Cyberpunk 2077 has involved months of crunch, despite past promises
polygon.com
polygon.com
Saw it what it did to our team, destroyed multiple relationships, the product suffered for it and overall both titles we're a disaster.
It cuts in more than one way, aside from some really rare cases the industry compensation is abysmal compared to traditional software engineering. I basically doubled my take home salary leaving the industry while also having a sane work life balance.
Rami Ismail of Nuclear Throne sums is up well[1]:
> In these situations we don't even expect everyone to get through unscathed. It's like management calculates the amount of churn, of burnout, of careers, relations, happiness that will be lost and goes "well, that's not too big a sacrifice to undo the damage of our incompetence".
Fuck em. They deserve nothing for putting a team through hell like that. Chances are they aren't the ones to pay for the damage their crunch does in the end.
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/tha_rami/status/13356988209702543...
That’s the game industry.
Thinks I learned from it:
- It's very daunting.
- It's quite bad for your health, especially your mental health.
- It's bad for productivity. Which means it's a fatal cycle: you do crunch time => because of stress and exhaustion you are less productive => you need to do even more crunch because you where not productive enough.
- It's bad for quality. Sure all your tests pass and the many problem(s) seems fixed, but there is a good chance that you will have to pay extra in the long run due to technical dept or just sub-optimal design.
- It's bad for creativity. I could more than one time majorly reduce my work by just reflecting on what is actually needed (in difference to what seems to be needed, is asked for by your team lead (i.e. not your customer)). The chance for this to happen under crunch is continuously decreasing with increasing frequency of crunch.
- EDIT: Because of the last 3 points, it's bad for getting things done in time as they will likely take longer on a "work done per hour" scalar.
Very brief crunches can maybe push you over a deadline but will (in my experience) result in lower overall productivity per hour (and higher defect rates) for the entire crunch + recovery interval.
Which seems to mean do a two week crunch and then fire your developers, but replacing them is usually more costly than recovery time.
It probably isn't a coincidence that universities often have two week final exam/final project periods followed by two (or more) weeks of vacation.
Anytime I hear a young person say they want to be a game developer I want to grab them by the shoulders and try to shakes some sense into them. If you're smart enough to do game development, you're probably smart enough to go make twice as much to work half as hard somewhere else. You can go work your 8 hour day, and play whatever game you want the rest of the night. Or do something completely different.
Is this everyone including Graphics designers? Not just developers?
Why are the economics of Gaming so not aligned? The cost of making Games are going up YoY. Revenue and Profits seems to be up too. We have better middleware like Unreal than ever before, and yet the cost keep going up but not salary.
And it seems Nintendo doesn't have any of these problem.
Someone please explain to me like I am five.
It seems to me that the on the opposite end of the scale you have Database administrator. Pretty much all non-trivial software projects need databases, their proper administration is absolutely essential, and it's the least sexy sounding role in a software team.
My (completely untested, and semi-serious) career advice is to read a reference manual for a database like PostgreSQL cover to cover.
We don't really know a lot about their process, but considering a lot of their games are made in Japan and what has been said in the past, there is guaranteed to be crunch there as well. People sleeping in their offices for days on end before shipping a game, etc.
It is just difficult to determine how long things will take in the end. I think it is great they did change the release date and not cut corners.
We did get a lot of free time in exchange after crunch and I think there has to be appreciation. I am sure developers are looking to a relaxed Christmas in the end.
Yeah, I'm sure that works well. How can you compete with those that do work long hours when it comes time for performance reviews? The fear of losing your job is very real and I'm sure that creates a culture where in effect everyone is working long hours, no matter what the CD Projekt co-founder says.
I have never worked in such an environment, and I also don't tend to take all of my allotted vacation anyways, but at first glance, I'm not sure how:
"take off as much as you like"
could possibly be more restrictive than:
"take off as much as you like, but no more that 2 weeks."
Assuming of course we are not talking about mandatory vacation policies (that some companies/countries) effectively have.
If there's unlimited vacation, and someone takes two weeks of vacation when the whole company tends to take one, and they were on vacation during a critical project, once time comes for performance reviews, people will say "I'm not sure how committed they are to the company" / "They don't have a great work ethic" / etc. etc. Because it was their choice to decide that two weeks was reasonable, it's easier to hold them responsible for the consequences of that choice.
So, everyone feels like they need to take at most as much vacation as average, possibly less.
If the number is the same for everyone, state it. Go ahead and say "Everyone gets 6 weeks vacation." If you don't feel comfortable saying that, then it wasn't unlimited at all, was it?
If the number is different, i.e., junior employees can take less, politically-connected folks and people who figured out how to coast can take more, that's probably a bad thing for your company. At best, make additional vacation a defined promotion benefit.
"take off as much as you like, but no more than you've earned; you earn 2 weeks each year and can't bank more than 5 weeks"
It's a subtle difference, but an important one. I usually bank vacation time up to my cap (typically 240 hours, but recently bumped to 300 hours). Once I'm close I take every other friday off.
When coworkers ask about it my answer is "I'm at the vacation cap, so if I don't take this time off I lose it."
This statement acts as a double-edged sword. "I'm at vacation cap" signals that I've worked hard and foregone time off in favor of work. i.e. I'm a hard worker. "if I don't take this time off I lose it" signals that I'm not willing to leave anything on the table, and it shows that I value a work-life balance.
I’m happy with my comp and my role. I don’t need a raise or promotion. I can work at this job until 70 with pay rises corresponding to inflation.
Given that, I’m fine if people work 70h weeks all around me. I’m also confident my work output will rival that of the crunchers, because after even just a few weeks it’s not effective.
who said to accept it? Above poster said that death threats are easy to get these days for virtually anything and can hardly be used as an excuse.
B) whinging about inevitable death threats to deflect attention from your gaffes isn't really great, either. The public complaint, if anything, further normalizes the death threats with people inclined to make them. Secondarily, it generates sympathy and distraction, which is probably the effect one wanted when one chose to whinge.
If one wants to object to death threats in a way that improves our culture and makes them less likely, it's probably best done out of band from the actual coverage of one's failing. Do it retrospectively, and in contemplative channels, not ones that are already polemic and filled with attention to the failing that caused the original outrage.
Violent extremists are often operate under the mistaken belief that they represent the "silent majority", and that most people secretly agree with what they do.
This is one reason that when a political party that tacitly or explicitly approves of extremist violence gets in to power more terrorist acts are committed. It's also why, for example, racists terrorists believe the murders they commit will spark a "race war". They believe that most people are secretly racist, and all it'll take for such a war to start is for their murders to encourage people's secret hatred to come to the surface.
To counteract this, it's important for the real majority to not be silent, and instead condemn violence, hatred, and terrorism (which includes death threats) in the strongest possible terms. When terrorists see evidence that the majority actually opposes them it'll require a lot more cognitive dissonance on their part to continue to believe that they represent the majority.
This is not a panacea, and I don't imagine for a moment that it will end all violence, especially as some people will never believe the evidence of their lying eyes, but many people speaking out in public against violence is one of the most effective tools we have for combating violent extremism.
Because if you're pissed off about Cyberpunk 2077, and think death threats are OK... seeing an article with more news about '2077 being late, and an aside of them saying "these death threats are upsetting us" A) reinforces your belief death threats for situations like this are normal, and B) provides you with some validation/happies.
I'd wager that the kind of people who issue death threats over video game delays has a pretty big overlap with 4chan. 4chan peeps know their behavior is not normative, and having a bunch of outcry has never stopped their pursuit of the luls... and the kind of article mentioning the threats you're talking about is pretty much winning from their standpoint.
At this point on the internet, if the topic touches more than 100,000 people and its controversial. You can probably find a few truly heinous comments.
And giving them attention, is kind of what they are after.
It's an expression of frustration, and we all know that. Unfortunately in today's world, feeling threatened is socially valuable so they're simply playing on that. It says more to me about the disingenuity and/or weakness of the "victim" than anything else.
We need to laugh at people more.
Its just very vocal fringe minority.
This indicates that nobody even knew how bad it was. There's also rumors developers found out about the delays from social media.
CDPR execs are just incompetent and unable to set realistic timelines. When big AAA releases are delayed, they're usually delayed once and it's done 6+ months from release (because it's obvious then you won't make it).
Delaying when it's less than a month out? Absolute incompetence. You lose millions and millions of dollars doing this, by burning marketing dollars and screwing over your retail partners.
How did they deliberately mislead them? By saying things like only a natural disaster would stop the latest release date, only for it to slip with less than a month left.
That's an actual lie and false advertising. As someone with project management experience, the people making those claims are either incompetent or lying.
So yeah, customers who paid them money and were lied to have an absolute right to be furious. Death threats is an excuse. 99.99% of the criticism was justified and without intimidation or threats.
Obviously people can feel however they want, but we’re talking about $5–60 and like eight months delay; you’ll forgive me for being a little dismissive of people who are “furious” about this.
You can point out the delays are do to incompetence without agreeing that death threats are ok.
You are ascribing intent where there is none. We need to stop framing conversations based upon the extremists in the population.
The root comment is full of hyperbole, but there is no indication he supports death threats, that's just silly.
Oh, so building something that was never done before and not meeting the deadline exactly is sheer incompetence? I hope you never have to build anything new.
No, you can't really make that claim. There are thousands of clones of more popular games out there, it's not like the game production is massively original to begin with.
And yes, Cyberpunk 2077 pushes the boundaries of what we expect from games in many ways - it's going to be one of the most complex games we have on the market to date when it releases.
I don't know people bother to defend billion dollar corporations in the habit of lying and misrepresenting their products. People paid them money for a product that was misrepresented in false advertising, I don't know it could be clearer than that as to why they're justifiably outraged.
99.99% of the criticism did not include intimidation, death threats or anything along those lines. CDPR used it as a deflectionary tactic from their own business practices.
And no, delays like this are not common. Games get delayed when they're many months away from release (it's obvious then that it's not done). Less than a month? They're either lying or so incompetent they don't know their own progress. Neither excuse the false claims.
It's a billion dollar publicly listed corporation. This isn't some indie studio.
They were still promising there would be no more delays with less than a month to go, even saying only a natural disaster would stop them. Now we know that's a lie, and they were deliberately misleading customers.
As for my personal interest: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." - Shigeru Miyamoto
(1) the issue would have likely been avoided if the studio did not set a day-definite release date (announcing it more generally as e.g. Q4 2020 instead);
(2) there is a general problem with how game pre-orders work: people put their money down but it isn't really clear what they are getting for it in return, or when they will be getting it; many pre-orderers make certain assumptions to this effect, and when promises fail to materialize later, the disappointment runs deep.
Expecting not to be lied to as a customer is a very justifiable stance.
And it seems pretty clear to me that they met the standards of lying in the more recent announcements. They didn't just make bad predictions early on.
> more generally as e.g. Q4 2020
The first release date was Q2 and the second release date was Q3, so I'm skeptical that would have helped.
> Cyberpunk 2077’s advertising has been saying the quiet part loud. It has maintained the spiky, anti-SJW, anti-woke persona throughout its marketing campaign, careful to always pepper any diverse characters’ inclusion with stereotyping or humor designed to mock its own ideas.
As the article concedes, these pieces individually don't have to be bad, but they are always presented by the overall marketing as something to make fun of or stereotype, not as something to take seriously or positively.
The first (and most black-and-white) is that CDPR's social media presence has been very… trolly. For example, "did you just assume my gender" is not something I've ever heard a queer person say; it's an anti-woke joke at their expense aimed at people who disdain the notion of gender fluidity. These, I think, color the rest of CDPR's conduct; there are other things that might be considered benign if not for their consistent trolling here.
> The criticism of the character creation surprised me: sure it could be better, but is it not also the most embracing version created yet in any AAA videogame that we known of.
The cynical take is that CDPR is exploiting the issue; they know that this is a popular topic right now and they're appropriating it in order to sell a video game. But even if you assume good faith on the part of CDPR, I think this is a case of intentions not mattering. Ultimately this game is going to be played by a lot of people, and help shape how many of those people see trans issues, and trans people are unhappy with the impression the game will leave.
I also observe that people often use "at least they/we are trying" as a way to evade criticism — even constructive criticism — which makes it hard to move forward. Like, are you only supposed to engage with people that are already hostile?
> Same with the poster: is it not cool to have a buff trans protagonist - they are objectified, but that is the point of posters (see captain america or black widow posters).
Objectification isn't binary; there are plenty of ways to highlight conventionally attractive features, which is why you see films like Wonder Woman lauded for their representation while characters like Black Widow are criticized for superficially similar portrayals. And of course criticism refers only to a consensus; there will always be people who are offended at benign representation and others who are fine with flagrant stereotyping.
Ultimately, I think the author knows that AAA titles are made by teams of hundreds of people, many of whom are trying to make a progressive game. But whatever the creators' intentions, when all is said and done the game and marketing thereof will look how they look, and people will feel how they feel about it.
Some, at the very ends of the bell curve, are enraged and simultaneously not equipped with the tools to process that in a healthy way.
Hate is cheap on Twitter
While devs can, artists and game designers don't have that bargaining power.
It just shows that the aristocracy is alive and doing well even in this modern world. Unsurprising to anyone that actually paid attention but there are a lot of developers who never realized that they're peasants, still.
there are industries where we can get a decent wage as software developers however, so life is fine for most of us.
Lowish wage for game developers? I beg your pardon?
It isn't easy to "just go somewhere else" or "start your own thing" for a variety of reasons. The reality is that the majority of these game developers aren't getting job offers every day and don't have access to the kind of capital necessary to start a company.
It's flippant to suggest that these developers can just find another job, because the other reality is that most of these developers would only be able to find jobs doing the same thing but under a different moniker.
People in other places in this thread have produced some solutions, which I think is somewhere along the lines of organizing and unionizing, and I think that would help for bigger companies who are known to exploit these workers.
Whatever the solution, history has shown that you cannot rely on a company's word that they won't do this anymore.
Plus the development abstraction layer influences public perception as much as it does developer perception. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/11/the-development-ab...
In the end they get a reasonable wage for the normal work they do, but not if crunch is involved. Which, do to the large amount of stress and in turn health (physical+mental) and social risk it can involve doesn't seem reasonable for "any" amount of money (or at least any amount any person would be willing to pay ;=) ).
> "just go somewhere else"
Mostly means leaving the game industry, which also means leaving behind years of experience, and the area of expertise you prefer to work in (if it wouldn't be for the working conditions).
> "start your own thing"
Is in general just unrealistic as an advise for most people. It's risky, costly, stressfull and needs a bunch of additional skills which are not necessary part of your current job.
I wonder what the solution is here. Boycotting the game is hardly going to help the employees there.
I guess this is just one of those things that the law should mandate, but does not for some reason.
And why would companies like Epic restrict their revenues like that? Epic too sees financial gain from their developers working excessive (potentially unpaid) overtime, no doubt. Unions are necessarily devised and lead by workers, not beneficent corps.
This is such a weird logic. Since when should the company financial incentives have higher priority over the employees well-being? Arguably, if the existence of the company is threatened by a few delays and that the only solution is to exploit people, it should instead close shop and let people get other jobs that will make them happier.
So no, a union would probably not help the game be shipped in time, and if it did, it would be the shittiest union. And if enforcing humane working conditions against the profits of the employer makes the business unsustainable, this means the business should not exist in the first place.
Quite likely yes, though not directly. Foreclosing avenues that management tends to fall into which are both empirically not particularly effective and also miserable working conditions, like more than brief crunch time, probably does improve delivery, though that's not the main goal.
Somehow, the large investors still make lots of money. The primary effect of unions in this space seems to be that they put an actual dollar cost on poor management. When you hear about boondoggles like Heaven's Gate or Waterworld, what you hear isn't that unions screwed it up; you hear about the prima donna director who couldn't get it all "just so" with a couple hundred million to work with.
My employer, a digital services agency, pays hourly overtime of 1.5x. Then the professional PMs we have work very hard to accurately forecast and estimate. I've had crunch periods in which I've been paid overtime, but they're rare because the business has incentived itself to execute on-time and on-budget, mostly by not promising what we can't deliver and expecting the workers to pick up the slack.
Now I work for IBM, and I am expected to work late as much as it takes to ship on time. "On time" is of course completely arbitrary and determined by people who have no understanding of the technical tasks required to ship the project (and most pertinent, don't listen to me when I provide my expert opinion that the timeline is not viable). And they expect to not have to pay me for that overtime.
Not being able to exploit your workers encourages realistic deadlines.
You’re probably right that software devs as a group are generally too egocentric or libertarian minded to engage in any sort of collective action for their own benefit.
Too smart to from cartels instead of being played off against each other by labor by buyers with greater market power?
Nah, just too many have bought into propaganda being spread from the other side of the negotiating table designed to preserve the existing power imbalance.
One problem is that there is too much hype. No Man's Sky proved that with too much effective advertising you can hype yourself into a corner, not have enough resources to finish the product properly, and guarantee the disappointment of the people expecting too much. Some game developers seem to not know when to scale back their ambitions and align the hype they generate with a time schedule and human resources management that is healthy. There's just too much passion in some game development areas that isn't left unexploited.
For GTA VI, Rockstar will only release a smaller sized game and instead add sizeable updates spread out over time, which makes it sound like they've finally started to learn from the past.
https://kotaku.com/18-months-after-red-dead-redemption-2-roc...
Sounds like Windows 10, only with microtransactions.
They had plenty of resources, and they did finish it properly once they had enough time. The real problem was declaring the game as 1.0 far too early. The hype made that hurt more but it wasn't the cause of the problems. I mean, it didn't even have a real ending early on, or any multiplayer.
Is Hollywood a successful business model though? Most movies don't make much in the end - we only see the most successful ones.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:atHjZM...
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAdeep breathHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
Is there a major game developer known not to require this of their employees? (According to the article, CD Projekt appearently made such a promise but failed to deliver on it.)
Not very realistic, unfortunately.
Also, it's not an indie studio that needs sales money right now to keep existing. They can easily afford much bigger delays. They prefer to put their employees at severe health risk instead so they can maximize profits.
IF that's true, then CDPR's claims about only crunching for the last two or so months isn't as transparent as they wanted it to seem back in October.
If I'm tired, I will definitely not reach the 6 hours.
So I really wonder who in their fucking mind would think that you can pull off 12 hour workdays and be more productive? That is just pure insanity. I think it's time to stop lying to ourselves on how many hours we are actually productive in the 'work hours' that we do.