Viral reaction
The game industry vs. Covid-19: how developers are dealing with life under the pandemic
How developers are dealing with work and life under Covid-19
Last month we celebrated games that could lift the heaviest of hearts, and over the past month or so, it’s become clear that more and more people have turned to the medium for succour in these unprecedented times. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused hardware and software postponements, while distribution and certification delays are ongoing, and yet numbers are up across the board. Digital and physical sales saw a huge spike during the early weeks of lockdown, and while the curve steadily flattened as – in most countries, at least – the same began to happen for coronavirus cases, weekly figures were still well ahead of the average. Doom Eternal recorded the best opening sales in franchise history. The extraordinarily well-timed Animal Crossing: New Horizons became Nintendo’s thirdfastest seller of all time, outstripping every Mario and Zelda game. People wanted to read about games, too: physical copies of E345 sold out within 24 hours; The Observer’s monthly gaming column became a weekly concern; the Financial Times even wrote a delightfully straightfaced article on the reduction in bank interest rates in Animal Crossing.
But what of the impact of Covid-19 on those working to bring us those games? The ripple will surely be felt throughout the industry for a long time, but the effects
upon smaller studios have been immediate and devastating. Some have already closed their doors, while others are likely to face extreme financial difficulties. Recognising how this would affect the independent community, PlayStation announced in mid-April that it had reserved $10 million for a fund designed to help developers struggling as a result of the crisis, though details of how this would be apportioned or distributed were unclear. Without the marketing clout of the industry’s biggest publishers, meanwhile, the loss of E3’s spotlight will ensure that future game announcements will reach significantly fewer pairs of eyes. GDC’s move to a digital-only event meant smaller developers lost a valuable opportunity to strike potentially crucial deals to gain funding for ongoing or future projects.
One upside of the digital GDC was how clearly it demonstrated the industry’s capacity to adapt to events. Indeed, all the developers we contacted to discuss their response to Covid-19 had a head start, tracking the overseas response to the pandemic and introducing their own measures well before official guidelines came in. “Going back to February, we’d been keeping a really close eye on it,” Graeme Ankers, managing director of Firesprite, tells us. “With the IT and operations guys, we started having our
own kind of weekly meetings – we nicknamed them Adder meetings, as opposed to COBRA meetings.”
1900 miles away in Finland, Remedy Entertainment was having very similar conversations at around the same time, as communications director Thomas Puha explains: “We’d been talking to our Asian colleagues in mid-February, and they were like, ‘Yeah, you really need to take this seriously.’” Rather than wait around for government intervention, it began to ask itself what a responsible company would do. Towards the end of the month, it put together an internal task force, including people from IT and HR departments, to draw up a plan of action. Volunteers were asked to try working remotely, before the majority of the company followed suit. “Ominously, it was Friday the 13th,” Puha recalls. By the following Monday, 90 per cent of its 260-strong workforce was at home. The studio is large enough to accommodate a handful of staff; 12 people (“mostly IT, office management and a couple of people who live nearby”) work there daily and are still able to practise social distancing.
Back in Liverpool, Firesprite found itself having to accelerate a process it had originally earmarked for 12 months down the line. It was dealing with well over 100 staff following a recruitment drive. “Remote working wasn’t really on our roadmap for about another year,” Ankers says. “And so we basically had to cram in what was ostensibly a year’s worth of work into four weeks.” It involved finding software and hardware solutions, and organising calendars for each of its internal teams. Reluctant to risk using courier companies, the studio disinfected individual workstations by hand before delivering them to houses across the northwest – all before the official UK lockdown. “We had to spin this up in a really concentrated timeframe, but we knew we had to put the safety of everybody in the Firesprite family first,” Ankers says.
Remedy, by contrast, was reasonably well-prepared to work remotely; several of its staff were already able to do so, including Puha himself. But while that meant getting everything up and running happened relatively quickly, refining its processes took a number of weeks. “You can use VPN, you can remote access your computer in the office, or you can just use a laptop if you have one,” he says. “That works fine when it’s just a few. It’s a whole different thing when it’s hundreds of people.” Figuring out technological solutions quickly became one of the studio’s biggest challenges, particularly with regard to accessing game builds. “When your build sizes are somewhere in the 50 to 60 gigabyte range on an internal company network, you can usually just throw computers at it, and it’s all right. But the amount of data you need to move… things that took minutes in the office take hours, or even a day.” Finns might well have reliable, fast internet speeds at home, he points out, but that doesn’t really solve the problem. “It’s about the amount of data we can push through our servers in the office.”
Latency has been a persistent issue, particularly for QA purposes. With up to 200 people remote desktopping at once, Remedy has had to carefully track lag spikes. For a game like Control, which has narrative triggers at very specific points, timing is crucial; handling that remotely has been an ongoing trial, even with the more efficient streaming solutions the studio has put in place. “It doesn’t help that everybody around you is using data as well,” Puha says with a wry smile. “Streaming Netflix and things like that all have an impact.”
Remedy knew it couldn’t recreate the traditional office experience at home, and instead decided to ensure its staff had everything they needed to work remotely as effectively as possible. “We really wanted to drill that mindset into people, that this is not just a couple of weeks. You might as well get comfortable, so tell us what you need.” Chairs were shipped, and staff were given webcams for video calls. For specialist staff, working remotely threw up a few unusual problems. A sound designer who didn’t speak Finnish received a polite note through his front door from a neighbour enquiring about the odd noises coming from his apartment late at night; Puha had to write a note of explanation in return.
Over in Oregon, one of the earliest states in the US to issue official guidance on Covid-19, Fullbright hasn’t experienced nearly so many logistical issues in moving its 12-person team to remote working as it enters “the real thick of development” on its third game. But if the practical transition has been relatively straightforward, co-founder Steve Gaynor has found that he and his colleagues – much like those in Liverpool, in Espoo, and across the globe – have had to establish new lines of communication. Face-to-face time is more crucial than ever, he says, hence the studio organising more structured ‘team togetherness’ time. “Whether it’s inviting everybody to hang out on lunch break and play Jackbox together, or just chat in a voice channel while somebody streams something they’re playing, we’re being more intentional about bringing the team together both for specific work decisions and more general visibility.”
Gaynor, like his counterparts in the UK and Finland, is cognisant of the mental burden on Fullbright’s employees, acknowledging the low-level stress wrought by the pandemic. “All of these worries collectively make it that little bit harder to feel productive, even if you are being productive. And so, as the people managing the company, I think part of our responsibility is to try to give people any resources that we can, from strategies to help with mindfulness and also just reassuring people that it’s normal to feel like you aren’t operating at 100 per cent – and that we understand that.” Both Firesprite and Remedy have been keeping a close eye on their new overseas staff, as they try to settle into their new homes at the most trying of times. “It might just be about spending five minutes checking in on people from a well-being perspective,” Ankers says. “And being open in return, and getting that message out to everyone that there’s no such thing as overcommunication.”
Yet as all three studios reflect on what has become their new normal, there’s
“You’re just constantly amazed at how people solve problems so effectively and unselfishly”
a shared delight at how well people have responded. “After two weeks, people were like, ‘Oh, I think I’m only at like 70 or 80 per cent [productivity], is that a concern?’” Puha says. “And I’m like, that’s zero concern! Even if you’re at 20 per cent, because the family is at home or whatever, don’t worry about it.” In some cases, working from home has even increased productivity, Ankers notes. “It’s unbelievable – a real testament to Firesprite’s ability to adapt and react, and something we’ll be looking closely at in future.”
This is a dark time for us all, and yet it’s clear there are positives to be taken from it. All our interviewees speak of a sense of togetherness in moments of crisis, a spirit of resilience and resourcefulness that has brought out the best in everyone. “When you’re shipping a game, the last couple of months is the best time,” Puha says. “When the end is near, and everybody just comes together and it’s an exhilarating feeling. To me, this remote working has felt the same – you’re just constantly amazed at how people solve problems so effectively and unselfishly. Everybody pitches in: we talk to other developers who openly detail their tech solutions, and help each other out. It’s awesome to see.” He pauses and smiles. “But I think that’s just how us humans are. We can adjust to almost everything.”