On Cowboys

Game developers are famous for working longer hours for less pay than software developers in other industries. We like to complain that this is because our industry is run by people who don’t understand the work we do, which makes sense on the surface. It’s the owner’s fault for imposing mandatory overtime! It’s the publisher’s fault for thinking what we do is magic! It’s the manager’s fault for not knowing how to plan out a project such that it has a reasonable schedule paired with an adequate budget!

No.

It’s our fault for being such a bunch of prick-waving cowboys.

Do you like game jams? Of course you do! The camaraderie! The focus! The creativity! The collaboration! A whole weekend where the only thing you do is the thing you love the most!

What’s the first thing you sacrifice during a game jam? Sleep. Over two days, maybe you rest for, I don’t know, a couple hours in total? Why sleep, anyway, right? Sleep is for the weak! I’ll sleep when I’m dead! Sound familiar? Not only do you devalue sleep, you ridicule it! Worse yet, it leaves you exhausted before the week ahead has even begun. If you’re lucky, you’ll have made up that sleep debt by Friday. If you’re average, you’ll be groggy for two weeks.

Good thing we have caffeinated beverages, though! Who needs sleep when you’ve got a pallet of free Bawls courtesy of your gracious local sponsor? So what if you’re already obese from drinking so much sugar?

Or maybe you aren’t obese. Maybe you’re too skinny, can’t seem to build any muscle to save your life. Did you know most men build most of their muscle mass while they sleep? Same goes for women, more in terms of tone than mass. The less sleep you get, the weaker your body becomes.

And don’t forget the damage you’re doing to your immune system. Healing requires rest. No rest, no healing.

Ah, but the healthy air of competition! Really gets those juices flowing! You may not be conscious of it, but any psychologist would be able to see the tribal behaviors that go on between working groups at a really frothy game jam. Is it any wonder you hardly see any women at these events? Women want to cooperate with their community, not compete with it. As if we don’t have diversity issues enough already!

So let’s go through the list: We don’t value sleep, we don’t value our health, and we don’t value inclusiveness, all for the opportunity to work too hard. Do you think owners and publishers and managers don’t see the cowboyism in our working culture? No wonder our industry has problems!

You’ve perpetuated the perception amongst employers that all we want to do is crank out product at the expense of the rest of our lives. And for some, maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s due to depression or some other mental health issue. Maybe you don’t have a life outside of work or do anything to help yourself because you don’t want to. I would encourage you to change that mentality, because the rest of us, I would submit the majority of us, want a better life in this industry, not just for ourselves but for you, the depressed recluse, as well, and we work just as hard at achieving it as we do at our “work” work.

Let’s keep encouraging focus and creativity and collaboration, but ditch the stress and caffeine abuse and exclusion and all of that other complete fucking cowboy horseshit that we’ve told our bosses we want in our lives.