Quality of Life
The Quality of Life SIG is moving to a new location!
Hello everyone,
First of all, allow me to introduce myself. My name is James and I am the new community manager for the IGDA's Quality of Life SIG. Moving forward you will be hearing from us more than you may have been previously been used to. This is because we plan on becoming far more active with you, our community to discuss important issues that you bring up as well as ones we notice in the news.
Currently our community is spread out between multiple locations so it makes it difficult to organize thoughts with everyone at once. Because of this, we are going to be directing all users to our new Facebook page. Please visit us there moving forward and of course, spread the word! We have also set up a Twitter account if you would prefer to talk with us that way as well.
Thanks so much for baring with us during this change and we look forward to hearing from you soon!
- James
Post to TwitterIntroduction and Thoughts
I recently founded my own independent studio. I also wrote an article for IGDA Perspectives titled "Indie by Default". The gist is that after working and being laid off from 2 different studios, and given the state of the economy, I started my own studio so I could just keep making games.
Even though I worked for pretty small studios in the past, I can tell some harrowing stories about crunch. If fact, crunch really has no meaning for me since, at both studios, I literally worked 7 days a week 12-15 hours a day from the time I walked in until the time I was laid off (to show their appreciation, no doubt, and increse my quality of life!).
I'm not bitter...I enjoyed the work. But I do feel underappreciated, overall. I mean, take your harderst worker and lay him off? Doesn't make sense to me!
Global Game Jam sends a mixed message
It's Global Game Jam time again. Obviously these Jams can be a lot of fun for the participants and a good way to make connections. But every year I read posts like this:
http://www.baltimoregamer.com/posts/global-game-jam-who-needs-sleep
And I can't help thinking that we've shot ourselves in the foot.
Rockstar story hits Slashdot
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/01/23/177206/Rockstar-Employees-Badly-Overworked-Say-Wives
The article also highlights Chris Kruger's response to the question on Develop's Jury:
http://www.develop-online.net/features/758/Develop-Jury-The-dangers-of-crunch
Chris Kruger, Founder, Kruger Heavy Industries:
What can I say. It's rhetorical question in my view. Crunch is totally damaging, but much more so to the individuals involved. An almost failed marriage in my case.
Rockstar responds
Unfortunately, this is a case of people taking the opinions of a few anonymous posters on message boards as fact. No business is ever perfect, but Rockstar Games is a tight knit team made up of around 900 supremely talented and motivated professionals, many of whom have worked here for a very long time.
McGee not crunching in China
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4250/american_in_china_mcgee_on_making_.php
Well, one thing you talked about is that you don't crunch, which is exceedingly rare. And how did you arrive at that?
AM: Just process. It's crazy. I mean, I wish more people knew about Grimm, because for us it was a phenomenal success, but because of GameTap and their distribution and monetization model, no one really ever heard of it, and it never made a dime for them, or for us.
Developers who blame the IGDA for doing nothing
I am bringing here, a discussion that was started on Drew Sikora's blog. Thanks Drew. The original post and comments are here:
http://www.blade-edge.com/index.php?p=1480
Erin suggests "Anyway, I don't want to get into this on Drew's blog" and I agree, it's not the right place for this discussion. I suggest here is probably a better place.
And I will continue the discussion from here if I am allowed.
Rockstar San Diego
Not sure which forum this should go in, so I'll put it in both.
Is this the new home of Quality of Life at IGDA?
It seems we now have 2 forums and a mailing list. Wasn't the idea of this new website to pull everything together in this one place?
Where is everyone?
Can we have a roll call?
