[game_edu] Qol, "crunch" and Education

[Ian Schreiber]

Bill says:


>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.). 

>


Well, this is the part where IMHO the arguments for QoL get a lot more 
difficult, because "measuring quantitative productivity" is much easier in an 
assembly-line environment than a creative-knowledge field. One thing I can say 
is that "fewer errors when workers aren't tired" still fits the bill just as 
well in game development -- ever seen a tired programmer check in code that 
broke the build... or worse, a tired IT guy who accidentally deleted the entire 
source code tree?

Even measuring things that are quantitative (e.g. suicide rates,  incidence of 
reported workplace injuries) are difficult to study,  because of all the 
confounding variables and reliance on self-reporting.  However, the studies I 
have seen that attempted this were all pretty clear: extended crunch has a 
linear effect over 8 hours/day OR 40 hours/week, and that the known effects 
include increased sick time, injuries, depression, suicide, and increased 
incidence of smoking and drinking. So it is pretty clear that, if nothing else, 
crunch is hazardous to human health. (The question of whether there is a 
productivity payoff, however, I couldn't find in my literature search. Anyone 
care to help with that? I'm sure the QoL SIG would be grateful. :-)


Anthony writes:

>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.


There was actually an interesting thread on the QoL SIG recently about the 
attitudes and assumptions behind crunch. One point raised is that in a lot of 
ways it comes down to a lack of trust on both sides. Management doesn't trust 
development to do their job without a fire lit under their arse, and development 
doesn't trust management to set realistic schedules. So when a PM comes to a 
programmer and says "how long do you think Task X will take you"... well, if the 
programmer doesn't trust the PM then he'll give an overly large estimate, if the 
PM doesn't trust the programmer they'll reduce the estimate too much, programmer 
will say it's not realistic, PM will think programmer is just being difficult 
and will get it done just fine once he settles down, no one ends up being happy. 
And this is even without the typical programmer optimism, i.e. both sides' 
failure to account for the fact that an 8-hour programming task takes far more 
than one work day because of meetings, interruptions, and after-the-fact bug 
fixes. So... yes, in some cases management does assume it's the employee's 
fault, employees assume it's management's fault, and in a lot of cases it takes 
a dual effort from both sides to screw up this bad ;-)


Scott pointed out:

>The timing of this thread, in the week following Global Game Jam, is hilarious.


I should have figured that would come into the discussion, just as it did on the 
QoL list.

For the record, if you watch this year's GGJ keynote, I specifically encourage 
participants to get a good night's sleep and to take regular breaks. GGJ and QoL 
are not mutually exclusive, we at GGJ actively encourage safe-and-sane work 
habits, and if the participants choose to ignore our warnings then it is their 
right to learn this lesson the hard way.

Furthermore, note that there is a HUGE difference between industry crunch, and 
GGJ. Working late for a couple nights on a weekend does NOT have nearly the 
negative effects on health and productivity as working late for six months. It 
is the extended effects of crunch without respite that are harmful, more than a 
short-term "long week" with compensatory R&R following. For the same reason, 
arguments about how "students crunch anyway" because they slack off and then 
pull an all-nighter before the assignment is due, don't really hold water for 
me. If an assignment is short enough that an all-nighter or two can get it done, 
then that is not even CLOSE to the kind of experience these students will feel 
when they're thrown into the meat grinder. If anything, successfully pulling 
all-nighters is extremely damaging -- not because of the "crunch" itself, but 
because it reinforces an untrue lesson that you can work long hours to get the 
job done. This may be true to an extent in the short term on small projects, but 
it completely falls apart once you have even a medium-sized project. 


As I saw in a game once: "It wasn't until my Boards that it began to occur to me 
that nights aren't infinitely long."

- Ian



      
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