[game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education

[Jose P. Zagal]

On 2/3/2011 11:33 AM, Ian Schreiber 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 ^_^



I recommend students read the following (which we then discuss):

Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig S. de Peuter, "EA Spouse" and the Crisis of 
Video Game Labour: Enjoyment, Exclusion, Exploitation, and Exodus, 
Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 31, No. 3 (2006), 
http://www.cjc-online.ca/index.php/journal/article/viewArticle/1771/1893



> 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?).


We should not encourage students to "crunch", or expect that they will, 
or assign them work such that they have no way of completing it without 
having to put in crunch-style hours. As educators we have the moral 
obligation to help our students become professionals that can (and 
should) make changes for the better. Crunch (or overtime) is just wrong. 
And it doesn't work either (there's over one hundred years of research 
from a wide variety of industries that supports this). The 40 hour work 
week came out of research on improving productivity at Ford. It was the 
optimal for increasing worked productivity and reducing costs. In other 
words, it was in the best interest of the company... :-)


-- 
José P. Zagal
Assistant Professor
College of Computing and Digital Media
DePaul University

http://www.ludoliteracy.com/
http://facsrv.cs.depaul.edu/~jzagal