[game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education

[Kim Blake]

After the ea_spouse thing, EA conducted an investigation into their own QA dept because they thought the figures were wrong. They weren't: it was just that their productivity had shot up once they were no longer working stupid hours...
 
There's a blog post by Erin Hoffman somewhere giving facts and figures.
 
 
From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Bill Crosbie
Sent: 04 February 2011 13:32
To: IGDA Game Education Listserv
Subject: Re: [game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education
 
I love this thread and I'm going to try to make use of some of Philip's techniques in my class.

I have a question for you, Jose, about the 40 hour work week and Ford. The processes there were for efficiency of assembly line workers. Fewer errors when workers aren't over tired. I can see the parallel between being more efficient when you have a good nights sleep (GGJ aftermath still fresh in my mind.). 

But with relatives that work in film production, I know that there are exceptionally long hours there and some 'crunch' to get things done on time. The main distinction I see is that those fields are unionized and there is a financial penalty in terms of overtime for poor management. 

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. 
 
 
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... :-)
 
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