Clearly Your Dev's need a Break

from Demigod Forums

I submitted this reply in another thread which seems to have inhaled my post (and others as well in that thread).  So I figured I would start a fresh thread.

Considering the quality of the release builds that we have been getting (random crashes / etc).  The quality of the programmers coding is such that you would have thought they were on crack when making the fixes.  Yet, having worked in the games industry, I don't even blame them.  The games industry is about slave driving to the max; game programmers are the most overworked, underpayed software programmers that you will find.  And I say this in retrospect, having worked in the telco, cartographic, financial, gaming and simulations industry.  

Game programmers' work hours, especially in the lead up to a release are typically 7 day weeks, late nights, sometimes sleeping in the office; all this of course with no overtime pay.  Its downright unhealthy and plain abuse.  Now imagine all that slavedriving COMBINED with the pressure of having to fix crucial bugs POST release.  You are already burned out by the time the game is released and now this - critical bugs that MUST be fixed post release because after all this work the devs realize people might drop their game if it continues to bug out on them.

Solution?  The developers clearly need a vacation of 2 weeks to disconnect their minds from this game and to come back and face the problems with fresh minds.  Too bad if the community has to suffer during that time - no point making fixes if you are gonna screw things up further.  To the managers of this project; stop the slavedriving.  When dev's are burned out, extra hours of programming != higher yield.  With the quality of the recent builds this has become abundantly clear.  Give the devs a vacation and announce it so I can play some other game in the meanwhile; I will definitely come back to this one coz it has got plenty of potential.  As it stands though, its just not stable enough.

Just the 2c from a former games programmer.

demigod
31,557 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

maybe they shouldn't have been lazy and fix the bugs before hand

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

hmmm 2c from a consumer... don't release a broken product unless you want to work 7 days weeks for no extra pay.

I love DG I really do, but I'd rather NOT be playing it now and have had it released a few months later in a working form, than have an otherwise brilliant game jaded by such a poor release.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

That is two weeks they could be fixing stuff.

As it is, they have improved the game quite a bit.

Two weeks of nothing would not increase productivity.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

That or we need to all chip in and send the boys a fat pound of grass. Nothing like that to clear the mind up.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

Hear, hear

 

It's not the programmer's faults for the state of the game.  The game was simply released a little too early.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

 edit: Crazy ass forums. Sorry.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

I agree that all workers need holidays and breaks and that overworking staff can lead to reduced productivity however i feel you are mostly out of line here.

Do you have any specific knowledge of employee contracts at gas powered games? Are you aware of any employee discontent or exploitation? Or are you just assuming this from an outsiders perspective.

Sureley if the workers are unhappy with thier working conditions they will purse the matter with thier employers or possibly goverment authorities. If they are unhappy with the resolution they can always choose to take thier skills eleswhere. Did you ever consider the fact that the programmers may be passionate about thier work. That they may want to work hard to ensure the final product that is released is as good as possible. Working on a succesfull game would be good for programmers careers and may be a priority for them.

Hard to see where your coming from here to be honest.

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Valcurdra, reply 7
I agree that all workers need holidays and breaks and that overworking staff can lead to reduced productivity however i feel you are mostly out of line here.

Do you have any specific knowledge of employee contracts at gas powered games? Are you aware of any employee discontent or exploitation? Or are you just assuming this from an outsiders perspective.
No, I am stating this from the perspective of having been a programmer in 2 different game companies. As mentioned in the OP, there were times where for months on end I would be working weekends with no overtime pay.  Now you could attempt to argue that I happened to join the wrong game companies or that my experience was specific to myself only; how would you explain then that all of the poeple I have talked to or read about online who worked in other game companies had the same experience?  As for demi, when I see the instability of the game, it is clear that the coders are not being given enough time or simply are burned out from working on this project.  Alternatively it could be down to improper testing procedures which I think is the case here.

So who is to blame?  Surely there must be a scapegoat?  Yes, my friends, its not the coders - its the managers who are to blame.  They are the ones who should decide on ensuring proper OPEN BETA testing procedures and allocating an appropriate timeline for such testing to help weed out bugs BEFORE a release.  They failed to do so in this game - it was a closed beta.  Still wanna blame the programmers / devs?

Quoting Valcurdra, reply 7
Sureley if the workers are unhappy with thier working conditions they will purse the matter with thier employers or possibly goverment authorities.
lol?  the gov authorities don't give 3 shits about programmers. IT in general is the most abusive industry I have ever heard about, because its too new and people in high positions such as government do not understand it. There are no labor unions to protect IT workers or coders as such. 

With software or hardware, things can go wrong anytime and randomly and people expect an "on the spot" fix.  That means that IT people can be called up in the middle of the night or, becuase of some unseen LAST MINUTE problem that causes delays of a particular delivery, programmers / IT workers have to do massive overtime (often all nighters) to resolve a problem that they are not even sure how long it will take for them to fix in the first place simply becuse they often do not even know the cause of the problem.  Being a good software engineer is not just about knowing programming - its about having top of the line analytical and problem solving skills and about being able to manage frustration because often times people are facing giant jigsaw puzzles when they are clueless about the cause of a problem.

Quoting ineverdie, reply 3
That is two weeks they could be fixing stuff.

Two weeks of nothing would not increase productivity.
You are partially correct, it would not increase productivity in the short run.  But it WOULD in the long run.  You see, ironically the best programming you can do is when you are AWAY from the computer. Becuase when you sit in front of it too long, your mind gets so entrenched in a problem that you are unable to come up with an out of the box solution.  Your thoughts become cluttered and no longer clear.  So often times its useful if you disconenct yourself from the problem completely and come back to it with a fresh mind. 

I'll give you an example - 3 years ago while in my gaming coy I spent an hour or two trying to resolve a memory allocation problem for a nintendo DS game we were working on.  I could not solve the unexplained crashes.  I got pissed and took a break by playing street fighter alpha 2 on PC emulator (believe it or not I can still pull off combo's on a keyboard, I am that kind of nerd).  I knocked the crap out of the "expert" AI on it, felt good about it and my game was over in 15-20 min.  I came back to my memory allocation problem and solved it in less the 30 seconds.  This was because I had disconnected myself from the problem completely and came back to it with a fresh perspective which allowed me to come up with a solution that I had not thought of during the 2 hours that I worked on it.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Time off, weed, hookers, hand jobs...hooker weed time hand off job.....time off from weed and hookers....time off from giving hookers weed for hand jobs...  Whatever.  I don't care.  These guys clearly need it.

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting TobyB, reply 9
Time off, weed, hookers, hand jobs...hooker weed time hand off job.....time off from weed and hookers....time off from giving hookers weed for hand jobs...  Whatever.  I don't care.  These guys clearly need it.
weed sounds good.  yes, the dev's really need it - as for the managers?  they should admit their poor planning, beg for forgiveness and accept being flogged for those 2 weeks that the dev's are on vacation.

This game has clearly been mismanaged by being released too early AND not having undertaken PROPER open beta testing procedures.