It’s easy to think, ‘Ah, I’m so young, I’ve got years before I need to worry about that,’, but why not take the time to look after your future self, now?
Healthy habits are becoming increasingly prevalent in the games industry, and old ways of thinking, such as ‘Don’t take a day off when you are sick because you look weak’, or ‘Taking a mental health day is for the broken’ are passing into gaming history. Companies are coming round to the idea that people, not machines, make their product. While you can’t force people to be healthy, you can provide opportunities and reduce the hurdles to encourage them to look after themselves both physically and mentally, because the two go hand in hand.
If you think you can work a 100-hour week and come out the end unscathed, you are sadly very wrong. Reports abound of failed marriages, destroyed sleep cycles, anxiety, and weight gain from unhealthy crunch-time foods, which are so yummy and salty but so not good for you. Have I made my point? Good, because I wish someone had pulled me aside and said ‘Paul, go easy, ask for help, the company isn’t more important than your health’.
It’s true, my wife thought I was a bit of a workaholic. That, coupled with minimal holiday allocation, questionable management practices and poor delegation, made me an overly busy guy who did little at the weekend except recuperate. Factor into that the crunch periods of over 80 hours a week, one day off a week and no physical exercise. It seemed inevitable that my body would lock up. It took a stand and said ‘enough’. I couldn’t turn my head, neck, or lift my left arm without massive pain, and I was off work until the painkillers, muscle relaxants and massage got me back into usable order.
That was just the physical damage, the mental damage and depression was pervasive and took much longer to get back on track. Over that period where I went to the dark side as I call it, I became a less than ideal employee while I figured out how to recharge and regain a healthy perspective.
You might think, oh, this all sounds intense and crappy, not really liking where this is going, and you would be right to think that, but only for a second.
You aren’t blindly stumbling into the industry; you’re reading this to get yourself all tooled up. Remember, this is about providing balance. You can’t control what the games industry throws at you and how it operates, but you can control what you do to combat hard situations to bring about a favourable outcome.
It’s all a balancing act. If you have a good job and an excellent manager, then life is simpler. Moral support and a healthy company culture go a long way toward improving your quality of life. I’m an artist not a doctor though (yes really!), so any issues should be discussed with your medical practitioner. Considering that, I’d still like to pinpoint some things to think about, which I consider important.
Healthy mind
• The energy jar
Imagine you have a small but important jar, neatly tucked away inside you. The jar contains your creative inspiration and motivation. When you recharge yourself by doing things you love, this jar fills up, giving you the inner stores of energy and bonus brain power for your creative outpouring. When you are working hard, you’re relying on those inner stores. Push too hard and for too long and your inner reserves eventually deplete and run dry.
I’m an introvert at heart and recharge by taking time for myself. There’s a lengthy list of things I enjoy, which to some would be nightmarish! These include gardening, spending time on my motorcycle, organising my garage, helping someone out (as long as it’s not moving my brother-in-law’s massive sofa again), small PC projects, photography, house projects, power tools, occasional socialising with close friends and family, taking in nature and walking my daft dog. These are my energy jar tasks I do to offset the stress and hopefully re-balance and centre myself.
• Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a form of meditation practice. The daily practice helps deal with anxiety, create focus and ultimately move a step closer to the elusive concept of happiness. Think of this as another skill, one that over time and with practice, provides you with a clearer head, enabling you to spend more time creating rather than worrying.
I do between 10 and 15 minutes a day after waking up (because I like my sleep), but what counts is that I’m doing it. Health insurance providers are now giving access to mindfulness apps as part of the policy, so if that’s happening, you know something is working in the campaign to improve mental health.
• Journaling
An online journal is an excellent place to jot down your daily or weekly thoughts, and the search functionality gives it the edge for me over a handwritten version. When things get you down, such as repetitive work, annoying work colleagues, repeatedly making mistakes, or loving crunch food too much, whatever it is, jot it down and get it out of your system! It’s only taking up space in there, which is otherwise valuable creative space. If you notice an issue repeatedly appearing in your writing, acknowledge it, sit with it, then see if you can find a way forward to resolve it.
I find this works wonders, even if I can’t resolve the problem, the very fact of noting it down seems to reduce its importance and weight, freeing me up to concentrate on being creative again.
• Therapy
I’m not joking about using therapy. It’s more usual in the US but is becoming more accepted in the UK. Sometimes, you just don’t possess the tools or the knowhow to solve the bigger issues buzzing around your head. When your washing machine breaks, do you fix it yourself or call in a professional? When your car’s gearbox grinds, do you fix it yourself or call in a professional? Do you see where I’m going with this? If you have the means or can access therapy via occupational or academic provision, I highly recommend it as part of the upgrade process.
Practise what you preach, right? I don’t mind this being in here, even if it feels highly personal. I had a long list of after-effects from my dad’s death, which manifested themselves in adult life. This included behaviours that were no longer useful and were causing me more harm than good and self-protection systems that needed to change. I got there in the end. I appreciate that often money is the barrier to entry here and that healthcare providers can only offer a certain number of hours with your policy. It’s not ideal, but it’s a start.
Healthy body
• Exercise
Is exercise the enemy of game devs? Maybe back in the day, where lifting and drinking four pints at lunch and smoking as many cigarettes was considered exercise in some way, but not anymore. You know the mantra healthy mind, healthy body already, but are you averse to a little sweat? I was averse to all sports and competitive scenarios. My advice is to do what you can, where you can, even if that means just taking the stairs. Whatever you do, remove the barriers to getting there so that you have no excuses to avoid it.
I’ve tried all sorts, exercising with Mel B from the Spice Girls using the Xbox Connect, playing hockey for one day, trail biking, and is motorbiking considered exercise? That’s maybe a stretch! I’m currently making use of the gym and since I enjoy avoiding people, I go when it’s quiet in the evening. Walking the dog at a brisk pace for 30 minutes is also a great way of keeping you and your four-legged friend happy.
• Yoga
Yoga is the non-competitive stress-reducing option. A great way to give your body a good stretch, get blood flowing to your joints and boost the body and mind connection. It’s also a great counterbalance to all that sitting about, and believe me, after over 20 years of making games, you’ll start to feel your age if you miss out on this trendy-bendy mat-rolling water-supping slice of life.
I seem to slip in and out of this one, sometimes it’s regular, sometimes I completely forget, I think it’s the natural ebb and flow of my brain, sometimes work overrides everything else and then a week later I’m like ‘hey, wasn’t I doing yoga?’ and start back up.
• Massage
In the UK, if you mention going for a massage, some people might look at you weirdly. To them, it’s not really the done thing. If your company offers neck/back/shoulder/leg massages either free or at a reduced rate, I recommend that you book one. Stress commonly collects in these areas, and in the forearms, fingers and even your glutes.
Massage can be a little painful as your muscles are stretched and pushed into an elastic state again. For a few days after you might ache and you will probably wonder, ‘Why did I do that, I almost feel worse?’ But then you wake up one morning and your original pain has gone, along with your massage aches, and you feel ten times better.
The time my body locked up so that I couldn’t turn my head or neck, massage was a huge contributor to getting me back on the road to recovery – thank you, Phyllis! As a result, I now go for a regular deep tissue massage to keep on top of work-related aches.
• Food and water
The quality of fuel you put into your body makes a big difference. At the very least, work on getting your five-a-day, and the recommended amount of water. If your company provides food and drink, but has no healthy options, ask if they will add it to the company stores.
Remaining regularly hydrated seems a constant struggle for me. I maybe get two to three cups of water a day and about five cups of tea with two sugars. I don’t drink caffeine except for a can of Coke on a Friday as a treat, otherwise my sugar baby appears on my dad bod. The principal thing is that I’m trying. It’s hard for someone with a sweet tooth!
You’re probably aware of these basics, and there’s no need for me to labour the point. You’ll find your own programme to achieve a healthy mind and body experience and keep yourself in good shape. Do something you’ll enjoy so you have a good chance of continuing it, because it often takes 20 continuous days of a new activity for it to become a habit.
I know you might think, ‘I’ve only just started, I haven’t even done my first crunch yet, so there’s no point talking about stress so early on!’ Well, you want to be best of the best, yes? How many articles have you read about artists who were amazing, but left due to stress and never returned?
Stress comes with making games and is unavoidable with high-expectation projects. The threat of failure is all too real, and it’s this that taps into the well-known ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response buried deep within your psyche. You want to do your best, yet there is so much to learn about both the software and the workplace.
Understanding that stress will be part of your life is part of the process; the important part is to focus on how you can identify and reduce its overall effect. We’ll look at the symptoms first, then the triggers. You might ask, ‘Isn’t that back-to-front?’ I would say no, because you’ll notice the stress effect long before the primary trigger. It’s with hindsight that you can react and reduce.
In the games industry, this trigger can be repetitive and possibly last for months. For example, crunch is the most stressful period with long hours and mental drain, while balancing the desire to do the best versus getting stuff done. But it doesn’t have to be large and obvious as in a crunch situation. It can be smaller, involving making mistakes or not hitting expectations, or it could be project based, such as having unclear deadlines, too much work, or low team morale.
Let’s take a peek at the symptoms before looking at the trigger in the next section.
The mental stuff
• Racing thoughts
• Constant worrying and rumination
• Difficulty concentrating
• Slow decision making
The physical stuff
• Headaches
• Muscle tension or pain
• Dizziness
• Sleep problems
• Feeling tired all the time
• Feeling hyper and bouncing from task to task
• Eating too much or too little
The emotional stuff
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Acting irritable and wound up
• Feeling anxious
• Reduced self-esteem
Stress can be subversive, creeping up on you slowly and getting into your mind and body, pulling levers and tugging at your strings to where suddenly you are no longer acting as yourself.
To put the above into context, if one day you find yourself irritable in meetings, focusing on the bad rather than the good, suspecting people’s intentions, the green-eyed monster of jealousy rearing its head, your brain becoming so foggy that you can’t focus clearly, retreating from social situations and your friends, being less flexible and responsive to change requests or seeming about to blow up with the addition of just one more small task, then yes, you are likely exhibiting signs of stress.
But what to do about it? How do you get back to normal?
To get back on top, to become more yourself, look at the triggers. As a Junior, I hope that your stressful situations are in the minority. Perhaps you missed your train to work, or felt a fool when you made a mistake? You may have submitted a file which broke the game build, or forgotten to export something and a designer got all uppity with you, things like that.
If you find you are making repeated errors, stop and do some digging to find out what’s going on. Please leave the self-judgement at the door. You will make mistakes, but it’s how you recover that counts.
1. Ask the HOW questions:
• How am I feeling?
• How did I get to this point?
2. Then the WHAT questions:
• What don’t I like about this situation?
• What level of control do I have?
• What do I do to fix the situation?
3. Then a WHO question:
• Who do I trust to help me solve this situation?
As with all introspection, try to leave your ego out of the discussion. It can be hard because that ego has helped you through some tough times, but it can also impede really identifying your issues. If you are struggling to identify the areas, peek below. You might find this list helpful in pinpointing troublesome areas that are common to the industry and which cause undue stress.
• Organisation culture (crunch culture, feature creep, wasting content and effort)
• Poor management practices (lack of planning, tasks assigned at late notice, unrealistic expectations, lack of clarity)
• Physical work environment (desk/chair/lighting/air quality/temperature)
• Relationships at work (colleagues with conflicting personalities, bullying)
• Team morale (loss of valued staff, group negativity)
• Lack of support (not feeling listened to)
• Role conflict (unclear expectations, duplication of tasks, favouritism, undue competition)
Who can help?
If you can solve your issues directly or through a simple chat with your manager, that’s great. Make the tweaks and on you go. However, if the issues are larger and involve abuse, sexism, racism, discrimination, or harassment, speak with HR first. If HR can’t help you, then seek outside counsel.
TIP: Not all HR departments are created equal! Some are excellent and value everyone equally, some side with the company and management. I'm just saying, be prepared...
Is your computer trying to kill you?
It might feel that way sometimes, especially after spending hours on a good creative session. It doesn’t have to be a crunch situation either, you could work happily away, super focused on your weekly tasks, but slowly the slouch creeps in, the head getting closer to the monitors, your eyes drying. These ailments are well documented and a genuine concern, so much so, that studios operate checks on staff and your desk environment to keep ahead of the curve.
Figure 13. Computer-related posture problems
Have you noticed people around you with these body postures, the stoop, the craned neck, or the rolled shoulders like in Figure 13? While they sound like something from a kung fu Disney movie, they are very real and not just limited to veterans like me, even people with five years’ experience can show early signs. You can take early measures now, which is part of paying it forward for your future self.
Let’s look at the common physical ailments that can occur while your head is down and focused on creative genius, and the simple steps to keep them at bay. I’m not a medical professional though, so any worries you have should be discussed with your doctor (I feel I need to repeat this!).
Problem: Weakened core/weak back/neck. Long hours and poor posture while sitting at your workstation are the major culprits. Users often naturally ‘creep’ towards their monitor, but does getting closer to your pixels make them more special? I don’t think so. It’s a natural tendency as you get more engrossed in your work. The downside is that your body pays you back eventually with muscle pain, joint stiffness and possibly reduced blood flow to your joints and limbs, further exacerbating the situation.
Solution: Your company can assess your workstation, which involves checking seat, desk, and monitor heights. Adjustable desks are becoming more popular; ergonomic chairs and monitor risers also might help you out. Notice that I said ‘help’ because, even with all this equipment and checking, if you want to slouch, or sit for too long in your chair, there’s nothing anyone can do. Exercising an awareness of your posture and rechecking it will help you no end.
Problem: RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury). A condition resulting from repetitive actions, which can affect office workers anywhere from the fingers all the way to the shoulders and neck. Symptoms often include pain, stiffness, tingling, numbness or cramps.
Solution: In an ideal world, prevention is better than cure. Simple checks on your posture and workstation are preventative acts, as are alternating between mouse and pen, taking breaks, stretching exercises for your aching limbs, and regular deep tissue massage to stretch those tendons and improve flexibility.
Problem: Eye strain. Those pesky pixels give your eyes a battering, making them flit around, examining and checking, processing, tweaking and squinting. It’s a full-time job. Pain, dryness, or blurred vision are common issues, with headaches and migraine being the top ailments.
Solution:
a) Check your seating position, do you sit under an air conditioner? AC diffusers can help alter the airflow, though often the best solution is to move desks.
b) Check you have adequate light fixtures and light levels. Glare from poorly shielded lights can trigger headaches. Improving your surrounding light levels (eg from a desk lamp) can help too, reducing the glare and contrast from your bright monitor and dim surroundings.
c) Is your monitor too bright? Reduce the level or switch to a low contrast user interface on the software you use.
d) Be sure to take regular eye tests and schedule breaks. Like the rest of your body, they need looking after.
Problem: Diet. We’ve looked at lighting and seating, but what about the food nasties stacked in the company larder? You’ll find high-salt snacks, high-caffeine and sugary drinks, biscuits, and odd things with a half-life of a thousand years. In your twenties, you may think your body can take it, but unless you take care of your body, you’ll take on the shape of an old potato. Garbage in and garbage out.
Solution: You know this already, right? Use the best fuel you can to keep you in top shape; a healthy body makes a healthy mind and vice versa. Keep track of the food you take in, limiting those sugary treats and greasy pizzas. Drink water and limit caffeine, although green tea is the exception with its reported health benefits.
Most of this is straightforward stuff, but it’s also simple to ignore and let fall by the wayside. I certainly don’t expect you to be perfect, but you can make small tweaks over time and build it up. Like going to the gym, you don’t hit the top weight straight away; you build up to it, then you can see progress and feel the benefits.
As an artist, you’re now part of the creative gang that forms a large part of the games industry, one which is still young, still learning and still making mistakes. On starting your new job, guided by this book, you’ll help make the industry a better one, more tolerant, more accepting and more inclusive.
This is all sounding idealist, isn’t it? But why not? Why should you put up with unacceptable behaviour and poor standards in an industry just because you are new? It’s hard if any of these issues happen to you, I suffered bullying early in my career and it took a while for me to even accept it was going on. Once I did though, I could address it and get back on top.
Some examples of unacceptable behaviour are:
• Aggressive or abusive behaviour, such as shouting or personal insults
• Spreading malicious rumours or gossip
• Discrimination on grounds of race, gender, age, body type or religion
• Sexual or any type of harassment
• Unwanted physical contact
• Stalking
• Offensive comments, jokes, or gestures
• Publishing, circulating, or displaying pornographic, racist, sexually suggestive or otherwise offensive material or pictures
• Isolation, deliberate exclusion and/or non co-operation at work
• Persistent and unreasonable criticism
• Unreasonable demands and impossible targets
• Coercion, such as pressure to subscribe to a particular political or religious belief
The reality is that all this still exists in organisations. When people feel powerless, this stuff continues. Thankfully, more and more people are stepping forward, taking massively brave steps to highlight the injustices that have occurred.
If you experience anything on, or like, this list, speak to HR first, to give the organisation the opportunity to right the wrong. If you find they aren’t listening, then look for outside counsel.
What’s not to like? Free food: check; free alcohol: check! Living the dream now! You are working for a kick-ass company, making great-looking assets, and now part of a strong art team. When a company party is announced, it’s time to let off some steam, kick back, drink a few mai tais, chug some beer, sneak in a cheeky tequila shot; what could go wrong? I think you know where this is heading.
Party on!
Not everyone loves a party but, for those who do, you’ll have more than your fair chance at your new company to let your hair down and enjoy a bit of social time with existing friends and maybe even make some new ones. I’m not your parent here, and everyone has overdone their alcohol intake at some point I think it’s fair to say. Go easy, because even at a company party, you represent yourself and the company. If you go too far, you’ll find out the hard way.
Real examples of going too far at company parties
• Broken ankles from jumping off balconies
• Parts of body flesh missing (owner can’t remember how)
• Sexual harassment, grabbing body parts over and over
• Throwing up all over the staff coats in the cloakroom
• Harassing the boss’s partner
• Swapping clothes with the party host
• Standing in the hotel foyer in your underpants
• Damaging company or event property
Drunken behaviour isn’t always funny
What might be funny to you at the time might be hugely offensive to others. Watch out for making the mistake of ingesting alcohol but no food, or you’ll be in real trouble. Before long you’ll hit that sweet spot of buzzing and then fly right past with a long visit to the porcelain portal.
Some of the examples listed above are more serious than others, and some will cause a visit to HR or worse, the police.
Want to get fired?
Although the event may have a free bar, it’s not a license to lose self-control. The consequences can be swift, and you could be cautioned, fired or end up in front of a judge in court.
I feel I must also balance this section out because I’ve had far more good times than bad by a ratio of about 10:1. Sure, it’s fun to have a drink and relax to celebrate team achievements, but if you want to go wild (whatever your definition of wild is) I suggest you do it in your own time with real friends and not at the company event.
The company social is one upside you’ll experience as part of working in gaming. That’s the social side covered, but the next section looks at the welfare and financial sides. Some of these are not really given the limelight that they need, especially when considering future you.