You Have to Stop Working, Even When You Can't Stop Working

[Music] thank you hi welcome to this session in the independent game Summit of the game developers conference we call this one you have to stop working even when you can't stop working and I've spoken to many people throughout the years about Crunch and burnout and suffice to say I'm not a fan do not recommend um I mean none of us are we just get stuck in it anyway somehow don't we I had the idea for this panel because usually when we talk about crunching burnout in the broader game industry the worst crimes against developers tend to be Studio management ordering people and their power to work harder and burn themselves out faster but in the Indie space we can often burn ourselves out more joyfully more enthusiastically and more violently than any AAA worker

because literally no one can stop us not legally not physically not emotionally it's just us versus ourselves so here are a few very experienced independent developers with different insights and strategies for how to avoid working yourself to death you deserve a long career my friend making games many many games in the years to come so please listen carefully to their survival strategies good luck hi everyone I am chandanaike I'm the co-founder and creative director of outer loop games here in Seattle I've been in the game industry for almost 24 years I was born in Sri Lanka and my parents moved us when I was about eight years old during a civil war going to Sri Lanka to the states they um you know they didn't feel comfortable us being there uh me my brother my sister were pretty young

and they wanted to have more opportunities for us so we moved to the uh to the US uh lived in Maryland went to Art School in Savannah Georgia and I watched my parents you know having to start over move into a whole new country and and I think I learned a lot of my work ethic from how it's watching them to see how hard they worked to provide for us so I went to art school and then got a job at Bethesda at 19 right place right time and I just did everything I possibly could when someone asked me to do something I did it I felt like the only way I could get ahead in games was to just put just you know throw myself onto it and do anything that it needed to get done so I started an art got into production UI trailers design work whatever needed to get done on the project I was willing to do it um eventually moved over to LA and Orange County where I worked on a couple Matrix titles uh for the movies that were coming out at the time and then we eventually after having our first kid

moved to the Seattle area and we've been living there since um in my 20 years prior to starting out a loop the the I worked on a bunch of different games and the team sizes varied from 10 15 to 150 to 200 people depending on on the project um and there was one commonality with all these with the studios I worked at was that the game had to ship the game had to get done um and we needed to do whatever uh we you know we could to to help with that it wasn't necessarily you know some places and depending on the time there was some mandatory crunch but most places it's not mandatory crunch it's this more implied crunch it's the scheduling it's uh peer pressure from the team or it's a major deadline with the publisher external pressure it all amounted in us working a lot of hours I mean there were times during uh working on Enter the Matrix that I put in 100

hour weeks uh because the the game had to get done uh for the movies that were coming out and that was a fixed date so regardless of the issues we're having on the design side or production I just met a lot of us were working a lot a lot of hours I mean I would come home three in the morning barely see my partner get get up in the morning uh you know for after a couple hours of sleep and do it all over again and that after after a while years of doing that just takes a huge mental and physical toll on your body um and when you're you know working that many hours you're not being very productive like you can barely think of what's going on you're making a lot of mistakes is it's just it's just not healthy and it's especially not healthy for the long term um so I haven't been doing that having done that for 20 plus years I decided that you know there must be a better way to do it and I want to be able to spend more time with my partner spend more time my family and yeah with my kids so about four years ago I started out a loop as a fully remote Studio I think the timing was good the tools and

technology has gotten better with zoom and Discord and slack we were able to you know myself and two other partners that I've started the company with that I've worked with before oh we decided to try it remotely and we all work out of our houses um it's grown from three people to four people to you know our first project was about nine when we shipped I was still learning how to run a company and and still doing too much so there's like a responsibility and and a work I think that I you know I think I I learned over the years and some of the habits are really hard to pick I think my a lot of my self-worth was tied into how productive I was being which is not a healthy way to make anything or or make a living so over the years I've learned to try to make myself more redundant uh you know hire hire people that we need to fill certain roles so I'm not trying to do like eight different jobs that's been healthier um you know and have after having kids

uh we're forced to kind of budget our time better okay you know I wanted to see my kids first steps and spend time with them as they grow up because they do grow fast I mean everyone tells you that kids grow fast but oh boy yeah I mean 14 years 15 years um with my you know two sons have gone gone by real quickly so um starting the studio remote was also just a a decision uh for myself and my partner to spend more time with their our family and part of that is also making time for other things outside of games and staying away from the screen so I coach Sports before covet I would coach sports with my both of my kids and now that things are getting better in Washington I'm doing that again uh it's been really healthy uh not just mentally physically to kind of stay away from the work side when I'm not working um creatively it's been a lot a lot better too to just to have that break to focus on something else to solve problems you kind of have to step away

sometimes and it's made for a better work environment a better family life balance but it's it's a constant struggle I'm pulled in constantly to think about like how's the team doing and you know are we paying our bills on time and everyone get you know all that stuff but I'm trying to shut off work when I'm not at work and focus on work when I am the team is up to 15 now we're spread across nine cities and you know 12-hour time differences so we're definitely trying to find different ways for that to work um we're more empathetical for the different needs even though covid situation the US has gotten better it's not the same in other parts of the world where our partners are um so you know over the last year it's been really stressful on everybody too and you know make sure that people have time we encourage mental health days we encourage people to take minimum number of days off they have to take a number of days off every year um we try to make sure you know check in

on people more often make sure they're doing well and scheduling wise for the amount of work that's required you know we're trying to be better about that too so that they're not feeling the same kind of pressures I did in my previous companies where I felt like I had to get stuff done because everyone else was doing so I need myself as a as a you know Studio head needs to be do a better uh job as an example for the rest of the team um we're also the team is a little older so you know one of my partners had a baby recently someone made sure that he had three four months of paternity leave and we plan around that you know we know that's a coming thing and we plan around it um so far it's been working out pretty well but it's a constant struggle for myself to make sure that I'm not doing too much which is easy Habit to get back right into um so yeah working you know for 24 hours 24 hours 24 years um I've learned a lot to what not to do um you know and it's really healthy and

it's better for the project and the team if you can take the time you definitely should take the time and it's it's responsibility on the studio heads and the production team to make sure that the project is scheduled in a way that people's mental health and well-being are taken into account that's the the biggest part of making any game is the people and if you're not taking care of yourself or your folks and it's just in the long run this is not going to be healthy and and the products will will uh will do as well um and neither will the studio all right thank you my pronouns I see her I'm CEO and co-founder of triple seven games and advisor to calvinites ever since we funded triple chopping it has been important for us to rethink how we structure work and allow ourselves to stop working if you're curious on how we handle all these details you can always read our contract and employee handbook on our

website before I start I just want to give a small trigger warning especially for those who are parents themselves some context to give the best understanding of my CR of my talk I want to share a little bit of my current current personal life situation last year I gave birth to our baby Bobby they were born premature week 34 with an emergency C-section since then we have learned that Bobby most likely suffered from a Chronicle illness and we have spent countless hours at the hospital I for the first time had to say no to things I planned I even took a break from work from my work at Carver night but working is also what helped both my partner and I to focus on something else and allow ourselves to take a small break from the hospital socialize with other people and be creative and have a sense of normality I'm thankful that I always practice to stop working otherwise I would not in time have realized that that's what I

had to do I hope that the learnings I share today can be helpful for others too why it's hard to stop most people want to do the absolute best at any given job on top of this most people identify themselves by the profession and the job they do especially in the games industry this makes it incredibly hard to stop working personally I don't believe in what I call the Netflix model they share handbook with no fixed amount of work hours because how do you know when to stop what if your colleagues work more are you even lazy or maybe your boss thinks you are I believe we need to help ourselves to stop I believe we should all just agree on working less hours our industry combined conferences parties fun Hangouts and Discord and even rollerblades with our work the line with lines between spare time and work are blurred game development of a sub a lifestyle no but not a job

it's our own way of coping with work-life balance and it's a huge path of why I love this industry but it also makes it so hard to stop working I learned this all I learned all this myself the hard way when I was expecting my first child and I once and once again when Bobby arrived well love care and hits this were needed somewhere else than on our company slack Channel most of us have a hard time not to think about work in our spare time it's because our work makes us worry you worry about Job role the next deadline that common during lunch is the CEO likes you or dislikes you how to announce your pregnancy Etc so to stop working you also have to learn how to stop worrying and I use this tool by advice for my dear brother if it's not a problem in six months is that a problem now like running a studio doing a job life can be challenging and sometimes you're presented with a hill that seems too high to climb

to help myself I think of challenging this way most things within six months from now have presented itself with a solution a good or bad solution but a solution a breakup right now when it's happening it can feel like the end of the world but in six months you will start to move forward and see all the new positive changes in your life it can also be a game release in six months from now the game is out maybe it will do amazingly maybe not but you will know and you will have the answer some things will not have presented itself with a solution in six months for life climate changes for example so we should worry about that I even schedule winter worry very often your voice lies in the hands of other people like a yes or no on funding but also they give you that answer stop worrying about it I will also not allow myself to think about my worries before I sleep it's hard and I practice it this every

night but I always tell myself a good story before I sleep sometimes I have to make it up I know it is it's easy to tell you to stop worrying about work especially going through a pandemic many of us working alone from home but it's always good to practice how I stop working communication goes a long way if you tell everyone when you are are not working it actually helps you to keep that promise to yourself too so communicate to people when you work when your work hours are let them know if you are on vacation and when you are back respect other people's time zones and office hours too I put my work hours in time and time zones in my email footer it helps a lot realize things can wait no need to email a reply at 1am other people are sleeping budget and plan for time off face Takes Time game development a long time but try not to make a budget and time schedule that requires you to work 70

hours per week it's like taking a loan on your own health you can't keep doing it demand of your partner should be equal in Parenthood not only when it comes to weekends but doing work week too my partner and I have worked every second day it helped us to structure our work schedules and be 100 there for Bobby when they needed it it made planning work-wise easy set goals and monitor your work time go from 50 to 40. a 40 to 35 hours at some point you will get the same amount of work done in 32 hours the benefit from this is also that if you need to work more like to walks a big deadline a game release for example it would take a lot of a lot of extra work before you end up having to work long nights working towards a more healthy work life work life takes practice but it's just as important as a game you are making I know it's taking time off and working

is a privilege it requires you to have a secure job in the first place first place to have sick pay paid holiday live in a welfare state and unions to Advocate your rights ironically to be able to stop work you need to have you need to have the resources to work we are all in this together but summer starts some of us have a lot more power than others while I'm speaking from a small small business perspective the power for change lies both at both ends of the spectrum the small power I have to set an example or to Advocate still needs to be met by the big corporations to build better working conditions better publishing contracts and better internal cultures overall so I'm adding all of us through previous enough to be able to take my advice on how to stop working to help those who are not support people of color ingenious people women non-binary people trans people queer people and recognize

that the struggle for a life worth living living is also bigger than work it is in solidarity for the people suffering apartheid in Palestine it is an advocacy for migrants and Global human rights higher diverse candidates take a job as an employer seriously listen and learn put your money and your advocacy out there buy people's work make space make connections pass the mic let's work together to redesign our industry with dignity in mind and thank you Hannah Newton for helping me putting together this last slide and thank you all for listening hi I'm Danny day I run a 14 year old game studio in South Africa and occasionally contract internationally I burnt out really hard last year while working for a wonderful U.S Studio that had very little to do with it I burnt out because time zone related overwork combined with having a toddler and the global pandemic to completely overwhelm the lifelong coping mechanisms

I'd built up around undiagnosed add I went from being a high functioning person that relied on hyper focus and random inspiration to someone that was barely able to focus on anything and constantly failing to spot glaring errors in what I did manage to do after a difficult conversation I took a month off then resigned I really really had to stop working things are much better now I'm excited to be running a team and making a game armed with understanding of my ADD good therapist and support of an amazing partner so I'll be talking about two things avoiding time zone stress and how to get the most out of therapy sleep is important the major mechanism of time zone stress is a lack of or severely Disturbed sleep bad sleep is a huge red flag remote working is great for flexibility but working across time zones can get complex it's normal to want to work with the people you work with not only is pure asynchronous communication difficult but the times when you can chat directly to your co-workers and pair up on issues just feel so much more productive work hours

tend to shift as a result it usually starts out as just being up late or early for this one thing which goes really well soon your workouts have shifted slightly to give you more overlap with your co-workers then meetings get scheduled for when you're always around to get so to keep up the pace you shift your day a little more spot the feedback loop it requires constant effort to prevent time zone slippage for some people like me it's nearly impossible to avoid and we end up working a local night shift completely disconnected from where we live in my case that was a feature at first working remotely for a US Studio meant I could look after our infant child and get work done all night but as the child started sleeping through the demands on my time meant I couldn't just sleep all day fast forward a couple of years and I was working in three distinct chunks every day interspersed with hours of responsibilities in my regular time zone and sleeping and eating an incredibly strange times I was essentially experimenting with polyphasic work and it felt like being jet-lagged for months at a time cool so that sucks how do we not do that individually you can counteract the pull

into another time zone by focusing more on maintaining a constant starting time that's good for where you live people will learn that you're always on at X time but now that will work in your favor because they'll leave comms waiting for you or have quick Handover meetings be reasonably ruthless about when you're not going to work sure make yourself available for meetings and special things that need everyone's attention but if you're doing those outside of what would be regular work hours for you set time limits on those meetings and don't keep working afterward acknowledge that you're going to be working async a lot and plan around that make sure you always have tasks you can switch to if you get blocked on anything waiting for someone to get back to you be proactive about issues when they pop up and treat your pairing and co-working times as precious schedule and push for socializing time with your co-workers this is fine to do outside regular work hours and be open to people wanting to socialize with you in their off hours as well because this doubles the time you have for connections monitor your time in more than just hours spent track your start and end times each day spot Trends and watch for

slippage if you're routinely staying on through your co-workers entire workdays stop and take a breather when it comes to running Studios across multiple time zones it's part of your responsibility to build systems that help your team members avoid time zone stress this sounds obvious but be aware of everyone's time zones build in automatic do not disturbs based on when they don't want to be working respect their time when you schedule those inevitable meetings outside their workday and if someone's obviously working later and later check if they're okay plan far enough in advance that people are comfortable working asynchronously and picking up other tasks if they're blocked waiting for someone else treat that kind of waiting as a conveyor optimization task for yourself rather than an availability problem on their part cut down on the concept of core hours that require everyone to be around they're directly undermining your asynchronous capabilities I get why core hours feel like a good idea and you definitely do need some kind of occasional overlap so that important discussions can be had but try to figure out ways to make those less frequent

and finally commit to being remote if some of your studio works at the same office that's going to become the de facto time zone that everyone else is pulled towards part of this is making sure all your meetings can be caught up on the next day you don't have to be minuteing everything but at least record decisions and expected outcomes no time for a Safeway onto the therapy cheat sheet therapy is a good thing if there's one take away from my part of this talk it's that you should go to therapy even if it's only for a limited period preferably well before you hit a situation like mine the thinking that eventually got me looking for a therapist went something like this what if I frog boiled myself into using up loads of resources just to function each day what if there are other ways to exist that leave me less drained and I can't see them from where I am now but there are literally professionals that can help me figure this sort of stuff out in my case that led to an adult diagnosis of ADD which has been incredibly helpful just understanding how and why I make decisions and how that differs from other people's

mechanisms has alleviated so much stress and made running a team much easier it's very important to know what you want from therapy that can be catharsis healing new tools self-knowledge anything based on poking how you feel inside your own brain it's not just the extremes of sobbing on the couch which is perfectly okay or some personification of a grinning self-help book on steroids different therapists prefer different approaches and patience finding a therapist is a lot like dating you're going to need to meet a bunch of different people until you find someone that gels with you because therapists make that same call from their side as well also please note that I'm coming at this from a privileged perspective in South Africa where I can both afford and choose therapists other people in my country don't have as many options and other countries Health Systems restrict choice in other ways it can be extremely exhausting to sit down with a person you've just met in a strange environment poor parts of yourself out in front of them and feel like they're just not engaging because they're not a trained therapist will want to know as

much about you and your situation as they can before they decide if they can indeed help or not until they know they'll make extra sure they're not going to get in the way of anyone else at the end of your first session with someone if they think they can't help they'll be extra distanced and disconnected this isn't them judging you it's them making sure they don't set anything in motion that another therapist won't know about they really do want to help so ask for recommendations for therapists they feel might work for you once you find a therapist you can work with be prepared for things to take time very few therapists are going to recommend anything super impactful early on it's mostly tests questions and trying out theories you didn't get to where you are overnight and your therapist first needs to figure out where that even is before you can start taking steps to move elsewhere thankfully things add up over time you're not obligated to keep seeing anyone that makes you uncomfortable and you can always ask your therapist to stop any practices or methodologies for whatever reason therapy is about ongoing consent getting a diagnosis is a complex set of

feelings to navigate especially as an adult it's important to know that you're still the same person and your life doesn't need to change drastically you just know more about yourself how you choose to use that knowledge is up to you and you don't have to disclose any diagnoses to anyone else in your life if you don't want to a diagnosis isn't a sentence or a proclamation about you most of the time they're great for giving you a window into how the other people do what they do medication isn't just something that happens it's a couple okay hang on let's go into more depth about medication medication can only come from registered psychiatrists often you'd be recommended to a psychiatrist by another therapist you're seeing psychologists can do diagnoses but no meds if someone that's not a psychiatrist recommends or offers medication stay away the choice to be medicated or not is up to you attitudes towards medication are complex but the most important thing is how safe and empowered you feel additionally please don't weigh in on anyone else's choice to medicate or not that's gross

psychiatrists issue medication they're the pilot in a plane that's taking you to a destination of your choice if you want to get off they'll land it for you and help you pick a different flight but self-medicating is a bit like hijacking a plane because your friend likes shrooms and has played a lot of flight simulator don't do it should you choose to start medicating know that the best approaches to medication are long term nothing is a silver bullet yes some people start meds and find that those situations change almost overnight but if you've got a network of coping habits already figuring out how and when those change due to medication takes time a good psychiatrist will ease you into a medication gradually letting you know what to expect and what to watch out for it's perfectly okay to say nope I don't like how this impacts me and look for something else everyone's relationship with their mates is different and we get different things out of them sometimes meds are long-term interventions like glasses giving you a different perspective that you couldn't hold before other times means a short term like someone loaning you a car so

you can get back on your feet provided you're working with your therapist there is no right or wrong way to be medicated or not in fact there is no right or wrong way to be full stop therapy is just a very good way to get someone else's expert input on how you are so that you can decide where to go next you should try it thank you please feel free to ask me any questions in the chat how this talk constrained by space and time um which we are we are constrained by space and time um I am the CEO of finji and um I'm going to tell you just a little bit about myself real quick we are both a development studio and an independent publisher so we make our games and we publish games some of the things that we made internally are cannibal to the endless runner from 2009 um and also uh Overland which we

launched in 2019 and sort of in the in between years we have launched Night in the Woods wilmot's Warehouse spiced panoramical and last week because I'm recording this a little bit early uh we launched chicory colorful tail um on PS5 um why am I here because we have opinions on work-life balance um I run my studio with my husband and partner Adam Saltzman um and we have a family um so running a studio and having a family can be a bit Trixie so Shinji there's so much about finji that wants to take over my life um it's kind of endless we have our games uh Adam and I have been mentors for a really long time in the industry we support initiatives all over um we have events in person and online now um I have to manage budgets and Pitch decks and HR and operations and talks

and travel and meetings and I could go on and on and on and on and uh Shinji doesn't want to give up any time uh it can be a bit of a black hole it does want to be every single day of my life the two to-do lists will never end uh the emails just keep coming including on weekends because weekends are work days in some places um and if I let sinji really take over if I pay attention to it a hundred percent of the time I actually won't have any more time for me or my family or my kids or my hobbies um there is always always always something more to do please please leave me alone and like I can say that it's my company but also like seriously finji leave me alone uh it's been a lot of years and I

kind of just don't want a to-do list anymore because let's be real this is way often more important than making video games my family and my pets and playing at the beach in the summer like at the end of my time here on Earth I have my creative life but I also have my family life and that is equally as important as just making cool things there are so many so many obstacles staying in the way of what's important to me we have my work to-do list that never goes away my work in my computer live in my house and the pandemic has made that way worse I'm actually my office right now by myself it's very weird I have external pressures that feel incompatible to flexibility um for example uh we have money like we have a finite amount of money my family needs my time my team needs my time my publishing Partners need my time my team has expectations of me alongside with my family my business development partners

all of these things are incompatible incompatible to being flexible um I also have like years of poor record keeping not just from me but sort of from all of us collectively like did we write things down and are we redoing work that we just poorly documented in the past and then we have destructive internal dialogues um the most Insidious of which is fake it till you make it and I say it all the time but like at what point I'm I not faking it anymore like how much do I really have to work to not fake it um am I working hard enough to deserve what I have or am I convinced I'm not working hard enough so I can't get what I want like all this stuff is just there in my head keeping me from trying to take time to myself and then why am I working all alone sometimes we really are working alone we're a single person team or we're the only expert in our particular field we have no one to bounce things off of which means it feels like we have to work twice as hard or 10 times as hard

to like proved ourselves we're doing it right so all of this stuff has been here like we're years over a decade into fingy now um and at a certain point Adam and I were like you really need to change we need to change our mentality we just need to think a little bit harder about like how we're going to work in this industry for a long time because we can't burn out we have burned out and we have suffered the consequences of that gotta say the flu after Pax and GDC sucks so how did we change and this is going to sound really stupid but the very first thing that we changed back when we like sort of rebranded finji is we published a mission statement to hold ourselves me and Adam accountable and like it seems sort of light and fluffy or whatever but there's a really important piece of it at the bottom which is like we practice inclusive team policies that support good quality of life meaning no

Crunch and we provide significant Revenue shares or bonuses but how we want to use that word for all team members um and that was written because we Adam and I needed to understand that we couldn't crunch and we wrote this when we were parents of two young children now like this was our deal with ourselves and then we had to take that and make that same deal with our collaborators so we have our fingy policies where we work 40 hour work weeks we have collaboratory collaborator buy-in on short Studio Sprints Time Zone overlaps per discipline and team to make sure we overlap and are working together we have five planned weeks of Studio closure every year that are paid we have unlimited scheduled PTO we have maternity leave and paternity leave benefits we have six times six days flexible work locations we have weekends that don't belong to finji we have comp time after travel and Sprints but I can say these things all day long but it's just a promise it's our job to follow our own policies and to be honest with

ourselves if we expect our teams to take time off Adam and I have to take time off as well we have to be intentional about this so how do we do it and this seems like an impossible like problem in front of us and we just took some really simple steps to sort of pull ourselves accountable um and the first thing is we have a production schedule and that seems obvious but we have a schedule we put things on it we use it we share it with the team we schedule short-term medium term Long Term 12 months from now these are things that we have to do and they're going to change but at least we have it written down so we understand the context of changes we plan for an announce Studio closures we help the team wrap up projects or come to a reasonable pausing point before those Studio closures we actually have one in like two weeks and Studio closures means we don't work like yes Discord lives on when we're not at work but we also have admins that

help us manage while we're on break um we have backups so if somebody needs to go on vacation we have somebody who can take over their spot if it needs to be taken over while they're gone now how else do we do it we have communication rules you know the saying about assume don't make an ass of me and you or you and me however you want to say it we have to have collaborate or buy-in we can't have assumptions on how people are going to work your partners your people that you live with and your family you can't assume that they're okay with what you're doing they're probably not have you talked to them you need to have buy-in from them you need to have these conversations we try to solve problems with Solutions and we tend not to discuss the merits of ideas or opinions because those can like get us bogged down in valuing people rather than solving problems and that's how we keep our design discussions and our to-do lists and tasks lists sort of on track

and then we write things down we write down so much stuff we have definitely discovered the value of documentation and we also trust that validate we have Team one-on-one check-ins um to see how our collaborators are doing um we also do validation for our tasks um so if we're gonna put something on a program or schedule we need to understand how long is this sort of stuff going to take because if you are wrong or wildly wrong or you didn't have that conversation you may have assigned a 20-hour task when you thought it took two and now you are setting someone up to fail and to not be able to take time and to have that work-life balance and we have constant collaboration or not collaboration we do that too we have constant calibration that what we're working on is the right thing at the right time sometimes you need to punt things because you're going to get bogged down in something that doesn't have a solution yet and we've gotten very comfortable with punting it forward

and doing something that we can do in the time that we have and we rely on these processes to keep us honest honest with ourselves because we can't have fingy and making things take over our entire life because we're more than what we create now I'm a lot of people outside of games like I'm a person that you don't know when I'm home here in Grand Rapids Michigan I have hobbies and I have friends who don't work in games and I have interests that are not making things and creating things and I am able to have these things because at a certain point I realized I had to have these things and like yes Parenthood forced a bit of it but like I could have ignored that um I I could have let that continue to

encroach upon the life that I sort of agreed to have with both my husband and my family um I have birthday parties and soccer games and swim meets and dance recitals and that those have nothing to do with games and I want you to think if nothing else after this talk today the thing that I wanted you to think about is who are you outside of games who are you beyond your projects are you comfortable with who that person is and like have you given time have you given that person space to also be a complete person um and that's work-life balance and like we had to use process and documentation and communication skills to put together like a laborious process for us to make room for that person that wasn't you know Rebecca Saltzman game developer Adam Saltzman game designer like we had

to make room for the people who got the Saltzman mom you know me a dancer me a goofball who makes Halloween costumes for my kids like I had to make space for that and I we did that by making sure that fingy space belonged to finji now if you have any questions you can feel free to reach out to me um I'm on the twitters and I don't shut my DMs um but yeah feel free thank you for listening I'm probably gonna be taking questions um someplace uh when this shows in about a month um but thank you hey there on this beautiful day I'm going to talk to you about how I manage my motivation and deadlines whilst presenting myself preventing myself from crunching even though I still remain productive and ambitious small spoiler now it's really hard uh before I dive into that quick minute about me my name is Celine Feldman and I

make games in other forms of art here in Utrecht that's a cozy City in the center of the Netherlands the best known thing I've worked on is called hidden folks an interactive wear swallow designed and created by Adrian young and Silvan torch and I specifically worked on the last two levels where I did the design and the interaction I'm currently working on some personal projects and a Gold Line car game called simulant but the second one uh it's out on the open but we haven't made an official announcement yet and I'm doing this together with my good friend tyman he's the original Creator and designer of the first simulant and in this project I do mainly the art and the design um I work on all my things in a co-working space with a bunch of great friends and the space is called bonehead this is a really nice place where we can easily share IDs talk about our work and

also our work style so I've seen a lot of things there and I also have seen a lot of crunches um I think to Crunch is a very personal thing and it's hard to give a clear definition it kind of boils down to when you're working more hours in a day or feeling more frequently tired or sad than usual um or when you constantly think about work and have a hard time stopping that I would call that crunchy it can have several reasons too most obviously a deadly deadline or you perhaps really love what you're doing and it's hard to stop working or thinking about it that's the one the one I struggle most with is an ambitious obligation to yourself and the strong will to achieve

something or make something great and it's really easy to justify bad working habits when you're working on something you're very enthusiastic about or you feel like you really need to and besides how can be being productive be a bad thing well let me give you some examples let's start with my development experience with hin folks during the development I was allowed to have a very flexible development style as Adrian young is a very chill guy and I was able to set my own deadlines and work at my own pace and ship the game basically once it was ready so uh especially towards the end um when all the fun Parts had been done I found pressure building as time was passing by and my money was running out I remember working my late evenings during my weekends and taking my laptop with me on my holidays and at some point

I even went back to taking Ritalin which is a drug that helps you concentrate it works well but I knew it also made me nervous depressed and more socially anxious so yeah I also had moments when I was really deep into a project like my website and I really love working on it and I had a hard time stopping and thinking about it or or doing other things although making my website gave me quite some energy it drained way more in the end there was a moment and actually actually several smaller ones where I just lost all confidence in what I had done and I really disliked the side of my work Looking Back Now I did not take enough breaks and therefore I didn't really have time to reflect on it and being exhausted from continuously working did not help my mindset at all

if I had taken the distance I needed I could have easily prevented these lower moments and stayed motivated towards the end currently things with stimulant go at a very chill pace two reasons for that is that we just don't stress it uh Simon and I really like a chill workflow and also Diamond has to release a game every four months so that creates an obligated break in the development every uh did I set two I mean four months so yeah it creates a break but it actually has been quite interesting and quite positively so it gives us time to reflect and have a better perspective on the project and therefore I think we made some better design choices and better art related choices in fact I don't expect it to be completely crunch free but I feel confident that will manage any pressure

quite well um and then I have to be frank and honest uh because being crunchy is really hard like I said even when you really want to and ironically whilst making this talk I've been actually experiencing a fresh little crunch just now I really wanted to perform well and put a lot of pressure on myself besides I really enjoy doing this I've been working in evenings and in my free times and not taking enough breaks for some part so actually breaking most of the rules I had written in the first place um on top of that I thought this recording was due next week the beginning of next week but it was actually Friday so um what did I do nothing I did nothing so Tuesday I worked for several hours in a row then

Wednesday I spent all time all my time or all the morning working at bonehead because it's quite new and needs to be built still and uh Thursday I went on to go climbing and worked on some other stuff um so yeah when I was working I made sure I was taking enough breaks and uh that little distance every time allow me to have a better reflection on all I'd written and drawn so when are your continuous working style comes from a strong ambition often like minus are crunching deadline crushing deadline um or an enthusiasm for the work you're doing um that makes it hard to stop I present to you my ultimate list of things you can do so the first thing I would say is you could keep track of your working hours

I've been doing this for one and a half years and I love this kind of data it actually gave me a lot of insight on my behavior and style plus it made me realize when I've been slacking off a bit or actually working really hard when I felt I wasn't I do this in Google Sheets and you can do it precisely as precise as you want but in the end it's going to give you an overview of how many hours you work on something what areas you tend to start and stop and how efficient you're working and that's also when you're making over hours so I'm not the only one who does this I actually got the ID by being inspired by my other game developer friends everyone that I know who does this would totally recommend it it really helps with other things too like making it easier to start working

um and making sure you have enough breaks then another tip I have for you is guard your weekends and evenings with your life seriously I hear this over and over again and it's a very important thing to safeguard keep at least one hour before that solely for relaxing purposes uh because you need time to wind down from your day and get a good rest not doing that will exhaust you very very quickly then a thing you could do is work out a bit you lazy bastards I myself love to work uh well love to Boulder no matter what deadline or how deep I'm into my work I go two or three times a week and not because I'm a very fit or active person believe me I'm not but I found that it really helps my mind to get off things and it's really nice for a stress relief

so it also keeps you healthy and some other more smart people would tell you that's healthy too so um yeah you could work out a bit and it doesn't really matter if you liked crime climb run swim or try at least to walk an hour a day and I'll tell you it helps a lot and then what I find the most important one is to take breaks maybe every hour but at least every two go outside for a walk make yourself some tea coffee or in the evenings play a game watch a series at night read a book find what works for you but this not only gives your mind time to calm down but it gives you a fresh look on your work when you're restarting it and dive back into it if you still feel stressed and you find yourself not relaxed relaxing and still

like working it out in your mind it still helps a lot and when things are really bad and you have a really really hard time relaxing trying to go back to being in the moment uh look at small things around you try to listen to the noises and that helps me relax and even some really hard days and on top of being that taking breaks being good for a busy mind it's also most important for your work too as it resets your focus and open up space for a new ID and gives the necessary break for your mind preventing total exhaustion so I've been practicing these tactics for quite some time now and although it's hard to remain totally country I think it's very possible and I hope you try one of these tips and

you'll find them useful anything anyway it's time to take a break now I think I'll leave these for you and uh take good care and thank you for listening [Music]