[Developer Musings] Deadlines, Social Lives, and Satisfaction – RCMADIAX, Eden Industries, Frozenbyte talk about the stress of making games
Ryan Vandendyck – Eden Industries
Previous Works: Eden Industries released Waveform back in 2012. The action/puzzle title is available on PC, Mac, and Linux.
Upcoming Games: The studio is currently developing Citizens of Earth thanks to a publishing deal with Atlus. Look out for the game on Wii U, 3DS, PS4, PS Vita, and PC later this year!
I’d like to start off by saying I love making games! I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to do what I’m doing. So bear that in mind as I explore some of the harsher realities of making games, since what will follow may sound very negative!
First, while making games is enjoyable, it’s also very serious work. Staring at lines of code all day, examining why things are off by a single pixel, spending hours investigating a bizarre crash where memory is mysteriously overwritten…these things are not overtly “fun”. Throw into the mix having to often work long days (16 hour days are not uncommon for me, meaning 80-100 hour weeks are pretty regular) with no compensation (there’s no overtime pay in the mainstream game industry and definitely nothing of the sort with indie development) with looming deadlines, and you can probably start to see where stress begins to build!
Since I’m the game director of a small team, this is compounded by the number of different hats I have to wear, so to speak. I have to take care of anything that falls through the cracks. So in addition to my main roles of programming and design I also take care of all business-related matters (such as communicating with our publisher, Atlus, paying contractors, etc.), manage the team, track deadlines and objectives, and even random odd tasks like fixing bugs in levels, making particle effects, etc. So it’s a ton of work spread across a ton of different disciplines as deadlines approach relentlessly. Talk about stress! That definitely takes a heavy personal toll.
I should probably point out that I’m also both a workaholic and a perfectionist, so I may overload myself more than is necessary sometimes. So depending on someone’s individual personality, things may be better for some than what I described.
The most notable impact of how the stress of making games and all that I described impacted me and my family was about three years ago when I got married. Although that of course was a happy thing, I was at the time both working full-time at Next Level Games on Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon and also working essentially full-time on Waveform in the evenings and weekends. As you can probably imagine, that first year of marriage was pretty rocky as I was working at minimum 80 hours/week on two different games. In retrospect, getting married during a time of intense work stress and the transition from mainstream development into Eden Industries was probably not a great idea. Oh, and just to complicate the mix, during all that my mom passed away extremely suddenly. And incidentally, she was the one that believed in me even from a young age to go and make games. So try to imagine grieving over a lost parent, juggling the responsibilities of a new marriage, and still working 80-100 hours a week across 2 different games. In retrospect, I’m a bit surprised I even made it through that. Thank God I’m even still able and motivated to keep making games!
Now that I’m solely working on Citizens of Earth, and not spreading my time across 2 different games and companies, I do at least get to spend more time with my wife. Though I still have to admit that most of our time together is me at my computer working and her in another room. Which I suppose is not really “spending time together” in the traditional sense, so I hope to change that in the future.
But I guess what it comes down to, and this’ll hopefully bring things back full circle to where I started, is I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to be working on Citizens of Earth. Having a team that believes in what I’m trying to do, and the support of a publisher like Atlus that also believes in the vision of the game, is a privilege that I take very seriously and I want to ensure that I don’t squander it. I like to frame it in the context that after the game ships, I’ll never be able to make Citizens of Earth better (aside from patches I guess…), so I should put my whole heart into it while I have the chance! And that means a ton of work, making sure we hit deadlines, and trying to ensure my wife doesn’t divorce me!
Oh, and just to finish with a flourish, I don’t earn any money until Citizens of Earth releases. I’ve put 2.5 years so far into Citizens of Earth, but all the money I’ve received (either from Atlus or even from the residual profits of Waveform) I funnel into development of the game. So in case working 80+ hours a week while juggling countless different development roles and trying to stay married didn’t seem quite stressful enough, imagine doing it without any money!
Continue on for thoughts from Frozenbyte…
