Kathunter's Personal Space

?: We've been following some unrest at Electronic Arts lately. Do you think the game industry can change its workaholic habits?

!: No. I am sorry, I wish I could answer the question differently, but that is just how it is. Ask most application programmers regardless of the industry, and they go through the same thing. It is simply the nature of the technical/creative projects where ship dates are determined by quarterly revenue rather than when the title could actually be finished. If you add to that the growing number of mega-budget titles on the shelves, being the hot new game out there will only mean bigger staffs and shorter deadlines.

Kat, I have to disagree. Crunch time at the end of a project is one thing - but crunch time for no obvious reasons if only for bad planning months ahead of beta is complete nonsense.

Bigger staffs don't yield higher productivity (nice article on GamaSutra about that one), longer working hours don't yield higher productivity either.

I'd just like to point out that the Mercury News put the EA class action suit on the front page today. Don't they read Slashdot, too? Or is that really the cycle for newspapers?

I am not saying I agree with the way things are working, I am just saying that the odds of any significant changes are pretty slim. Of course I hope they fix this mess for all my friends who are still at work tonight as I post this.