No offense, but these arguments dont make a lot of sense lol. Working out (or even indoors near a bay door) in a northern alberta winter doing physical work is a cushy job while sitting in front of a computer, probably with a podcast going in one year is a meat grinder? Huh? What does the qualifications of a job have to do with the physical and mental demands? Not really that relevant. I also don't see how being bored in a camp bed is fine while being bored in a bed in your own home is some hellish nightmare. What's the difference. Who says you can't have 3 months off in software? You can quit, I dont think its against the law. If these people are so high skill they can find another job whenever they like. The truth is a lot of people in game development are actually low skill, whether its QA people or some devs who took a one year course at a technical college, there are low skill jobs in game dev. Its definitely a sought after job that allows a lot of young people to be exploited, I agree with that.
Not defending forced crunch to the reported 100 hours Schreier is reporting, just dont see where you're coming from on this one.
I believe I recognized that the work can be very hard, when I said "cushy" maybe not the best word but I was talking about perks and benefits, mainly the time off and rate of pay. By qualifications I mean that a software developer in the video game industry (I'm only focusing on programmers here) can make close to the same amount of money working in say accounting software, which would come without the horrible crunch. Someone working camp in Northern Alberta is not going to get the same opportunity/pay/benefits seeking a 9-5 job in town.
Anyways I don't want to spend to much time clarifying what I was talking about. The point I was making was to the person comparing camp work to software crunch, and that from my perspective as someone who's experienced a bit of both it's apples and oranges. Again I'm focusing on the programmers here, I can't speak to the experience of testers, animators, etc.