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GTA 6 Developers Unionize

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431–440 of 561 posts

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong, but it's also so sad. FAANG used to be the _dream_. Change the world. Work on groundbreaking tech. Solve harder problems than anywhere else. Get Paid incredibly well. Then I guess a generation focused exclusively on that last part flooded the zone. I still believe that The Great Resignation of 2021 did more harm to our industry than COVID or any interest rate or VC changes. It polluted the brains of…

Interesting choice to blame FAANG demise on its workers

Its not like the CEOs unilaterally said "we want to suck now". It's the cumulative effect of many people optimizing for the promotion process within the company and then coaching their mentees to do the same.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#432

> An end to crunch I was unaware of the crunch concept: "In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

who is in hn these days, remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours. now it's "extremely predatory".

I got nothing out of working like that 10/15 years ago but my employers certainly did.

I may have thought it was cool and in line with my passion and desire to learn and ship cool things, but I was plainly taken advantage of. I’m willing to admit I was naive.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very interesting, what makes video game engineering so difficult?

The amount of things you're trying to simulate within the the performance contraints (games push computers to their absolute limits). An example - a 3d humanoid character. You need code to manage the mesh, the animation (probably skeletal), the animations themselves, all the blending logic, probably specialised code and data for facial animations, and then you need to make sure all of that can mesh with both input dr…

>> games push computers to their absolute limits

The overwhelming majority of games actually don’t. Even 5+ year old rigs can run most modern games just fine.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been an issue in the game industry for decades, and yes, crunch is predatory. It's exploiting the passion people have for making games to make them commit to burnout-inducing working conditions. Some game companies have taken steps to improve their working culture, but based on what I've read I get the impression it's still a big problem.

Crunch is good for maximizing shareholder value though. Which is the job of the developers. If they don’t like it they can simply not accept the contract and perish.

Definitely flying too close to Poe's law for some.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The games industry is notorious for this, yet far from the only industry working against deadlines. Deadlines are a good way to timebox work, but they need to be set in a realistic way rather than an optimized happy-path. I do understand there are certain periods where games _should_ release to make more sales, and for most games that's probably true. But this is GTA VI, they can miss the launch window by a month and…

GTA6 in isolation is not the issue. Coordination with the entire rest of the ecosystem is. Ads are bought and paid for 6 month before launch for certain time slots. Store shelf space is reserved. Miss the deadlines and those downstream companies suffer. Their promotion time slots / space, is unbooked and it's too late to fill it with something appropriate. So, the company makes the promise "we'll have ready by Novemb…

> So, the company makes the promise "we'll have ready by November". They make this promise in April.

Make smaller promises but make them more often, and shit changes more often. Be clear about features 3-6 releases out, and when and why features get bumped. Companies delivering software are already doing this because they often can't deliver in 6 months and telling the customer it will be in the nest release a year from now does, as you note, make them stop doing business with you, so instead now you can tell them it's just delayed by a few months which they can maybe deal with.

Games don't really work like this, but games also don't seem to really work the same way at all and have different incentives.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've missed their launch window by years now.

I mean the ideal sales window within a year, e.g period leading up to Christmas.

Of which year? GTA6 has been in development so long they could miss that period slightly in a year and decide to wait for the next year and polish it up and they likely wouldn't run out of things to fix or make better.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#437

> An end to crunch I was unaware of the crunch concept: "In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours" -- wikipedia Needless to say this seems extremely predatory.

who is in hn these days, remember like 10/15 years ago everyone was just willingly working 65+ hours. now it's "extremely predatory".

[dead]

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#438

> Together, we are organising around the things we want to change. Starting with: Pay transparency Flexible working An end to crunch That’s a lot of demands, what next? Competitive salary?! /sarcasm I hope more people will start fighting together for better work conditions. Company owners have money and lawyers so workers must unite to fight them back. I’m saying this as employer.

How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates. We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.

Don't reveal super far away release dates.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Game dev here, have worked on AAA and indie. First off let me get on my high horse and say the engineering in video gaming is generally more complex than the engineering I've done working in big tech. You need a lot more creativity and ingenuity to solve the unusual problems you run into in gaming. From there, as others have said, it's a simple supply and demand issue. Nowadays I am a university professor, nearly eve…

I work in the slot game industry. Plenty of ex-video game devs in this space. Much better work-life balance, but it's very clearly not the same as making video games.

There's also the moral factor, but I've definitely considered switching in the past should money ever be a problem for me.

Re: GTA 6 Developers Unionize

#440
post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you end crunch? Teams always work at a more relaxed pace when the deadlines are years out. You can't beat Parkinson's law no matter how generous you are with the estimates. We've all tried methodologies to counter this problem and create a continuous, sustainable pace. Unfortunately there's something deep in human nature that prevents us spreading that effort out evenly from day one.

Hourly pay rate with OT. That'll clear up the crunch or at least compensate the workers.

The world is not that simple, let's say you do pay overtimes, the salary in this industry is already low, will that be worth it to the employee?
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