Video game developer

A video game developer is a software developer (a business or an individual) that creates computer or video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game system, such as the Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, or the Sony Playstation 2 or may develop for a variety of systems including PCs.

Quality of life

Video game development in the United States is performed in an extremely casual business environment. T-shirts and sandals are common work attire, and work hours are usually flexible; many developers start the work day at 10:00 AM, though employees usually work at least a full 40 hours a week. Employees are paid fairly well for what seems to outsiders to be light work. Many developers have some sort of profit-sharing plan to reward their employees.

Related Topics:
United States - Profit-sharing

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Crunch time

Most video game developers are notorious for overworking their employees. "Crunch time" is the point at which management realizes that the team is experiencing "slippage": it is not going to achieve everything needed in order to complete the milestone on time, meaning the publisher will not pay the developer until the milestone is indeed completed; and since most development companies are such small operations, this presents a real risk that the company won't be able to pay its employees on time. Worse threats occur when it becomes apparent that the team won't be able to ship the game, as a whole, on time.

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An extremely common management response to this is to invoke "crunch time", dictating a 60- to 80-hour work week with work over the weekends, in the hope that the team will be able to catch up. The complexity of the workflow in video game creation makes it very difficult to manage the team's schedules, meaning that it is an unusual project that does not surprise its managers with slippage at some point.

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Controversially, employees in the United States are not paid overtime pay when crunching, as all developers maintain salaried employees. Salaried employees are classified as exempt, who are not paid by the hour, and are classified as "professionals". Therefore, most state laws on overtime pay do not apply.

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Attention to crunching came to something of a head in 2004 when a blog entry titled "ea spouse", a manifesto of sorts, was published. Railing against the cruelty of crunch time, it was posted by an anonymous person claiming to be the fiancee of an employee of Electronic Arts. This person said her life was being indirectly destroyed by the company's work policy. This led to a great deal of debate in the industry, but without any visible changes until March 2005, when Electronic Arts internally announced that it was planning to extend overtime pay to some of its employees not currently eligible. The underlying problem of poor scheduling remains.

Related Topics:
2004 - Blog - Fiancee - Electronic Arts - 2005

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