The perils of project-based work: Attempting resistance to extreme work practices in video game development

Abstract

This article examines two blogs written by the spouses of game developers about extreme and exploitative working conditions in the video game industry and the associated reader comments. The wives of these video game developers and members of the game community decry these working conditions and challenge dominant ideologies about making games. This article contributes to the work intensification literature by challenging the belief that long hours are necessary and inevitable to make successful games, discussing the negative toll of extreme work on workers and their families, and by highlighting that the project-based structure of game development both creates extreme work conditions and inhibits resistance. It considers how extreme work practices are legitimized through neo-normative control mechanisms made possible through project-based work structures and the perceived imperative of a race or 'crunch' to meet project deadlines. The findings show that neo-normative control mechanisms create an insularity within project teams and can make it difficult for workers to resist their own extreme working conditions, and at times to even understand them as extreme.

Performing projects with constant connectivity: interplay of consulting project work practices and smartphone affordances

“…One example is the research by Peticca‐Harris et al . (), which highlights the crunch mode process of work in software development projects as having a distinctive rational and reified dynamic that tends to be regarded as inevitable but also leads to resistance. Another example is the paper by Lindgren et al .…”

“…For example, Peticca‐Harris et al . () provide evidence that in building gaming software, projects appear to be both a source of gratification on the one hand and resistance to the ‘inevitable’ crunch mode of development on the other hand. In theatre production projects, Lindgren et al .…”

The project (management) discourse and its consequences: on vulnerability and unsustainability in project‐based work

“…Not surprisingly, life in organisations is today becoming increasingly 'projectified' with a widespread tendency to manage and organise all sorts of activities by projects (Maylor et al, 2006) and to make sense of everyday work-life in terms of projects . Projects, as goal-oriented ambitions of individuals and groups, reinforce instrumentalisation and masculinisation of life, and they have come to be seen as predominant life-defining and personal worth justifying engagements (Peticca-Harris et al, 2015). This is also carried over to society in general, as a tendency to perceive more and more aspects of life in terms of achievement-driven, delimited, temporary courses of action (Chiapello and Fairclough, 2002;Knights, 2006;Gaggiotti et al, 2011).…”

“…These studies have clearly exposed some potentially unsustainable aspects of project-based work for organisations and individuals such as stressful work situations, internalisation of project management models and tools, subjugation to unrealistic plans and deadlines and a focus on each individual project rather than on organisational and individual long-term coping with a project-based work-life. As a product of technological, social, economic and political forces and human agendas, project basing changes the relationships people have with work, life and co-workers (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2007;Lindgren et al, 2014;Lundin et al, 2015;Peticca-Harris et al, 2015).…”

Why Might a Videogame Developer Join a Union?

“…Overtime intensity had no significant relationships. It has been argued that extreme overwork may hinder the ability of project-based workers to critically evaluate or resist their conditions (Peticca-Harris, Weststar & McKenna, 2015). This is because their focus is only on surviving to the next milestone and their expectation is always of eventual relief in recognition of their loyalty (O'Carroll, 2015).…”