GameswidowSpyder's Blog

Away days

gameswidowspyder — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:01:15 +0000

So I’m on my own at home at the moment. He’s off helping out at another studio. Too far away to pop home for the odd weekend or evening. We discussed it all, reasoned it out, agreed a compromise. Which he, of course, promptly ignored. I told him that he could extend his stay, but that I wanted reasonable notice. He told me the day before he was due to come home.

New city, you’d think he’d make an effort to see a little bit of the area. But 7 days a week, working into the evenings, doesn’t leave a lot of time for fun. He’s seen the inside of a few of the closest bars and restaurants.

It apparently doesn’t leave much time for emails or phone calls either. One of the pets got ill. He didn’t bother asking about her. She died. He didn’t bother asking about her. I had a big project go live at work. He didn’t bother asking about it. Launch day came and went. He didn’t bother asking about it.

I got fed up of doing all the work and the worrying. Of fending off questions from friends and family about where he was, what he was doing, when he would be back. Of telling his mum where he was, or turning down invitations for him from his friends. I guess I shouldn’t be aggrieved. He made no more effort to stay in touch with any of them than he did with me.

I went off for a long weekend away. I could have visited him, but he didn’t know if he’d still be around, if he could get any time off work, where he’d be staying, what dates would work. And he expected me to drop my work at 24 hours notice, book travel tickets at premium price no-notice cost, and hang around on the hope he might get an afternoon off, and that didn’t really sound like a break to me, more like normal life, but in a city where I didn’t have anyone to hang out with when he dumped me for work. So I turned down that half-arsed offer and made my own plans, a trip to the seaside. I let him know my plans, a courtesy he rarely returns.

He sent flowers. A week after my project launch, a project I’d been working damn hard towards for eighteen months. To my office, when my hayfever-ridden colleague took them in. Because they arrived on a day when I’d told him that I wouldn’t be around. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with them. Leave them on my desk to die, or carry them home, whilst they drip down my coat. This already half-dead bouquet, with an overwhelming sickly sweet stench, it’s like having a wreath on my desk, reminding me how he tramples everything that’s important to me into the ground. Reminding me how he always thinks of me least and last and far too late.

I’ve already bought myself daffodils. It seems to me they’re a far simpler, sunnier flower, full of Spring’s optimism. The other flowers, they can go on the grave of the pet whose death he missed. Because two minutes of time stolen from work, credit card in hand, doesn’t make up for weeks of emotional and physical absence.

Happy Holidays

gameswidowspyder — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 18:41:39 +0000

So we come to that time of year when we discuss holidays. It’s important to try and get those dates in as soon as the leave year starts. And as usual the discussion goes something like this:-
“How about a week off to do this in ..” – “No, crunch.”
“What about ..”, “No, still crunch.”
“How about ..”, “GDC”
“Well, what about ..”, “No, crunch then”
“But it’s after GDC” “I know but I’ll be in crunch during GDC”

It’s different this year. Because we have friends we want to visit, who are living abroad. And due to their schedule, and the climate, and flights, and all that other crap, there’s a 3 month window in which we can make the trip. But there’s no time within that three months that suits the company, and it doesn’t matter that it’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to visit somewhere we’ve never been and stay with people who are actually living the local life. Because the game rules all. And the company is boss, not just of him, but of my personal life and my worklife too. I take my holidays to their schedule, regardless of how inconvenient it is for me or my work. I’m surprised they haven’t started sponsoring abortions for babies inconveniently due to arrive during crunch, but I guess they figure daddy, and it almost always is daddy, will come in early and stay late just to avoid the crying and the stinking nappies. Here’s my advice to any woman dating or married to a games programmer – don’t have kids unless you’re prepared to feel like a single mother, without the benefits and with one extra kid to look out for, for the next twenty years.

So as the floating crunch envelops us, it’s now six months where we can’t schedule holiday and no end in sight. I’m still stuck on how we’re going to fit 4 weeks holiday into the 2.5 week window that doesn’t clash with crunch, but the company will probably give us at least 2 days notice that we can grab a week, smack bang in the middle of the school holidays. And faced with the prospect of paying through the nose to for a last minute jaunt to somewhere we really don’t want to be, we’ll probably just stay home, do DIY and miserably acknowledge that if this is how holidays go, we’d both rather be in work.

My Crunch

gameswidowspyder — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:09:06 +0000

Now it’s my turn. I have a big project launch next week and a load of other stuff going on. I’m the one who can’t be bothered to think about dinner or chores or taking the bins out and who is always focused on something else. Although, for me, this is a once every four years kind of thing, not once every four months. I get to see it from the other side. I just want to get this done and always, my partner, he wants attention, needs a little love. He’s the one who gets the whole of the bed and the solitude. I understand the drive and ambition, the focus, the pure pigheadedness of getting it done – it’s just it can’t be sustained for months on end, and you can’t sustain anything outside it if it goes on for months on end.

This week, my mum’s phoned a couple of times. I think I know what she wants to tell me and I think it’s bad news – someone else got there before her. And I know I should talk to her, although I don’t quite know what’s wrong with texting or email or messaging. And I’m getting kinda narked at the facebook messages from siblings and mutual acquaintances – I know she called, I have caller ID. But right now, in my own personal crunch, my target now is getting the work done and getting five straight hours sleep. And I’m not close to either of them. And this particular bad news, it’s not someone close and there’s not much I can do and right now, it seems doing what I can, living whilst I can, getting my priorities straight is the most important thing. So I’ll call my mum this weekend and I’ll take the flak for not answering her calls and I’ll hear the bad news and I will feel bad for not giving her the support she wanted, the friendly voice telling her that there were other good things going on, but still in the back of my mind, I’ll be debugging or working out what I’ve left to do.
Good night or morning or some time – I’ve got some performance issues to iron out before I go to bed.

RockstarSpouse – more unhappy wives and partners

gameswidowspyder — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:12:05 +0000

Back in 2004, Erin Hoffman, then only known to us as ea_spouse, put into words what a lot of us who lived alongside games company employees had felt for some time – that the long hours and unreasonable working culture, which was almost impossible to resist, not only damaged our loved ones’ lives and health, but also our relationships and our lives and health. Massive publicity, a lawsuit, and several quality of life working groups and websites later, it felt like the industry might be on the brink of a sea change.

It looks now like we were heralding a false dawn. This time it’s another large company’s turn as the wives of Rockstar San Diego employees, or at least someone claiming to represent them, complain, somewhat less eloquently, about their partners’ working conditions.

Rockstar Spouse’s post on gamasutra

Long hours, unreasonable pressure, moveable deadlines leading to extended crunch, no comp time, poor salary increases and bonuses, increased stress levels manifesting themselves in mental and physical health problems. It all sounds pretty familiar and there’s very little to disagree with. But here’s a few extra points.

1) Salary / bonus – unfortunately there is a recession on, and companies are struggling to stay afloat. Even previously successful companies. None of us got the salary increases / bonuses we hoped for last year. Many of us are just grateful to still have a job. The games industry isn’t that different from the rest of the world – salaries and bonuses are down there as well. Besides which, just what amount of money is enough to compensate for putting your life, and the life of your family, on hold for a year or more?

2) Some of the comments mention the unnecessary cost of flying in people from other studios and some are fairly critical of the help received. I’ve known many people who’ve been dropped into other studios to help out during crunch and it ain’t much fun from that end of the deal. Given a week or two’s notice to leave their home for an unspecified period – try explaining that to your wife or kids. And it’s not like your family can enjoy a holiday out there with you cos chances are, when you get there, you’ll be working even longer hours than you do back home – crunch hours and then a little bit extra to get to grips with the new game. And if you’re really lucky you might get a mention near the bottom of the credits, but chances are your contribution will be forgotten. I’m guessing that many of those lucky individuals flown in to help out RockStar San Diego barely had enough free time to visit the local Taco Bell let alone make a day trip to Sea World.

And this, this is my biggest bugbear. This will only change when the employees themselves start saying this stuff. In just how many other industries are the partners of those working responsible for raising concerns about their employment rights? True, miners’ wives may have played an invaluable role in supporting the miners’ strike, but the miners had to go out on strike in the first place. Nothing will change until individuals within the industry start saying that they refuse to accept these conditions and THEN do refuse to accept these conditions.

Lads’ Nights Out

gameswidowspyder — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:18:20 +0000

Celebration time – we seem to have left crunch, for now at least. That means it’s party time.
The games industry knows that it’s not the money, or the love of the job, or threats from the boss that makes people work long hours. It’s really hard to leave your desk and go home to your family when you know you’re letting your team-mate down, particularly if you not only respect your team-mate, but you also really like them. The best way to squeeze more work out of people is to make sure that you have really strong teams, teams that are like a second family to each other.
So quite often when they’re not spending really long hours working hard together, they’re spending long hours playing hard together. Games industry parties start in the pub – they quite often end in the lapdancing or strip club. Women are usually tolerated as long as they don’t bring any of those foolish feminist objections about paying to see other women undress. Occasionally wives and partners are invited. Sometimes, they aren’t but as the evening wears on, they get a drunken phone call – “We’re all at the pub. Why don’t you come and join us?”, oblivious to the fact that it’s a £20 taxi fare, it’ll take at least 30 minutes and the pub closes in 45 minutes. More often than not though, it’s just the team together and an incoherent text at one in the morning – “I can’t get home tonight but I’m staying at …”.
The evenings out are legendary. The company card behind the bar or the boss buying champagne cocktails. And when us OHs are invited out, the generosity extends to us too – it’s not all bad being a games programmer’s widow. I’m told even the bits I don’t remember are quite good. But I’m lucky – I lead the kind of life where I can get a phone call at 5pm and be in the pub at 5.30, because you don’t often get much more warning than that.
But going out, drinking, going to strip clubs – it’s almost as much of the job as writing the code. Sure, you can cry off once or twice, but it’s important to be seen as a team player. People who don’t do the socialising don’t tend to last very long or get very far. It’s really just a different type of overtime and it’s still taking staff away from their families. I think it’s great to celebrate the end of crunch but it’s not just the staff that have gone through it – everyone should celebrate. Invite us, give us a bit of warning and above all, don’t ask us at 11pm if we mind being popped in a taxi so that the lads can go on to a “Gentleman’s club”. And I’ll be happy to pay for my own drinks.

Pancakes

gameswidowspyder — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:05:57 +0000

To top it all, this morning I woke up at 5.30am to find we were being burgled. And the bloody dog hadn’t even barked. I stumbled out onto the landing to investigate further – the burglars had even turned the downstairs lights on. And that’s when a second possibility occured to me – I called my OH’s name. “I’ve just popped back. Go back to sleep.” he told me. Silently I apologised to the dog.
A couple of hours later, my OH woke me again – he brought pancakes and nutella up to me in bed. True, later on, I had to scrub the somewhat blackened frying pan. But, in these months of saying goodnight by text, or waking briefly when he rolls into bed at 3am, you take those moments of happiness where you can find them.

Our anniversary

gameswidowspyder — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:42:20 +0000

Yesterday was our anniversary. I have been with this man more years than I care to remember. We met fresh out of Uni, both full of dreams and ambitions. He wanted to work in the games industry and I wanted to be the world’s greatest feminist. OK, so maybe he was slightly more focused.

So more than a decade down the line, he works on games, big games, the kinds of games you’ll have heard of even if you don’t play. Me, I stay home in the evenings and clean and cook and look after the house, and occasionally nag him to sign his mum’s birthday card or send his sister a text message to congratulate her on passing her driving test.

Because here’s one thing that I’ve learnt about the games industry, if you’re in it and you’re over 30, you’ve got someone stood behind you picking up the pieces. Someone who’s prepared to look after the kids, or arrange the house sale, or throw out your sour milk. Someone who’s prepared to explain to your 90 year old gran why you won’t be home for Christmas or tell your friends that you’d love to come to their wedding just as long as it falls between March and May next year.

So yesterday was our anniversary – great timing, it fell on a Sunday. He went to work at 11am. I did some gardening, washed the dishes, tidied up and hoovered, walked the dog. At 8.30pm, he emailed to say things weren’t going that great and he might stay over. That’s about the last I heard from him. I checked the empty fridge – no point in food shopping when he’s never around – and decided that my anniversary dinner should be the 4th baked potato of the week.

Good news though – today’s the final final deadline. The last final final deadline was the end of August, and before that the start of August. I’ll let you know when the next final final deadline is and who knows, one of these days we might just get a final final final deadline.

My OH does OK out of this. He loves his job, loves his team. He’s paid well enough and will probably get a handsome bonus, even in the recession. Friends and relatives call up to say they saw his name in the credits. They don’t pay me – the money I have is the money I earn. They no longer even put my name in the credits. I get to go to a fairly decent Christmas party and I once got a bunch of flowers from the company. For every person, the games industry hires, it exploits one, two, several more. Whether it’s the mums who wash their clothes and make sure they’re always in deodorant, or the girlfriends who always have to take time off their work to let the builders in, or the boyfriends who buy all the birthday and Christmas presents, or the kids who understand that Daddy can’t go on holiday with them this year or the wives who can only have a romantic night out if the work blackberry / iphone can come too. There’s always someone else sacrificing their lives and their dreams to the games industry’s long working hours culture.

It doesn’t have to be like this. So here’s a huge round of applause to Relentless’s relentless commitment to crunch-free working – 2150 days without crunch and counting.