How much is too much when it comes to the infamous development “crunch time?” What do the people who work on developing games deserve in terms of both pay and working conditions?
Well to answer that question, Michael Pachter, a high-profile gaming research analyst for Wedbush Securities, decided to share his less than enlightened insights:
“I don’t know anybody in game development who calls it a 9-5 job,” Pachter said. “I’ve never heard a developer say ‘I don’t work overtime and I don’t work weekends’. If you’re getting into the industry – if you’re going to be a developer - you know you’re going to work plenty of hours.”
“I think there’s a legitimate complaint if crunch time is never-ending,” he said. “Crunch should be the last three to six months of game development.”
However he notes,
“If you are a salaried employee – if you’re not told what to do – then you are master of your own domain and you don’t get overtime,” he added. “I do get that it is a bad and unfair business practice to work 18 months non-stop overtime, [but] I don’t think anybody was entitled to overtime pay.”
“I think [the point] that everyone is missing is that, if a game is good – and L.A. Noire was good – there will be a profit pool, and there will be bonuses,” he said. “My guess is that Mr. McNamara is going to be able to compensate his employees and they’re going to make a lot more than just their hourly pay. And I think they’re going to get compensated for overtime.”
Pachter seems to be saying that the current system works, and that it hasn’t really crossed the line into becoming unfair. His reasoning only begs the question though, where does that line exist? How many work hours a year is too much? What’s the minimal amount of profit sharing before companies can be considered to be exploiting their workers?
Looking at overtime pay as an example, Pachter wants to make it an issue of pay. But what most developers seem to be complaining about isn’t that they should be paid more, but that they should be required to work less. And this is originally what the intent of overtime pay laws were. By making overtime labor more expensive for companies, those companies would in return stop making their employees work so much. So it’s not the lower employees expect too much compensation, it’s that companies lack regard for their workers, and see them only as expendable assets.
Like Team Bondi, which while developing L.A. Noire’s boasted a notorious revolving door where as one former employee explained, “We were looked at as a disposable resource, basically. If you weren't in the 'inner circle', you were just a resource to be burned through,"
Plus, not only are these employees not paid overtime, but the profit sharing Pachter claims will be their reward (in the form of bonuses) won’t be seen by any of those who got burnt out early.
When thinking of all those employees taken on in low level, sometimes entry level capacities, and then expected to work anywhere from 60 hours a week normally, to 90 hours a week when approaching deadlines, it looks like Pachter completely misses the point.
In the case of Team Bondi, there will be tens, possibly even hundreds of employees who never see a dime of the bonuses due to L.A. Noire’s success, or of the overtime they put in while with the company, something that needs to be taken into account. But that’s just all in the game right?
Pachter seems to think so, and despite these cold hearted comments, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s supported some controversial positions.
Like when he called Gamers’ Voice a bunch “crybabies” for threatening to report Activision to the Office of Fair Trading due to buggy versions of Black Ops for PC and PS3.
But even taking into account Pachter’s natural inflammatory style, he sounds more tone def than usual here. I understand that he’s a great analyst, and he does have a lot of important insight into the gaming market, but it’s thoughtless comments like this that make people think the above company practices are just an inherent part of the industry, rather than abusive policies that need to be reformed.
For instance, he doesn’t think game developers would benefit from forming an association similar to the Screen Actors or Writers West Guilds:
“I think unions are in business to protect workers from, I think, dangerous working conditions and unfair labor practices. Sweatshops should have unions but games studios, which tend to pay people a lot of money, shouldn’t,” he said. “I just don’t think people who make over $100,000 a year need a whole lot of protection cause they might have to work overtime.”
Sweatshops should have unions? Sounds good, since that’s exactly how another former Team Bondi employee described the employer when speaking about why he left the company,
"I left because of stress and working conditions, mainly. But the trigger was this: I received a reprimand for 'conduct and punctuality' for being 15 minutes late to work. I arrived at 9:15am – despite the fact I had only left work around 3:15am the same day, and paid for my own taxi home! I never would have thought you could put a sweat shop in the Sydney CBD."
So perhaps developers need unions after all.
In addition, though, there’s Pachter’s point about how game developers already make lots of money. Basically, his argument is: you’re already in a lucrative profession so stop whining and get on with it.
That neglects one of the central purposes of unions though, which is to make sure profits are shared in an equitable way, between all contributers, not just the shareholders and upper management. Being salaried at $100,000 a year may be great, but if the game you worked on is going to bring the developer and publisher in tens of millions in profits, some of that needs to go to those who were a part of the project, from the head of the company all the way down to the “graduate junior” employees. Until developers have more leverage, there’s no way they could force companies to rewrite contracts in a more employee conscious fashion.
The problem with Pachter’s view is that he muddles together a discussion of what game developers deserve, and what the current environment will give them. Thus, he’ll make the value laden claim that developers don’t deserve to be paid for overtime, but defends it by saying something like, “If you want to be an hourly employee, go build automobiles, and what will happen is they’ll close down your autoplant some day and you’ll be out of work.”
Reminding us of the competitive marketplace and faltering manufacturing sector have nothing to do with the normative claims that many video game developers are exploited by the companies that hire them.
Pachter may think those who decry these practices are just another bunch of “crybabies,” but the truth of the matter isn’t nearly as superficial as the way in which he’s discussed it.