Game Development During a Pandemic

[Vega]

How do developers make games during a pandemic? Can they do it as well as when there isn't one? I started thinking about this when reading the thread about the Breath of the Wild sequel, but this question can apply to any game in development.

I've never been a game developer and I assume it's mostly tedious deskwork. I'm also sure WFH is huge right now and chat software is more popular than ever, but isn't there also a lot of face to face communication? Aren't there times when people want to crowd around someone's desk and look at something?

Also, video games are basically extremely jazzed up versions of activities we do in real life, so if developers can't do any fun face to face stuff, could it get harder to come up with fun activities to put in games?

 

[Gaer]

The FFXIV team has been working from home since the pandemic began. The game did see a three month delay from its normal 3.5 month patch schedule, but this was entirely due to setting up work from home access. Mostly because it had been done on an intranet rather than internet connection, and certain departments required specific hardware that had to be delivered to their home.

After the WFH transition was complete, yoship reported that they are at 95% or higher in terms of productivity compared to working in the office. While there is no real way for them to "make up" the development time that was lost, all current and future content are now back on track to be completed at the traditional 3.5 patch cycle (though the next expansion will probably be autumn rather than summer release). This is probably why S-E recently announced that WFH is now a permanent option and solution even after the pandemic is dealt with.

Working from home is perfectly reliable. The way the pandemic proved it shows how ableism has prevailed when it comes to management. All of the accomodations that disabled rights groups have advocated for are now in place due to covid-19. It's especially painful because for decades disabled workers were denied things that were immediately made available once abled people needed them too.

 

[Mightyblue]

I've never been a game developer and I assume it's mostly tedious deskwork. I'm also sure WFH is huge right now and chat software is more popular than ever, but isn't there also a lot of face to face communication? Aren't there times when people want to crowd around someone's desk and look at something?

Conferencing software is cheap, easy, and very flexible and accomodating, and has been for years at this point. MS Teams, for instance, allows for various call participants to share their screens (or just certain windows in it) all while optionally recording the entire call for those who couldn't attend said meeting.

Also, as someone who's working in a small software dev group that has pretty much transitioned from in-office to basically permanent WFH (actually permanent in my case) most of those around-desk meetings were excuses to kill time and/or take a break which then wasted the time of the other people involved.

 

[Violentvixen]

At least 70% of meetings are horrible wastes of time and I'm glad it's harder to have them now. It's forced people to make agendas and have an actual reason for having one rather than just bumbling around the office saying "hey could you pop in a room with so-and-so to talk about X?"