
An insider's look at what he gave up to create a classic game - aaronbrethorst
http://www.polygon.com/2016/6/1/11820966/fable-crunch-microsoft
======
rwallace
This is a good example of an important general point: _human social instincts
are a really huge security vulnerability_. The price we pay for adaptability
is that we can't have a hardwired instinct of what's normal, so the solution
evolution came up with was to program us to take our cue on that from the
people around us. The downside is that if we put ourselves in an environment
where people are doing bad things - working overtime, doing a PhD, taking
drugs, bullying, working for a totalitarian regime, basically anything
whatsoever - it won't be long before our brains start telling us it's
perfectly normal and finding excuses for the harmful effects. Look at this
guy: he admits it ruined his life, but he still thinks it was okay because he
liked his initial group of co-workers.

Conclusion: do not put yourself in an environment where the people around you
are doing bad things. If you are already in such an environment, talk to
someone outside it, get their view on the matter, and take it seriously. And
if you think you aren't in such an environment, consider doing that anyway as
a reality check.

~~~
Artoemius
> the solution evolution came up with was to program us to take our cue on
> that from the people around us

Exactly, I cannot agree more. One of the most striking examples of this is a
classic experiment where people are no longer able to trust their own judgment
in a very simple matter and are compelled to give an obviously wrong answer to
avoid deviating from the norm:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments)

~~~
hansjorg
That was an interesting read. I'm not sure it actually proves your point
though, seeing as two thirds of the subjects did not yield.

Also, from the end of the article:

> Asch's 1951 report emphasised the predominance of independence over yielding
> saying "the facts that were being judged were, under the circumstances, the
> most decisive." However, a 1990 survey of US introductory psychology
> textbooks found that most ignored independence, instead reported a
> misleading summary of the results as reflecting complete power of the
> situation to produce conformity of behavior and belief.

~~~
whack
It's worth pointing out that 75% of the subjects did yield at some point.

 _" 25 percent of the sample consistently defied majority opinion, with the
rest conforming on some trials."_

Ie, when taking the test individually, everyone got the correct answer almost
all the time. But when taking the test in a group, 75% gave the incorrect
answer at some point.

------
eterpstra
Side note...

The tech/startup world has realized relatively quickly that 100 hour workweeks
are detrimental to productivity, retention, and overall success. Seems like
articles such as this come out on a weekly basis, along with other articles on
'progressive' practices such as unlimited vacation, flex working hours,
mandatory time off, half-day Fridays, etc... and it's only taken a dozen or so
years.

The medical profession, on the other hand, has struggled with this for almost
a hundred years. The norm was for residents to work 100+ hour weeks, for 3-5
years. Non-stop. Only recently have they given themselves a pat on the back
for achieving a '[mandatory 80 hour
workweek]([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#To...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours#Towards_an_80-hour_work_week\)').

Seems odd that people building apps and games have figured out that working
insane hours is bad, but the people responsible for treating the sick and
wounded are still chugging along, bleary eyed and overworked.

~~~
munificent
The work is very different. If I'm coding and I'm tired, I can go home and get
some sleep. When I get in the next day, the code is _exactly_ how I left it.

A doctor can't put their patients in suspended animation while they get some
shut-eye. The patient's condition may worse or improve. They may make vague
complaints that are clues that can only be pieced together if you were around
to pick up all of them.

Likewise, it's very very difficult for a doctor to serialize every bit of data
they've gleaned from a patient to pass on to the next doctor to come on
rotation.

Because of that "continuity of care"—having one doctor around to continuously
interact with the same patient—is really important. It would definitely be
great for doctors to work shorter hours, but it does have some real costs.
Patients aren't text files.

~~~
rqebmm
This is all very true, but on the other hand: if you're coding and you're
tired it's exceedingly unlikely that your mistake would kill someone.

~~~
pixl97
Unless you're coding medical devices.

~~~
andyjdavis
You are presumably not writing the code and immediately patching some device
that is hooked up to a patient.

------
mrdrozdov
This doesn't exactly seem like the healthiest (or most efficient) routine.

> A pattern emerged in my days during this period. Get up, get washed and
> dressed, wash down a couple of caffeine tablets with some strong coffee,
> pick up a red bull, a coke and some cereal bars on my way into the office.
> Once at work I’d be at my desk non-stop; all meals would be eaten at my
> desk, though sometimes I’d not eat at all. When I did eat, it would usually
> mean a sandwich from the supermarket for lunch. Work would often provide
> dinner, invariably takeout. Sugary caffeinated drinks and sweets would
> sustain me for the rest of the time.

Working 80 hour weeks is not okay, but working 40 hour weeks is also probably
not okay when you're relying on this sort of sustenance.

Thanks incredibly for sharing your experience and helping build such a
renowned game. Hopefully people can take away from your experiences strategies
to avoid a similar fate!

~~~
inDigiNeous
Yeah I dont understand this either as a programmer. Maybe this works in a big
team better, but alone at least there's no way I can work even 8 hours
productively every day, realistically it's more like 3-4 hours of intense
thinking, maybe on a good day I can do 6-7 hours, and sometimes even more, but
continuing this pattern will really affect the level of code and problem
solving in a major way.

Better to take breaks, do something else, just relax for a day or two even if
nothing is coming out, and then continue when it comes naturally.

~~~
Joeri
They might have shipped sooner had they let everyone work normal hours. It's
not just that the studies agree sustained crunch is a bad idea, I've seen
several times in person that sustained crunch beyond the first few weeks
lowers overall productivity. People start goofing off, or just staring at code
without making much progress, or writing huge mountains of code when a little
stream of code would have sufficed with more forethought. And the code that
they do write they have to revisit later to fix all the bugs caused by sloppy
coding.

~~~
Retric
I have personally seen someone in crunch replace a few terse lines written in
15 minutes that worked. With pages of boilerplate code and a few dozen files
that must have taken days. His response, I did not understand what you did.

Ask? I mean no wonder that team was working 80 hour weeks. If you stop
thinking then even very simple problems become monumental challenges.

~~~
aedron
Whenever I work more than 10-11 hours, I usually come back to the code the
next day and wonder WTF I was thinking. Problems with straightforward
solutions solved with large amounts of garbage code, wonky designs, lots of
stuff that just gets thrown out wholesale. It is literally counterproductive.

------
madrox
I've seen this pattern as engineer and as an engineering director. You can
always put the blame for these things on leadership's inability to make
decisions. Too much time is spent in the theoretical, "what's possible"
headspace that no final decisions get made that gives the team anchor points.
It says a lot that the switch from open world to level transitions (a major
decision) happened so late. Staying that there was no real plan to get to the
end...that's the job of an executive.

The best executives I've ever seen, for better or worse, will regularly make
decisions on the project so there's a continual sense of marching towards
goals. They may not always be the right decisions, but making the wrong
decisions can be less damaging than making no decisions.

~~~
Negative1
Great points, but, remember that executive behavior is a by-product of the
company culture and environment. I've seen high-ups afraid to make these
important strategic decisions in a timely fashion that were rightfully
worried. Sadly, some people do not share the sentiment that failure can be
just another data point and reward it harshly.

~~~
dragonwriter
> remember that executive behavior is a by-product of the company culture and
> environment.

Conversely, company culture and environment is a by-product of the executive
behavior.

The latter probably is a stronger influence in younger, smaller companies, the
former stronger in older and larger firms.

~~~
ajmurmann
Yep and the company the author worked at was founded by Peter Molyneux who is
infamous for dreaming up stuff that's not possible in the real world with real
constraints.

~~~
madrox
That was my thought. Peter has a history of big ideas that have a hard time
translating into final products. Those kinds of minds are integral to a great
product, but past a certain point it can also be a hinderance

------
Raphmedia
I never understood how some people who work in tech have no ability to say
_no_. I understand that passion runs deep but that's no reason to become a
slave.

There is no way whatsoever that I would work 80 hours a week for an extended
period unless I were working on my own startup or company and the time that I
invest would benefit me in the future. And even then, I wouldn't do it.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Because someone else will say yes. Even if you win the battle you'll lose the
war. I imagine that's why raising awareness, engaging in public discourse
about it and pushing for reform or change industry-wide is a common theme.

And you're probably working on games because you're passionate about them so
considering the hop over to a job doing $boring_thing vs. crunch time abuse is
choosing between a rock and a hard place.

~~~
prawn
I think the games industry is to males what magazine journalism can be to
females. Seen many (including friends) putting in loads of hours and working
cheaply, because the competition for spots is so intense.

------
reedlaw
I don't mean any disrespect to the author or his team but this sounds much
like Stockholm syndrome (1). I see symptoms even in many "Ask HN: Who is
hiring?" posts. Yes, we work long hours but we play games at lunch. We have
snacks and drinks!

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome)

------
newobj
Programming is a craft, game programming even more so. Passion runs high;
people will work longer and harder for less money than at other jobs. The
competition in the workplace and in the market is intense.

Willful moderation can never be applied systemically in this industry. There
are two ways out: 1) six sigma industrial engineering type management of your
processes, and 2) lucking into a clever idea that's not hard to implement. 1)
leads to a safe, if well-loved, game. 2)is great of course, like in the way
that hoping you'll win the lottery is great.

Might be tempted to add a 3) de-risking by middleware, but all that does is
raise the bar for everyone. Good for consumers, not helpful for devs.

My opinions are based on working in the game industry for ~6 years, with
months of 100 hour weeks under my belt. Stressed to the point of bleeding out
of random parts of my body.

Just can't see it ever changing. I just lol at unionization.

~~~
eru
Do people working on game engines licenced so other companies work hours more
in line with the rest of the software industry, or more in line with the rest
of game development?

What about people working on cloud-y games (like WoW) that don't have one big
bang release, but have more continuous development?

~~~
newobj
Don't know. I worked in the industry when Quake, Unreal, and if I'm being
generous, maybe RenderWare and LithTech, were the only real middleware
options, and most people still just rolled their own engines.

I ultimately burned out while working on an MMO, so I think the answer to your
second question is that it's no different... because the launch is for sure a
very, very big bang release.

~~~
eru
Thanks. I was thinking more after the initial release of the MMO.

There's probably also a difference between people closer to the creation of
new content (for all the updates and expansion with firm deadlines) and the
people keeping the infrastructure running.

------
coldcode
I know the feeling. At my first startup a long long time ago I worked 100
hrs/week for 4.5 months and almost died. You can somehow get through but it
takes too much out of you. Game companies do this routinely of course.

~~~
brazzledazzle
Does the middle and senior management put the same time in? I guess they have
a much higher financial stake in things so even experiencing the horrible
results first hand might not dissuade them.

~~~
eru
They also often got where they are, because they put in the extra time.

Not so much because it actually made them productive, but because it made them
look productive. Also, there are people who naturally deal less-badly with
long hours---and they tend to rise to the top here.

------
danso
I got into computer programming because I wanted to make video games. By the
time i graduated, I no longer had that interest and I don't have any feelings
of missing out (though I'm deeply envious of how indie devs like Lucas Pope
and Toby Fox -- Papers, Please and Undertale, respectively -- have been able
to create such artistic and clever and commercially popular work)...but I
would love to experience a standard game dev cycle/crunch. Other types of
user-facing software development I can imagine...but how software engineering
interacts with the artistic components of development (nevermind playtesting
and marketing) is something that seems so different to what I've ever worked
on.

Side note: Eurogamer had an absolutely epic insider write up of Lionhead...I'm
surprised it didn't make front page but it was one of the best things I've
ever read about the industry, and I've never played the Fable games
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Lionhead:%20The%20inside%20sto...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Lionhead:%20The%20inside%20story&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

------
mfoy_
For what it's worth, I LOVED Fable. I'm amazed to hear that the original plan
was to have it as an open world instead of the load screen sectioned maps. I
can't imagine how much harder that would have been. Also strange to hear they
made that compromise very late in the development.

------
stcredzero
_" It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the
epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of
Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had
everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to
Heaven, we were all going direct the other way ...."_

    
    
        -A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
    

This is very relevant to the Bay Area tech scene. This area literally has the
income disparity of a 3rd world country.

------
tsunamifury
I recently spoke to someone who left Apple, who was able to list three people
who died on his team due to overwork.

Died.

People acclimate to awful things when isolated in a monoculture. It is not
worth it.

~~~
j1o1h1n
FWIW, this is a well recognised problem in Japan

* [http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/ge...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/11/15/editorials/getting-a-grip-on-karoshi/#.V0_IBfl95hF)

------
shkkmo
Given what happened with Godus under Peter Molyneux, the terrible
mismanagement talked about here is unsurprising to me.

Fable, at least, turned into a game worth playing.

------
erikb
I don't really understand why people put themselves through that stress
without getting a personal equally high payout. I mean, the stress he faced
was pretty much as big as the ones startup founders face. But startup founders
have a chance to end up rich or with a much bigger business. What could he
gain from it? A bonus?

And as a side note: If the text about his work sounds like your work, you can
gain a lot of more performance, fun and results if you spend some of your time
learning more indepth how everything about your job works. The debugging
drudges become less once you know enough. And not all of it can be learned
just by doing.

------
draw_down
I guess this just comes down to a difference of mindset - I work my job
because of the concrete benefit I get from it. (Mostly money, but also work
schedule, environment, etc.) I'm not interested in being driven to grind my
life to dust for a shot at little bit of hero-glory. To be totally honest I
hadn't heard of this game or this person before.

------
Agentlien
Crunch is a serious issue for the entire video game industry. It's only made
worse by the idiotic treatment of unhealthy stress and unrealistic deadlines
as a badge of honour. In fact, rumours about the terrible way game studios
treat their employees, along with a brief firsthand glimpse of it during a
summer job, is the reason I didn't immediately go into the game industry after
graduating. Despite the fact that I had dedicated myself wholeheartedly
towards pursuing a career as a game programmer ever since I was a kid. After
3.5 years working on the development of surgical simulators, I finally took
the plunge into the game industry. It's one of the best decisions I've ever
made.

When I first started working at Ghost Games (an EA studio) I heard a lot of
horror stories about the crunch of the previous project. What made me put this
aside and take the job was how everyone at the interview spoke sincerely about
how crunch is a bad thing, the damage it had done to the studio and all the
ongoing efforts to ensure it wouldn't happen again. In the end, the project I
joined (the reboot of Need For Speed) finished without anything which could
reasonably be called a crunch and I only had to put in a few hours of
overtime, including one Saturday. This made me feel so relieved and I'm now
looking forward to a long career in this field.

Of course, EA has a history of crunch as bad as the next game company, but
there is a strong feeling that they've realised that it's a problem and they
are doing everything they can to mitigate it. It's simply not good for
business to burn through talent at a rapid pace and build a reputation for
ruining people's lives.

------
fossuser
> The consequences for me were devastating. I was briefly prescribed anti-
> psychotics at my lowest point. I experienced migraines, complete with
> terrifying tunnel vision, blackouts, severe depression, anxiety, panic
> attacks, paranoia, hallucinations and thought insertion.

That sounds pretty terrifying - wonder if there's a way to be resilient to
this or if everyone is affected this way given enough time.

~~~
newobj
I was working on a system that was doing CSG of AI nav meshes. If enough
floating point error crept in, eventually the a shared of edge of a navmesh
would split apart and you'd be left with the AI walking around non-existent
obstructions. Spent an unimaginable amount of time trying to deal with this.
One night when I was walking back to my apartment, I walked over a section of
the sidewalk that had plywood laying on it. The edges of two pieces of plywood
had about an inch gap between them, and I remember my heart jumping in panic
as though I was "seeing the bug" again - basically hallucinated my work
problem into real life. That was towards the end of working in the game
industry...

~~~
chillingeffect
Under good conditions that can be a fun thing. I once spent a whole evening
changing parameters, drawing black and white fractal trees. When I walked out
into the night, I perceived RL trees as the software would render them. I
wonder how much of this overlap goes on without us even realizing it :)

~~~
newobj
True! Though in this case, after months of fighting the problem, not so fun,
and more a sign of my impending mental collapse :P

------
spdionis
All that said, Fable is one of the best RPGs ever made.

~~~
ccvannorman
It was the first one I experienced where buying real estate in the game became
more important to me than any quest or character

------
smoyer
I'm having a hard time being sympathetic ...

He joined a team that was goofing off, which made it an extremely fun place to
work. Wouldn't life be easy without deadlines? So when they actually had to
produce something, they were far behind where they should have been. The fault
for this situation probably lies with the management but ... as a developer
(who's ostensibly getting paid), you should expect to do work at work.

He also states that he was sad to see the "Big Blue Box" culture and company
disappear. That company would have instead gone out of business if someone
(the parent company?) hadn't stepped in and changed things.

~~~
harryjo
People being jovial doesn't mean they aren't working. It just means they
aren't stressed out about deadline or other pressure.

The deadline is extrinsic (At best, arbitrary at worst), missing a deadline
doesn't mean the product was not getting made.

