253 - Crunch Culture: MindsEye Disaster - Part 02

Gaming Industry Crunch Culture: Deadlines, Management, and Misogyny

In this episode of 'Gaming the System,' Alex, Gem, and Matt dive deep into the challenges of the gaming industry, addressing the pressure of deadlines, the impact of poor management, and the pervasive issue of toxic masculinity. The discussion also touches on larger systemic problems such as patriarchal capitalism and inequality in the gaming workplace. Tune in for insights on how these factors affect game development, employee well-being, and the overall quality of games. Support the podcast on Patreon or via PayPal for more exclusive content.

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Transcript

Speaker 5: 0:15

Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Gaming the System, the podcast where three intersectional feminists examine gaming and games through a feminist lens. Today, I'm your host, Alex, and I'm joined by my friends, gem and Matt, before we get started, if you want to support us, you can subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/gaming the system for some exclusive content. Or you can send us a one-off donation via PayPal to our email address. We are gaming the system@gmail.com. The other thing that interests me about the gaming sector, it's obviously games we know are huge technical achievements, but as we've also touched on that, also very creative. And I wonder whether, as we've also talked about people's egos, whether. It being such a creative project. Maybe manager's egos are also having a bigger part to play for gaming because obviously from the sound of it, this was very much Leslie's baby. It was his first independent project away from Grand Theft Daughter. Um, so perhaps that's got a part to play as well. Um, and I'll touch on that with a later question too. Um, but I wanted to also ask you about, obviously we've talked a lot about the deadlines for crunch and deadlines are a massive thing within the gaming industry. There's so many games that come out every day. You'd think that it wouldn't matter if a game was delayed, but it's such a huge thing. Within, within gaming. So do we think that the pressure of a deadline for a game to be out, the pressure of the community wanting a game to be out at a certain time, does that contribute to these unrealistic demands on workers from the higher ups, from the CEOs? Uh, or is it all down to like the stakeholders just wanting money at certain times and, and things like that? That's probably

Speaker 6: 2:20

a, um. Factor of all of it, really. I think it the, the, the customers want the products and the publishers want to get them out there and the investors want their money and, you know, everyone wants it to be done as, as quickly as possible. And. Obviously the longer that somebody's working that, that somebody's working on a particular game, the less time they can be working on another game. And at the end of the day, there is the, there is a limit. I mean, we've talked about how game prices are just going up and up, but there are limits to how much you can realistically charge for, um, games. So if a game takes. Five years to make, and you can sell it for 50 pounds a game and another game takes two years to make, and you're selling that for 50 pounds a game. You know, then obviously you want the one that's taking two years to make because it's a lot quicker, um, to do. You don't have to pay people for as long and then you can start making the next game. So I, I think we're seeing a similar thing happening with. Um, television, you know, now that we've got all these different, um, streaming channels and this kind of constant, uh, need for a new, for new, um. There were just so many mediocre TV shows and movies out there. I was, I was looking for, um, a movie to watch on, um, on a flight. And um, and I was going through and I was noticing that. All of the films that I was looking at were getting five and a half, six stars from different, you know, from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB and all of those places. Um, like why are there so many movies that are scoring so, so. Averagely. You know, it's not that they don't have decent actors in, it's not that they don't have decent money behind them. It's just that as a society we are, we are accepting this. Well, I mean the, the sort of AI phrase is the slop, you know? Yeah. We're just accepting the slop. We we're accepting it, and we're saying that's fine. And I think that's the problem that the, that games and then if you have a situation where you have the games company that has somebody in it who really is really passionate about it, then. There's a conflict there isn't there because mm-hmm. They're being asked to do everything within too smaller timeframe for their creative brilliance. Um, and with too few people and too few hours and all of that. And suddenly you've got this massive conflict between those things. So it, it isn't necessarily all down to, you know, asshole creatives wanting to ruin everyone's lives. It, it's. About the fact that there is this massive conflict between, because we don't value the creative process and we don't value quality, we, there isn't space in the system to pay for that and to factor that in. I Not sure if that makes any sense at all, but that's, that's my company. It does,

Speaker 7: 6:24

and quality isn't incentivized anymore. I will have to the extent that it was because, because the, the dis the distribution of wealth up and out of the hands of the 99% has, it's too extreme to. Make the people like who have all the money, why would they care? It doesn't matter to them whether how successful something is because like the, the CEO of this and their executive, they've, they've all got very well paid. They, they have generational wealth. They don't, so you can't have people in charge who it absolutely, they have absolutely no. Uh, like stakes in whether the thing is really good or not. It, if it, if it fails completely, then they just go, oh, doesn't matter to me, whatever. And the Angry Joe show has changed my, well, has updated my views on the scoring of things because they, they score things out of 10 and. They point out that for most review places, if something's average, they'll give it a seven. Mm-hmm. And that isn't how maths works. No. Five is average if you've got between one and 10. Five is average. That is average. It is in the middle. It gets as many things wrong as it gets. Right. That is, that's where you should be like. Placing most things, like if it's average, then you go, that's it. But then when most things are, when you start thinking about it like that, if you are, if you are, if you think seven is average, and then it means that five is slightly below average, when it really means that if it's a, if it's a 70 U, it should be a three, a three or a four, and then. But when, when you say, when you settle for things and go, oh yeah, this is fine, then they're gonna go, well, in order to be relatively successful, we'll hit that, we'll hit this shit level. And Alex, one of their, one of them, one of their teams called Alex, and he says that people who, people who. S like watched, like really big blockbuster things that are absolutely awful. And the death of art is saying if you give this above average scores, then you are literally making all of art worse. Because if you give money to a shit thing and say, oh, it's fine, why would they try and make anything better than that? So. Uh, yeah. So all the incentive or the, the, the money distribution is too extreme. The, and then there's the, the, the, the evolution of micro transactions.'cause it's a lot simpler when it's just the only money you make from something is the, the buying of it. Whereas now through the, the mobile game market, the Candy Crush things where. People, billions from billions, more successful than 99% of games. And there's just the, the, the, like, the schizophrenic sort of like, I dunno if that's the right word, but the, like the absolute flightiness and man childness and it's like, like. Gods, they think of themselves as Gods, and so they've got all this money and they don't have any, there's no grounding to them, and we are just all, we're just all at the mercy of it. And we're not even getting, if, if, if they were pulling out awesome stuff as well, that'd be one thing. But then

Speaker 5: 10:40

I think, uh, oversaturation. Of the markets is definitely a problem. Uh, and yeah, I don't know. I think it's just we're all, we're, we've, there's too much choice out there and, uh, not enough quality as we say. But, um, but

Speaker 7: 10:57

that is a, that is a positive, that is a positive thing. Fortunately with, with, unlike with films, you can't make a AAA blockbuster as an independent filmmaker. No, but with game designers, you can spend. Like Claire obscure is the, mm, that is the, that's properly the, the highest bar of like the cutting edge of game design quality really. And they did that using almost entirely, uh, unreal engine like. Uh, third party assets and making it look like you can literally buy it. And lot, a lot of it was free stuff that comes with the Unreal engine and showing that you can do that. And so as long as we've got places like uh, Claire Obscure and Boulder Gate three going, like along the way, there will always be people making fantastic games and. Hopefully that continues to be true because these small studios can make such fantastic things. Um, I don't know if you remember, uh, when Boulders Gate three came out and it was a revolutionary AAA thing where it's this massive hundreds of hours long game. There's no micro zone sections. It's, it raises the bar in every metric in terms of gaming and the, the message from. A ton of other AA game studio was going, don't expect this to be the new norm because this really isn't, this is a very unrealistic thing to be, to be, uh, expecting of people and not everyone really wants it, rather than going, I was,

Speaker 6: 12:41

that came to mind when you were talking about it earlier, actually. I'm glad you mentioned that.'cause Yeah, that it was quite, it is quite shocking how quickly they jumped on it as well. Don't expect this to be the norm.

Speaker 7: 12:56

Yeah. And they were right.

Speaker 5: 12:57

Mm-hmm. But yeah, I just wanted to touch back on gender within the workplace, just to kind of wrap up this episode, really. Um, because obviously we've talked and gem you touched on it at the start of the episode, um, about the barriers that women facing work, particularly compared to men, um, in management roles. O obviously poor management is not confined only to men or only to women. What sort of factors contribute to to poor management? I was wondering about whether, obviously toxic masculinity has a role to play with within poor management and whether that can affect women in management as well, whether they feel like they have to manage in a certain way, whether they have. Feel like they ought to be micromanaging because of pressure from maybe other male colleagues, or they need to be seen to be managing or in control and maybe there's something there at play. I dunno, I was just toying with the idea in my head. I dunno whether you have had any thoughts on it at all.

Speaker 6: 14:04

Yeah, I've, I've thought about this quite a lot actually, because I think that it's, I think toxic masculinity is a. Good, um, way to look at it. But my, my thinking at the moment is that a lot of our problems stem from patriarchal capitalism. And I think that the values that we hold as a society are dictated by those two factors. So it's, um. It's about power, is about, um, strength, and it's about how you can value something, how much something is worth financially, which is one of the biggest problems that we have because w. What we really need is a, an economy that actually recognizes the importance of care and care is, you know. Caring for your employees and making sure that they are not burnt out in, in the work process and putting in, um, systems that allow people to work at their best and be as healthy as they can be in, in their work, working life. Um, and I think that because of this sort of patriarchal. Capitalism driving everything. I think we are in, in an interesting moment, and I think it depends on how positive. You are as to whether you feel that this is the death rows of patriarchal capitalism or actually a sort of shift, um, away from the attempts to move away from capitalism and, and the patriarchy, because I think we are seeing this rise. Tech bro culture and I, that to me is, it's not entirely driven by this, but I think that the AI boom unfortunately came at completely the wrong moment for that shift because what it's done is it's given that these very. Um, I dunno, uh, confused and not very. Socially, um, adept men, a huge amount of power on over our society. And suddenly you've got, you know, Elon Musk and I've forgotten everyone's names, so, you know, you've got, is it, feel free to chime me. Mark Zuckerberg? Yeah. Zuckerberg and Bezos. And, um. Oh yeah. Anyway, a whole bunch of these tech bros who are suddenly extremely powerful. I mean, they were already really bloom and powerful. Mm-hmm. But AI has just shot them in, you know, stratospheric. I mean, it is crazy really. I think the only thing that could have done. More damage would've been if Elon Musk had managed to get to Mars, had it. If he, if he'd actually, if him and Bezos had properly got their space race on, um, then I think we would be seeing a similar sort of tech bubble. And it, what it's done is it's given them a lot of power and it, and it's. Given them a superiority complex, it's, it's shored up their SEC superiority complex where they genuinely believe that patriarchal capitalism is not only the best option, but it is the only logical option. And I've known quite a lot of tech techie men for whom that would be their argument. We will always end up here because this is the thing that makes the most sense. I am increasingly of the opinion that it isn't the only thing that makes the most sense. There are many other options and, um, Kate Woolworths, um, donut economy is something to look at. If, if that's, if that's something you would like to know more about, there are many other ways of approaching this. So yeah, I do think that we're seeing an increase in this machismo. Um, and I do think that it borders on toxic masculinity. I do think that we are seeing this idea that, you know. The aim of the game is to be the best, is to be the biggest, is to make the most money and all of the other stuff. Family doesn't matter. Mental health doesn't matter. Physical health doesn't matter. You know, taking a moral responsibility for your employees doesn't matter. They should be grateful that they've got a job. I mean. I don't wanna bang on about Elon Musk too much, but I do think that his attitude to his children is a really, really good example as to why these people should not be allowed to have this extreme amount of power that they have. And so, yeah, I, I do think it is, I think it is a, a. A shift at the moment towards this to, you know, properly leaning into the patriarchal capitalism. But whether or not it's a, a, a sort of last ditch attempt of those people to hang on to the power that they have gained out since the Industrial Revolution. Um, or whether it is a. More permanent shift to those kind of old school attitudes? I don't know. Um, I, that all depends on how positive I'm feeling on the day

Speaker 5: 21:05

you ask me. And we know that, um, I mean, I've never been a manager, manager of people, but I think it is a very hard job to do. To do well. You, there's plenty of people who are put in the position of manager and don't have the appropriate training or the confidence or the knowledge that they need to be competent at managing other people. So I guess my last question to you both would be, how can we help managers, particularly women in management, who feel like they're really overwhelmed and burnt out to get help in, in becoming better at managing? Their teams or, or just themselves as managers, because that, I think sometimes, well, it's not only women, it's men as well, does contribute to the, to the problem of poor communication and, and these unhealthy working environments.

Speaker 7: 22:02

Um, sorry, can I, uh, interject of course on the, the, the, um, toxic cellularity and misogyny thing of course, because, uh, that's the, the like. Generally, like the, the simplest split between in, in society is between men and women. You've got roughly 50 50 and then you've got trans people, non-binary people, but it's easier to go right. Men, you are higher in society than women. And then. You can, that's the, the initial split and then what the right wing and the media and the capitalism and the ruling class have been doing more and more and more. And the advent of social media has allowed them to do this is to whip people up into anger and sadism against other people and people who are different to them. And we can see that in the UK at the moment with all the, uh. England flags going up everywhere. They're going, oh, we just, we just love our country. It's going, no, it's'cause you're saying you hate people who aren't white men and that is what is going to, they want to spread that to everyone. They want to have people antagonized and angry with their fellow citizen and. Part of the reason, like and why toxic masculinity is so damaging is because the misogyny of antagonism against women actually furthers the, the divide between them because they're not on the same page. Right? We're the same. We have, we're in the same place doing the same thing. That's fine as to be, if there's a woman who is in a position of power above the average man. There are so many voices telling that man that he should be angry and that he shouldn't, he shouldn't be happy with this, and that he should be happy. He should hope that that woman should have something bad happen to them, even if it makes the workplace a worse place. And. And it's, and it's another reason why we have Donald Trump in the, in the White House, is because of misogyny in America. Because she, both Kamala Harris and uh, Hillary Clinton are woefully flawed candidates, absolutely abysmal candidates, but they definitely lost millions of votes purely because they were female. And that's the kind of detached from reality mindset that our leaders want to instill in us. And when they do get women in these positions of power, they want them and they manage to find women who will be, even though they're in positions of power, they are still ruling on behalf of the men who are. Higher up. They are not behaved. So like with, um, I think am Emily Marmo in the French Open tennis, French Open, she's been the torn female, torn, been the tournament director for several years and it is just being, it's like it's being run by the old men's club who she's essentially

Speaker 5: 25:30

a puppet, but Yeah.

Speaker 7: 25:31

Yeah. And then the, their, their absolute, I think, golden case scenario is, say. With, I think about this often, and fortunately they're not in power for the moment with the, uh, conservatives, an incredibly diverse front bench of the conservatives for prime minister, person of color, uh, person of color, women in high ranking positions. You think, oh, that, that, that should be good. But then they are some of the most viciously racist people. In, in their party. Ella Braverman Pri Patel, rich soak, absolute like off the charts level diabolical racism. And that is the white what the, the white ruling class men want. And the, and another thing, the ruling class love is laughing at us, laughing at the peasants, fighting amongst themselves and. The, yeah, the misogyny and the toxic massive ity is, and I, I completely agree about the, the two coin, the two sides of the coins is patriarchy and capitalism, which is why those are the two things that we end up talking about the most, and that they feed each other, they're not separate things. And even though it's, it's upsetting and frustrating to talk about, I'm so glad that we've got a place where we, we. We agree on it and we go, we are not crazy, are we? This is, you know, I feel like I'm, there's so much going, I feel like I'm going mad that I'm the mad one. But then you need to find places and people where they go, this is mad. This is mad. Everything's insane. And then we can go, oh, okay. Hold onto find those people and hold onto them really tight.'cause you, you need that in this mad world. Yeah.

Speaker 6: 27:36

I think when it comes to how all of that impacts on the sort of management process within these, in these studios is. I dunno who said it, but it's an excellent, an excellent concept is that you are promoted to the sort of your, your point of failure. So basically you just keep getting promoted until you are rubbish at your job. And one of the things that I've always thought was insane is that in order to be a manager, you have to just be good at. Whatever it is that you are, that you are doing, and that is a whole different skillset to managing people and managing, um, systems and all of that. And I think this is where the problem lies. So somebody can be a really, really good, um, computer programmer. It does not mean that they're going to be able to manage people. It doesn't mean that they'll have those skills and. I think that is where we have this problem within the workplace, and I think both men and women end up being promoted into management positions without being given the right support that, that the need in order to manage people. And I think that that is. Where all of this stuff that we've been talking about with the patriarchal capitalism is the problem because that says all you need to be the good at is, um, the skills of your productive job and management. Managing people is not a productive. Thing. It doesn't produce anything tangible. Therefore, the value placed on the. Those skills is, is is much reduced. I don't think that companies are completely oblivious to it. I mean, I do think that people do recognize that managers need to have some people skills, but I think there is too many examples where people have just been promoted to a management role and given staff when they are not capable, they don't have that skillset. So I think it's really important that. All management are given training to understand that their staff are human beings, and to recognize the signs of burnout, to recognize the importance of having. Breaks, taking time out. You know, it's not okay for somebody to, to not take their holiday throughout the year. You know, they need to be taking that time. We know from a psychological perspective, from a mental health perspective, that prevention is better than cure. If you take lots of smaller breaks from things, if you deal with the mental. Pressure that can build up over time. If you sort of release those valves periodically, you are much less likely to have some big physical or emo emotional breakdown. You know, you are much less likely to end up with a back injury or you know, having to be signed off for two weeks with stress. This is a positive thing for companies in the long run. You know, presenteeism is a massive issue, which is like people turning up to work and not really being at work because they are not in the, in the right frame of mind to actually be productive. So yeah, I would give, I would make it, you know, I would provide training for people. It doesn't have to be like, you know, you're not asking them to go do a PhD, you know, just a little bit of training, a little bit of. In recognition that the, that the wellbeing of yourself is important.

Speaker 5: 31:56

Trusting that they can take on that role as well, having putting trust in their person will help build their confidence as well. Yeah, I think often that is something that's not, um, covered really by a lot of organizations is that you have to help teams to believe in themselves. And have trusting relationships between each other as well? Definitely,

Speaker 6: 32:19

yes. The communication has to flow both ways. It's, it's, I mean, I said earlier that communication is really important in order to manage these scenarios, and I think that, as you said, Alex, you know, some people are anxious or feel that there's no point in them saying anything'cause nothing will be done. Yeah. So it's really important that the, that, that, that the people at the. Coalface, um, topically feel able to say to their management. This is not working. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, we are not gonna make this deadline, you know, we need another five people, and the, the management are prepared to listen to that. Mm-hmm. And vice versa. It's really important that management say, look, you need to tell me if we need to hire some more people because we have to make this deadline. And if we can't do it, then you are all gonna have to stay in every weekend. You know? And, and that's. Basically because otherwise all of our jobs are on the line. If you have those conversations, then you can, you can, but as you say, you have to empower the, all these conversations

Speaker 5: 33:22

to happen

Speaker 6: 33:22

all levels within the, within a business has to be empowered to feel able to have those, those honest conversations. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7: 33:33

I've been watching, uh, the Star Trek original series recently, and it's just. It's just the best. It's just the absolute best and there are so many, it, it, it, it has the best answers to so many things. And they have management as well because Captain Kirk is the captain and he. He didn't just unlike in the, the new films or he's just this maverick, just lad and he's just really cool and awesome and that's why he gets to be captain. He went, he was the, uh, top ranking student at Star Feed Academy for years, then worked his way up the chain of command to be captain of the Starship. And there the yellow, the gold is the, the leadership. Uh, class of star fleet. So you, you have, you can have scientists, you can have security, you can have engineers, you can have navigators. They've got all these specialisms, but there is an entirely separate one, which is for command. And that'cause it takes a massive amount of skill to be in command of a group of people. And Kirk, he knows. He knows how to do all the jobs on the ship to a certain extent, to know what it's capable of, what needs to be done. But then he's got his staff around him. He's got Spock, he's got McCoy, he's got Scotty, he's got, he's got Ulli. He's got Chekov, he's got all of this. These people who are as expert in their fields, far more expertise than he has, but he knows enough about them to, to use these people in the right way and. That recognition of what it means to be in charge of people, to be managing people is just completely left outta the equation.'cause it just needs to be right under capitalism. You don't have to care about these people, you just need to get them to do the thing, to perform the function, to make the money, and then that's it. And you need, you need to be a, a really vocational thing as well. As'cause people suck people. People on the like in completely relaxed places can suck. But when you're in a high pressure work environment and then you're managing people who are ill, people who are tired, people who are underpaid, people who have kids, people who have like elderly parents, the, the higher gamut of things. And if you're thinking, I just have to get these people to. To do the thing, then of course it's gonna, of course, the, the end result isn't gonna be very good and. So part of the course should be a staff lead academy course where you go and watch and study, study.

Speaker 5: 36:30

I think that's a fantastic idea. There we are. That's the answer to crunch culture. Just go watch Star Trek and uh, you'll get all you need to do. There you have it. Uh, thank you so much brave for covering the topic with me. I think we've, uh, we've pretty much covered. More than I thought we would, which is but exciting. And uh, I'm always excited whenever we, we come to cover topics'cause we always get a lot outta the discussion. So thank you. Um, and if you enjoyed that, please let us know and tell your friends as well. We'll be back every Thursday with another episode. So we'll see you then. And thank you very much for watching and listening. Bye-bye.

Speaker 6: 37:12

Bye

Speaker 5: 37:12

bye.