-like labor, or palm oil because its harvesting destroys the tropical forests, or watch American football to protest constant stress of trauma for players, I refuse to play big name games. It is a moral stance. Once in a while I spend some time playing an indie game and before I do that I make sure to find the site or the blog of the producer.
I applaud your principles and voting with your wallet, however I find your comparisons frankly ridiculous and tone deaf.
The people murdered by warlord funded by blood diamonds didn't really have a choice. Exploited coffee farmers in the third world who barely make enough to survive also don't really have a choice if they want to feed themselves and their families. They can't exactly say "well screw this farm, I'm going to go write code for Morgan Stanley instead".
The 20-something freshly graduated CS engineers who sent their resume to get hired by those big name devs did so willingly and were probably very happy when they got hired. They most likely could've easily gotten a well paying job elsewhere and if their working conditions really become unbearable they'll probably do just that.
Should we still support this bad industry? Probably not and I think you're right to boycott these games, but it's nowhere near comparable to those other things you talked about.
I mean, that's applaudable, but I'm afraid your filter might be too broad. I've worked(and still work) on one of the largest AAA releases of this year and we've done zero crunch. I'm a senior engine programmer and no one on my team has done more few hours of overtime in the month leading to the release . I'm at work 8am and leave at 4pm every day like clockwork. So yeah, not every company is like this and not every AAA title requires crunch to be finished.
I'm not sure that level of crunch is generally lower in indie companies. In theory, they might be struggling more, they are in disadvantageous position against big companies, they have to do more experiments and take more risks than AAA, which make the same "press X to hollywood" or network shooters for the last 20 years.
(I don't play big companies' (modern) games, because almost always I'm not in target audience and find such games completely unplayable)
Indie game developers often self impose crunch that is significantly more extreme than what many AAA developers go through, which can also lead to long term health or mental issues. There are AAA games that have little to no crunch involved in production as well (although universally that's not the case for the most popular games, unfortunately).
This might seem ok with outlier games that make the creator super rich, but this thing also happens with smaller titles that have no chance in the market.
Honest question, why would competent developers subject themselves to this kind of treatment? If a company ever "requested" that I work Saturday or Sunday I'd be gone later that same day.
Because videogames are glamorous and a significant portion of people in CS went into it for the specific purpose of working in videogames. As such it's one of the rare sectors in our industry where employers do not struggle too much to hire fresh blood.
At the risk of sounding a bit jaded I don't feel too bad about overworked videogame developers. The vast majority of them can quit at any point and probably land a job in some other sector of the industry, probably with better work conditions and a better salary.
Developers chose to work for these videogame studios. They chose the glamour of being able to say "I wrote some code for GTA V" rather than the comfort and quality of life of being able to say "I write backend code for a flower shop".
I did similar after a long drawn out crunch. Decided I was going home at 10pm rather than 11-12(after being in at 8am each day for the last 6 months).
I was branded as 'not a team player' the whole team basically resented me for 'not pulling my weight'.
In summary, fuck that industry.
The real solution is unionization or fresh blood but I don't think it'll happen in the next 5-10 years. Both titles I worked on previously I'm almost dead certain the constant crunch lead to a sub-par game and subsequent poor releases. Until that industry learns that crunch isn't the solution nothing is going to change.
Because there's a risk of being seen as "not a team-player" and a fear of losing your job as a result of it, social pressure is real in tech culture, if all developers refused to take part in the rat-race and left the office at 6 on Friday the management would have no other choice than to deal with it by _managing_ the human ressources differently, or increasing the count of developers which I will agree: is not easy when it comes to software development.
Social pressure, and the lack of interest (or even contempt) the developers have when it comes to unions mostly explains why such abuse is still seen as normal in the industry.
I was once at a startup that did well enough at Demo, they wanted to launch without a proper ops team in place (it was a service). In addition to demands, lack of planning, and poor management -- there was an expectation that people work unreasonable hours. Taking a weekend off without proper genuflection was frowned upon. Multiple people walked before their 1 year cliff was up, other people stayed.
Working hard isn't an issue, but expectations like those in the gaming industry or some startups (like the one I encountered) are unreasonable and it would help if more people voted with their feet. That said, I know a lot of people in gaming have a passion for such.
Working more than 40 hours is stupid, but I can see doing it for very short times. In a culture where you are branded as not a team player if you don't work 70+ hours a week uncompensated is exactly what Marx called exploitation. You make other people wealthy while you burn yourself out. No matter the job its not worth it. If however you own the company it might be worth the risk of killing yourself, but it's not right to make other people do it to enrich yourself. Not that that ever stopped people from demanding others do it (see Jack Ma for an example).
It's remarkable how someone will always find a way to lambast successful companies even if it means faulting them for becoming successful and relevant in the first place.
[+] [-] CompelTechnic|7 years ago|reply
1. Focus on producing novel content to keep the game interesting, mixing things up enough over weeks/months, but without killing the core mechanics.
2. Hire lots of new employees, all while knowing that the popularity bubble may burst and they may need to be laid off in the near future.
3. Give bonuses to my employees, who are working their tails off, to prevent resentment. Especially in the over-worked video game industry.
4. Acknowledge that this lucky streak is unrepeatable, and that if the game falls out of popularity, there is likely no one to blame. But when it happens, the demoralization will hit hard and the layoffs are inevitable.
5. All this, while the company reaps huge profits.
[+] [-] vvanders|7 years ago|reply
Hah.
I've know a few people on break-away titles(on the level of fortnight for an era) in my time in that industry. In most of those cases the employer or publisher had slipped in some sort of cap in royalties on a per-employee basis. So while their % cut of royalties was in the 7-figures they never saw anything above 6-figures.
Kudos on you for thinking this way but I'd be surprised if most of the people working on Fortnight are seeing more than mid FAANG compensation.
[+] [-] GuiA|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cheez|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JohnFen|7 years ago|reply
While bonuses can help, expecting them to prevent resentment is, in my opinion, misguided.
[+] [-] DaddyGotDough|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notTyler|7 years ago|reply
2) The actual employees are paid very well via a profit share arrangement. To my understanding, the issue is when contractors are worked like this. I don't believe contractors receive overtime or bonuses.
edit: some below have pointed out contractors do receive overtime.
[+] [-] gambiting|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaonashi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbill29|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] argd678|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 9935c101ab17a66|7 years ago|reply
So everyone who has to work long hours is just incompetent or new, or new and incompetent, and should just do the same amount of work in less time, duh? That's not how these high-pressure workplaces function. Even if you are a significant contributor and you are technically allowed to opt out of overtime, that doesn't mean everyone won't resent you for it, and that management won't interpret as a 'lack of commitment' when promotion or reviews come around. As a corollary, the recent rise 'unlimited time off' policies have been widely criticized because they often inadvertently contribute to implicit pressures to take less time off than before, because of the resentment, hostility and jealously. I've seen some companies rolling out unlimited time off with mandatory minimums which seems healthier, but I'm unsure how successful it has been.
> they expect you to know what to do with little guidance
Even good engineers need guidance, and guidance and training are especially important when you're doubling and tripling your workforce.
> so it’s something they expect employees to take care of because it’s a unique place, maybe similar to how museum staff look after art work.
This is a super weird analogy and makes no sense to me.
> and you will get fired if you’re not competent and pulling your weight
Where does the article say that Epic shouldn't fire incompetent employees? No one is saying that.
> but that’s the industry they’re in, you can’t have a few people putting everyone else’s livelihood at risk
Your response to a toxic work culture is just 'It is what it is, deal with it'? Don't you think we should have discussions about the human impact and damage caused by these intractable competing interests? And there's almost certainly a financial and business cost, it's just not as obvious to measure.
> So it’s not like some sweat shop, it’s more complex than the article makes it sound.
The article covers both sides pretty thoroughly, there's a litany of quotes from Epic PR addressing the claims and recounting their efforts to resolve them. I understand WHY these pressures exist, and it's clear the Epic want to do everything they can to leverage their transient popularity. But that's not to say they shouldn't be criticized or they shouldn't do better.
[+] [-] mynegation|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
The people murdered by warlord funded by blood diamonds didn't really have a choice. Exploited coffee farmers in the third world who barely make enough to survive also don't really have a choice if they want to feed themselves and their families. They can't exactly say "well screw this farm, I'm going to go write code for Morgan Stanley instead".
The 20-something freshly graduated CS engineers who sent their resume to get hired by those big name devs did so willingly and were probably very happy when they got hired. They most likely could've easily gotten a well paying job elsewhere and if their working conditions really become unbearable they'll probably do just that.
Should we still support this bad industry? Probably not and I think you're right to boycott these games, but it's nowhere near comparable to those other things you talked about.
[+] [-] gambiting|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ungzd|7 years ago|reply
(I don't play big companies' (modern) games, because almost always I'm not in target audience and find such games completely unplayable)
[+] [-] Impossible|7 years ago|reply
https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/9/11/4614458/antichamb...
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/267563/The_4_years_of_se...
This might seem ok with outlier games that make the creator super rich, but this thing also happens with smaller titles that have no chance in the market.
[+] [-] Thaxll|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaonashi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bdavisx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pysxul|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Allagash|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] virtuexru|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
At the risk of sounding a bit jaded I don't feel too bad about overworked videogame developers. The vast majority of them can quit at any point and probably land a job in some other sector of the industry, probably with better work conditions and a better salary.
Developers chose to work for these videogame studios. They chose the glamour of being able to say "I wrote some code for GTA V" rather than the comfort and quality of life of being able to say "I write backend code for a flower shop".
[+] [-] vvanders|7 years ago|reply
I did similar after a long drawn out crunch. Decided I was going home at 10pm rather than 11-12(after being in at 8am each day for the last 6 months).
I was branded as 'not a team player' the whole team basically resented me for 'not pulling my weight'.
In summary, fuck that industry.
The real solution is unionization or fresh blood but I don't think it'll happen in the next 5-10 years. Both titles I worked on previously I'm almost dead certain the constant crunch lead to a sub-par game and subsequent poor releases. Until that industry learns that crunch isn't the solution nothing is going to change.
[+] [-] Zealotux|7 years ago|reply
Social pressure, and the lack of interest (or even contempt) the developers have when it comes to unions mostly explains why such abuse is still seen as normal in the industry.
[+] [-] jmspring|7 years ago|reply
Working hard isn't an issue, but expectations like those in the gaming industry or some startups (like the one I encountered) are unreasonable and it would help if more people voted with their feet. That said, I know a lot of people in gaming have a passion for such.
[+] [-] jammygit|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneakernets|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intertextuality|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldcode|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fyoving|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vvanders|7 years ago|reply
Sorry but I'm going to call out bad work practices that run counter to building a better product when I see it regardless of the success.
Crunch destroys lives(remember easpouse?) and has no place in that industry.
[+] [-] intertextuality|7 years ago|reply
Game companies can become successful without abusing programmers who are passionate about making games.
[+] [-] pixelbath|7 years ago|reply
I find that assertion far more remarkable.
[+] [-] volkk|7 years ago|reply
you make it sound like this article is nitpicking uncomfortable chairs in the office. they're calling out deplorable working conditions.
[+] [-] ahoy|7 years ago|reply