The production of Apocalypse Now was by any account HELL. Far worse than any game development example I can think of. (Well, DNF jokes spring to mind, but at least they essentially built multiple games there. Apocalypse Now wasn't released until two years after it finished shooting.)
It didn't chase Francis Ford Coppola away from film. It was an isolated example of how bad things can get, a living worst-case-scenario. It wasn't "Tuesday at the office."
Are people dying during game production? No. But they're not in experimental spacecraft, and they're not balancing on I-beams hundreds of feet in the air, either. Given the sleep deprivation you hear about in game production, if they were in either of those scenarios? Yeah. Games would probably take more than eleven lives a year.
/edit:
Also, do you consider the eleven men who died during the Sydney Harbor Bridge heroes? Or guys that got stuck with shitty, dangerous jobs in search of a paycheck, for whose deaths I feel more pity for, than respect? I'm more with the latter. Astronauts, well, that I can kinda get as a "hero". The gang that made Guitar Hero: Van Halen? Not on that level.
> Also, do you consider the eleven men who died during the Sydney Harbor Bridge heroes?
Kind of off topic but to answer your question:
If you define hero as someone who puts forth a heroic effort, then sure I would. Does them dying make them heroes? No. Maybe someone was hungover and slipped. But the type of work they were doing I respect.
If you defined hero as a role model, I have no idea of course (didn't know any of them).
It didn't chase Francis Ford Coppola away from film. It was an isolated example of how bad things can get, a living worst-case-scenario. It wasn't "Tuesday at the office."
Are people dying during game production? No. But they're not in experimental spacecraft, and they're not balancing on I-beams hundreds of feet in the air, either. Given the sleep deprivation you hear about in game production, if they were in either of those scenarios? Yeah. Games would probably take more than eleven lives a year.
/edit: Also, do you consider the eleven men who died during the Sydney Harbor Bridge heroes? Or guys that got stuck with shitty, dangerous jobs in search of a paycheck, for whose deaths I feel more pity for, than respect? I'm more with the latter. Astronauts, well, that I can kinda get as a "hero". The gang that made Guitar Hero: Van Halen? Not on that level.