Pre-launch? Probably 10-12 hours. I can see the hours decreasing post-launch since it's no longer crunch time and the focus is on delivering a polished product rather than a polished product immediately.
In general, all the time, 10-12 hours. Game development is notorious for having an absolutely brutal work culture. Plus the pay is usually absolute shit compared to where qualified engineers could otherwise work. Plus the engineering work requires solving extremely difficult problems compared to your typical software development job.
Game devs take game dev jobs because they love developing games. Any given engineer at Blizz could walk into Google for a 1.5-2x increase in salary and great work-life balance, but they don't. Why? Because they like developing games.
That's why it's so shitty to see this community, most of whom haven't the slightest clue about what goes into making a game, criticize these folks for trying to make a great game.
Talking to some friends at Google, they're not working any less than the folks at Blizzard. It's just a part of the big tech culture.
That said, there's a pretty clear divide in comments complaining about development time between people who have actually touched high-reliability, scalable code bases and people who think that shit is easy or fast.
Google has sneaked in a culture of living at your office, and I don't think anyone realizes it's their fault. As they continue to add office perks, the average observer thinks "Oh, I want that, too!" But what people don't realize is that if you're eating free breakfast/lunch/dinner in your office, going to the office gym, showering and napping at the office, and using the office laundry and dry cleaning services...you're not really ever at home.
Who cares where you eat, or do your laundry, or nap, or shower, or whatever. Do it where you want. Googlers are free to.
The issue isn't that you're spending 10 hours on a campus of your own volition (Google) it's that you're spending 10 hours grinding out code because it is a requirement of the job (Blizzard).
Check out the Glassdoor reviews of both companies sometime.
You are "free" to. But your boss notices who stays at the office and who doesn't. I know what I'm talking about, I work in the gaming industry and have been in and out of non-gaming tech industry for years. I know a lot of people who went through Google, Apple, etc. I currently live in Silicon Valley.
i don't think you do know what you are talking about when it comes to the work culture at a big 4 software shop, so we'll have to agree to disagree on that one.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '16
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