WIGI Conference Notes Part 4 - The Ultimate Challenge, Balacing Work and Personal Life

...continued from Part 3...

Panelists: Jen Seward from DigiPen, Shannon Loftis from Microsoft Game Studios, and Sheri Graner Ray from Sony Online Entertainment
Moderator: Ellen Beeman from Microsoft Corporation

As I mentioned before, the game industry has a higher employee turnover even than professional sports. This panel covered both the reasons for this and potential solutions. It's not as easy to categorize the various responses this time so I'm going to just kind of write it up more in summary style where necessary.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away (okay, in 1989 in the game industry) it was common for nine months of the year to work twelve hour days, seven days a week. Unfortunately, it was still common recently and can still happen. Graner Ray feels, however, that the industry is finally starting to move away from this tendency.

Loftis pointed out that, early in her career, many games were killed before they could actually get anywhere. This factor made her anxious to actually finish and ship a game, and so she ended up taking on more than she could actualyl handle ... yet, at the same time, she also got her best annual review, showing where the industry was putting its priorities. Yet, when she looked at her own work statistics she realized it wasn't worth sinking so much time into her work life. This isn't just an issue for parents, either.

Seward said that when she was in the industry, all of her projects involved overtime to the point that she was working 80 to 100 hours a week. As a producer, she shipped fifteen titles in just two years because of it, but she had to leave.

In general, when asked what people can do to improve their quality of life while working in the game industry, the first suggestion was to schedule time for yourself in ahead of time and stick with it. It helps to have a support network and a mentor/sponsor, essentially someone you can check in with occasionally who can help you determine if you're on the right track for your future plans. These plans hopefully include sanity and some form of mental stability. It also apparently helps to have a reason to actually leave work. Take classes, pick up a hobby, find something that is completely unrelated to work to help you change gears at the end of the day. It's also important to learn to manage tasks and estimate well. Often it's not the end of the world if you know early on that a project can't finish on time, IF you let everyone know that. Then they can adjust their schedules accordingly.

Some companies are actually trying to focus more on quality of life. Even so, you have to take personal responsibility for your own personal life. On top of that, learn to include time in your project schedules for "polish" at the end, so everything isn't always a rush.

Things companies can do to improve the work/life issue for their employees are:

• Managers can prevent newbies to the industry from working until they burn out, which is a real problem. Graner Ray said that she actually has gone to the circuit breaker and cut the power to the building in order to force people to go home in the past. Rested employees give better quality work.


• Companies tend to rewards the "Firefighters," those who manage to burn the midnight oil and pull a project that's behind back onto schedule to meet deadlines. Don't forget to reward those who don't get themselves into situations where they have to do this. Reward good planning and getting it right the first time.
  


• Look at concepts such as job sharing and working remotely.
  


• During "crunch time," which is when time is getting very short, managers need to help employees de-stress. Seward said she once sent employees to a shooting range to blow off steam. This can also be a time when employees never get to see their families. Interesting tactics involve paying to have dinner catered at work and inviting all the families to come and have dinner with the employees when they otherwise are barely getting to go home for weeks on end. Crunch time actually comes at different times for different parts of the team. Art, programming, Q&A, and writing all have different cycles.
  


• No adding whiz-bang features during beta testing.
  


• Remember in general that employees have lives and need to be able to live them. Work is not life.


• Communication between the company and employees is essential.


• As in the rest of the tech industry, managers are often promoted from within the technical ranks, in this case from artists, programmers, and so on. Yet, these people are not typically given any training on how to manage teams or people in general.
  


• Women have, on average, 3 hours less per day than men (I would say that this refers to women who aren't single, particularly mothers, but I could be mis-interpreting). Thus, quality of life issues hit them first. Consider them the canaries in the coal mine if they're burning out at a rapid rate, and don't think for a second that men don't suffer too.


• Using more middleware in games rather than always reinventing the wheel would reduce the workload at various parts of the game creation process.
  

While many people like the idea of being programmers for games because it pays best, programmers also have the worst quality of life in the industry as far as hours worked. At the same time, they also get more creative stimulus because they have a shot of seeing their name on the box. If you love your work, it can certainly help. Part of enjoying work is not continuously working on games that all seem the same. Make sure to express yourself in meetings with your own, unique point of view to help avoid this problem.

The most important thing is to try to get a feel for a company's quality of life balance before you sign on. According to the speakers, if you don't stick with your first game industry job for 2 1/2 to 3 years (barring companies who go under) you seriously hurt your career.

When asked what books they recommended for people to help them address the issues in this talk, the speakers answered with the following:



... finished in Part 5 ...