Normal Working Hours in the Industry

Professional
#1

Hi all,

How many hours do you guys normally work at your studio? All of us have heard about the horrors of crunch time and such, so I was curious. What has your experience been? I am a 38 year old guy, married with 2 small children (2 boys, 7 1/2 and 4), and I want to switch my career over to the games industry (Yes I know, getting started a bit late). How do you guys deal with this if you have a family? What kind of “compensation” (such as extra time off, etc.) do you get for the long hours when you have to work them?

#2

It all depends on the studio and sometimes even the project itself. For example Ubisoft I did absolutely no overtime in almost 3 years I was there. Now I’m wokring 60 hour weeks, although being paid time and a half in OT which most game studios don’t do.
Usually you get compensation time at the end of the crunch at a random number determined by studio management. The OT might also be part of the calculation when it comes to your yearly or project end bonuses.

#3

Well for me, I started in retail as a store manager so I was working a good 50+ hours a week as a requirement (being on salary). I have a wife and 2 kids as well (although I’m nice an young at 23).

At the moment I average 40 hours a week with an occasional mini crunch every month or so (usually only an extra 10-12 hours) and this is usually countered with some extra time off the following week.

I suppose I also counter this with really enjoying this job over my retail job. So even when I stumble over problems all day I still go home happy (maybe a little dazed from overthinking) And I’m pretty sure this ripples through my household. I also have no blackout dates on vacation so I can take off 2 weeks for christmas as opposed to retail where you had windows of vacation, usually when I didn’t want to go on vacation.

Really depends on the company though. I have heard some game companies run nonstop crunch for huge portions of time.

#4

Yeah there are some companies that pay for over time. Others that don’t. At Crystal they will ask us to work weekends in order to hit a big milestone and we are usually compensated with a day off for every weekend day we come in. They will also sometimes ask us to do extra hours during the day. A lot of the folks here are married with kids so the company is very understanding of that which is why they always ask for the extra time, never demand it.

I personally will try as best as I can to keep around 40 hours a week which makes me a happier and therefore more productive employee.

#5

I try to stick to my 40 hours, but if something is exciting or just a needs a good long mental “chew” I’ll end up staying late. I’ve only had to work late one week in the last year and a half, and they gave us some time off after that to compensate for it. Other teams here have different schedules, and some do OT more often, but they are also compensated for it, both with extra days off and more consideration at bonus time.

I work at Monolith, and they are great about this sort of thing. In the past, I have worked at companies that were really, really bad about crunch hours, and we could spend half a year crunching and putting in time on the weekend with no real attempt at compensation, and they would still dock you a day off if you needed to go to the doctor.

It’s all over the place - so wherever you are looking for employment, make sure you do some research on the quality of life before you accept anything!

~Alex

#6

The way I look at it, is my free time is valuable to me. If they’re willing to pay overtime I’m usually willing to work it. I set the precedent and expectation early where I work that I wouldn’t work for free.

I’m now seeing a lot of people that are now working crazy hours, for no pay because someone else didn’t schedule properly.

It makes me pretty upset that this still goes on. And the worker bees just work their asses off, for moderate to little reward.

I think my boss considers me lazy as I wont stay late, but honestly that’s an outdated philosophy that needs to change as VFX and Game industries evolve. If there was a consensus that no one works for free, then a lot less exploitation could happen…

Though on the other hand the bastards would probably just outsource to a country that was less regulated. So what do you do?

#7

[QUOTE=shawner;6504]I’m now seeing a lot of people that are now working crazy hours, for no pay because someone else didn’t schedule properly.

It makes me pretty upset that this still goes on. And the worker bees just work their asses off, for moderate to little reward.[/QUOTE]

You, sir, get it. And even when I’m working 80+ weeks, I still hold the same view. A lot of my crunch is self-inflicted. I get a lot of leeway in doing things how I think they should be done and I make sure I deliver on time. On the other hand, if I am covering someone else’s misschedule or bad work, I make sure everyone knows about it.

So ultimately I feel it comes down to something quite clear:
You are obligated to crunch to meet deadlines you commit to. If you say, this will be done in 2 weeks, and you’re behind, you crunch to get it done on time.
If you are being compensated, or it is an extraordinary circumstance, crunch should be optional.
Otherwise, you should not be crunching. Doing so, for whatever reason, is allowing yourself to be taken advantage of, but even worse, creating an expectation in your studio that demands OTHER people to get taken advantage of to be seen as a team player. When you crunch, management will expect crunch, and create unrealistic schedules, and it is YOUR fault. But your crunch is hurting people who are, frankly, more mature than you are if you are crunching without good reason.

I am a bit of a hypocrite but I certainly am outspoken enough when things go wrong- being a ‘worker bee’ not only makes you a fool, you are effectively stealing from your coworkers. If you’re dumb enough to crunch (like me), then at least yell about the people who put you in that situation in the first place.

As to the thread topic, what everyone else said. It depends per-studio and per-project and per-team. Here, if you are behind, you are crunching, if not, there’s no obligation to crunch (ie, sympathy crunch). Unfortunately, the longer we go, the more people that are behind. The best advice I could give you would be to talk to the people at the studio (the other artists or TA’s, not the leads or management) and see what their experience has been. But
DANGER: If the studio hasn’t shipped a game of comparable scope to what you’re working on, or you’re talking to someone who hasn’t worked an entire project cycle, these assessments are worthless. Crunch comes near deadlines. So I’d talk to people that have worked with your art director or studio heads, etc., and see how they tend to go about crunch.

And lastly, quality of life is an important topic- don’t hesitate to bring it up in the interview. Any studio where your concerns about QoL are a negative don’t give a shit about QoL in the first place.

#8

Very much agree with Shawn.

These days I have my own small studio and work about 7-8 hours a day, 5 days a week and get plenty stuff done. But then we have no ‘middle managment’ layer that tends to create a lot of overtime by poorly scheduling things.

:wink:

I know it takes some guts and can be a dangerous move depending on your position in the studio, but keep your “managment accountable for scheduling” is all I can say. If you keep having to do overtime, they are either taking advantage of you or they really suck at scheduling and need to do some courses on it :slight_smile:

-Kees

#9

It’s been basically the same in the places I’ve worked.

Usually work normal 8 hour days.

Sometimes there is a mini crunch for a milestone which gives maybe 5-10 hours extra that week, which there is usually no compensation for other then free food when you are working late.

Near content lock, Beta and Gold delivery dates there can be a heavier crunch that can last a few weeks and having 10-12 hour workdays and sometimes even occasional weekends. Usually compensated by food when working late, extra pay on weekend and sometimes compensation time off after the crunch is done.

Working overtime (more then 8 hour days) usually comes down to bad planing. Management should never plan for more than 80% or the current milestone, everything else that gets done is a bonus. Something we learned at Grin the hard way an implemented for the later projects, which usually made out publishers happy as well as we always managed to get something extra into each milestone which wasn’t in the original plan.

#10

I guess the other thing to consider is where you fit in the company. We’re lucky in that being CoreTech we sit outside of production so get buffered from the production crunches that happen. We’ve got teams in heavy crunch, long hours, which we avoid. Most of this I have to say is because the pipeline gets locked on a team basis before crunch time, we keep support, but lock the actual toolsets down. It also means that any development we do is buffered from them as a safety measure.

#11

We’ve got core hours, theoretically it’s 9-10am to 5.30-6.30pm, but I generally get into work at around 8.30 and leave at 6 most days. The extra 30 minutes in the morning is very quiet, so I use this as interruption free time, or to kill several small bugs.

For the last 6 years or so I personally have never had a work directed crunch as such (maybe a couple of nights here and there for submission deadlines), but I did a self imposed one in the last year of GTA4 for about 3 months where I’d work until 9 or 10pm every Monday and Tuesday to run tech checks through massive amounts of assets - this was invaluable since that’s where I learned a lot of production shortcuts and that was the birthing periods for dozens of tools.

My working hours can be longer because of working with some other studios in different timezones, but generally I handle this via email.

#12

One thing you have to remember is most people here are talking as experienced artists with many years under their belt. You are starting as a fresher. It sucks but as a fresher you will have to put in a lot of self inflicted overtime because your learning and new to the industry. It is a simple fact of life for the inexperienced.

If you are lucky you will get compensated for overtime but often times you will take any job you can get and will be paid a flat rate per day or per week no matter how much overtime you do.

#13

Sometimes there’s no right or wrong in this timeless debate, it’s just a question of culture.

Some companies make no secret that they crunch, and crunch bad. They also make no secret that they guarantee to financially compensate the staff, so if you sign up with them you know what to expect, and they know what to expect of you.

Other companies don’t crunch, and work nine to five and try to stick to that ethic.

There’s just different cultures and both systems can work if staff generally know beforehand what the expectations are.

You also get some companies where there are staff who just work their asses off and other staff get home to see their kids, a culture of choice if you like.

Things go wrong when an eight hour day studio turns around and offsets the financial risk onto the employees and demands extra hours, gambling that crunching will prove successful enough to reward the staff. For the most part, the staff get abused, get out of pocket and bear the brunt of the company’s mistake.

When imposed crunch does (rarely) work, the product ships and makes enough to compensate staff, it’s then used to justify crunch on future products and is held up as an example on how hard work and hard hours make great games.

Shawner said, what can you do?

I’d suggest researching a company’s culture, history and management and see if it fits you and your lifestyle. Being Tech Art, we’re usually the last to leave at night during crunch and the first person who’ll get called in to fix something, so make sure you know what you’re getting into.

#14

"It sucks but as a fresher you will have to put in a lot of self inflicted overtime because your learning and new to the industry. It is a simple fact of life for the inexperienced.
"

The problem with this is that while true, it becomes taken advantage of by upper management and also they are not told how this extra work that often goes undocumented destroys the ability to create a real schedule because the work produces and the “known” hours to make the work are not in sync, caus
ing producers to schedule shorter times and then teams end up in crunch.

So if you hire new green talent then the extra time should be adjusted for in the schedules and also, the senior experienced artists should be taking care these guys make sure they understand that working 6 months of 12 hours days is not good for the team, the project or the future and longevity of their careers.

Company culture is a big part of it and I would say that if the culture is anything other than protective of the well being of the staff meaning, even if you want to to work overtime and work late they tell you to go home anyway, then you should stay the hell away from them. Studios that crunch because that is how they do things are like drug addicts and their drug of choice is young artists that, think the only way they can work in the industry is to work all the time and have Zero time away from work and think that Free food for overtime is pay!

I also don’t see anyone talking about the effects of crunch here that go beyond just unpaid time. I will list some of them… divorce, often more than once…one per new hardware release, carpel tunnel and other wrist rsi damage = end of career type damage to your body, effects of said overtime food on overall health of team members, increased mistakes and amount of thrown away work because of mistakes done by exhausted workers running on 3 hours of sleep or less…and then the danger of these guys driving home after working no-stop weekends , and on and on…

When it comes down to it, never forget that just because you love what you do and would work overtime for free, you are screwing over your self and your team and other artists that come after you by allowing yourself to be taken advantage of or if your the person doing the taking.

Now be clear, if you the artist spends your time poorly and underestimates how long it will take you to get your work done then yes, you need to pull some extra time and get your work taken care of and then next time do better, your fault, you work to make it up as that is your own self inflicted punishment. But you better be sure after that that you do two things- first make sure you let your producer/lead know as soon as possible that you are behind and second track your time working for your self so that you can improve both your estimates for work and so you know how fast you can work and push back on schedules that are to short.

#15

I just want to say thanks to all for responding to this post. It has given me a lot of insight and a lot to think about.

@bharris: “(although I’m nice an young at 23)”, that hurt man:wink:

#16

Thanks for everyone’s response, it was really helpful for me too!

#17

i really like the tone of this thread - it’s interesting to see people’s perspective from other studios that i respect, but don’t know a lot about the culture there. it sounds like the attitude of the industry is pulling away from unquestioned crunches and blind acceptance of poor management.

we are a very family-first studio. most people here work the standard 8 hours and go home to families. there are times, when approaching deadlines, that people will crunch voluntarily, but they haven’t mandated a crunch for a while; and when they did, it did not turn out well for employees morale. in my experience, crunching generally led to people only working marginally harder. at other studios, i would see people take longer lunches, longer smoke breaks, play one more extra game of foosball etc because they realized that they were going to be at work late that night anyway. i believe that having a mentality of coming in and working hard for the time that you are at work (even doing things like coming in early so you work uninterrupted for a short time) can be a big step towards avoiding crunches that are unnecessary. obviously that doesn’t account for all cases, but i have convinced myself that it works for me, haha.

#18

Found this on Gamasutra and thought it would add to the discussion.