On 13 December 2013 17:18, Meta <jared771@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 12:06:57 UTC, Manu wrote:
2013:
Suffered an occupational burn-out/breakdown

Is the stereotype about most game studios working their employees to the bone during crunch time true?

Yes.
I have barely seen an exception.
If you also want to get paid well, then you're double screwed.

I have friends all over. My mates from Rockstar tell the worst stories though by far.


I've heard the horror stories about 16 hour days. I'm going to be starting an internship at EA soon, to see if game development is a field I want to go into, and this is one of my top worries about working for a game development company.

Well... I hate to say it, but I wonder if your choice of studio might not be the best to make a positive impression of the industry. It's a problem across the industry, but EA are notorious for being among the worst.
That said, there are lots of EA studios, and they're all different. Which one?

I worked consistent 16 hour days for a year solid at my previous job (Krome Studios in Australia) before the studio melted down spectacularly.
Never really gave myself a change to recover from that before going straight into another job which also had a lot of crunching (though fortunately, a lot less in my department).
It was fine when I was a kid, but it creeps up on you. For me, I realised I wasn't putting the effort in that I expected from myself at first. I could sit there staring at my screen, but by brain kinda seised up, and I got very little work done.
When I consciously realised what was happening, I had to start thinking about how to fix it, before it ruins my lifes passion.