Everything you never wanted to know about burnout
Crunch, working conditions, and mental health have been topics of frequent discussion in the games industry for years. At last month's Game Developers Conference, a panel of personal and professional experts discussed the subject at length.
Take This clinical director Dr. Rafael Boccamazzo led the session with an overview of occupational burnout, providing an overview of how the medical community assesses it and what factors play into it.
He was followed by Spry Fox lead game designer Alicia Fortier, Blizzard Entertainment lead content designer Osama Dorias, and The Outsiders lead UX designer Anna Brandberg sharing their own experiences with occupation burnout and what they've learned from the ordeal.
Under Maslach's model of occupational burnout – which Dr. Boccamazzo called the most commonly used model and a basis for the World Health Organization's definition of the affliction – it is "a chronic syndrome due to exposure to overwhelming long-term stress in the workplace" with three main criteria, all of which have to be present for "full-on burnout."
Exhaustion
"It's more than just being physically tired and you take a few days off and it goes away," Boccamazzo said. "We're talking about a kind of pervasive, bone-deep, soul-crushing cognitive and emotional weariness that paradoxically interferes with our ability to rest and recover."
Ineffectiveness
"It's not just self-doubt or impostor syndrome. With burnout, our effectiveness is measurably decreased. And not once or twice; our performance is consistently not as good over a long time."
Cynicism or Personal Detachment
"With that, we might see mood shifts, like anger at yourself or other people around you. You might see cognitive shifts, like a lack of
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