This is something I was familiar with due to having a couple of friends that work in games development. I thought this was a fairly well-written article about it based on conversations I've had with them on the subject. It illustrates the amount of pressure that publishers put on games development companies to meet ship dates, and one of the reasons why (in my opinion) so many games are shipped nowadays with a lot of unaddressed bugs. In many cases the developers are killing themselves to meet the publishers' ship dates for no additional pay, and the quality of the product is most likely suffering as a result. The publishers? Laughing all the way to the bank.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/05/the-death-march-the-problem-of-crunch-time-in-game-development.ars

Love the Nuka cola bottle

Could somebody explain what this supposed "40 hour standard work week" is?

8 hours for 5 days a week, the standard.

85 hours would be 17 hours a day if game designers with such working hours would take the day off on Saturdays and Sundays. These days most people work on Saturdays though so it can also be 14 hours a day or 12 hours if one works on Sundays too.

I myself have been studying to be a game designer but I′ve pretty much realized what I like is creating stories. So I currently want to be a writer but that is a job like "being a football star" or "being a famous singer", something that only happens to very few people and not even always by worth. So I′m still studying programming and game design and such but if this link is correct being able to keep up with such work is starting to be just as much of a fairy tale as being a writer is.

That's it, it seems very low for a standard. 50+ hours seems more realistic.

Depends on the person and the job, I suppose. I typically work around 50 to 55. I have friends with kids that couldn't manage more than 45-50 without being pretty sleep-deprived. :shrug:

I don't think that's the point, though. People working 16-hour days can't be managing to get more than 4-5 hours of sleep...and then go back to another 16-hour day. They're going to make mistakes. The publisher refuses to push back the release date, so they release a game that's unfinished and/or buggy. The developers are working themselves to death because the job market is so competitive, the consumers - as a result - are paying full-price for a product of a lesser quality than it could be, and the publishers are making out like bandits. Seems to me that EA has the right idea, no?

Just read that article. Sad to say it seems to be typical of the software industry in general: there is unfortunately a culture of being pressured into unpaid overtime with nebulous promises that it's just temporary and that the extra work will be reflected in generous bonuses. Neither is true. It does tend to result in a bad quality product and high rates of stress-related illness, though; which is pretty much what the article said, I suppose.

40 hour weeks and good job security would be beneficial for both the employees and customers, but I guess "shareholder value" trumps both groups, so the silliness of the 60+ hour week continues unabated.

From my (relatively small) amount of experience in software engineering, I don't really think this problem is exclusive to games development. I'd say it's probably a bit more common in games development, but I know when a release is coming up where I work, we are expected to work a considerable amount of unpaid overtime to squeeze in the unreasonable list of features that the bosses want.

I agree, it's not just a problem in games development. I've been a software developer for 13 years and have worked for more than a couple of companies that expected the same. Being a software developer is going to often put you in a position wherein you're going to end up paying for the mistakes of upper-management and project managers. From what I've heard, though, it sounds even worse in the games industry.