[game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education

[Anthony Hart-Jones]

   This (John's suggestion) is what I would do...

   Teaching them how crunch feels is all well and good, but it is much 
better to help them understand why crunch happens.  If you give them a 
time-scale that is easily achievable, but leave them the chance to a) 
add content they deem appropriate and b) get complacent, crunch is 
usually inevitable.  If you do this soon after teaching them about 
proper project management and scheduling, it would also serve as a 
practical time-management exercise.

   From experience of crunch as a designer, there are two main reasons 
for crunch:
         1) someone (usually in management or design) promises more than 
can be delivered in the time you have left
         2) early deadlines are too easily hit and instead of getting 
ahead of schedule, you slow down

   In a real-world example of the latter, you might get three tasks 
which are each assigned two weeks; task one only takes one week, task 
two requires three weeks and task three fits in the two-week slot.  Give 
this situation to a student and they learn a valuable lesson either way; 
the conscientious student realises that they dodged a bullet by starting 
task two a week early, while a typical student encounters crunch and 
gets an insight into how easily it can happen even when you appear to be 
ahead of schedule.
   The best example of the former situation would be to give them an 
impossible task (twice as much work as they have time, perhaps) and then 
grade them based on what should realistically be achievable - the three 
valid responses (from worst to best) would be a) under-delivering after 
they run out of time, b) crunching when they realise too late that they 
underestimated the task and c) pointing out that the task is impossible 
and making a counter-offer.

   I once did option c) at university; the maths didn't add up in a 
lecture on 'entrepreneurial strategy', so my entire strategy consisted 
of 'close the factory' because it was the most profitable thing the 
hypothetical company could do.

  - Anthony

On 03/02/11 17:53, John Hopson wrote:

> I think the best preparation that you can do on this front is to make 

> sure your students have the experience of working on an extended 

> project with lots of moving pieces and a schedule to live up to.  

> They'll naturally feel the same pressures that industry folks do when 

> they face the choice between cutting a feature or crunching to get it 

> in the game, especially if you're a little rigid on the grading criteria.

> Of course, you can also stack the deck slightly in the planning stage 

> to ensure that a "teachable moment" will occur.  :)

> John

>

> On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 9:33 AM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com 

> <mailto:ai864 at yahoo.com>> wrote:

>

>     There's a really interesting thread going on at the QoL SIG right

>     now and I wanted to bring a splinter of that thread over here. So

>     I wanted to bring up the following for discussion:

>

>     First: what kinds of QoL discussions do you have as part of your

>     formal education of students? For example, I introduce the topic

>     in my Industry Survey class (the "ea_spouse" letter is required

>     reading, and we discuss the implications and effects of that

>     letter on the industry as a whole), and I also regularly remind my

>     students of the sometimes harsh conditions in my other classes,

>     particularly if a student complains that they didn't have time to

>     finish an assignment or that they have a lot of demands on them

>     outside of class ^_^

>

>     Second: is "crunch" or long work hours something that is (or

>     should be) part of the student experience for someone who wants to

>     break in to industry? On the one hand, we should be doing our best

>     to simulate real-world working conditions so that students are

>     appropriately trained and prepared for the reality of the industry

>     (this also likely makes them more marketable as well, if they have

>     survived a difficult dev cycle). On the other hand, the industry

>     (particularly the IGDA) acknowledges that excessive crunch is a

>     problem, and introducing students to what it is like may make them

>     more likely to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it (and it

>     doesn't do anything to help the problem of burnout -- really, are

>     we doing our students any favors if they graduate, get placed in a

>     job, then leave the industry a few years later?).

>

>     What do you all think? How do you actually handle this on a

>     personal (instructor) level, program level, and institutional

>     level? How do you think schools SHOULD handle the subject?

>

>     - Ian

>

>

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