#flangrande

[askagamedev]

As per your previous post about crunch, I'll add that if they fix that problem, new problems may arise, although I can't think of any. Anyways, my question is, what kind of compesations do devs receive for crunching, if any? Is it accounted for in the annual review?

Compensation for crunch will vary from studio to studio, but it generally follows this pattern:

1. During Crunch

While we are crunching, the studio provides us some creature comforts. Plentiful snacks and drinks, catered meals,  etc. are provided to us while we work. The quality of the food varies with the studio and size of the team. One studio introduced me to Brazilian tapioca cheese bread because of overtime meals. 

2. Hurry Up and Wait

At some point, we reach the various “locked” or “frozen” stages - (data freeze, code freeze, etc.). This means that we reach a point in the schedule where an increasing number of devs aren’t allowed to check in changes anymore unless they receive explicit approval to do so from production to fix increasinly important bugs. Near the end, the only people allowed to make changes are engineers. Everything else is locked down and off limits in order to maintain stability.

During this “frozen” stage, those of us who aren’t allowed to make changes are basically on a “work” vacation. It’s more limited than actual vacation because we need to be available in case something within our purview actually breaks and needs a high priority fix, but we don’t necessarily have to come in to the office as long as we’re available to come in if we are needed. If we do come in, it’s usually just to kick back, play games for a few hours, work on our reels/portfolios, etc. It’s much more laid back during those times for those who aren’t actively involved in cert fixes and issues.

3. The Aftermath

After crunch ends, we’re usually given “comp time” - a paid, off-the-books length of vacation time. It isn’t quite as good as vacation time because we don’t get to do things with it that we could with vacation time, e.g. cash it out or hold on to it for use later. However, it’s usually 1-2 weeks (possibly more, it usually depends on the length of the crunch on the project) of uninterrupted relaxation time. Many of us choose to (and are encouraged to) supplement our comp time with our vacation time too. Some folks I know have ended up taking a month or more paid time off from work because of this. There’s also usually some sort of launch/wrap party for the project once things are done. This usually involves giving out prizes and gifts to employees, free food and booze, and so on. Depending on the studio, project size, etc. this could be something as small as a catered meal and some raffle prizes for the team or as extravagant as taking the entire team to a vacation resort.

Regarding Annual Reviews

I would love to tell you that those who crunch get recognized by the team or at review time, but that’s usually not the case - especially if it’s a teamwide crunch period. We all have to do it, from the lowest QA tester all the way up to the executive producer, so we don’t really get much additional recognition for doing it. We only get special recognition for going above and beyond (during a time when we’re all already going above and beyond) - usually doing something extraordinary during those times. In fact, the opposite is often true - if I don’t crunch alongside the rest of the team, it reflects badly on me at annual review time because everybody else crunched and I didn’t.

Overall, crunch is basically baked into how many studios operate. Most studios provide overall creature comforts and benefits explicitly for crunch, but many also provide us regular “nice” benefits that aren’t explicitly in reward for crunching but to keep the workers happy at the studio in general, crunch included. This can include things like catered snacks and meals, theme park trips, movie outings, parties, sponsored activities, gifts, annual cash bonuses, and so on.

The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.

[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]

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[askagamedev]

What about a guy that already has a programming background in web development? this guy has no university degree, just some superior degree on multiplatform development (2 years degree). He goes to the interview presenting a humble CV and a website containing his own works (maybe an android game or two, some game maker studio small games, nothing fancy though). This guy can demonstrate he has programming skills, no art skills at all and a lot of will. Can that guy get into the industry?

Once again… doing what? We’re not going to hire people who’s only qualification is wanting to be here. We need people who can do a job for us. You need to be honest with yourself about what it is you want to be doing. Web development? Gameplay programming? Combat design? Concept art? Production? QA? What sort of work do you want to go into the office and do each day? Unless you can answer that, I really don’t know how to answer you.

Do you want to be a programmer? If so, you should be knowledgeable on common algorithms and data structures. You should be able to come up with efficient code, and that includes knowing which data structure to solve the problem with great run time efficiency. You should understand terms like “Big O Notation” and “Object Oriented Programming”. If you want to get into AAA dev, you should probably know C++ very well, because it’s the go-to language for consoles and most PC development. You probably should also know your linear algebra - you should be able to demonstrate mastery of matrix math, vector operations, and how to represent objects in 3 dimensional space. You should understand what the word “virtual” means with respect to computer science. The term “cache” and “multithreaded” should hold special meaning for you.

Do you want to be a designer? Then be prepared to demonstrate your ability to craft experiences with the tools you’ve learned. You need to show that you understand how to represent complex processes and manipulate the awareness and feelings of the player. You need to show that you can build content and systems that are intuitive and require minimal amounts of hand holding, but are still engaging and fun for many types of players. The content the designer creates is what the players will directly be interacting with, so you should be able to demonstrate that you can construct engaging and interesting quests, conversations, lore, items, and/or systems.

Do you want to be a producer? If so, show us that you can manage tasks for a team of people working together. We need to understand that you can prioritize tasks for everyone, that you can communicate with people working on different parts of a project and keep everything coordinated and on schedule. Be prepared to talk about problems that your team encountered, and things you did to deal with those problems. Even better, tell us about how you empowered others on the team to solve those problems. 

I’ve been getting a number of these questions lately, but I can’t give a real answer unless I know exactly what sort of job it is you want. It can’t just be “I want to work in the industry” because there’s a lot of different roles in the industry, each with a skillset and knowledge base. The different roles exist because the work that they do needs specialists and experts, which means that anyone who is going to do them needs to be a specialist and/or expert. I’m not the sort of person who will pat you on the head and say “Keep dreaming big and one day you can do it too” because I don’t think it’s particularly helpful advice. If you want to work on games, you need to have a clear idea as to what it is you’ll be doing day in and day out to contribute to the project. If you don’t know what sort of jobs there are, I heavily suggest you read my past posts tagged with [roles in the game industry] to help figure it out. But you have to bring something useful to the table - some sort of skill that we need that you’re so good at that we’ll want to pay you for it. I’d be more than happy to tell you “You should know this, this, and this” if you ask “What do I need to know if I want to be a _______?” However, if what you’re looking for is reassurance that you might someday have a place here if you just keep dreaming, I’m the wrong person to ask. “Game developer” isn’t an actual job description, it’s a collective descriptor. If you want to work with us, you need to know what it is you’ll be doing.

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[askagamedev]

Hi! I was talking with a friend and he just told me that he is running a game at 600 fps, which suddenly made me wonder: "When a game is supposedly running at extremely high framerates, is it making all that graphics and physics calculations in that really small amount of time?" (Concretely for 600 fps, all the calculations must be made in 1.6 milliseconds, if I'm not wrong)

Yes, that’s what is happening. Usually this only occurs when the game is really old and played on hardware that is far more powerful than the developers had considered. Many games (both old and current) run all of their updates assuming a specific frame rate and thus become unplayable at high frame rates. Running at 600 fps when the developers expected 30 means the gameplay is updating at 20x speed, which can make things like moving with precision incredibly difficult.

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[intentandoseringeniero]

flangrande replied to your post: ¡He vuelto!

Viste a la games waves band tocar? Son geniales verdad?

¡¡La Games Waves Band fue una brutalidad!! Si alguna vez tenéis la oportunidad de verlos, ni se os ocurra dudar!

[watashinohikari]

flangrande said at your photoset: Tienes cara de pan, pero en plan guay jajaja, no en plan zampabollos :3

¿Cómo coño se tiene cara de pan en plan guay? Me acabas de traumatizar, que lo sepas, no haré más selfies si no es con una bolsa en la cabeza.

[mellamannoviembre]

He leído lo que te pasó y se me saltan las lágrimas. No lo soporto, hasta el punto de no saber que decir, salvo darte mi apoyo, tuvo que ser horrible. He visto un video del engendro ese (por Auronplay, no porque lo apoye), y da hasta mal rollo joder

Lo peor es que no soy un caso único pero en absoluto. Quien más y quien menos ha pasado por cosas similares. Estoy pidiendo a todo el que quiera que comparta sus testimonios en los que, más allá de lo incómodo, ha tenido una experiencia de verdadero terror, de violencia sexual, de asumir que quizá le tocaba pasar por un abuso con todas las letras. Yo tengo 20 años, pero a la mayoría nos han pasado cosas similares siendo menores. Eso sí que es para llorar.

El engendro ese me provoca muchas cosas que mejor me ahorro. Que nunca le toque a ninguna mujer cercana suya; que nunca violen a su madre, que nunca fuercen a su hija a hacer algo que no quiera y encima la hagan sentir culpable. Que nunca le toque ver de cerca ese horror. Este discurso nunca hay que usarlo, porque las mujeres somos seres humanos independientemente de que ninguna te sea cercana o importante y merecemos el mismo respeto todas y cada una de nosotras; pero me temo que ese cacho de mierda con funciones orgánicas no sería capaz jamás de llegar a esta conclusión por sí mismo.

En la vida, por suerte o por desgracia, todo se paga, también te lo digo.

[logoside]

Lo siento, pero los penes aquí se censuran.