A Video About BioWare Working Staff To Tears And Calling Its Mental Abuse "Magic" (The Jimquisition)
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- čas přidán 7. 04. 2019
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Kotaku published an instant hit of game journalism, How BioWare's Anthem Went Wrong. It's must-read material, shining a light on mismanagement and indecision.
More importantly, it details the stress and the overwork that companies like BioWare continue to put their workers through. So-called "BioWare Magic" - the concept that games like Anthem come together in the final few months - isn't actual magic, it's actual abuse.
We need to stop saying game development is magic, because believing in sorcery sure as hell didn't help Anthem or Mass Effect Andromeda.
Also, no company should have stress casualties.
Read Kotaku's story here: kotaku.com/how-biowares-anthe...
#BioWare #Anthem #MassEffect #Jimquisition #JimSterling
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Twitter: / jimsterling
Facebook: / jimsterling0
Jim’s Big Ego (No Relation): bigego.com/
Bandcamp of the Sax Dragon - carlcatron.bandcamp.com
Nathan Hanover - / @nhsynthonicorchestra - Hry
On the matter of combat stress: I served in the US Army for 5 years and did 2 tours (27 months) in Iraq. The civilian world, generally speaking, is far harder to cope with because there is no oversight. I've worked in retail and as a ship fitter, and they will absolutely crush your humanity in a way that few people in the military experience. The military is a family, with people looking out for one another at any cost. Coporate America: I don't care how you do it, just do it. It's done? Great, do it again but faster. Faster. I don't care if you have to lie, cheat, steal...get it done.
I work in retail and I can validate your argument with first hand experience.
This needs some more upvotes.
@Jackalblade9 I really like the new video format for Reddit
: - )
GruntBurger i have to disagree the military isn’t always a family. I served for two years in the army and I never felt more alone than when I destroyed my labrum, among other issues. All the friendly faces immediately turned sour and i was blamed for my injury. Seeking help got me called a piece of shit and I didn’t deserve to wear the uniform and I should kill myself for being a little bitch. Just like retail in the army you can get different experiences. You got the good side of the coin i got the bad side that’s the case with any career.
I worked in a retail store and it was complete garbage, being yelled at for unloading 20-packs of beer two at a time too slow. Then I transferred to another spot in the same chain and that was a family in there: everyone did their job well, manager trusted us to do it well and covered our asses when we occasionally fucked up. Way less stressful, but we got a lot more done.
Corporate Magic: When inhuman working conditions is romanticized by the people who worked the least
@Dragon50275 I agree on the part of indie games/devs coming up in the industry. Lately there has been many original devs leaving triple A companies to create their own, which is pretty fuckin awesome.
I was playing The Division 2 yesterday and came across a hanged corpse... from somewhere in the dark parts of my mind, the phrase 'The Division 2 adds Bioware Magic' came to the surface.
The magic bit is the suits getting people to believe it, and act against their own interest by rejecting notions like just and fair employment law, and the historically proven benefits to workers of unions.
Greg Zemke-Smith preach brother!!
You can thank capitalism for that
"No AAA-Publisher likes real journalism".
No powerful entity in any public sphere EVER liked real journalism.
I do, and I like to think I'm a powerful entity.
Exactly. This is a huge problem in the game industry, probably the worst, but it's also indicative of Western culture as a whole.
@@greatgoblin3065 Yeah but in other media journalism is mostly allowed to do their job, they may not like it, but they usually can't silence journalists.
[Noam Chomsky liked that]
What about newspapers?
Hey Jim, former Bungie dev here... Thanks for doing these videos, and thanks for your support. Especially want to thank you for the nod to Game Workers Unite. ✊
Thank you Halo-man-maker.
@@Schnokers I highly doubt he was part of Marathon, but they also did Marathon, Myth and Oni too. Shame they're just Actiblizz's used up crackho now.
@@kvltizt they left, remember? they split from Activision a bit ago.
@@pxltron2807 Hence the "used up" moniker. :]
@@kvltizt I remember Oni; it took me all damn day to download the 120MB demo via Juno, and the download was corrupted. Looking back, it is hard to believe that magazine pack-in discs were ever useful (never mind the economics).
The week has 168 hours. If you work 100 of them, you got 68 hours left.
That's 9.7 hours per day in which you have to sleep, eat, do laundry, wash dishes, shop, and cook.
Now, almost nobody lives right next to their work, so you better believe that those 9.7 hours are, realistically speaking, more like 8.7 hours (30 minute commute in each direction).
And that's if you live close by to your work, and if you're single.
If you've got an SO - or even children - then say goodbye to the notion of even talking to them. Because if you're working 100 hours/week, you're going to need some sleep, or you're just going to collapse from exhaustion. So you've got mabye 30 minutes to eat, do chores, and interact with your family when you come home and then it's time for bed.
Realistically, you're going to get, what, 6 hours of sleep a night, maybe 7?
Fucking hell, my own job could be done by a shaved chimpanse and I can't go a whole week with just 6 hours of sleep per night. I get cranky, I lose concentration, I make mistakes.
I can't imagine solving high-stakes problems on the computer for that amount of time, with that little sleep.
I'd go nuts. I'd kill the next person who asked me if I could stay after hours. "Volunteer", my ass!
It's not called "gettin the axe" for nothing, and if everyone around you is pulling double shifts then the obvious person begging for that axe is the one sticking their heads above the crowd to ask "when can I go home, please?!".
I've heard that this is a big reason why Japanese birth rates and marriages are so bad. They literally do not have the time to have relationships, so they don't bother. As much as I respect the games that come out of that country, their work ethic and culture is one of the worst in the world and is literally killing the country.
What happens is you start cutting out anything you can. It usually starts with cooking, "ill just get delivery and eat at my desk while doing code review", then goes laundry "ill just buy a cheap pair of pants and a some shirts on Amazon", next is sleep in your bed"Ill grab a few hours on the couch in the quiet room" then eventually other people "Sorry im blowing you off for the 10th time this month just work has me chained to the desk"
I remember playing a number of games for 100+hrs a week... do that for a month or two and most never got ran again.
Amazon does the same thing, especially during prime day and the christmas season
@@comyuse9103 The 3rd line says the commute wasn't counted in the working day, it came out of that 68 hours personal time.
"crunch is not triumph of workforce, but failure of management."-jimsterling,the jimqusition (2019)
Crunch is ALWAYS a failure of management, no matter the industry, no matter the project.
& 2018, 17, 16, 15... You'd have thought the industry would've figured it out by now.
@@Dracinard It's a persistent idea.
@@zackg3507 Ye, the whole "They only crunch if they want" excuse is BS. Its a strategy for getting past legal working hour limits. Employees know that, informally, they will be fired if they don't crunch.
Legal working hour limits need to be absolute, as in, the company needs to literally kick you out of the office if you don't wanna go, or they get fined.
i find this whole situation so sad, game development is what is super attractive to young students and they imidiatly get slaved away. Software development for Enterprise Solutions might not be as flashy but certainly shows how to properly treat developers in most cases and pays better too.
My dad worked over 80 hours a week for a decade so he could be his own boss. It was physical labor, fourteen-hour shifts, so he was always dead tired. He used to make himself sick.... then work while he was sick. He had no hobbies. He never saw his family or did anything with them; I was the only kid in my Cub Scout troop who never completed a single do-this-with-your-dad activity in the little handbook. Took him over ten years to learn to ease it back a bit, and it was ten years after that before he openly said he had made a mistake working so much. I grant that it put food on our table, but you don't get one second back later.
Thankfully, while I've made many mistakes in my own life, working to the exclusion of all else hasn't been one of them.
Bioware Employe: I think i need some rest.
Bioware: ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL
*”You exist because we **_allow_** it, and you will work because we **_demand_** it.”*
Boy if that ain't a perfect analogy I don't know what is.
Me standing still for 0.00356284 seconds:
My manager: REEEEEEEEEEEEE
Jesus. This hurt me x.x
I understood that reference.
Imagine having a job so soul sucking that it's affecting your livelihood.....for a game like.......Anthem
It almost makes me feel bad about calling Anthem a big piece of shit, knowing it destroyed people. But then again, that also makes me resent the game more.
Anthem being shit is likely the result of the job being soul sucking
for every stress casualty there a two more developers knocking on the door who work even more for even less. Basically, those people are consumables, and later... human trash. US economy, it just works! :thumbsup:
Yeah, personally, I rather die working for a game I am passionate about than....Anthem. Still boggles my mind how Petroglyph get to work the CnC remake. Under fucking EA.
I can't because I would have leave that company instead of "finding empty room and crying" there and then telling everyone how you cry in an empty room.
Jason: drops bomb shell that BioWare’s management are now spineless corporate weasels
BioWare: releases spineless corporate weasel statement
Indeed. Self-demonstration at the jerk of one collective knee.
Stories as sad as this one make me really appreciate the indie companies that get it right.
Klei entertainment, the folks most people know from Don't Starve, delayed the development of a game called Oxygen Not Included by a few weeks a while ago because coming out of the holidays there was a problem with some contagious illness making its way through the staff. Rather than push a bunch of sick people to meet a self-imposed deadline, management took to the official forums to explain to fans that they were sorry for the delay but that they cared too much about the wellbeing of their employees to do that to them. The response from fans of the game was also positive, being a pretty much universal cry of "Get well soon; we can wait."
This. Absolutely this
This needs more likes
This is an example of management doing a good job and caring for the human lives that go into the game, not the shareholder's pockets.
And you know what? ONI was a good game (if a lil merciless).
Klei are awesome!
I saw this episode coming from a mile away, and I couldn't be any happier that it's here.
Now all we need is the post mortem video about fallout 76 that keeps getting delayed because the game keeps fucking up
I'd have been happier with the intro intact ... got to give us time to get hyped, and get into the mood.
@@AlphaladZXA gunna need a mid mortem video series.
Kotaku: Reports on immoral behaviour, naming the people who took charge only linking factual evidence.
Bioware higher ups: Why are you dragging us through the mud.
Like geez is there no self awareness here?
No, there isn't. And if there is any, if they're aware of the harm they're causing, they are exactly the kind of people who do not care, so long as they themselves can continue to get richer. Corporate environments encourage and nurture sociopathic behavior.
Well the response had to have been written in advance of the Kotaku article, so it literally didn't matter what they actually wrote!
It's PR bullshit. They are trying to push the narrative away from the fact that Bioware is pretty much going downhill very very fast. They don't want their investors to get scared because then it is pretty much game over for Bioware.
Lmao sounds like this girl im fucking
Bioware prob didnt expect it cause they act woke, so kotaku has been kissing their ass.for the last few years
In my 20s I worked for a famous corporation and put in extremely long hours every week for many years. We're talking the best part of a decade getting by on 2 to 3 hours of sleep per day AT BEST. I ruined my health. I did great work, I saved that company MILLIONS in several different ways.
In my 40s my ruined health finally left me disabled. Yes, I am now on disability, meaning I am not only sick as hell al day long every day, I'm also fucking POOR. My savings dissolved, I lost my home in the time it took to finally have my disability case wend its way through the process.
Do you think anyone in that corporation I wrecked my health for thanks me? Do you think anyone in that corporation I worked for *remembers my fucking name?* No, of course they fucking don't.
Now I see people in their 20s doing even WORSE than I did. Listen kids, and I do not say kids in a derogatory sense - seriously, young people - DON'T MAKE MY MISTAKE. Don't let them con you into it. YOU WILL RUIN YOUR HEALTH... and when you ruin your health YOU RUIN YOUR LIFE.
Its not just working too hard. It's working too hard and getting absolutely nowhere for YEARS ON END, a new tradition in today's professional world.
Working so hard ain't worth it even more if there is no real progress from it. It's been studied often that even 50 hr/week can fatigue people if done for even a couple of weeks. Imagine 80-100hr/week for MORE THAN A YEAR ON END!!!
Yep. I always remember the "Autonomous" team in Amnesia Fortnight a few years back. Those veterans breezed through the crunch like absolute bosses, made a great demo, and went home on time while the other teams struggled without sleep.
what to do if mgmt asked you to work extra hours? can you refuse? at what costs?
@@med5032
Depends how much social capital you have. If you've established yourself as an important part of the pipeline and you get a reasonable amount of work done at high quality, you can expect to keep your job despite saying you've got to get home on time. If they fire an upstanding employee they're liable to get sued or at least get a bad rep in the professional community. However they'd only fear this from someone they sense knows people who matter.
So get to know more professional people. Also take part in pacing the team early on in the production schedule by rushing yourself to deliver assets quickly to others. The essential problem is scheduling and lack of adrenaline early on, so people kick back and then rely on the adrenaline surge of crunch. But adrenaline dependency will lead to burnout and an early grave. There should be tiny personal milestones on your own calendar and you must meet them. Many PMs are too nice and/or can't keep up with every piece of the puzzle for everyone.
Jesus man, I...sorry about your condition. Hope you get some happiness back.
Not gonna ask what the company was, but I can definitely understand the feeling.
I remember in college, our computer animation classes held this event twice a year. A team of 4 to 5 students worked together to make a very short 30 sec animation in 24 hours. The winning team got really nice perks and programs, so it was worth it to try at least. Everyone worked all day, only taking 30mins to 1 hour naps. It really wasn't that bad and I did have fun, but looking back on it now, and in the wake of how business are abusing their workers, I realize they were normalizing the crunch behavior.
I'm not saying that was their ultimate goal, it's just shows that's how far we've fallen. We dress up this horrible work ethic as a challenge, a game with the possibility of getting rewarded. Scarily accurate now that I think about it.
If a result seems like magic to you, then chances are the massive amount of work it took was a: not yours, and b: unnoticed by you.
Well said.
"Bioware magic" makes me think of Harry Potter, where the food appears by magic in the Great Hall, and it's all "ooh, magic!" but in fact there's an army of slaves in the kitchen preparing all the food, and the bosses merely deliver it with a flourish to the consumers, and everybody's impressed.
Now this both makes me sad cause like that's apt as all hell, and also I almost forgot that Hogwarts had that entire elf worker problem, WAIT IS JIM HERMONIE IN THIS SITUATION?
Problem is though the elves love to serve (with the exception of dobby......rip......)
Even to the extent that they would refuse to clean griffindor tower because they may of been “libarated”
While the staff at BioWare are just straight slaves.......they are all DOBBYS!!!!
I bet they left that part of out the movies.
*@rasheedqe* Yeah, they did leave it out.
@@rasheedqe sure did.
The truth is that under our current system, repeated threats to employment ARE a threat to survival.
No job, no food.
I had a breakdown related to stress and can confirm I would have starved and been homeless if it wasn’t for my parents.
Some people are not as lucky.
Any company that has workers with 'stress casualty', should be sued into bankruptcy!!
this has been going on sense ww1
The solution isn't suing them to death but starving them to death. Stop buying products from companies that treat people this way, no matter how great/bad the end product may be. Of course there lies the rub, few care about the people that make the products. It's not just gaming, it's the system as a whole.
wow... that would be the whole of the worlds big companys (with few exceptions)
but i hear you!!
@@thesundrinker9530 Might not work. We exist in the world of corporate welfare. For some reason someone thought that was a good idea.
You guys remember Upton Sinclair's book, "The Jungle", and how it exposed the terrible conditions of Industrialization?
The same thing needs to happen with the gaming industry
If it's anything like Sinclair's book, it won't get the results you're thinking. Food safety was tightened after The Jungle, but social points of the book were ignored. Sinclair himself said "I aimed for America's heart, and instead hit it's stomach.".
You can see that happening already. Any time an expose talks about how a company that used to be but is no longer considered to make good games, and how they mistreat their employees, the discussion is always centered around how they're wasting the potential of their IPs. Meanwhile, when a beloved company like CD Projekt Red has its working conditions called out, it goes ignored because we don't want to ruin the Cyberpunk 2077 hype train.
replace gaming industry for pharmaceutical world, mainly it's retail side and you got the same thing happening here.
@@theguywhowentthere3346 I started anti depressants, but I was quickly cured after a few visits to the pharmacy, thinking to myself, "this isn't so bad, at least I'm not the person behind that counter."
I waited in line for fifteen minutes before I started feeling like I've had enough of this. My agitation was steadily climbing, not toward the pharmacist, but the people in front of me trying to find coupons, and calling people, and then the doctor, and filling out loan applications for all I know, and then calling somebody else, and everything that they should have already sorted out before getting in line. Just give them your name, DOB, pay for it, then get in the car and floor it. Then I thought, damn, I only just got here, and that person at the register has been putting up with this since early this morning.
@@Posichronic If just waiting 15 minutes already makes you anxious enough to think it's not worth pursuing medical treatment then you're probably just as anxious as the people in front of you in that line. You pre-planned that visit to the pharmacy process in so much detail, you expected to just give them your name, DOB, pay for it, then get in the car and floor it.
Instead you had to wait 15 minutes in a line of people that are wasting everybodies time like panicked monkeys and ruined your experience of just getting into that pharmacy, getting your medication and leaving.
The Person behind the counter is fine, you're just projecting your negative experience on him because it couldn't possibly be you who is distressed by the situation, you're not depressed at all, right?
You're like an open book for anyone with some knowledge when talking like that, take care.
I just quit a job where I was working 70+ hours a week, and my productivity has skyrocketed. When I was working that hard, I couldn't even clean my bedroom. And half of the (unpaid) overtime I was doing was less than useful. Cleaning the office for free. Filling out forms to give to customers for free. Having "training meetings" with trainers who have less professional development than I do, for free.
At no point has my "service overtime" ever benefitted *anyone*.
@@cubefreak123 Wait a second, they had you working on _Christmas?_ I mean, I know there are some jobs that obviously need to be open even during the holidays like the police, hospitals, and fire departments, but in commercial businesses?
Misguided busywork is a waste of time and effort. No sensible boss should ask it of their employees; human beings need rest and relaxation in between stints of productivity, especially if creativity is desirable. Working people like slaves is the approach of an arrogant fool with no leadership skills.
@@silverdragon122 Yeah. Pretty much. You want me to work overtime then it will cost you bigtime. Don't wanna pay, well then I reserve the right to look at you as if you're stupid and then leave. Thankfully here in Norway there's fairly good employe protection, and the majority of employees are unionized so the corporations can't just do as they please. Remember, as an employee the company is _not_ your friend. They see you as an asset to be used and, if you leave them with all the power in the relationship, to be abused.
Wow. If that sort of shit was imposed on me, I would have protested against that and if they tell me I have to do it I would just have tried to squeeze the higher ups into a bad spot.
There's no way I would get made to do unpaid overtime work.
@@steinarbergstl5799 Very true words. As a young man who recently started working. I will take these to heart.
We're shocked at the fact that Japan has such an issue with death by overwork that it ends up having its own term in the dictionary, yet the same thing is happening right in the US. Maybe not to the point of death, but the companies sure don't exactly care if that happens at this point.
For anyone wondering what the term is, it's "karoshi" meaning "worked to death".
Give it time, if things keep up: Karoshi will be making it's debut on North American shores :(
I feel like its already here just underpublicised. We often like to talk about the phenomenon happening in foriegn countries to abstract them of their substance and avoid people from applying the concept to the world around them.
It makes it sound foreign, exotic, and most importantly distant not only conceptually but physically
In the US, we don't work ourselves to death. We work ourselves into paralysis.
@@awzthemusicalreviews On the broad and aggregate level; for sure.... but in retrospect their may be a few individual cases of Americans working themselves to death, but not to the same extent and way on a systemic level as Japan does....
Well, not yet at any rate. Like I said before.... give it time... and it will...
Jim you probably won’t see this.
But mate you are restoring my faith.
Keep it at it lad
I feel the message about overworking really hits home. My father would work himself to death, eventually literally. His health turned to shit and still he kept going. What pisses me off still is those around him, his friends, did nothing to make him back off and just take a day. Now he's gone and was too sick towards the end of his life to actually enjoy any of the fruits of that hard labor. We miss him more than we miss the money he brought in with his 'hard work'. I see it in myself, and it scares me. Hell, just last week I did two days of my job with a fever of 101. I was proud of that, and now looking back, it was stupid. No bigger rewards for me, or the place I work, it just got done morning the next day instead of lunch the next day... BFD.
This was incredibly sad to hear and stories like these need more eyeballs on them, this fetishization of work is downright dangerous.
RIP your dad.
I'm so sorry to hear about your dad. :( That's tragic.
I think the saddest part about all of this is that, had Dragon Age: Inquisition failed, there would've been a chance to course-correct how Bioware's workplace operated. But because that insidious crunch time ended up with a modestly-successful title, that only encouraged the way these workers were treated even further. They got punished for being successful. And that's just fucking depressing.
Still glad I never bought that game. Bioware fucked me on promises too often with dragon age 1/2 and ME 1/2. Things happenings in your game that make a difference? Yea, not killing your party wasn't really what we wanted. We had that.
Yep and the game awards bs didn't help either
Blame Bioware, not Inquisition. After the failure of Andromeda, they should have changed the work schedule.
@@Vexominous Seem like their management is utter shite.
@@chillhour6155 I wouldn't blame the game awards for that, dragon age inquisition got lucky it released in 2014 'cause that was a pretty slow/mediocre year for games if I remember correctly.
*every child should learn to code*
"okay coders are now disposable like any other worker*
we live in a Fordist hell
An excellent observation.
You should learn to code because so much of the human World is now programmed. Not having at least some basics in it is modern illiteracy.
But if you want your kid to have safe economic future, teach it an unpopular profession. Stuff people don't want to do is where worker supply is consistently behind demand and wages and conditions are above average. Plumbers and carpenters don't take the kind of shit wannabes swallow every day on their overcrowded way to that dream job.
I mean, they really should: computers are now ubiquitous, and everyone would benefit from even basic knowledge of how the internet works, the different protocols for information exchange, how to be safer online and stuff like that.
That's a good point, but it goes beyond that. It's about industrialization in a capitalist system predicated on the idea that unless you work yourself to death or damn near it than you aren't really a good worker. Then that rubs against the idea that if you work in any industry that seems "fluffy" then people ignore any complaints, but the truth is whether your in a factor making textiles or at a computer desk if the expectation is that you give everything to the company than there's not difference.
@@darlagoddesshate Are you writing from XIX Century? I'm from Poland and right now working in Poland and this has zero relation to even this country's reality (and we have far lower wages compared to Aus, USA, UK etc). Ppl that work in grocery stores clock their 40 hours and this is it. Construction is shifting to Ukrainians because 40 hours of hard work just doesn't have many takers within Poles. Working near to death would be something like 80 hours in construction and this kind of effort is only done by entrepreneurs, some mid level corporation workers trying for the top and in the passion-jobs. All of these people don't have to do it for the economic reasons. I have friends that don't want to push career and they definitely don't overwork themselves and pay all the bills, save money, have kids etc even on Polish salaries.
The reasons why a passion-job can require way more effort or underpay compared to very similar work on more boring projects:
1. Competition between workers. Everyone wants to do Cyberpunk 2077/Star Wars/design for national museum.
2. Work of this kind satisfies indirect needs from the salary like and job, but also directly satisfies the need of expression and aspiration for that worker. These benefits cost nothing to the employer (provided it's already making top level creative product) and are not visible in stats, but workers would not take such deal without them.
"Wait, don't go! I promise this isn't about bashing Anthem!"
Haven't started the video yet, but that was so funny it gained an instant sub.
**people's heart valves disintegrating into mush from exposure to extreme levels of stress**
it's Bioware Magic!!!!!!
And what dark, foul magic it is.
@@anglerfish4161 Like literal blood magic.
Do YOU believe in Bioware Magic?
"Kali Ma Shakti De!"
Holds up beating heart of programming grunt.
"Kali Ma Bioware Magic!"
Stress Casualty
(4th lvl Manager Spell)
Target: 3 employees per management level
Casting time: 1 meeting
Duration: 3d6 weeks or permanent
Spell resistance: no
Saves: Fort (partial), Will for permancy
"There is no such thing as magic. It's hard fucking work."
This is something a lot of people - not just gave publishers and developer managers - need to hear and understand
And it applies to a lot more than just video games.
The managers know it very well. The magic stuff is all just a pile of rhetorical BS.
This is how capitalism works. If companies can see ways for them to abuse the shit out of their employees then they will do that. There are no such thing as a "good capitalist", that concept is as real as magic.
Is a man not entitled to the sweat on his brow?
No, says the man at Bioware,it belongs to us
No, says the man at Digital Homicide, it belongs to the Unity Asset Store
No, says the man at ZenimaxBethesdaEAActi-BlizzardUbisoftandnowCDPR
Isn’t that a reference to a quote by the character John Galt, a captain of industry and powerful billionaire who's response to government regulation was to take all of his money and leave the country?
King of the Moon
Andrew Ryan, Bioshock
Oh right. well it's close enough, since Andrew Ryan was based on John Galt. Different characters, same shitty beliefs.
You know it's a good Jimquisition episode when he rants about crunch for 20 minutes.
And I swear that is not a backhanded compliment.
Where I live it's illegal to have employees work more than 60 hours a week (with some exceptions for emergency staff). I've had people complain to me about not being able to volunteer to ignore the restriction and I've had to explain that they really don't want that. As soon as you can volunteer to give up your protections under the law it stops being voluntary, as employers will base their hiring on who's willing to do so. Then your choice isn't between whether you want to work more than 60 hours but whether you want to be employed.
Where do you live? I wanna know which places I can escape to as a refugee-from-capitalism.
EXACTLY THIS.
If people are able to voluntarily ignore the limit and overwork themselves, the ones who don't won't get hired, won't get promoted, and WILL be marginalized and looked down upon as "lazy" by their co-workers. There are countless stories about this that have come out over the years.
OguzKhan Desperado ah yes, our social market economy! Whiles being under attack by crisis and lobby, even it‘s ruins provide a far more human work and living environment than communism and capitalism ever did. In my opinion at least.
That is understandable. Your country did had communism after all, and it did left socialism part of it. If it wasn't for Communism our country would in no time ditch any regulations and worker rights to abuse them in manner of unchecked capitalism the US has.
Thank Nor for Communism giving the base for worker rights out here, we have poor wages but at least it isn't slave mentality here.
Unless someone WANTS to betray their nationality for the love of Triple A (I am looking at you, pricks from CD Projekt Red, I genuielly wish work control after work control after work control to fine you, until you either go out of buissness or you learn to RESPECT your workers - we are NOT rampant capitalism you bastards)
@@AegixDrakan Careful, sir. Both you and Chris K sound like *G A S P* *SOCIALISTS* just now.
I have lived in Edmonton all my life and have always looked up to BioWare and their accomplishments. I, over the years have gotten the opportunity to talk to a great number of their employees.
Back in the 90's and early 2000's everyone I talked to was proud to work there, they would go to nearby schools and help teach kids how to code, all the while saying "if you keep practicing this and if you're lucky, then you could work there too!" I really used to look up to them for that. (I was one of those kids)
But as the years went on, what I was hearing from them became less and less optimistic. Still proud to work there, but now they would give advice like "Only do this if you don't care about making money." or even "only do it as a hobby, your should put your time into something more valuable". This really took me by surprise, and it's probably the main reason why I changed my career goals in my early 20's.
Now they barely do any outreach to kids or the community at all, and I don't hear anything positive from their employees. I've known people that were fired for no good reason, or just quit because they couldn't put up with the toxic environment there anymore. Now they work for Disney or for IT or somewhere outside of EA's grasp.
All of the people that made BioWare great have already left, they seen what's coming and got out while they still could. Everyone who works there now are only there because they have to be. The management is entirely EA run now, the writing staff is completely non-existent and 80% of their work is farmed out to other studios to do for the least amount of money possible.
BioWare isn't dying, it's already dead, what we're seeing now is nothing but some cockroach alien called EA wearing a new Edgar suit with a BioWare logo on it.
Me and a bunch of the gaming community in Edmonton for years have been very loyal to BioWare. We'd buy every game they released, even if it sucked, we were supporting a local company and our friends continue on and be successful. We've stopped doing that a few years ago, I have no desire to buy Anthem and I never will. Anthem is not a BioWare game, it's just a EA Pachinko machine in disguise.
Well one of them retired and died from a heart attack 2 weeks later.
@@TobikunOuO With the stress they are being put under it wouldn't fucking surprise me.
Thanks for sharing that.
You're not far off, Jim. Schreier posted a story to Twitter saying he let Bioware know he was publishing the article the next morning as he was heading to the subway back home. As he was on his way, he got a text from someone saying that Bioware had put up their response (that's right, THEY HADN'T READ HIS ARTICLE), so Jason quickly rushed back to the office to publish it in advance.
Fucking wow. That is just disgusting and ridiculous.
As someone who used to work IT and watched my dedicated team go from fourteen to TWO over the course of a decade while workload shifted upwards and downwards, but maintained the same amount of hours on average, I have at least an understanding of the stress. My group was responsible for networking, phones, computers, printers, backups, distribution, removal, repair, and maintenance for thousands of pieces of equipment spanning an area of nearly a hundred miles. Our support was 24/7, we were given no sick days, no paid holidays, and only five vacation days we could not take congruently. The "bosses" making choices of who to keep and when to fire whom were hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away. Over 14.5 years, I never once met my direct boss in person. When I finally decided if I didn't leave I was going to physically die (I had been mentally destroyed long before this point) it took over six months for me to stop hearing the phantom chimes of my pager going off in the middle of the night. Only recently, nearly two years after quitting, am I starting to become a human being again. The damage I allowed that job to do to me because we were under the disillusion this was normal will forever haunt me in some ways. And yes, like many others, I would brag about my twenty-four hour shifts, my many Christmas day page outs, and the fact I took a vacation day to have major surgery, recovered over the weekend, and was back to work in absolute shambles on Monday. It needs to end. Not just the gaming industry, but all facets of working individuals fooled by the guise of it being "normal". This isn't hard work. This is doing the job of two, three, four, or more people so those at the top can have a little extra. If you are in this situation, I implore you to move on. There is more to life than what you're allowing yourself to experience. Make the financial changes necessary to live making less and you'll soon discover how much more living you're able to do by NOT working yourself into states of depression, fatigue, and endless stress.
I'm not sure why I'm replying to this a month after the fact, but I just feel like saying I appreciate your story and I'm glad you moved on from such abuse.
I never went to college because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do, and I felt becoming thousands of dollars in debt for the chance at a high-paying job was too much of a gamble. I never got specialized training in anything, and I would often stress about not doing anything important or significant with my life.
I now work as a janitor, a job so lowly that pop culture regularly makes fun of it along with the Mcdonald's employee. I make very little, but I still make enough to live comfortably in a small but nice apartment. On top of that, my managers genuinely respect me and my work, and they never overwork me. It's a relatively small company, small enough that the CEO knows everybody's names, and it's full of respectful people. It took me a while to grow out of the Ideal Successful American mindset, but now that I have, I find I'm content.
When I keep hearing stories like these in the game industry, I realize that having a prestigious career and a lot of money doesn't make you a success, you're only successful when you're happy. I would find more contentment in that, but thinking about all the workers out there being worked to death by heartless executives or even themselves makes me feel sick and furious, especially when I know I can't do anything about it.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Thanks for sharing yours!
They teach it to kids in school by asking students to study for at least 6 hours a day after doing over 3 hours of homework. This is for honors and Advanced placement courses. They barely touch the regular classes and kids in high school can barely read in these low level classes and those in higher are just being taught and rewarded for overworking. At least that's what happened where I came from but it's probably different for each state. It's not as bad as overworking at a job but cultivating this behavior of working till you drop kind of sickens me.
Bioware magic sounds a lot like "it'll be alright on the night", the only term in theatre more suicidally dangerous than "the show must go on".
There is a reason that (In the UK at least) theatre unions are strong.
EvilDMMk3 How do I like this twice, because my theatrical experience is throttling me in order to find a way to agree even harder than I already do.
@@apollosinner maybe game devs should look at theatre. Mixed skills, big budgets, tight deadlines, personal attachment, odd hours, 50 people who want to work in the field for every entry position and internal cultures that make little external sense.
I'm not knowledable on that term, so what does that mean, exactly?
Absolutely in love with this thread. @ my theatre nerds, I see u
@Sol Thanks for your answer there. :)
well said. "hard work pays off,harder work pays a doctor".
Victorian factory owners:
_I'm addicted to stress_
_That's the way that I get things done_
_If I'm not under pressure then I sleep too long_
_And I hang around like a bum_
_I think I'm going nowhere and that makes me nervous_
_Everybody's out to get me but I feel all right_
_Everybody's out to get me but I feel all right_
_Everybody's out to get me but I feel all right_
_Everybody's thinking 'bout me...._
That’s probably why he took down the song from his intro
Corporate Psychopaths are probably saying: "Crunch is great, I'm not feeling any negative results when I order my employees to do so."
Well, what else to expect from psychopaths.
Thanks for calling out CDPR. Some people give them far too much slack.
Yeah, people are willing to care about workers being exploited when the product they produce is mediocre - a lot of them only care once the standards drop. Rockstar and CDPR get brushed under the rug because people find their games enjoyable and don't want to face feeling guilty for buying them and supporting that work culture. With all this shit I'm going to wait until Cyberpunk 2077 is available preowned so they're not directly seeing money from me - it's not much, but it's something, I guess?
@@EnglishRosie hinestly the emptiest thing you could do.
Even if you somehow did cause a noticeable loss of revenue the only people you'd be hurting is the workers your trying to protect, you really think Cdpr management will eat up a loss when they can shift that loss to the workers wages? Yeah no.
If you want to affect real change put pressure on your local politicians, sign some petitions, spread awareness. That'll make a much larger difference than denying the devs wages when there the ones your trying to stand up for.
And that way you get to buy your game on your own terms and make a higher difference than you would have otherwise..
But IIIII liiikee their video games, how could they do wrong? Obviously it didnt happen. If it did happen, it was worth it. If it wasnt worth it, then it was to me because consumers matter most in art, obviously
I think Sakurai has no problem praising himself for stressing himself that much because Japanese culture is very focused on workaholism.
RickRaptor105 I agree. They have that “never say die never surrender” mentality with everything they do.
Edit: sorry guys I typed that pretty stoned last time but I mean I think I got it lol
Which isn’t a good thing because a lot of japanese workers suffer from health issues.
Iwata would’ve had another 20 or 30 years if he hadn’t worked himself to get cancer.
Sakurai is also close to breakdown, has been several times.
If it’s not the company that is the cause for overwork through mismanagement, it’s a person’s mismanagement of his own health.
Roman00 there are many negative effects of overworking but cancer is not one of them
That's what I was going to say. Anything less than nearly killing yourself working is risking losing your job (and nobody, particularly females, wants to be homeless in many areas of Japan.)
It's a massive problem, but it's deeply ingrained in Japanese culture. A lot of people commit suicide because they can't keep up with the workload they're given by their employers, they drink themselves half to death on their days off to try to cope with the stress, and it's their normal.
(This might have happened in China, I don't remember exactly) I remember reading an article about a woman who committed suicide after she worked as a vet. The combination of emotional turmoil from euthanizing hundreds, probably thousands of shelter animals, plus absurd working hours led her to ending her life. In her suicide note, she wrote that that was why she did it, because of how dismal and unending it was. It's a very sad reality and shouldn't be glorified in any way.
@@andrewlynch4126 no not directly, but the measurable physical changes to the body caused by chronic stress/anxiety do probably make one more disposed to/at risk of several types of cancer
Damn, this video brought back some _bad_ memories. I got out of game development because of exactly the conditions Jim described.
Many years ago, after a week of working late every day, eating lunch in the office, and then working Saturday, I came in at noon on Sunday. I was buying a medical device for my father, whose health was failing. The team lead actually gave me shit for "being late" getting in to work, he didn't care why.
When I talked to the manager about the lead giving me grief for not getting in _earlier on Sunday,_ his response was literally "it's about what have you done lately." Employees were expected to constantly prove themselves anew with fresh overtime, and all previous hard work didn't count for anything.
The best part? At the end of the project, after all our crunch, they hired new, inexperienced (cheaper) people and laid off half the team. The next year the rest of the team was laid off too. The only good part is that the team lead & manager was also canned.
_Fuck the mentality in game development._
Fuck this mentality in general. My own job is blue collar work, and we had a saying that help drive that shit: "Feast or Famine"
The issue was our projects almost never had any proper scheduling or project management, so what would happen is we would get 6 to 7 months of 72+ hour weeks followed by 5 months of "I hope I dont get laid off cause theres barely enough work to justify a 3 hour day". So while no one held a gun to our head to force those hours, it was like Jim said - it was a silent threat, work the hours or get laid off during the next slow period.
It wasnt till I worked at a place with better management, one that scheduled things more carefully, that I realized that shit ain't normal.
@@Mr.Sparks.173 _"Feast or Famine"_
Holy shit.
Since you're not in the industry anymore maybe reach out to a REAL game journalist, or Idk Jim here to share your experiences? People are waking up and speaking out, and it's fucking glorious. I'm sorry for what you dealt with, that's a shit sandwich and a half.
Im glad for. Unfortunately this is the norm in any job. Its so unfair.
Did you ever hear how the lead and manager responded? I've had managers like them before, would loved to have seen the look on their stupid faces
It's sadly only a matter of time until the games industry has its first case of Karoshi (Yes, the Japanese actually have a word for death by forced overtime).
It translates to death by overwork.
Because of fecking course they do.
I guess "shi-shigoto" (ししごと or maybe even spelled "4しごと" as a pun) which, going by my basic Japanese translates to "death work" wasn't considered catchy. Not to mention higher-ups could corrupt it by calling it "yon-shigoto". (both shi and yon can mean four but the former can also refer to death.)
Calling it shi to ku no-shigoto (4と9のしごと or "Death and Suffering by work") is even more creative but a bit of a mouthful, moreso if spelled in roman letters.
I was just going say that, but yeah the japanese have this in bedded in to the culture. The results are the deaths(suicie, overwork,etc.), people totally shutting themselves out of society (Hikkimori) , and a decreasing population. overwork does have a big part in the problems.
I'm sure there already have been plenty, but sadly Americans are very dismissive about suicide.
The industry seems to underestimate the value of voice actors as much as it does its own developers. Surely if voice actors can unionize and still thrive then so can game developers.
The problem is there is a large pool of hopefuls from schools looking to work on making games as a 'dream job' while there are less people viewed as 'available and good' in voice acting.
The best part about this is that veterans in that field are probably making like 50k a year, when interns at Google would be making 70k
As someone who got into programming because of video games, I would NEVER go into game development
Thank you for bringing up the Rockstar and Sakurai/Ultimate stuff, and your own self-analysis. Overworking is such an epidemy.
Last year I worked 2 jobs. I 52 hours a week. Then one morning I woke up and I couldn't move the left side of my face.
Over working yourself is not advised.
Love the video Jim
This is the reason I don't work two jobs and through my talks with people who do I'm convinced I wouldn't be able too do it and I'd breakdown and loose all sense of purpose and work ethic
Hope you're doing better man!
As a fellow victim, Bell’s Palsey suuuuuuucks. Hope you recover all of your expression and movement back, and quickly.
The idea that software developers can work "all hours" and remain effective is a myth that has been THOROUGHLY debunked.
Tiredness has been PROVEN to affect mental performance in the same way as alcohol.
Software development is about quality of what you write; there's NOTHING worse than a dev in the team who spews out reams of **** code. All it does is make the GOOD devs work harder to fix their stuff.
It is, as Jim rightly points out, absolutely a failure of management.
52hrs? Cute.
Serious question: How long before a dev snaps and starts shooting up their office?
This Is Totally My Real Name
That sense of realism sent fucking chills down my spine.
I'm surprised that there are hardly any news about employees gang up against their managers yet.
People would just blame the game
Bold of you to assume people nowadays below the age of 45 can afford guns.
"Bioware magic" You think back in the 1800's plantation owners were like: This isn't slavery, this is: "cotton field magic!".
Nope that's EA with their magic called 'It's not lootboxes it's suprise mechanics '
Or in the industrial revolution. "It's not child labor it's 'factory magic'."
The thing is THEY FREAKING WHERE, just freaking pretended like the cotton got itself
Jim, don't overwork yourself.
We plebs need someone to thank god for.
But if Jim were to shuffle off his mortal coil, surely he would attain his true divine form?
One might say that he would break his chains. Although I'm sure he's quite attached to them, so that's probably not the right approach.
If only we had some kind of audio tool to help us understand this predicament.
Also, please don't overwork yourself Jim. The jackwagons who cause most of these problems definitely aren't worth it.
@sander heutink
If that happens, may Pope Francis canonize him as Sterling of England, patron saint of journalism, gambling rehabilitation, professional wrestling, and “TRIPELAAAY” gaming. Thank God for him.
@@Healermain15 How can I explain, when there are few words I can choose?
@@markcobuzzi826 I'm not sure Jim would accept the authority of such a low-ranking figure in the celestial bureaucracy.
@sander heutink
Hm. Maybe Jim Sterling would accept being officially canonized, in the same way that a soon-to-be Galactic Emperor might give a lowly peasant the honor of putting the crown on his head? :p
I like how Jim specifically says "I've never *medically* pumped fluids into myself." You beautiful stallion.
Technically, he did, though. He had an iv running in the hospital scene, didn't he?
yeah, but he didn't do it to himself. Would have been a nurse.
Dev here, yeah, a lot of companies don't give out contracts anymore, you work as an independent with no health or pension.
I've switched to better working conditions, but two years back I had to work through Xmas, full days and nights and I was promised a bonus. I'm still waiting for that bonus.
It ain't Christmas yet, you dingus! Ask again in 3 months!
When I first started college I thought about going into game development since i have an art background but after hearing horror stories about work hours and layoffs I was like aww hell no.
I thought stress casualties only happened in Darkest Dungeon.
senjuromon At this point, it might be a more accurate representation of the industry than one would like it to be
@@winfehler Bioware Employee #91099327's resolve is tested.... Hopeless!!
@@ichaukan There can be no hope in this hell, no hope at all.
@@Romanticoutlaw "Victory. A hollow and ridiculous notion."
You are correct. The Darkest Dungeon is also another internal term for a Bioware Studio.
Over a hundred years ago a novel was written which exposed the harsh work conditions for certain industries.
The Jungle
Now we're right back to having work conditions where people work themselves to death, coming in while sick due to needing money and not wanting to get fired, and all sorts of other stupid issues. This isn't even locked to the game industry, this sort of situation happens all over the board.
Sweatshops, black companies, working for EA...nobody should be suffering like this.
ArlanKels Yeah, and when people were confronted by the ghastly conditions and practices of the meat-packing industry, they came out in droves.....
....to improve the meat.
ya were back here cause managers need to be reminded unions were compromises instead of dragging the factory owner out onto the street to be lynched. just saying guillotines promote workplace harmony
This is like watching an abusive relationship
"Stress casualty" makes me think of Darkest Dungeon where the people are expendable fodder for you to chew through with startling regularity, either discarding them when they no longer suit your needs or pushing them so hard they literally die of a heart attack from being too stressed out.
Hmm, that sounds eerily familiar.
I love the low resolution 1990s gifs for 'Bioware Magic'
you are mistaken. that's Mass Effect Andromeda :)
I hope those people do unionize, they deserve to be treated like people!
Thank God for you, Jim!
Unionizing only works when the company is on an upsurge. Bioware has one foot out the door. They will be cut loose if they demand higher wages at this point. It would be one thing if they were on a hot streak or the game industry had very few workers.
It’s not just BioWare that needs to unionize. It’s every game developer currently rooted in the market. If enough studios start making noise about unionizing, publishers are going to shit bricks and fold to them.
They just need someone to take the reins and actually start the uproar.
@@wombat8812 Or, they will simply fire them. If there is an industry labor union, then it is possible. If it just Bioware employees it may backfire.
@@colindavies6463 Yeah I dunno. They can fire people, yes. I would think they would struggle to find workers afterwords though. Who would willingly work for someone that does that? No programmer is gonna want to work for a company that has a rep for mass firings.
So yeah, they can fire them. Probably wont be making very good games afterwords cause now the only people willing to work there are green or desperate.
Save money in the short term, lose a company in the long run. Thats probably there end-game.
Fuck God, I thank Jim for Jim.
Bioware hasn't released any magic since Mass Effect 2.
I still remember with a smile the E3 stream of 2018 where Jim and pals were laughing about the Anthem presentation where four people were talking about the game with the same 3 artworks and videos repeating themselves (showing things that aren't in the game in fact).
It's even more hilarious to think that the bioware people weren't even sure of what they were talking about, it was the closest we were of real game design in the making.
it's was both instructive and a sad piece of comedy.
Fetishising the number of hours worked has been a toxic idea for decades in America. It also tires people out to the point where they can't or don't help with their kids, interact with their community, or are able to completely relax. It isolates workers for the things that life should be about.
That lovlely Protestant "work ethic"
This also is a problem in Japan, hence the anime and manga industry, not even mentioning the gaming industry.
@@BigA207 Oh man, you are completely right. The only places it might not be a problem are Italy and Norway.
By singling out America, I don't mean to erase worker conditions in other countries but I think America is a Lynchpin for dealing with corperations because of what a strong hold they have over the government.
Most labor movements and every socail-focused movement in the world gets scruetany from America. So, companies and the American government being delt with will make labor struggles in other places easier.
@@SpoopySquid Which one? Ever took a peek at Scandinavian countries how they handle work and leisure? Or the Netherlands, Germany and Swiss?
I understand. I brought it up because Jim brought up Sakurai’s work on Smash Ultimate.
They made Anthem in a year.
Without leadership.
They deserve a raise and holidays, all of them.
They deserve to work for a company that won't push them to mental breakdowns and having to take work leaves so they don't blow their brains out.
They need some goddamn lawsuits. Didn't you hear about the breakdowns and indefinite leave? Those people aren't gonna be fixed by vacations and raises. Severe trauma can cause permanent damage.
If those people lost their jobs, they can't get raises and vacation. Also, if they're unable to work at all, they can't even use a better job.
weirdee ya
@@kelsiday2084 what funny is when it came out that Rockstar was doing all this people just brushed it aside and said it didnt matter because of the games quality but now its Bioware (EA) people are going mental, it just shows how overly biased everyone is, both Rockstar and Bioware (and most AAA devs) are scumbags for these working conditions
, pretty much all American and european game studios work their staff with these piss poor conditions, its one of the main reasons i left CDPR, unfortantly all these games you love are made by people being worked to death
I wish nothing but the best for all those poor developers.
I really hope they can recover from this :(
You know who else is an ‘individual’? Every single ‘stress casualty.’
Kinda want to see an edit of the Capn Crunch box with "Oops! All Microtransactions" with the bowl being empty and a prompt to buy in-game currency somewhere on it now.
That'S a good one!
I think the Editor did a great job with this one.
the ironic thing about Cap'n Crunch being the inadvertent mascot for video game crunch is that Quaker Oats is a union company and has no crunch
Sakurai is an amazing man and amazing game developer, honestly a lot of what he has accomplished is pretty inspirational to me.
But it still is really concerning how much Sakurai is willing to push himself. The man deserves a year long vacation.
Joey Crewe
The Man needs to retire.
@@vixonvontrollington4529He needs a rest of any sort at this point.
I feel like he comes off a tad arrogant in his hard work, but then again I think it's more of a cultural thing since Japan is notorious for black companies overworking and its just played off. It's why employee suicide is rampant over there (not that everywhere else is better. I worked a factory job and quit as quickly as I started because it was a literal sweat shop). But then again it's just my Opinion.
@@TakeItEasy2019 Exactly this. It's Japanese culture that's the problem there.
I think he does get 1 year or longer breaks in between the optional Nintendo contracts he takes for Smash. I think he might do his own projects in that time though. He's definitely wealthy enough to quit whenever he wants!
I understand this all too well. I was borderline suicidal before the holidays over this kind of thing. One of the other excuses they give is that the company can't survive without that crunch. I've been trying to explain why a union is necessary in our company, but it gets dismissed as a way to protect the incompetent. I just want protection from the management.
Jim: What happened to the game?!?
Bioware: I don't know! One minute the game was there and then it wasn't, it was like magic!
*Jim tosses Bioware in the cupboard*
Jim: There's no such thing as magic!
Except in this version, Uncle Vernon was right, and Harry went to (hopefully anyway) prison for releasing a dangerous animal in a crowded area.
@@thecorniestlemur7969 Probably Azkaban.
dying Bioware employees:
Bioware: *It's Bioware Magic!*
It's Bioware Necromancy!
Blood magic? Except you're using other people's blood?
Also, nice thumbnail
Sounds like Suicide.
@@vidmuncher best blood magic
The reaction Red Dead 2 got after the company treated their workers poorly was honestly depressing. It feels like most consumers only care about working conditions if the game was considered bad. Hopefully, we will see the rise of more worker co-op studios in the future.
This is nothing new, my dad worked for EA ages ago and I never saw him because he was gone from 9am to 9pm every day at least. (Not excusing it, fuck the gaming industry)
This whole ordeal reminds of the Japanese term Karoshi, meaning "worked to death" where stress from work causes strokes and heart attacks.
When I worked in retail I went through a situation where my boss was very ill, and being the assistant manager I had to basically do everything in their stead. I literally worked for 5 full weeks with no day off and no overtime pay, 60+ hour weeks doing a job I was technically not even being paid for as I was doing the manager's job.
With that being said I can sympathise with how these game developers can feel in terms of how they feel forced to stay extra (I did it because I didn't want the shop I ran to have any problems and I felt that it was my duty) and wanting to lock themselves in rooms to cry. To those people I say please get out. I have chosen a different career path which doesn't pay quite as well but I am doing much better on a personal level and I am overall a lot happier with my life since I took the plunge and just got out of there without looking back. It sounds silly but I know how it can be scary looking at other/worse paying jobs and being too afraid to take the leap but I promise it will be better for you in the long run. Nobody should have to put up with this.
On the other note, Bioware's page with open job positions starts with a phrase
"We believe that work/life balance is essential to the success of our employees."
If they mean, they're ready to send you to doctor, when you break during crunch, well, sure.
"If you're alive, then you're working."
I’d rather BioWare be closed forever than have people go through that kind of stress
@malik sherrod You said it. As sad as I'd be to see them go, I'd rather they were shut down (along with EA of course) then have them crank out mediocre video games while working their employees to death.
There can always be another company. There cannot always be another *you.* Each person should be treasured both as a human being and as an asset to the company with personal qualities, talents, skills and experience. A company should not be so large that nobody interacts socially and every day is the same; that's death to morale -and with it, creativity.
At this point little of value stands to be lost.
If by "Bioware" you mean the shambling Frankenstein Shit Monster EA created from the original Bioware that EA mangled and gutted for years and then slapped Bioware's face onto this travesty of a company Face/Off style.....then yes I hope it and EA burn in HELL!! Bioware used to be my favorite company. Between this and CDProjeckt, I am honestly about done with new AAA games. I skipped this most recent generation (Witcher 3 notwithstanding) because I have slowly lost my enthusiasm for the medium. And this BS and all the manipulative monetization have just burned out everything I loved about gaming. It's probably why I stick with the classics I already own.
@@thomasjess5029 Finally someone else is saying it. Listen, Bioware used to be my favourite RPG developers since the Baldurs Gate days, but that is exactly WHY watching all this hurts. They're not Bioware anymore anyway, they're a lifeless husk puppeteered by EA and it's disgraceful. I'd honestly prefer them to just be shut down as well.
That intro skip was epic. What I do every time I load up a Jimquisition video, you have done for me. I love you.
Whach this video czcams.com/video/2zuYCM0g2kc/video.html from beginliving and czcams.com/video/m1vICEf1TgA/video.html from the same chanle. the battle of gog and magog.
It's bad when a famous videogame company commonly uses a term linked to war related matters.
But what if they're making a shooter? ;)
Anthem being a bad game is an inconvenience for the people who bought it (myself included). It's admittedly pretty low-stakes.
Anthem ruining people's lives, leaving them with deep-seated issues like anxiety and depression, and forcing them out of work should be a call to arms to get some protections in place for these developers.
This prompted me to spend _hours_ examining and commenting on that article. Even creating a highlight reel produced an hour-long video.
Sometimes I vehemently disagree with you Jim but your quote about crunch being a failure of the workplace was perfectly worded and apt. Good work on this one. Keep it up ya chunky grumbler.
Can't wait to see biowares reaction to Jim finally making a video about anthem
I doubt they give a fuck about this weirdo
@@rob_3417 wooooooOooOoOoOssssssSsSshhhhhh
“Anthem must be un-meme-able”
- Bioware 2019
I feel its genuinely worth contrasting this with the fact that Valve did everything they could with Portal to make it generate memes. Of course what ended up becomming a meme wasn't what they planned to become a meme, but still
LoL, they never go to internet. Even egg is memeable
"Memes are a core value of the community" - Rebecca Ford, Warframe community manager
@@Coronatto she's a woman of culture
@@anggasatya69 *Lady of culture
Brilliantly thought-provoking & eye-opening video on a horrifying trend in AAA video game industry. Kudos to Jason Schreier too. BTW I love the clasps/buttons on your waistcoat.
This is by far the best and most important video so far! 🙏🏼✨
Nice rant Jim. And respect for being so open about your anxiety and depression.
These problems are all too common in this day and age... the root seems to be that the people entrusted with all the power (due to wealth which they mainly have due to lineage) don't care about anyone else. Well, unless there's a well-televised charity gala, perhaps, then they suddenly start to care, a little, for a while. But yeah... hopefully unions will step in and make it harder for the wealthy few to ignore the needs of the working many.
"Crunch" is what happens when you fail at planning. Like when I did my GCSEs and had to "Crunch" all my revision lol
Or when you have an in/out referendum and spend 3 years faffing on trying to get it to work.
It honestly still confuses me how these directors and managers still have jobs.
Failing at planning a product, throwing away the lives of so many people and wasting so many hours of time developing nothing should _never_ be rewarded.
I mean that's not even an amateur level of development right there, that's just being a pure fucking asshole out of spite for your own workers. How is all of this not illegal?
God i regret buying Dragon Age Inquisition...
Great video Jim. I needed a reminder about workaholism. Not sure if I'm going to do much about it in my personal schedule, but it's nice to hear someone address the issue like this. Don't forget to take a break too, eh?
>"Depression and anxiety are an epidemic"
>shows a picture of "Pandemic"
Goddamn it, Jim.
Hard work doesn't pay, it pays your employer while you get a pittance to live on.
Exploit workers for profit. Use that profit to buy governments so they'll allow further exploitation.
I'm waiting for the day they just start assigning the underclass to companies.
I'm writing a movie about a world where governments have collapsed and corporations have taken over, waging war on eachother for control of the scarce ressources after the climate went haywire... Yes, we will be owned by corporations...
@@fosphor8920 thats the plot of a video gamr called Ace combat 3. The world is controlled by 2 giant corporations; General resources and Neucom. They wage war against each other and the government lost all power.
@@DeadlyYellow you already have for profit prisions, where people work for less than minimum wage.
McDonalds now gets all their uniforms from prision labor because it's so much cheaper
@@annorgothica7771 Oh cool, I'll have to go study that game then :P
Hey man great videos, I didn't know you had anxiety and depression. But I hope you hang in there and that all will be alright with you
God bless you for the intro skip.
Pyramid Head: I love crunches.
Sonic: That's no good.
Pyramid Head: Oh, I meant abdominal crunches. I'm with Jim on this one.
I am seriously thinking about posting this video to my company's mailing list when I inevitably quit because the parallels between what BioWare did and what my company is doing are frightening, up to and including employees disappearing for months due to overwhelming stress.
Oh and BioWare, you don't get to whine about journalists supposedly singling your employees out or turning them against each other when you treat them like shit.
i can find the email of the CEO of my company pretty easily, i have half a mind to tell him how to run the damn company
Yep, this is not happening only in the gaming industry. Worked for a big corporation for seven years and most of what's mentioned in the article was happening there as well. The difference is that we had a different term "attrition".
I have a long standing theory that the intangibility of a SW end product must have something to do with it. If the end user gets a car that has a busted window and a transmission missing two gears he will not buy the vehicle or complain to the company, the same just isn't true with SW products, which in make cases is held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.
The only positive I can tell you here is that there is light at the end of the tunnel. There are still privately owned companies who don't treat their employees like disposable garbage. I know, I found one. :) Keep looking and you will find one as well. Don't sacrifice yourself for something that won't appreciate your work!
My grandfather was a workaholic as well. And it pushed his body so much that he would stop eating, did work after surgery, and he died a year ago. It's a terrible thing.
Such a long and juicy episode. I loved it. Thank you Jim.
"But we aren't forcing anyone to work their arse off, they can just leave!"
Just in case you thought the world has ever budged an inch since 19th century...
That argument only works if there is a somewhat equal balance of jobs/workers, which is not the case and never was. Your average worker doesn't have any leverage over their employer because the moment you quit somebody else will take your spot for even less due to reserve army of labour. So you either push it to the limit and beyond each and every day and suffer mental and physical degradation or you die off starvation. Gotta love the "choice" provided.
@@Readysetheal Even now, (in the U.S.) with unemployment supposedly at it's lowest ever, wages don't go up meaningfully. Because the rich want to hold all of that economic growth for themselves. They're not going to raise wages to try to attract top talent, top talent benefits won't reflect on their next quarter numbers, but their wage will. So keep churning entry-level people and then wonder why nothing comes together without crunch.
@@Readysetheal It only works to any extent when labour organises in its own interests
@@Devilpapaya no it's because the work force doubled after the collapse and women joined. There will never be a shortage of workers and if by "god" there ever is they'll just import the workforce from other countries.
@@harveymarks6038 Oh, I totally forgot about women and minorities. You're right, it's all their fault.
If your idea to attract a significant other is to argue they shouldn't be able to earn a living for themselves, and thus must be dependent on you, you may want to do some self-reflection.
Likewise, if you think having to compete in an international labor market is problematic, maybe invest more in your own skills than trying to stop people from moving around.
Your lack of meaningful employment isn't the fault of your fellow workers. No, the issue at work here is a labor market in which only a small number of companies make up the majority of the labor buyers. That creates an inherent imbalance of power which only collective labor action can remedy. When the established players can swallow and new-comers to a field, the idea of 'competition' in a meaningful sense is void.
As shit as this all is in the game industry, this is corporatization. Not unique to the game industry. This hard work notion is just a form of control over those without power. Jim killed it.
Bingo! It's a corporation problem.
I was constantly bouncing between empathy and disgust while watching this as this is awful it's happening at all but in all honesty why are we acting like it's only that shocking when it touches the game industry? minimum wage retail workers are FUCKED by this, day in and day out and it's literally assumed as part of the job to be stressed out beyond belief, overworked, underpaid and treated like a number... Working at Walmart when I was 18 literally is the kickstart source of my anxiety. I did not have anxiety before being slaved over there and treated like garbage every day but it's like we've forgotten this is the reality and the people who have to work these jobs do not even get remotely a choice, they have to work these awful jobs to barely meet ends. Ugh, I hate this shit. Corporate world is so dehumanizing and then dare demands for 'people' benefits. This shit depresses me.
Sorry for the rant/rambling. I really appreciate your comment, thanks!
I live for that intro Jim...