November? really?

[rainichan]

Here, let me put this in easier terms: everyone is thinking of an American (or maybe even a UK) work week where it's 40 hours, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day.

Japan is not like this. Just a normal salaryman can work 49+ hours a week, and while they have time off they CAN use (not including the one day holidays they have across the country) most don't. The reason? It's seen as disrespectful. So while they may have MAYBE 19 days or so of vacation time they can take, they don't. They don't want to kick back while their peers and coworkers are working and picking up their slack and going from a 12-14 hour day to a 16-17 hour day at work while that person is on a two day paid vacation.

That's why the devs taking a break after working ridiculous hours to pound out a core game, 5 patches, and a huge xpac at the same time as developing your content patches, is such a big deal. If my day consisted of reading lines of code to make sure things weren't buggy, and if I did that for upwards of 15 hours a day? I'd want a break too, even if it were for 4 days. Japan has a high suicide rate due to schooling/work conditions, and this is precisely why (out of 100k people, 19.4 people will take their own lives, for clarification.) They also have a fairly high amount of stress-related illness/deaths that come from overworking themselves.

So, there's your reasoning on why the devs needed a week, likely a week that they were reluctant to take, before jumping into making a content patch: because they're likely to work themselves to death if they don't.

tl;dr, their culture is radically different from everyone else's.

[Cidolfas86]

Here, let me put this in easier terms: everyone is thinking of an American (or maybe even a UK) work week where it's 40 hours, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day.

Culture in this case has nothing to do with it. People here in the US and the rest of the west can regularly do 60-70 + or more hour work weeks when its crunch time on a video game without over time. Dev studio crunch times no know culture. This kind of thing happens all the time see: EA spouse <- and thats from 2004

[rainichan]

Culture in this case has nothing to do with it.

It does when it's seen as a disrespectful, dick move to take vacation in the middle of crunch time because you're feeling overwhelmed. I've pulled my share of 10-12 hours days when things needed to get done at work, but they're likely going above and beyond pulling 100 hours overtime in a month or less with no breaks save for their national one-day holidays is insanity.

[Cidolfas86]

It does when it's seen as a disrespectful, dick move to take vacation in the middle of crunch time because you're feeling overwhelmed.

The same kinds of things your describing happen in the west as well due in no small part to mismanagement and lack of any solid unions in the industry. The point is that Japan isn't unique in this. "Development hell" isn't unique to Japan.

[rainichan]

...it's not mismanagement on their part, though. It is literally a cultural difference in "you and your team have worked hard, have 4-5 days off because you've earned it by not taking a day off that isn't a holiday in almost two years." That is how they're raised. That is how they're taught. If your peer is working this hard, you should strive to be working just as hard as they are, if not harder. If you're not, then you're disgracing your peers and who you work for. You want a mental health day? You don't really need it, do you? No one else does, and if you take that day off you're going to push your work off on Tanaka for the day and you know he's already swamped.

Yeah, that happens in the west. I can say with some certainty that part of those teams take a break after long dev hours, and then the other half will once the others are back. But that's not how the Japanese do. The patch being delayed some is not the end of the world. Unsub and play something else until patch drops.

[Wildsprite]

The same kinds of things your describing happen in the west as well due in no small part to mismanagement and lack of any solid unions in the industry. The point is that Japan isn't unique in this. "Development hell" isn't unique to Japan.

Regardless of this they are a team and as such they take vacations at the same time. This is a thing in Japan, your opinion won't change that nomatter how hard you try. I wholeheartedly believe they were entitled to the one that caused this delay.

I don't want to compare to anything. I'm just disappointed the developers left us with nothing to do for 5 months.

If you have nothing to do because you rushed through content or because you don't want to do some of the content available that isn't the fault of the devs.

[UBERHAXED]

Here, let me put this in easier terms: everyone is thinking of an American (or maybe even a UK) work week where it's 40 hours, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day.

Let's not make assumptions about stuff you don't know about. Quite of a few software companies in a particular location in california (not naming any company here) have the entire software force working 60 hours a week, every week. Please don't talk about hings you don't know about. Oh and we are on salary, so no overtime, just "40 hours" of pay.

[Dyvid]

Let's not make assumptions about stuff you don't know about. Quite of a few software companies in a particular location in california (not naming any company here) have the entire software force working 60 hours a week, every week. Please don't talk about hings you don't know about. Oh and we are on salary, so no overtime, just "40 hours" of pay.

I'm not a big union guy but software engineers are really getting screwed over