[game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education

[Anthony Hart-Jones]

On 04/02/11 13:32, Bill Crosbie wrote:

> Sometimes creative work necessitates long hours. But the difference 

> here is that creative professionals in game development are not 

> compensated at the point where those hours are incurred in the 

> development process. 


   Yeah...  I have worked five consecutive 13-hour days in the theatre, 
but the culture was different.  It cost X-amount to hire the venue for a 
day and so you did get-ins as soon before the event as you could, worked 
long hours and got compensated for the hours worked, whether it was five 
8-hour days or three 13-hour days.

   In the games industry, the assumption must be that crunch is the 
employee's fault somehow because it is almost universally unpaid and the 
only way that is conscionable would be if it was the employee's fault.  
Some companies (like Jagex in the UK, for example) have strict rules 
against overtime under ay circumstances, some others pay overtime, but 
it seems that unpaid overtime is the norm.

   In a stroke of irony, the UK's technical theatre union (BECTU) is 
also open to games developers, but most developers are not members and 
are not even aware they have a union available.  Why is the 
games-industry so union-averse?