The Trouble with Overtime

Overtime has always been an issue within the cg industry and in the past few years it seems to have come to light more. Last year there were several vfx protests about their working conditions and they way that they were treated, and how vfx was being pushed out of the USA and outsourced to other countries. As someone who is about to take their first steps out into the industry in a few months, it is worrying, I've always known that if I were to obtain a job within the industry I would be doing overtime, especially when it comes to deadlines. I came across this article and it is quite astonishing what could actually happen with overtime.

Normally studios will pay for overtime (classed as more than 40 hours of work a week in USA), however this becomes a problem when you are doing 11-14 hours a day for a prolonged period of time. The normal working day is about 8 hours and after that time, staring at a computer all day, everyone needs rest.

'It is actually impossible for a digital artist or TD to remain focused much longer than 8 hours a day. To suggest or imply that not working 14 hours in some way indicates the ability or commitment of the individual is ludicrous.'

Reading through the article it has made myself wonder why this actually takes place. If someone is constantly working that amount of time, weeks on end, their work standard is going to go down. Not only that but they will lose respect for the company and think they don't care. The company will not be gaining anything. They will be losing money from paying for overtime.

They could end up paying '11 hours for perhaps 8 hours of work. The math? Cost of VFX has risen by another 27%' If this carries on, the whole industry won't last, and you can see why the people in the industry have been protesting. Working that long without seeing family or having time to recharge is not right at all. This is changing however, in smaller companies they are limiting and sometimes are not permitting overtime. In my opinion it makes perfect sense to limit it, only when necessary though (deadlines, or if someone makes a mistake, etc) Having a team that is ready to work each new day after being rest seems far more beneficial than a team that is tired and restless. It is also down to the artist to make sure that they get their days work done in the time given. It seems like everyone needs to respect each other and their limits of what they can do. Yes the industry is fast paced, but endless overtime isn't going to keep the industry going for long.

Current Trends and Approaches in Games Industry

When coming up for ideas for a new game it can be quite hard to create something that is unique and original. Not many game designers have achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success with new ideas, because of this, the managers tend to be wary of new concepts and propositions. Even though this may be the case and many will actually go into production, there might be some ideas within that which may be used in other parts of development. What may be easier to do is working with an existing Intellectual Property (IP), the game can use a previous existing idea. IP rights can cover sports to comics, films to games. This in itself brings up the topic of transmedia where stories are transferred over different types of media. If you are to use a similar themed game you must make sure there are enough differences between them in order to avoid copyright infringement. There is no reason why you cannot make a better game using a similar theme, you just need to be careful of the details.

There are many roles which are needed in order to create a game, each role lasting a different amount of time throughout the whole process to one another.

Designers - tend to work through the whole project, most of their work at the beginning and then coming to and end near the game launch. Their job is to come up with the concept, story, gameworld and mechanics.

Art and animation staff - this ranges from 2D drawings of the designers ideas, right up to the 3D models and the animation. For the art staff, they start from the very beginning up until the game testing, whereas for the animation staff they come in a bit later and most of their work takes place in the concept development and game development section.

Sound and music engineers - sound can really drive a game and influence the emotion a player has so it's a really important aspect.

Programmers - they create the code for the engine that delivers the actual game. The main two roles are engineers and programmers but this can then be further subdivided into other relevant roles.

Testing - Quality Assurance professionals and game testers make sure the game works and meets the required specifications. They will try and find any glitches or loopholes, anything that shouldn't be there and this will normally happen as soon as game development starts in order to correct any mistakes.

Managers - There is an overall head of development who oversees the whole project, making sure everything is to schedule. They also usually have the head of each department beneath them, all the roles being filled by experienced staff.

Sometimes before starting the design process it may be a good idea to answer a few questions, these can help in developing and also solidifying your idea.

Describe your game - it should be a short paragraph outlining the game, who the target audience is, any unique features and an idea of what will happen.

Summarising the story - this should capture the essence of the story itself and is different from actually describing the game.

What platform - there are many different types of platform a game can be distributed on, however some platforms may determine certain aspects to be considered, some games may not work well on certain platforms .

Genre - this is a quick and easy way to categorise the game, by doing this it gives a basic outline to what your game should be about

Target Audience - depending on who it is aimed at, the story, objects that are used, gameplay etc will differ.