Osama Dorias: Progress fighting crunch is at risk

gamesindustry.biz:

Back in March, Osama Dorias was part of an industry panel on burnout at the Game Developers' Conference, sharing his own personal story of burning out in the industry and the toll it took on his mental health.

Now a lead gameplay designer with Brass Lion Entertainment, Dorias has more to say on the subject, and is a featured speaker at tomorrow's TIGS (The International Games Summit on Mental Health) 2023. But in anticipation of his appearance there, GamesIndustry.biz speaks with Dorias at last week's MIGS (Montreal International Game Summit) to get a bigger picture overview on the progress the industry is making when it comes to dealing with burnout.

"It's night and day," Dorias says. "Just night and day. I'm not saying it's good now; that's uneven across companies. But what I'm finding is that companies that have to remain competitive because they are in locations where they could lose people more easily are shifting faster to better work-life balance and better support systems for people so they don't burn out because they have more to lose; there's a business incentive for doing that.

"'The only show in town'-type situations are moving much slower, but Covid sped that up because now all of a sudden a lot of jobs are remote and people are able to move around… now that there's a shift toward working from the office, I'm seeing varying degrees of people saying it's getting back to old habits, depending on where you are. But the trend overall is night and day."

Any reversion to old habits may also be tied to the parade of layoffs and closures across the industry that we've seen this year.

"What I'm hearing is a lot of companies are using that as an excuse to say, 'Hey, there's uncertainty. You have to do your part