[mynegation]

I might ruffle some feathers here but here it goes. Very much in the same manner some people refuse to eat inhumanely raised and slaughtered animals, buy diamonds or coffee from companies associated with slave-like labor, or palm oil because its harvesting destroys the tropical forests, or watch American football to protest constant stress of trauma for players, I refuse to play big name games. It is a moral stance. Once in a while I spend some time playing an indie game and before I do that I make sure to find the site or the blog of the producer.

[simias]

I applaud your principles and voting with your wallet, however I find your comparisons frankly ridiculous and tone deaf.

The people murdered by warlord funded by blood diamonds didn't really have a choice. Exploited coffee farmers in the third world who barely make enough to survive also don't really have a choice if they want to feed themselves and their families. They can't exactly say "well screw this farm, I'm going to go write code for Morgan Stanley instead".

The 20-something freshly graduated CS engineers who sent their resume to get hired by those big name devs did so willingly and were probably very happy when they got hired. They most likely could've easily gotten a well paying job elsewhere and if their working conditions really become unbearable they'll probably do just that.

Should we still support this bad industry? Probably not and I think you're right to boycott these games, but it's nowhere near comparable to those other things you talked about.

[mynegation]

My apologies, some analogies are definitely tone-deaf. Developers, producers, QA in North Carolina definitely have more options than most people on the planet. And I am definitely not in a position to tell them what to do with their lives. Voting with the wallet is probably the most effective way available to me personally,

[glenneroo]

Voting with your wallet doesn't apply here since Fortnite is free to play.

[kkarakk]

so what? they increase human suffering in proportional amounts. Or are you saying suffering as a human being over how many years of game development(stress/emotional distress) doesn't matter compared to suffering in africa. It isn't an either or situation even though you talk as if it is.

suffering is suffering, you must acknowledge it wherever it happens. people in jobs don't have choices a lot of times either.

[gambiting]

I mean, that's applaudable, but I'm afraid your filter might be too broad. I've worked(and still work) on one of the largest AAA releases of this year and we've done zero crunch. I'm a senior engine programmer and no one on my team has done more few hours of overtime in the month leading to the release . I'm at work 8am and leave at 4pm every day like clockwork. So yeah, not every company is like this and not every AAA title requires crunch to be finished.

[mynegation]

I did not mean to imply that all AAA studios are that bad. Probably the missing part of the context is that I do not have much time for games these days, and this filter - while an overly broad heuristic - works just fine.

[gambiting]

That's fair enough. I can certainly see that games have gotten so large that there just isn't enough time in the day to play multiple 80h+ games all at once.

[ungzd]

I'm not sure that level of crunch is generally lower in indie companies. In theory, they might be struggling more, they are in disadvantageous position against big companies, they have to do more experiments and take more risks than AAA, which make the same "press X to hollywood" or network shooters for the last 20 years.

(I don't play big companies' (modern) games, because almost always I'm not in target audience and find such games completely unplayable)

[WorldMaker]

Yeah, if crunch is the moral issue, then indie companies are more prone to work/life balance issues than even the AAA developers. Indie companies have the usual startup issues of either the developers are moonlighting after their day jobs (working two jobs, a personal crunch) or pushed hard for "passion" to work hard (crunch) to pay the bills when it's still life or death to the company.

A lot of indies directly come from "game jam culture" which celebrates over-taxing developers with crunch "for fun".

Sustainable business practices in the games industry are unlikely to be possible until the industry is much more strongly unionized. At which point it would be more likely for the AAA games to be union shops and/or able to afford unionized workers to work on games.

[kkarakk]

Indie workers get rewarded proportionally for their crunch though. AAA workers seem to have to crunch for their base salary and good luck ever seeing an extra penny if the game becomes a phenomenon like fortnite did. meanwhile notch is a billionaire now and his employees are all comfortable millionaires

[WorldMaker]

Indie workers may get rewarded for their crunch efforts. Usual startup worker caveats apply that far more indie development companies bankrupt than succeed, and even in a small, early startup not all stock is equivalent (depending on funding sources and corporate politics).

[mynegation]

Most of the time I cannot drop by their office or home office and watch over their shoulder, but I try to do my due diligence as much as possible. Last game I played for example, was from this team [1], started playing it when it was an actual indie company (Alex as a single developer and Lacey as ops)

[1] http://edgeworksentertainment.com/about

[Mikeb85]

At least with indies the staff are more likely to share the windfall. While they crunch, it's their own choice and they profit directly.

[Impossible]

Indie game developers often self impose crunch that is significantly more extreme than what many AAA developers go through, which can also lead to long term health or mental issues. There are AAA games that have little to no crunch involved in production as well (although universally that's not the case for the most popular games, unfortunately).

https://www.polygon.com/features/2013/9/11/4614458/antichamb...

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/267563/The_4_years_of_se...

This might seem ok with outlier games that make the creator super rich, but this thing also happens with smaller titles that have no chance in the market.