This is basically why I left the gaming industry. My last gig before going corporate mandated 55 hour work weeks and didn't call it crunch. The one before catered in 3 meals a day and expected you to live at the office. I love games and I love making them but it was just too much. One of the biggest problems is the "old timers" who connect your hours in the office with how much you love what you do. 3 jobs in 3 years. Now I make more, work less, see my family more, feel confident in my stability, and don't have the next layoff looming over my head or studio heads breathing down my neck wondering why I am counting down the minutes until my 55-hour non-crunch week is over. I even got interrogated by the studio head once because I associated with someone who crashed and burned and sent the absolute best bridge-burning email I've ever read in my life.
If games would get their labor situation straightened out I'd be back in a flash because I truly do love making games. However I don't see that happening any time soon.
As to a solution. That's a tough nut to crack. Unionizing is difficult to support because it throws up a wall between management and the people creating the games but we're at a point where people are leaving the industry in droves because of poor treatment. I know 12-13 people who've left games in the last year because of this and they are the superstars that games needs to go to that next level. Other industries are gaining visionaries and super-engineers because making games isn't viable.
One statistic I'd love to see in the credits of a game is "Crunch-time dumped/divorce rate." Its a real thing and its nearly impossible to be creative or productive when you've just been dumped or had your wife leave you because she doesn't see you but one day a week for a year. I saw a credit in a game recently that said how many meals the company had provided during development. Many people told me how cool that was - I immediately shook my head and told them that each meal was the equivalent of about 4-8 hours of unpaid overtime per person at that studio. They got real quiet after that.
The answer, at least to me, is to scale back the scope of these games. 18 months - 2 years is the average turn around time for a major release regardless of the scope of a game. However, the variable cost of games is a pretty new thing so historically people have been trying to put in enough for gamers to feel their $60 is warranted. So they cram more and more in trying to hit that value point. Scoping out a game before starting is how we all want to make games. Feature creep and problems that arise during development almost always blow out deliveries but you only have so much money/time so you do what you have to do to keep the lights on. Its a catch-22. Do you ship a tiny game with super high quality that's on-time and on-budget and worked 40 hour weeks and risk backlash and poor reviews or do you put blood sweat and tears in there and go for the hail mary that will make the entire studio rich?
That's how management tries to sell their abuse and most people buy into it. I make games now on my own and while they take much longer I'm much happier with the environment. There are certain companies that are making strides towards livable game dev labor standards but for the most part the industry still has a long, long way to go.
I hope more articles and conversations like this can help.
LRavenwolf's comments