Of Work Crunches and Terminations

Apparently the video game industry -- a part of the animation biz unrepresented by labor unions -- has heavy work loads.

“In 2013 ... "I got a job at one of the three largest third-party game publishers as a PR employee. It was my first real job in the games industry—a dream job to me. I was immediately blinded by how ‘honoured' I should be to work for said brand. So much so that I didn’t notice obvious problems from the outset. About five months in I was already burnt out. The hours and the pressure to perform got to me and my manager could not deal with the emotions involved with that level of stress." ...

In the early nineties, Disney Feature Animation's staff worked long hours and long weeks. Theatrical animation had gotten hot (and highly profitable) and the company wanted more features "faster, better, cheaper". Which meant artists didn't have a lot of time for family life.

The game industry has been a business with deadlines and crunches from its beginnings. Two decades back, a group of L.A.-based Electronic Arts employees met with the Animation Guild complaining about the insane work schedules. Nothing much has changed from that time to this. As a games employee related:

"They want employees who are right out of college and gung ho. They use people who are in their early twenties, who don't have husbands or wives or kids to distract them. By the time somebody is twenty-seven and wants to have a family, they're laid of for another 22-year-old who's okay with working ten and fourteen hour days."

And the layoffs are often abrupt and brutal, as games employee Larz Smith relates:

"... “You’ll get an impromptu meeting invite to one of two possible meetings: one for the people being fired and one for everybody else. I’ve never been in the meeting where people were let go, I can only imagine the anger and panic they feel. In the meeting for people who remain it's just shock and sadness. ..."

Emotions are always raw when layoffs happen. (Like the game industry, anger, sorrow, and resignation are dominant reactions to layoffs in traditional animation studios as well.) It would help if the game industry dhad union representation, with notices of layoff and dismissal pay. It would eliminate the pain of separation and unemployment, but it would ushion the blow.