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"If working overtime on AAA games with giant budgets is the only way to succeed, 'then maybe the industry deserves to die,' says RPG veteran David Gaider: 'There is another way to be'"
"Summerfall Studios co-founder David Gaider speaks in favor of industry unionization and his studio's four day work week."
I'll just say it again. One of the first things they tried to teach us at DigiPen when I started there almost 20 years ago was that crunch is counterproductive.[1][2] In any case, I fully agree with the sentiment that the industry deserves to die.
[1] - And yet, despite that, we still ended up at people's apartments working on game projects until two or three in the morning at the ends of semesters, after the school had literally shut down the on-campus computer labs at midnight specifically to try to prevent such things from happening. That was because we all invariably budgeted our time poorly and left shit until almost too late where we basically had to crunch or else not get our games done by the end of the semester. Or else maybe it was because we had like five or six other classes every semester, each with their own homework and big projects to have to work on, some of which would get sacrificed in favor of group work on the game projects, and thus, those would have to be "crunched" later. Either way, crunch is bad, kids.
[2] - The main thing I learned from four years at DigiPen was that I actually didn't want to work in the game industry as much as I thought I did going in.[3] Too bad I didn't have that realization before all the student loan debt, though. ¬_¬
[3] - And everything I've seen out of the modern video game industry between then and now has only reinforced my belief that working in the modern video game industry would be utter shit, at least at the "big AAA companies" anyway.[4]
[4] - Hey, look, another footnote to a footnote.
"Summerfall Studios co-founder David Gaider speaks in favor of industry unionization and his studio's four day work week."
I'll just say it again. One of the first things they tried to teach us at DigiPen when I started there almost 20 years ago was that crunch is counterproductive.[1][2] In any case, I fully agree with the sentiment that the industry deserves to die.
[1] - And yet, despite that, we still ended up at people's apartments working on game projects until two or three in the morning at the ends of semesters, after the school had literally shut down the on-campus computer labs at midnight specifically to try to prevent such things from happening. That was because we all invariably budgeted our time poorly and left shit until almost too late where we basically had to crunch or else not get our games done by the end of the semester. Or else maybe it was because we had like five or six other classes every semester, each with their own homework and big projects to have to work on, some of which would get sacrificed in favor of group work on the game projects, and thus, those would have to be "crunched" later. Either way, crunch is bad, kids.
[2] - The main thing I learned from four years at DigiPen was that I actually didn't want to work in the game industry as much as I thought I did going in.[3] Too bad I didn't have that realization before all the student loan debt, though. ¬_¬
[3] - And everything I've seen out of the modern video game industry between then and now has only reinforced my belief that working in the modern video game industry would be utter shit, at least at the "big AAA companies" anyway.[4]
[4] - Hey, look, another footnote to a footnote.
