1y ago

'Devs are getting ground up as collateral damage': Fallout: New Vegas lead says burnout has replaced crunch as 'the primary hazard of the game industry'

www.pcgamer.com

PC Gaming @lemmy.ca

alessandro @lemmy.ca

1y ago

'Devs are getting ground up as collateral damage': Fallout: New Vegas lead says burnout has replaced crunch as 'the primary hazard of the game industry'

www.pcgamer.com /gaming-industry/devs-are-getting-ground-up-as-collateral-damage-fallout-new-vegas-lead-says-burnout-has-replaced-crunch-as-the-primary-hazard-of-the-game-industry/

33 comments

Nathaniel Chapman, a designer who has worked at both Blizzard and Obsidian, also added: "The slow grind on something you do not believe in is 10x as soul crushing as crunching for something you care about."
I felt that
- Hey this is me working at Unity! The never ending churn building a thing that I tell people to not use is terrible. In a few months though I can handle a change or gap in insurance though so I've got a light at the end of the tunnel at least
  
  In a few months though I can handle a change or gap in insurance though so I've got a light at the end of the tunnel at least
  This is just so fucked. In no way do I mean on your end, but just that the system begets inhumane situations like this.
  
  As a fellow Unity employee, I feel that right down to my bones. If the job market for software devs didn't suck so hard, I would have left a while ago. Compartmentalization is the only coping mechanism I have to keep myself going.
  
  from a longtime user perspective - yay, they got rid of riccitello - but the board that put him there is still in power. How's the linux guy working out as ceo? at least you sold of the useless weta stuff... never understood that acquisition
  
  Hang in there, partner
- "Member when games were made with passion?
  
  They still are, just not by these big studios.
Those two things seem like they'd be connected...
- Um...yeah this is a weird way to state it. Pretty sure crunch causes burnout.
  Crunch (imposing long periods of major overtime to meet a deadline)
  Burnout—sometimes called "occupational burnout"—is a state of full-body exhaustion brought on by prolonged exposure to stress.
  Yeah...
  
  I think the implication is that Burnout is not only caused by crunch. But also by working on projects you don't really care about, or have to watch decisions from higher up ruin.
  
  I personally experience them differently.
  Crunch is a sprint, burnout is a marathon.
  You can sprint a sprint... Once or twice in a while.
  You can't run a marathon of sprints
Wtf? WDYM FO:NV team, that game came out fourteen years ago.
- The article includes quotes by Joshua Sawyer, best known to be the director of FNV. They should have put his name or actual position in the title to avoid a confusing headline
When I was a kid I wanted to be game dev. Back then a game with three separate people for the coding, graphics and music was considered a big release.
Glad I didn't get into that tbh, because it sounds shit these days.
Devs are getting ground up as ~~collateral damage~~ part of our employee retention plan
You know nothing of the crunch. You've never even been to the crunch!
- This is an outage!
- When it comes to burnout, I think you'll find that Kirk leaves us all in the dust.
- Ooooooh my wooooord. Are we back to the crunch? Oh here we faaaackin gooooo.
Common Josh Sawyer W

33 comments