Crunching as company policy

[daemonwolf]

http://videolamer.com/enduring-the-grind-crunching-as-company-policy

Great article from VideoLamer. 

"I really have to wonder, what is the motivation for his statement? Is he implying that people who are not so driven, so devoted to their desire to make games that they will do nothing else are of no use to the industry?

So I wonder, is this true in all forms of creative endeavor?

Don’t the best painters and writers and musicians devote their lives to their art? Why would anyone want to listen to a rock band that considered playing music a “normal job”? Would we have Mozart’s Requiem if his love of music had not consumed him?

But I also think I would hate to live in a world where artists had no life outside of their art, because they would have no life to inspire their art.

What would Van Gogh have given us if he had remained happily holed up in his studio avoiding courting so that he could devote himself to the technical details of painting?

Life has to drive a devotion to art for without a life, you have nothing to make art about."


What do you think?  Agree, disagree?

[Bad Sector]

I agree with the article and i'll make a few comments:

I believe crunching stems from two things: a) bad planning and b) game development being a creativity driven process. And unfortunately both work against each other since its hard to plan correctly when your work depends on being creative at after the plan is made.

This part

But I also think I would hate to live in a world where artists had no life outside of their art, because they would have no life to inspire their art.

is very important. It doesn't apply only to artists but to any creative endeavor. A recent development i'm proud of is my independent recreation of what came to be called SSAO (and i believe mine was one of the best looking filters for a while, although this is subjective and i'm obviously biased). The train of thoughts that led me to make this effect were outside of the strict scope of a programmer (to the point other fellow programmers didn't believed it will work) and i'm sure if i wasn't interested in a lot of other (time consuming) things such as drawing, lighting, direction, etc i wouldn't come up with it. Letting your mind learn about new things prepares it to accept and process even more. Someone who is focused on a single task, doing a single thing, has everything else become atrophied.

The game development industry is new and companies became "mainstream" only in 90s with founders being mostly young inexperienced (in business) people. This lead to a lot of otherwise known (to other industries) stuff to be reinvented (such as the working hours part mentioned in the article being something know and proved). As time passes the industry will mature and these things will improve.

EDIT: i'm a bit tired and sleepy, which usually makes my English text to not make much sense, so if you dont understand what i'm talking about just tell me and i'll try to make it clear

[Hugo]

I live for game development. I spend every wake moment. And most of the time I dream about it as
well. I could never live in a world that wouldn’t let me spend more than 40 hours a week on development.


When I’m not doing work for my own job, I work on my own hobby projects. Or I volunteer to help other
teams at other studios with their projects.

I find it extremely hard to have patients or respect for anyone who has a job in the game industry but 
doesn’t want to spend every wake hour on game development. I get really annoyed by  them.

It’s awful to say but true.

I especially have a hatred towards students. Who played games when they were younger, and then went
on to study game design. I find them to be very ignorant. They have no idea what companies exists in
the local game industry, they don’t know the heroes. They don’t have or follow the hacker ethics.
They never went through the pressure and stress it takes to work on games at night while following school
or working at daytime. They don’t know what it takes to teach yourself to program.

In my eyes they kill the game industry. They kill the passion and romance.


Now that I think about it, it’s all about the following piece :


“Because some people in an industry are willing to devote sixty hours of their life a week to their passion,
does that mean everyone around them should as well? Is it better to turn away someone who does forty hours of
high quality work in a week and replace him with someone who does more, but lower quality work?“

I would answer  yes to that question. Just image the following scene :

It’s 20:30 your at the office, looking over a box with cold pizza, you can see a artist working his butt off.


In my eyes that would feel magical. I feel like he too thinks we have a ‘classic game’ in the making. And
he puts in any effort he can to assure the game becomes a classic.

This on its own would completely re-energy me, and motivate me to work on the game. I would feel really excited
to work on cool new features. Because I know the minute I show it to him, he will use the feature to it’s full potential
(I’m mainly a graphics programmer) even if it would cost him his evening to make it work.

If he would have left at 17:00, I wouldn’t get motivated to put in that extra effort.

Also if this guy would have asked me to code something for him (so he can do his work better) I would easily sacrifice
my weekend to do so. Even  if the thing I needed to code isn’t really challenging or fun for me to do. Because if it’s
worth his time and effort, then it’s worth mine.

So in the end, even if this guy does the same amount of work in 60 hour, what somebody else could do in 40 hour.
It’s still a better solution. Because it’s motivates and triggers other people on the team.

Jesus, this became a very long rant it’s past midnight, and it’s time for me to get back and code some more now

[Bad Sector]

Hmm, from this quote

"Is it better to turn away someone who does forty hours of high quality work in a week and replace him with someone who does more, but lower quality work?"

I've actually understood that the 60hours guy doesn't do as good work as the 40hours guy (that is, his output in the week is inferior to the 40h guy). In that case, i obviously think that its better to chose the 40hours guy because the end product will be better.

In the other case where both produce the same stuff, personally i don't care. As long as they do their stuff right and they don't mess with the schedule, i don't mind.


Sidenote: i've got more than 30 kilos (66 pounds) because i ate pizza and other junk food at work. I don't believe anymore its a nice thing to do

[Hugo]

Hehe, yes. I have a bad habit of gaining weight as well. I found a good solution though, I live in a very crowded city.
And instead of taking the car, I walk. This keeps my weight on level. And I also avoid stupid traffic jams and parking tickets

But there’s just something awesome about cold pizza and peanut m&m’s. I don’t think I can ever dislike that taste!

[Bad Sector]

I agree with the taste part, the unhealthy food tastes better (not that i'm a "lets be as healthy as possible person" - i eat my good share of pizza and junk food too, but i try to not overdo it like i was doing until last year ).