News broke out on 27/04 regarding Naughty Dog: their ‘The Last of Us: Part II’ ending and video content was allegedly leaked due to an apparently mistreated member of staff, allegedly due to payment issues. The team at TechStomper aren’t here to get the latest scoop by posting soul-destroying leaks that will urinate on the proverbial chips of the remainder of a hardworking development team.
But we did think it would be a great time to highlight the shadier business practices of the gaming industry and promote the importance of developer mental and physical health.
According to Fortunly.com, nearly 50% of game developers feel that the games industry should be unionised. This is a wise idea considering figures point to a 13.4% growth in the console market alone, with the global games industry set to make a whopping $160 billion this year according to Newzoo.com (COVID-19 dependent, of course).
With the gaming industry-dwarfing Hollywood box office numbers year on year, why are developers and others working in the games industry being treated so poorly? Furthermore, why are these isolated incidents resulting in the affected making a cry for help such as leaking an unreleased game? Or worse still, the mass layoffs of the closure of TellTale in 2018.
Houses Built on Crunch
Unfortunately, unhealthy and unsustainable work ethics have been the springboard of success for many big developers, often referred to as crunch. This was glorified in the build-up to the release of Halo 5: Guardians with dev videos detailing instances of crunch times for an E3 showcase and player testing.
Some developers such as Epic Games state officially that overtime is completely voluntary. Whilst the overbearing work environment forces employees to sometimes do 70-100 hour weeks when building up to big releases such as the smash hit ‘Fortnite’. Whilst hiding behind the ‘one off’ and ‘voluntary’ loop-holes, no one is considering the long term health effects of these employees. Also the work / life balance of people in general is so important, the COVID-19 worldwide lockdown has highlighted this to many.
So, how do we combat these types of practices? Boycott the accountable studios? Maybe boycott AAA’s all together? These resolutions can be found on any gaming based messaging board without doing much digging. Two wrongs don’t make a right, it’s one thing to have poor working conditions, but to actively try and damage an industry both gamers and developers love is not the answer.
Christopher Dring put together a brilliant article in 2018 over on Gameindustry.biz on how to avoid Development Crunch and highlighting studios that were against the practice altogether. Casper Fields of Wish Studios went on record to summarize the causes of crunch during his journalism career:
“poor planning by (often inexperienced) managers; under-staffing of the team; over-specification of the product; and refusal or inability of middle management to push back on demands from above or outside. It’s usually a fatal combination of those factors.”
Hard Work Pays Off (Your Da was Right)
Whilst conducting my research for this article, I came to the conclusion that people seem to have a general consensus that hard work pays off. Whilst it’s a great ethic and something to aspire to, we also need to consider that repeatedly headbutting a brick wall won’t eventually get the job done. All it does is impact the workers quality of work and themselves, which leads to the use of better tools more equipped for the job to help said worker. With Developers in mind, this could include a longer development period, healthier hours of work to increase productivity and general non-slave driving attitudes towards creativity.
“2018’s Best Places to Work” by GamesIndustry.biz showcases studios such as Creative Assembly and Criterion as amazing employers that care about their staff. You might be wondering why am I linking to an article that’s nearly two years old? Well, this proves a point that steps were being made to improve work life for developers even back then, and that not all Studios in the gaming industry follow these barbaric work practices.
Whilst we don’t condone the actions of either Naughty Dog or the now infamous leaker of The Last of Us: Part II, following the footsteps of industry leaders in developer care and fairness in the workplace could effectively combat revolts such as this and maybe leaks in general. Games workers usually get into the industry through their love of gaming – dev houses need to stop abusing that passion.
