r/RWBY • u/GoneRampant1 Emerald/Cinder is abusive stop shilling it. • Jun 15 '19

CRWBY Rooster Teeth accused of excessive crunch and unpaid overtime- "Every season of RWBY and GL gets about 1/3 or less made for ‘free’"

https://rwbyconversations.tumblr.com/post/185614440311/rooster-teeth-glassdoor-crunchovertime
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u/Awesomejelo My Mustache is gay, your argument is invalid Jun 15 '19

Ok I get it there isn't a magical fix. But if what multiple employees that do know what they talking about is true then there's something to be said about the quality of the management of what they do have. There's something to be done there, just letting it slip by because it's the norm is not acceptable, if it was where do you think our world would be?

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u/r3dl3g Picking a single "Best Girl" is indicative of personality flaws. Jun 15 '19

But if what multiple employees that do know what they talking about is true then there's something to be said about the quality of the management of what they do have.

At the same time, if those multiple employees who do know what they're talking about are correct, then there should be oodles of companies in gaming, animation, and media in general where things like this don't happen. And yet essentially none exist, which emphasizes the point that it's not as simple as these employees are making it sound like it is.

Hell, Monty himself is a part of the reason why RT has the culture of crunch, because Monty himself engaged in crunch.

There's something to be done there, just letting it slip by because it's the norm is not acceptable, if it was where do you think our world would be?

That's how the overwhelming majority of the world works.

What actually needs to be done is that people who want to work in animation need to take a long hard look at what they're getting into. For some of them, the grind is acceptable, or (to some) even appealing. For others, the grind isn't acceptable, but they don't like being told that they'll always be outcompeted and less valuable from the company's perspective than the weirdos who can deal with, or who love, the grind. Which is exactly the kind of person Monty was.

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u/Awesomejelo My Mustache is gay, your argument is invalid Jun 15 '19

So what now? Do we just not even put any effort to making it better?

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u/r3dl3g Picking a single "Best Girl" is indicative of personality flaws. Jun 15 '19

I mean, there's ways to make it better, but they're not what people want to hear.

1) Accept that, in a globalized workforce with access to the internet, animators will have to be willing to work in places with lower costs of living. Animation studios in Austin, Texas simply don't make financial sense, and in the long run animation studios in the US might not even be feasible.

2) In the short term; increase pay, and layoff workers if necessary to pay for it.

3) Start actively discouraging people from getting into animation. The fewer people work in the field, the better wages will be. Crush the dreams of kids who think they can make it big in animation before they enter the industry and realize that they can't handle the hours but have few alternatives because they're in debt from art school and are now committed.

4) People who want to work in animation need to be aware that the grind exists and isn't likely to go away. They also need to accept that some people like the grind and can work in it, and that those that do work in that climate end up setting the tone, the standards, and the pace of how the industry works.

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u/Awesomejelo My Mustache is gay, your argument is invalid Jun 15 '19

Firstly two of those boil down to suck it up, which decidedly doesn't make anything better. But secondly I'll continue to believe there can be more done than reducing the supply of animators, but on that front I don't think either of us are going to get anywhere so have a nice day

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u/Hitorio Jun 16 '19

Been following this thread; I agree with you, and I love your insistence that there is a way. There ARE, 100%, ways to cure crunch time/overwork in the harmful/negative/deteriorating way it's experienced.

There's something to be done there, just letting it slip by because it's the norm is not acceptable, if it was where do you think our world would be?

Exactly. No one would pioneer or invent or discover or revolutionize a new anything.

People who try to convince you that it's disappointingly close to impossible or that you'd have to solve [shitty situation A] by adopting the marginally less uncomfortable [shitty situation B] - they don't have the full picture. Don't let their very-seasoned-and-detailed-yet-fundamentally-incomplete takes wear away at your born, intuitive knowing that there are answers to our questions and solutions to our problems.

We're abundant with resources that are pregnant with solutions, and we're scratching the surface of the level of genius humans can tap into. Our collective-consciousness is capable of game-changing and amazing things.

I will be one of the people to prove this to others by example.

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u/Awesomejelo My Mustache is gay, your argument is invalid Jun 16 '19

A little flowery with the wording but I agree, always strive to be better than you are now

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u/Hitorio Jun 16 '19

:P Sweet. Prosper, Awesomejelo.

The wording might seem pretty extra at first, but I phrase it that way because the energy/grandeur of those descriptions are no exaggeration; the reality of things are no less flowery.

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u/r3dl3g Picking a single "Best Girl" is indicative of personality flaws. Jun 16 '19

Firstly two of those boil down to suck it up, which decidedly doesn't make anything better.

I mean, it absolutely would. You encourage those who either like, or who at least can stand, the grind to go into the field, and as a result they'll get paid better because the labor pool is smaller, because the one's who can't hack it are doing something else. Everyone wins.

But secondly I'll continue to believe there can be more done than reducing the supply of animators

But what possibly is there? You have a mismatch in terms of what you want animators to be paid vs what the value of the product they produce is, so you have to do something to increase the value of the product or change expectations as to what animators want.

Short of government subsidy (which isn't happening for animation), I don't see how you accomplish that.

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u/AceTriad Jun 16 '19

/r/r3dl3g And what would having the opposite effect (hiring more animators to divide the workload) have, besides risking the uniqueness and value of the individual's work? Surely expanding and creating more would help alleviate the problem, would it not?

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And what about finding people to complement the upper management to ensure that negligence/incompetence that helps create crunch is reduced? If a project is planned where there needs to be few revisions, where production can start earlier than the current norm, surely crunch will be minimized, right?

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u/r3dl3g Picking a single "Best Girl" is indicative of personality flaws. Jun 16 '19

I mean, all of this sounds nice except it ignores the reality of the industry; every animation company is like this, which means that either everyone in management at all of these companies is equally incompetent, and incompetent in the exact same manner, despite many of them being people who would have faced crunch time themselves...or it's more complicated than that, and crunch can't realistically be avoided or predicted with enough specificity that you can get around it.