Epic Games Boss Responds to Criticism

Epic Games President Mike Capps recently sat down and defended his company's business practices against International Game Developers Association (IGDA) claims that suggested programmers are forced to work 60 hours a week.

The argument stems from statements Capps made during a 2008 IGDA panel in which he implicated that employees only willing to work 40 hours a week at Epic Games would not fit in at the company. Capps is himself a board member of the IGDA, a group whose main goals include establishing and maintaining a "Quality of Life" standard for game developers. Many frustrated IGDA members have seen his comments as a promotion of unfair business practices. Independent games designer Greg Costikyan took particular offense to the comments:

"The notion that a fucking board member of the IGDA should defend (and indeed, within his own studio, foster) such exploitative practices is offensive [...]"

Capps responded to the allegations in a recent interview, defending the extra hours as nothing more than an indicator of the developer's passion and personal investment in the project.

"Honestly, I'm not sure which of the various things that got everybody so upset. I think the main one was that if someone walks into the door and says, 'I refuse to ever work past 5pm, I'll never work more that 40 hours a week and you can't make me,' they're probably not a fit for us. Just the same way they wouldn't be a fit, I assume for you, if they said, 'Well, I'll do E3 but I'm out at 5 and I'm not writing any articles till the next morning.' [...] So to have someone walk in and say they refuse to ever crunch for an E3 demo, it's kind of silly. It just shows that they're probably not passionate about what they do. That's very different from saying that we force people to work hard all the time."

Capps focuses on explaining his belief that the longer hours are usually only during the last 2 months of development, and for the most part, he has more trouble getting people to go home at night rather than having to convince them to stay.

While there's no problem with an individual putting in a little extra time for something they're personally invested in, it becomes a problem if that "passion" becomes an unspoken excuse for only hiring devs who agree to atrocious hours. Capps makes some good points in the interview, and the incentives the developers see from launching a successful game on time seem to justify the extra hours. Even so, it's a sensitive issue with good arguments on both sides. What's your take on it?

Source: Joystiq.com

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So what?

They choose to work there and they are compensated for their hours. If they want to work for someone else, they are free to leave.

A 60 hour crunch week wouldn't be too bad, nature of the beast and all that. But if you say someone has to be willing to work more than 40 hours a week then you'd expect them to have to work more than 40 hours every week.

kawligia:
So what?

They choose to work there and they are compensated for their hours. If they want to work for someone else, they are free to leave.

I believe the source of the argument is this:

The argument stems from statements Capps made during a 2008 IGDA panel in which he implicated that employees only willing to work 40 hours a week at Epic Games would not fit in at the company.

Implying that "Everyone has to work more than 40 hours aweek all the time" rather than what he meant to say "Everyone should be willing to work more at the crunch times before big releases".

Basically, after EA effectivity enslaved there workers into pulling 12 hours shifts daily under threat of losing their jobs and being black balled, people are warily of comments like these.

Yes, so what? It's not like they're not getting paid for their time, and personally I work 66 hours a week on average, and if I was doing 40 I'd be asking for more hours, as 40 hours is fuck all and I want to actually make some money ;)

Jadak:
Yes, so what? It's not like they're not getting paid for their time, and personally I work 66 hours a week on average, and if I was doing 40 I'd be asking for more hours, as 40 hours is fuck all and I want to actually make some money ;)

40 is 8 hours a day, i.e. half of your waking life during the week if we assume 8 hours sleep on average. Whilst you might not have a problem with that, some people have wives and children they might want to occasionally see ;)

stinkychops:

Rack:
A 60 hour crunch week wouldn't be too bad, nature of the beast and all that. But if you say someone has to be willing to work more than 40 hours a week then you'd expect them to have to work more than 40 hours every week.

40 hours is 8 hours a day. Not too bad. As long as they are appreciated, and get input, are are not treated like expendable pieces of crap.

And under EU law, its the maximum normal hours a week you can assign. Overtime is allowed, of course, but that has to be optional.

stinkychops:

Doug:

stinkychops:

Rack:
A 60 hour crunch week wouldn't be too bad, nature of the beast and all that. But if you say someone has to be willing to work more than 40 hours a week then you'd expect them to have to work more than 40 hours every week.

40 hours is 8 hours a day. Not too bad. As long as they are appreciated, and get input, are are not treated like expendable pieces of crap.

And under EU law, its the maximum normal hours a week you can assign. Overtime is allowed, of course, but that has to be optional.

Really? I thought there was a higher working week than that.

Well, having a lookie at it, seems there is no Europe wide law, BUT... I did find this link with a few examples of average working week, and legal maximums on a country by country basis.

http://www.fedee.com/workinghours.shtml

None are greater than 50 hours, and most are around 42-ish hours a week.

Doug:

stinkychops:

Rack:
A 60 hour crunch week wouldn't be too bad, nature of the beast and all that. But if you say someone has to be willing to work more than 40 hours a week then you'd expect them to have to work more than 40 hours every week.

40 hours is 8 hours a day. Not too bad. As long as they are appreciated, and get input, are are not treated like expendable pieces of crap.

And under EU law, its the maximum normal hours a week you can assign. Overtime is allowed, of course, but that has to be optional.

Doug:

Jadak:
Yes, so what? It's not like they're not getting paid for their time, and personally I work 66 hours a week on average, and if I was doing 40 I'd be asking for more hours, as 40 hours is fuck all and I want to actually make some money ;)

40 is 8 hours a day, i.e. half of your waking life during the week if we assume 8 hours sleep on average. Whilst you might not have a problem with that, some people have wives and children they might want to occasionally see ;)

Not quite, 40 is 8 hours a day minus weekends. That leaves 8 hours a day (minus travel time) during the week, and all day on weekends to spend with the family (if they wanted to, personally, that much family time would probably drive me insane). That's a quite a bit more than "occasionally".

Besides which, there are labour laws, people can't be fired for being unwilling to work over a certain number of hours anyways. So if they are working more than that number, and don't want to, it's their responsibility to say something, and stand by it.

If they sorted out their development practices, they wouldnt need to CRUNCH in the first place

Jadak:

Doug:

stinkychops:

Rack:
A 60 hour crunch week wouldn't be too bad, nature of the beast and all that. But if you say someone has to be willing to work more than 40 hours a week then you'd expect them to have to work more than 40 hours every week.

40 hours is 8 hours a day. Not too bad. As long as they are appreciated, and get input, are are not treated like expendable pieces of crap.

And under EU law, its the maximum normal hours a week you can assign. Overtime is allowed, of course, but that has to be optional.

Doug:

Jadak:
Yes, so what? It's not like they're not getting paid for their time, and personally I work 66 hours a week on average, and if I was doing 40 I'd be asking for more hours, as 40 hours is fuck all and I want to actually make some money ;)

40 is 8 hours a day, i.e. half of your waking life during the week if we assume 8 hours sleep on average. Whilst you might not have a problem with that, some people have wives and children they might want to occasionally see ;)

Not quite, 40 is 8 hours a day minus weekends. That leaves 8 hours a day (minus travel time) during the week, and all day on weekends to spend with the family (if they wanted to, personally, that much family time would probably drive me insane). That's a quite a bit more than "occasionally".

Personally, I don't include travel time in my working hours - if so, then I typically work around about 9 hours a day then. And ok, maybe alittle over the top to say 40 hours a week == half your life at work.

Still, the legal maximum in the UK seems to be 48 hours a week (so, around 9 and abit hours a day).

I never work over 40 hrs. and I never bring my work home. Then again, I'm not passionate about what I do. If I were passionate at what I do, my employer wouldn't have to ask me to go the extra mile.

My point: as long as you do your job well, your employer should never ask you to be passionate. Do your job, get paid, go home. Award those who go above and beyond without expecting everybody to do so.

stinkychops:

Doug:

stinkychops:

Doug:

stinkychops:

Rack:
A 60 hour crunch week wouldn't be too bad, nature of the beast and all that. But if you say someone has to be willing to work more than 40 hours a week then you'd expect them to have to work more than 40 hours every week.

40 hours is 8 hours a day. Not too bad. As long as they are appreciated, and get input, are are not treated like expendable pieces of crap.

And under EU law, its the maximum normal hours a week you can assign. Overtime is allowed, of course, but that has to be optional.

Really? I thought there was a higher working week than that.

Well, having a lookie at it, seems there is no Europe wide law, BUT... I did find this link with a few examples of average working week, and legal maximums on a country by country basis.

http://www.fedee.com/workinghours.shtml

None are greater than 50 hours, and most are around 42-ish hours a week.

It seems that it includes overtime as well. So standard hours would probably be around 40 like you said.

Indeed. I honestly think this argument (the OP) is primarily because of Capp's poor wording.

"Everyone must work more than 40 hours a week every week" is what it implies, whereas what he meant was
"Everyone must be willing at crunch time to put in extra time to make sure there are no cockups" which is fine so long as crunch time isn't all the time.

Bullshit. This is the same thing EA got smashed for. Just because people are willing to work ridiculous hours and be in crunch time at all times is no reason to do so. And most of the time, the only reason people are willing to do so is because if they don't someone else is more than happy to do so to get into the industry. It is the same thing that happens during workers strikes. The company realizes that they can get cheaper labor, the workers strike, and the company hires cheap labor and replaces them, or this happens over a slower amount of time.
Just because he can defend himself and sound intelligent and make comments that seem viable doesn't mean that they are viable or what he's doing is okay.

level250geek:
I never work over 40 hrs. and I never bring my work home. Then again, I'm not passionate about what I do. If I were passionate at what I do, my employer wouldn't have to ask me to go the extra mile.

My point: as long as you do your job well, your employer should never ask you to be passionate. Do your job, get paid, go home. Award those who go above and beyond without expecting everybody to do so.

Given the number of people who want to be in the industry, passion isn't really hard for a company like them to get. They have to choose employees somehow.

It really depends on what you do. If you do food service, your employer probably shouldn't expect passion, given it's known to be a big, boring, soul-sucking industry that almost nobody is passionate about.

If a lot of people consider a job in your industry to be a dream job, you're going to have substantially more competition if you're just there to be paid (in which case, you should probably leave because such things don't pay as much as other things you could be doing with your skill set). If there are enough applicants that you can get the majority of your workforce to really love their work, why not hire *them*?

It sounds like most of you don't realize that most of these software developers don't get paid hourly for their work. I'm not sure about Epic but a lot of these companies pay their employees via a salary + bonus structure. You work 60 hours a week and get paid for 40 hours a week with the potential of a bonus or extra time off etc.

Jadak:

Not quite, 40 is 8 hours a day minus weekends. That leaves 8 hours a day (minus travel time) during the week, and all day on weekends to spend with the family (if they wanted to, personally, that much family time would probably drive me insane). That's a quite a bit more than "occasionally".

40 hour weeks are just about right. Maybe it's because I'm accustomed to it, but I find that leaves enough time to work-out, spend time with my GF and my friends, and keep my gaming up to date.

Heck, I could use even a little less working time. Ahh... lazy boy :P

It's like this everywhere. You can say you don't have to do the extra hours, but if you're the only one not doing them then it's going to look bad, you're not going to get a pay rise and you'll be the first head on the block when they start needing to downsize.

Where I worked (sorry, no names) it was 40 normal paid hours a week, plus whatever extra as and when. Extra hours were unpaid. Working at the weekend was usual at crunch times (milestone builds, every 4 or 6 weeks). But there would be an atmosphere of camaraderie in the office, we were putting in these extra unpaid hours because we were passionate about the project -- it was hard not to be; it was a killer project -- and even though it was mainly fairly tedious work, we did it because we had to keep the publisher happy and we knew the eventual end result would be a wicked awesome game. Staying at least an extra half-hour in the evenings was usual, as chances were someone would be struggling to get something finished on time and need some support.

CantFaketheFunk:
Capps' point is perfectly valid. We here at Chez Escapist usually work 8/9 hour days, if not more. When I need to finish a review, I stay late. When we're out covering a show, we work late. It's our version of crunch time, and we do it because A.) we care about the quality of our work, and B.) we're passionate about what we do.

Many of us with jobs that don't have deadlines/special events/real consequences for not "getting the job done" will not understand this, but there are times where extending the work day, whether or not you expected to at the start of the day, is justified. I don't allow myself to get looped into staying late as a practice (I'm usually out 15 minutes early), but when we get slammed, I'll work a double if needed. My supervisors are flexible with me, and appreciate when I'm flexible in return. After a 20 hour snow day, I not only got my huge overtime pay, but also a Best Buy gift card in my in-box from my department director. I'll put in extra for these guys.

That said, if the expectation is that you stayed late every day, screw that- there's not enough money in the world.

I guess my point is that different jobs have different expectations, and you sometimes can't fit what you need to do into a simple, 8 hour a day schedule.

What about game developers who have families? A lover needs attention, children need two actively parenting parents and being a daddy, or in a few encouraging cases a mommy, is not just some little hobby you can leave in the basement for seven years while your career moves along to a point where you actually have time to spare again; we're looking at more troubled individuals growing up not giving a crap, finding their way to crime, vandalism, substance abuse or even becoming that really really annoying guy at your office who constantly does things solely to spite you, just when you really don't need any more grief...!

Being passionate about games, to me, is like being passionate about the sky or the moon if you're not also passionate about life: it's just staring off at something completely disconnected from you and eventually losing perspective on reality and all the things that make life worth living. Let your employees have lives, I say! Make them work professional hours, by all means, but leave them enough time to remember who they are and why they bother existing. Nobody produces amazing material while they're burnt out, anyway, and crunch periods strike me more as symptoms of a serious problem than an acceptable means to an end.

They just said on the interview, people on the Gears 2 team got paid more on extra hours than in normal wages.
Do want :(
Also to the above post, they get massive downtime after releases. They just work those 60 hour weeks when a game's about to be released (2-3 weeks prior).