Its difficult to pinpoint exactly when crunch got built into the equation. Certainly, it hasnt always been so. At one time, the game industry consisted of small groups of game enthusiasts working together feverishly and endlessly to build a title they believed in. They worked long hours because they were driven by passion. But over the last 10 years, that model has pretty much changed to a commercially-driven industry inhabited by big, publicly-traded companies.
What youve got now arent games emerging from the passion of individual developers but repetitive products driven by economic considerations, notes Buscaglia. Weve got an assembly line of people working on the fifth iteration of a football game that comes out every year like clockwork and the passion is gone. They may like what theyre doing, but its culturally inappropriate to continue the same model.
