@#$@# Eidos!

#61 In an (probably misguided) attempt to derail/redirect the personal animosity in this thread, here is a pretty good article written by Brian Hook regarding the parallels between movie production and game development:

Game and Movie Production Comparison.

He covers many of the issues this topic has brought up, including the production cycles and resource management/assignment concerns that have been mentioned.

#62 Joe all the game/entertainment titles I have worked on which have only been a few, including the one I am working on right now are just how I described, I work an hour I get paid an hour. My current project; we have 8 million registered users, and 5 million "current" users and do about 23 megabits a second, this is a big project, and everyone but the main Technical Director is a contractor, whether they are architecting/coding or creating content or testing/qa. Just makes sense, when the project is finished there is no need for 90% of these people ( myself included ), just a skeleton staff to do maintance and feature enhancement.

#63 Well Brett I guess actions speak louder than text, funny thing is I haven't resorted to personal attacks or name calling ever. Sorry for you that other peoples opinions dissenting opinions are such an annoyance, you need to relax and take a breath or two. But I guess your little snipe and retreat speaks more than anyone could say about your behavior and intentions.

Seems to me there are alot of wound up people that just take things WAY to seriously, seriously this is a fricken ONLINE FORUM! Opinions are expressed, ideas exchanged . . or is everyone supposed to just agree with the first poster all the time?

Fact still remains, the way the rest of the software industry works is invading the game industry. Get prepared for it.

It has been happening since 2000, which was the first E3 I remember where InfoGrammes had bought up just about everyone that EA or Activision didn't already own, and then promptly announced that the current project was the last one and they were shutting them down, the Flight Sim market took the biggest hit from all of that. Consolidation has been going on since before then, but that year it was the most noticable.

I have yet to see one post on this forum with a link to where a bunch of telemarketers or telephone support for JCPenny type employees are being laid off because their jobs were sent to another country? I guess that is ok, but lay off a few game developers that have finished a project and there is no more work for right this second and you people get all inflammed and ready to burn someone at the stake.

I guess it is just Personal Projection of something that happened to you in the past and you are projecting yourself into the subject of the discussion, pretty common thing for most people to do.

Think about it, if you were the employer and you didn't have work for some of your employees or couldn't afford to pay them? I have been on both sides of this position before and will be again. It sucks but it is reality. That is one reason I sub-contract people for projects instead of making them W2 employees.

I end a contract, and don't get another in a certain period of time, the maid service and the lawn service is the first to get the boot. I clean the house and cut the lawn. Then I have to cut out other no-essentials, Track Days, Racing, DirecTV, ect. Do I have some kind of obligation to these people to keep them employed when I can't afford to? Nope . . Eidos doesn't have any obligation to 'bench' these people until the next project unless they have a contract with them saying so much.

How about G4 they fired everyone from TechTV and then re-hired some of them. Some people didn't get their jobs back for what ever reason, sucks but that is reality.

I guess until you have owned a company and been responsible for the life of the company you won't understand the reality that laying people off is NEVER as black and white as the press releases make it.

#64 I think Jarrod got the point when Jeff made it. No need to make it again and again and ....

Interesting thread though. Includes some experience from the people here who have actually been in the larger companies in game development and I see very few happy comments. I guess I should be happy I'm not in the game industry.. yet. Hell I'll take the lousy job security, 70 - 80 hour weeks and all the bad things with the good things just to get to do what I love instead of what makes my wallet happy =) I guess the people who have families to support would have a lot harder to live with such uncertain conditions and I'm sure I wouldn't be able to live that way once I have a family to support. And to quote Phil Carlisle from above:
"Luckily the game dev scene in america is healthy right now, so there's no a big issue in them getting jobs (you should see the amount of offers theyre getting :))"
Sounds like everyone just moved on to the next project and hopefully got a raise with the added experience they got from the project. Then again I'm not in the industry but it sure doesn't look like it sucks when you're looking in from the outside.

#65 Stephen that is a good article, it brings out one point. A game can be canceled at any point. I have worked on 3 that were shelved either during testing or right before ( as in hours ) being sent to the duplicator because of ridiculous reasons from upper management.

That is why I took a play out of the 'defense contractors contract playbook' ... a kill clause, that says you get paid a % of what you were going to get if the project gets cancelled. The closer to the end the less the %.

You can do the same thing in a practical sense in getting how long your contract should last in writing guaranteeing you a fixed minium amount of hours during that period of time. If you get "cancelled" for some reason out of your control ( not performance related ) you have a good solid foundation to get the rest of the money in court if you have to.

#66 Sounds like you have this whole thing figured out. But that doesn't address the issue that people are getting hired as regular employees, not contractors, then being fired at the end of projects. They're not paid hourly, they're paid by salary. They receive no kill clause compensation.

I may be naive and idealistic, but I think that workers should be able to trust their employers to a certain extent, and if you have to worry about execs lying to you so they can fire you on their terms, that's a huge breakdown of trust. Without trust, relationships - even contractual relationships - break down.

It's not enough to say, "Oh, they should have a contract; I have a contract and I'm doing great." That's like telling people in car accidents they should have driven more carefully. Maybe they were taking risks - or maybe the system needs to change to help prevent such accidents.

#67 I do very much agree with Ben.

Your exception does not prove the rule. Could / should the games industry work like the movie industry? Maybe. Does it currently? No.

Do you work people to the edge, then reward their hard work (seldom properly paid) by removing their job? That's short term maximising at the best, crippling long term viablity at worst. Wouldn't get away with it in any other industry, it's just explioting the general good nature that current exists in the gaming one. Once they kill that off... well things don't bode well.

Quote:this is not true any more because, building business apps quit being more lucrative about 5 years ago!

Riiiight, took me a whole 30 seconds of searching a job site to disprove that. Oh and do point that out to Microsoft / IBM etc. sometime, so they can not waste all those resources on non-game development. Next...

#68 Jarrod, youre completely missing the point. These guys were hired on the "you will have a job for the forseeable future" in the FULL KNOWLEDGE that it was untrue.

Very few companies that work that way stay in business too long.

If people have FULL DISCLOSURE about a situation, they can plan for it, but if its basically coming from some misdirection or backhanded dealings, then its plain morally wrong.

And arguing over contract points with a potential employer is one of the sure fire ways for them to say "no hire". At least thats the way *I* would see it.

Asking for cluases like "if you can the project I still get X%" isnt going to cut it either. Basically, contracts arent worth the paper theyre written on if the company you have the contract with is unethical and immoral.

In fact, weirdly, I heard a war story about Eidos's dealings in that department, along the lines of one of the Eidos directors saying "THere isnt a contract in the world we wouldnt ignore if it suited us" or similar.

Yes, the whole deal is sour. Just got to find the sweet stuff for yourself.

#69 As another one from the industry, I have to agree with Brian, Phil, Jeff, etc. that what stinks is that nobody in the game industry get hired for a project. If it were a contract job and you know how long it lasts for thats o.k. (but also the reason contactors usually charge more...)

As an industry we are trying to get out of the single young geek mentality and allow experianced family people to work and prosper. How the hell can anybody settle down, when that job you took with future plans, probably thinking "at least its a big company owned by Eidos", probably involved moving and buying a house (or at least a medium term rental agreement) gets removed without warning.

At least if you work in a startup, going bust is usually obvious months before its happens, so at least you can plan.

If the publishers want a contract style film model for the industry, thats fine but to take the bits that suits them WITHOUT giving the benefits to the developers just suck.

Just like TV/Books/Film (to borrow Origin's old tag line), "we create worlds", do you want to play in a world that its creators were unhappy making?, I certainly don't.

#70 Jarrod:

Yes, be prepared! Nothing is certain! You could get eaten by a bear while out on a walk tonight.

Does that quip pinch the right nerve? We're living in a civilized society (we're not out in the jungle anymore) and corporate America must be forced to acknowledge that fact.

Even outside of the game industry the business world has lost balance. We have many many CEO's making hundreds of millions of dollars while workers are paid $5.15 an hour. We have a faulty system that some people are taking advantage of while others CHOOSE not to. Ethics in business are at an all time low and that's more to the point.

If the game industry cannot support full time employees then something is wrong. Something is even more wrong when they choose to change the locks on employees without even letting them know in advance.

Survival of the fittest is not the point of life. A balanced quality of life over the whole population of the Earth is. The game industy is just one prime example of business bullshit that doesn't need to go down like it does.

I know about owning a business and there are tough choices to be made. One choice that could be made is to right size your business and don't get greedy. If you see the opportunity to expand make sure its for the long haul not just for a year because of a fad. These businesses are being run for the quick buck not for the long term and that is wrong.

#71 I'm not taking any sides here, but given a -large- (15+ team member during production, as a hypotethical size), project, how would you suggest a company keep on, or at least inform/pay "term" developers, after a large production cycle is complete and you move to post-production (or it's equivalent).

My project is (by current expectations) going to peak at 10+ developers at 1 year+ per dev, and 20+ artists (of all sorts) with approx 1.5 years term per. I cannot see any economic way of keeping a team of that size together once production is complete. At this point in the discussion it probably sounds like an empty promise, but I personally wouldn't hire a team of that size without making it abundantly clear some, if not many, of the positions were "term". Nonetheless, does anyone see any corporate/"expense sheet" solutions from the company angle?

#72 Phil, from what I have seen that may or may not have been the case, probably was. Thing is we will probably never know for sure what the actuall situation was.

Arguing morals is ridiculous, it was a business decision. I really doubt that anyone was cackling like a James Bond villian as everyone was getting sent home, or saying "see we really tricked them!"

I don't know the facts, but just as a rethorical example/question didn't most of the people abandon Dynamix when they got the word early that they were closing it down during the development cycle of Tribes 2? Where was the loyalty in that eh?

Either way programmers are becoming more and more the commodity than not. Hs been happening for years in the "general programming" areas, it is just now hitting the enteratinment side of the industry finally.

All the "how to" game development books are not going to help stem the commondization either.

My point is you can't have this entitlement attitude, I don't think you do. Everyone that beleives in this trust relationship is living in some fantasy land. That hasn't existed in a LONG time inthe software industry.

I don't need full disclosure, I have worked on enough cancel projects and mergers and just plain bad management to see this stuff coming miles away, anyone with any kind of common sense should be able to also, that is unless they are just fooling themselves.

I was a "salaried" employee at CNN/Turner when Time Warner bought them out, I had just decided to get out of entertainment software development for something more stable. I had actually turned down a couple of opportunities on the west coast because of the way game developers were treated.

Right, a week to the day after I was hired to run a department, the TimeWarner thing came thru and they dissolved my department, fired my boss, and her boss and the rest of the team 6 out of 8 people quit. I still had 4 months to build CNNsi and 3 more for en Espanol! We went on to build 2 brand new television networks and revamp a third in a year. I was laid off right near the end of the 12 months, with "sorry there is no work you did too good of a job, we can hire 4 guys to do support for what we are paying you".

Was I mad, hell no I did such a good job and I SAW it coming, I had already gotten another gig lined up contracting again and was able to take the 4 weeks serverance and double it up.

I have never ever had a single W2 or "salaried" position in anything havnig to do with software development that did not disolve after the project shipped.

So I think my advice standsl; treat everything as a contract position and be agile, be ready for change, be ready to "get screwed" or whatever you want to characterize it as, it ain't going to get any better, just worse.

See the longer the development cycles the longer between titles because the publishers will want to milk all the profit out of there games.

It is already happening, used to be games were released year round, now there are definately "seasons" where games are relased juse like movies, hell the cost the same or more to make! The number of "big studio" titles is going to decrease and probably be around IP like the EA Sports line where they crank out a 2005, 2006 ect. And yearly updates to familar character based titles.

I am sure that Halo 2 has been ready for a long time, they are just waiting for the sales of Halo to bottom out. Publishers are very careful not to canabilize their own titles now days, and as the "big studio" publishers dwindle like the movie studios, they will start to try and avoid canablizing each others titles as well.

And like the movies, indepenant titles will have a place in the more rapid dev cycle, cheaper to produce and niche markets that the "big studios" are ignoring.

#73 Even in the movie industry people who are hired on a project basis usually expect that there will be another project to move onto when the current one is completed. They are often told this when they are hired as a "project" hire.

I don't think the companies hire people with the expectation to lay them off when the project is over, in any case. Projects go over budget, expected future work falls through. But that's not really an excuse, it's just poor planning.

It's really not a good way to treat people, and it saddens me that this is becoming more common in the games industry. It only hurts the companies in the long run, boucing people around like that just creates resentment, dilutes your 'proprietary' techniques, and drives salaries up. So much shortsightedness.

At least with indy games you know in advance that you'll end up unemployed when your project is complete. And during its development. :)

#74 ::has blender going::

smoothies? yes?

#75 Hi All,

I normally lurk but figured I'd come out and comment on this one with my $0.02. There is IMHO an overall time and human resources management problem in the industry. Developers are often expected to work terribly long hours without overtime that are probably downright illegal in most of the states they are working in. Companies often fall behind in their product schedules and hire more people in an attempt to compensate and work them to the bone. When they do this hiring they generally do not admit to it being a just for the project in question. They'll tell the hiree about other ideas that they'll will hopefully be able to work on, and even go so far as to give glowing reviews and bonuses the week before they let people go. Promises will be made, but there may be no intention of keeping them because the hiree will be gone in 6 months. That's just not cool.

I think part of the problem is that there is a certain "fratboy" mentality that has pervaded the industry for a long time. Doing a 16 hour shift is some sort of right of passage. You work long hours and do crazy things because you want to be cool. If you're not "cool" then you're bad for morale. You don't let people know they're going to be fired because you don't want people looking for other jobs as the project comes to a close. Whatever the reason, more and more developers get to a point where they've over hired just to get a project done and out. A project that startes with a team of 6 can end up with a team of 50. Finding ways to deal with this problem will become more and more important especially as more developers have workers who have families. An industry that was founded on the work ethics of geeky single males has got to mellow out as this happens or come crashing down.

I've talked with people about the ideas of unions before, but that is a whole can of worms I don't think the industry can tackle just yet (at least not maturely). Mostly because the publishers hav ALL of the power and the developers wind up like strung out junkies doing whatever their sugar-daddy publisher tells them to just to get that next check in the bank and survive. This trickles all the way down tot he individual. It's a wholely dysfunctional industry right now.

I think if the industry starts to sway more towards an honest contract based business where developers have smaller teams and then contract out work to other specialized teams/houses then we have a chance of balancing ourselves out. This would follow the model used by animation studios. A typical cartoon studio will do a lot of their prep work with a small team and then send various parts of the production out to other groups to get finished under supervision. This allows for secondary industries like arthouses, and special effects labs to grow. Before we can really do that we need to establish a common workflow and language that we all share.

This may not happen with the big publishers and developers anytime soon. I think the process falls on the shoulders of the medium sized indies. When independents working with contract houses are able to organize them selves to put out products taht rival and surpass the polished crap of the bigboys, the big boys will have to find alternate ways of producinng their product or step aside for a new wave of big boys. Keep an eye on Wideload and companies that follow suit to see how long it takes us to get it right and how things change (or don't) in the industry as a result. I think every craft based industry has had to go through this growing pain. Now it's our turn. In the mean time consider requesting termination clauses in the contracts you sign.

When we've unified and matured on that level then I think we'll be more free to begin to develop games as an artform (posibbly enven dropping the "game" restriction) and be respected enough to be able to tackle subject matters, experiences, and perspectives that we wouldn't even dream of today.

-Allen

#76 I just remembered this:

That's right, I have very little to add that wouldn't be beating several dead horses already in this topic.

#77
I think this one is really more fitting. :)

Corporate reality is great, but when developers are actively mislead I think something has gone very wrong in the industry. There's nothing wrong with hiring people just to fire them when the job is done - as long as you say that when you hire them. It's unrealistic and on very questionable moral ground to make 50 hires in the short-term, promise them all positions, and discourage them from looking for jobs when the project ends.

#78

Quote:I don't know the facts, but just as a rethorical example/question didn't most of the people abandon Dynamix when they got the word early that they were closing it down during the development cycle of Tribes 2? Where was the loyalty in that eh?

rhetorical question? pfft...

Yeah, it is very clear you don't know the facts. There was no mass abandonment during the development cycle of Tribes2. In fact, it was during this development cycle that Vivendi restructured not once, but twice, and the head honcho came down from corporate several times to assure everyone at the studio that they were not going to close us down despite the grim performace of Sierra at the time, good times were around the corner, and that they considered their 'people' to be their most valuable asset.

It blows my mind that you continue to miss the point of what everyone has been saying in this thread. You keep spouting the same old stuff like no one is understanding what you are talking about.. we get it.. at least I do. Take some of the mountains of money you make and go buy a clue.

Did I know the closure was coming? Yah.. I think you would have to have been deluded to think that it was not going to happen. I was prepared.. I had a job offer the day after the 'official' closure of the studio. Most of the people I know at Dynamix stayed to the bitter end, and in the last months, were working as hard as they could to try to make the best of what we had to work with, and many decided to take a
'wait and see' stance specifically because of the promises made by corporate.

I am not saying the studio should have been kept open solely for the benefit of the employees, but coming down several times to tell us, in person, that they were NOT going to shut us down (with them knowing full well they were)is pretty lame. Call it 'the way business works' or whatever you want. It was lame, it was deceitful, and it hurt quite a few people who had put in the better part of their lives (some with 10+ years in games, with kids, etc..) to help grow the company. I was not there early on, but I have a great deal of respect for those who stuck it out at Dynamix for so long, often with bad management at the corporate level (due to the multiple buyouts of Sierra) and continued to strive to make great games.

#79 Now, we have a choice here.. we can let the bullshit go on, and if it continues un challenged, we can see an eventual collpase of the current system (much like what happened with the old movie studio system) that will be replaced with a new system that is more effective for creating entertainment software effectively, and as a long term proposition and a valid carreer choice. We can be a part of the group that works to make it better, or we can bury our heads in the sand and let it happen naturally, undirected and unchallenged, as it slowly decays over the next ten years.

I choose to try to play a small part in making the business of making games better by doing what I can to make good games using sound software and entertainment development practices and effetive management. If we can make fun games repeatedly, and do it cheaper than others, we will eventually come out on top. If we can't , we won't. That simple. I am not asking for a handout.

From a business perspective.. some of what I see going on at the big shops just blows my mind. Short term gain, long term pain. Good business decision? yeah. for the stockholders this year.. as a long term strategy.. not buying it.

Personally, I think we are eventaully moving toward a 'contract' type system. For now, we will make our own games and continue to be a service house until we get enough money and clout to be one the small 'directing' crew on a big title. If it ever happens, the bulk of production will be outsourced.. keeping costs low.. keep the core team lean and mean.

It may never happen, but we are positioning ourselves to take advantage of the opportunities that will arise as the system continues to decay.

I have made my choice, and it involved saying 'enough' to the bullshit and fuck you to the big studios that would use me as a tool and toss me on the trash heap. I run a business now, and I am as ethical and upfront as I can be.

I want to make a lot of money doing this, but I am not going to sink to a low level in order to achieve it. My value structure prevents me from resorting to such tactics. If this means I fail or that I only end up scraping by, then so be it. I will go to my grave with a clear conscience.

I made a choice a long time ago that being happy with myself, who I am, and how I live my life is far more important to me that money. It is a deliberate choice, and it may at times hurt me financially, but I am not going to change who I am in order to get rich.

If I am a chump in your eyes or you think me stupid for being an idealist, so be it, I really don't care. Reading your posts above, I think I get a clear picture of who you are and what drives you. I think you are an intelligent person, and I don't wholly disagree with much of what you are saying, but your delivery strikes a cord in me. I feel sorry for you, I am glad I am not living your life, and I am glad I don't have to work with you.

#80

Quote:I'm not taking any sides here, but given a -large- (15+ team member during production, as a hypotethical size), project, how would you suggest a company keep on, or at least inform/pay "term" developers, after a large production cycle is complete and you move to post-production

@Stephan,

I would suggest a combination of contract developers and outsourcing. If you are working on a TGE based game, and need art assets that you can pay for, send me an email (in my profile).

If you are bringing on people for short term employment, just let them know you are doing so and work with them to help them get in and out of the project cleanly and with no headaches. This would include letting them know upfront, possibly letting them work strange shifts so they can freelance or look for other jobs at the end of the project.. don't make them sign no-competes (other than for obviously competing products), give them time to look for a new gig at the end of the project. I would have no problem workig like a madman for 3-6 months if I knew that it was going to end and the money I made would allow me to spend the next 3-6 months with my family between gigs.

I personally would not keep people on if there were nothing for them to do. If your business/studio does not have the resources to start up another project to keep everyone [i]productively[i] busy, then you can't keep them around.

Honesty about the situation during the project will, in my opinion, allow fopr everyone to make good decisions about what they need to do, and provided that the people are professional, should not make a difference in their ability to commit to the project to completion.