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[ADiTAR]

Most creative people don't know how to manage, which is what causes delays and a harsh working environment.

 

[Plies]

Most creative people don't know how to manage, which is what causes delays and a harsh working environment.

I feel like Todd Howard is an exception to this rule.

 

[calico]

If Exp33 was really made by 30 odd devs then what the hell are the teams with 300+ devs doing? How many in those large teams are content to do the least amount possible?

Perhaps everyone else needs to be looking at Sandfall to see what they did right to get 5-10x the normal amount of productivity out of their devs.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

Yes. I believe video games development should be a passion career only for fully committed, highly talented individuals who are willing to go the extra mile. Get all the purple haired, work-life-balance seeking, lazy academics out of the industry.

 

[March Climber]

No, and we are slowly moving away from it anyway into the process of early access -> polished full release.

The only devs left who are mostly not doing the early access method (officially) are mainly AAA devs and it hurts their image every time they release a game that needs massive patching in the first few months.

Will there be some devs who take advantage of this system? Yes, which is why a storefront punishment system needs to be in place so that people don't just constantly create early access games that never 'officially' release.

However, I'm fine with devs doing what they can to minimize the crunch as much as possible. The consumer will find ways to cope.

And if anything, the anime industry also needs a giant shakeup in regard to crunch. It's 3x worse in that industry and now thanks to the successful standard set by Dragonball Super and Demon Slayer, these studios are being told to make 90 minute movies in between every anime season, as their animators scream into the void of Twitter/X that they want to jump off of a bridge, only to be met with vitriolic fans telling them to get back in the office.

 

[Silentium]

Sometimes shit just has to get done. That said, the bigger and more diverse the team, the harder this is to get alignment on. I don't think it's a case of "bringing back crunch culture" so much as it's just not possible to get that tight, brotherhood-like environment you used to get when dev teams were smaller and more homogeneous.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Crunch isn't just about eliminating delays. It's about going all hands on deck and trying to perfect your game before launch. This was especially true when you couldn't patch a game after release.

Gamers who accept buggy games do the general community a disservice. There should be a massive financial penalty to publishers who release games that haven't had sufficient QA.

Games should not need several patches after the fact and yes crunch is a part of resolving that. It's also about releasing games within a certain amount of time, so you can deliver more games in a finite amount of time.

Naughty Dog gets a lot of hate (I think unjustly in some cases) but they're definitely taking their time with games more and that overall hurts the viability of the studio, which in turn makes it more likely that people lose their jobs.

Crunch means that you're putting X hours to make the best game you possibly can make and if crunch isn't for you, maybe the career isn't for you. Most jobs have some element that makes them not perfect. Even NBA players are on the road and away from their families for big chunks of the year, you get a short summer break and you're back at it. If you're in the military, you've probably pulled staff duty and are on for 24 hours, and sometimes that falls on a Friday, so your day off is Saturday, which was probably your day off anyways... Some jobs make you travel non-stop, some jobs you have to be on the phone where people cuss you out.

If you want to be a developer and work specifically on AAA projects? Yeah, you might have to deal with crunch...

 

[Mibu no ookami]

Sometimes shit just has to get done. That said, the bigger and more diverse the team, the harder this is to get alignment on. I don't think it's a case of "bringing back crunch culture" so much as it's just not possible to get that tight, brotherhood-like environment you used to get when dev teams were smaller and more homogeneous.

I think that comes down to evolutions of management. I absolutely think you can still get that feeling. You're still working within small teams together and coming together as a total group can offer its own experiences. Once managers get better adept at managing larger teams, that should become more proficient.

One big problem is trying to thin the workload so much which explodes team sizes. And sometimes I don't know what the gamer gets out of this. Massive empty open world games? Great...

One thing you have to give a lot of credit to Nintendo for is everything they're focused on is supposed to be fun. Sometimes I feel like devs make things just to make them.

 

[Three]

As long as devs are getting paid for the overtime then yes. If not then no. I don't see why they should put in stressful hours that they're not being paid for just to meet the deadline set by some poor planning PM.

 

[samoilaaa]

keep working or else

 

[DeltaPolarBear]

My problem isn't crunch, my problem is UNPAID overtime. Go ahead and crunch away, but you better pay your employees the full hours. And if you refuse you get the law on your ass. That's how it works in Australia.

As for games being launched unfinished, that is just bad planning. Not knowing how big the project is, have feature creep, and unrealistic expectations is what caused time overruns. And unless the overtime is paid for in full, the CEOs would never try to decrease the crunch by planning better. Because if they are not the ones paying for the Crunch them why should they care?

 

[Plies]

keep working or else

Some people would consider this a toxic work environment.

 

[Zathalus]

Work quality and worker effectiveness rapidly drops after a certain amount of hours. That's not the worse part though, extreme crunch culture rapidly leads to burnout, which leads to a higher employee turnover rate, which leads to loss of institutional knowledge, which leads to more delays and worse games. So no, I don't want extreme crunch culture to return.

The occasional paid overtime is fine of course, but that is hardly the same.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

As long as devs are getting paid for the overtime then yes. If not then no. I don't see why they should put in stressful hours that they're not being paid for just to meet the deadline set by some poor planning PM.

I think the general way to do this and it probably won't be popular is low pay, high bonuses for critical and financial success.

You game hits an 80 on metacritic you get a bonus, it hits an 85 on metacritic, you get a bonus, it hits a 90 on metacritic you get a bonus, it hits a 95 on metacritic you get a bonus.

The game sells 5 million units, you get a bonus, it sells 10 million you get a bonus, it sells 15 million you get a bonus...

This incentivizes results and a commitment to the game and its a far more sustainable model than what we have when bonuses aren't tied to results.

It also incentivizes games to be pure creation and not necessarily motivated by external factors. I think that's been lost. Helping a blind lady find out what has been making noise in her backyard and reprogramming a mechanical dog beast to be her support animal because she is allergic to normal animals is not "fun" and it doesn't help provide value to the gamer and isn't "storytelling". You wouldn't program this if your finances were dependent on the games reception.

Anyways, I'm ranting, but I think we need to move back to a reward based-incentive based industry. There's a lot of money in gaming, but I don't think it is dolled out well. I don't really have an actual answer for this.

 

[Plies]

Anyways, I'm ranting, but I think we need to move back to a reward based-incentive based industry.

Interesting thought, however I have two conniptions with this, given today's work environments:

1 - Petty workplace politics interfering with bonuses being paid out to the most appropriate, hard-working, and critical employees.

2 - DEI policies basically giving everyone on staff a participation trophy , consequently slighting the best employees, and therefore de-incentivizing workplace excellence, as there would be no real rewards for productivity.

 

[Majukun]

of course not.
I don't need people fto work themselves to the ground so that I can have my entertainment.

Hot take maybe but some here seems to forget that for us it's entertainment, for them it's a JOB. I'm doing 50 hours/week from time to time, sometimes more on big projects. Never killed me.

There is abuse for sure, and a few studios clearly overwork their employee but I can't help but think some of those devs are a bunch of pussies.

"Oh my God, I have to work a little harder to finish this huge project that's taken five years of my life, nooooo"
Well yes, welcome to the real World? Go complain to people working the field, or doing hard work that is fuckin their sanity/health for the minimum wage... You'll see the response.

crunch time is more than just upping a your weekly hours to 50 sometimes.

we are talking 6 to 9 months working 60/100 hours a week, basically living in the office, coming out at 2 am to be back there at 9 again to do it again.

do not know if that is still the case, but absurd levels of crunch were reported as recent as red dead redemption 2's development.


maybe you should know what you are talking about before calling people names, but that's just me

 

[Shmunter]

It's Human nature to act like time is infinite till it's finite. Only robots can overcome working 100% efficiency day 1 to day 'final' allowing for precision planning. So yes, crunch is inevitable in complex projects. You can release on time one way only, buggy and incomplete. Any exceptions to the rule are just that, exceptions.

 

[executor]

Crunch culture is evil and a byproduct of a wrong management style. If cooking time is higher than expected it means that you simply have to wait more.

 

[Loomy]

BUT could it be that today's videogame working environments are too lenient and soft with its employees?

No. There's no reason an SD1 or QA person should have to work 60 hours a week because a producer and a manager somewhere higher up the line sucks at estimating things, scheduling, and planning.

Shit like this is why everyone is trying to unionize.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Crunch never left, sure some studios have been pressured to publically get rid of it, but they may always bring it back if some new crisis occurs. The main problem is why crunch happens. In many cases it's because the game is announced way too soon, the publisher is pushing for a certain release date while ignoring feedback that the game is far from finished and the whole project is poorly managed by its directors.

Some crunch should be accepted as part of working in game development (while making sure it's extra paid), but not when it takes weeks or months.

 

[calico]

I suspect some manner of profit sharing is at least part of the answer to how Sandfall got so much out of a small team. I also think it could have the benefit of curbing the desire of certain employees to push for the inclusion of their unpopular political ideology in the game they are making.

I think metacritic bonuses would be too corrupt (this may already be happening), and in a sense would be at odds with sales-based bonuses. Game reviewers (as a group) are miles apart from gamers in terms of politics / culture war, so often the 'correct' design / content inclusion decision will be very different depending on which of those groups you are trying to please.

 

[TexMex]

I'm sorry - have games stopped getting delayed since Jason Schreier made it illegal for anyone to work 41 hours a week?

I don't think anyone deserves to be worked into the ground 24/7, but this attitude that busting your ass for something you're passionate about should be taboo has got to go.

Games are delayed just as much now as they ever were. But we have significantly less polished products as a result. They delay and still release half baked junk regularly.

 

[Hypereides]

Depends. If it emerges and manifests through sheer passion or creative compulsion a team shares and devotes for a given vision/idea then I find it admirable.

On the other hand, no. C-suites and management should not be given a mandate to force people to grind their health away.

I also want to underline there is a clear difference between working overtime and crunch. One is not like the other. Overtime can appear in infrequent instances while crunch is more of a thing that is spread over a consistently long period.

Also, this:

No, just manage projects and resources better and stop pissing money up the wall with constant revisions.and focus testing.

Expedition 33 was made by about 30 people in five years. The exact same project run out of a major modern studio would take two hundred people 7-10 years and following multiple reboots would probably stagger out of the gate to a mid-seventies metacritic and a muted audience reception.

Studios need to be working smarter, not harder

 

[Boneless]

- No amount of crunch wouldve gotten you GTAVI on time.
- To crunch or not to crunch is not binary, it is a complex sliding scale including time worked per day, as well as other working conditions.
- As an employee, you should be willing to do reasonable amounts of crunch if working on a key project with a hard deadline.

 

[Mibu no ookami]

I suspect some manner of profit sharing is at least part of the answer to how Sandfall got so much out of a small team. I also think it could have the benefit of curbing the desire of certain employees to push for the inclusion of their unpopular political ideology in the game they are making.

I think metacritic bonuses would be too corrupt (this may already be happening), and in a sense would be at odds with sales-based bonuses. Game reviewers (as a group) are miles apart from gamers in terms of politics / culture war, so often the 'correct' design / content inclusion decision will be very different depending on which of those groups you are trying to please.

The reason why I went with both is because some games review well but don't sell at no fault of the devs. Maybe it's marketing or market conditions.

So I think a balanced approach to bonuses makes sense here. It's hard to game aggregate scores and it should be weighted anyways against averages.

I still wish we had an accurate user review score based on verified purchasers rather than review bombers. Such an easy and simple way to stop this practice and it benefits everyone.

 

[seething left]

If Exp33 was really made by 30 odd devs then what the hell are the teams with 300+ devs doing?

Working on implementing realistic female boner physics.

 

[Ass of Can Whooping]

I get my games faster AND I get to see my fellow man suffer?

Fuck yeah bring it back

 

[OGM_Madness]

The older I get, the less time I have to play. My backlog is huge already. That said, a lot of games nowadays have horrible project management and shouldn't have to be these 6-10 year projects. 2-5 years should be the limit for how long a game takes to make, if it's longer than that, then the company fucked up: should have done less features, less levels, less weapons, etc. This makes room for a sequel, include that level or that feature on the next title.

But of course, I'm not a developer so maybe there's a secret problem that makes games like Silksong take almost a decade to come out.

 

[GHound]

I get my games faster AND I get to see my fellow man suffer?

Fuck yeah bring it back

all this sappy bullshit is getting me limp. Fuck them devs.

 

[PeteBull]

To ppl who think crunch(or rather working 10-12-16h days) is something evil, i got u here example of true indie(single dev) game, that launched august 2024:

Game got solid reviews but sold piss poor, and guy was working on it for years (2+, maybe even 3+ if we take in early concepts), and many of those days(on the weekends/holidays) he was coding for 12-16h non stop, thats true passion, he still didnt get rewarded for it coz afaik game costed way more to make vs what he made from sales profit.

I only know the details coz that indie dev is a co-host to a yt/twitch channel/podcast about games so while i listen to the biweekly podcast i could get info about his game on the side.

TLDR: Even if some1 works like a mule, crazy hours, it still doesnt guarantee success story, hell its extremly rare to have success story, and here we are with those AAA devs eatin tru hundreds of milions of usd budget providing us in many cases with mid(50 to 75meta for AAA game from big pub is super mid, fricken concord got 62(user score 1,7 and fully justified) and we know game shouldnt even get final meta of 30 if sellout journos were at least tiny bit genuine) games, bearing 0 risk, getting paid handsomely(easily 6figures) having all kinds of insurance and still complain.

Again- wanna have ez live- marry a milionaire when u are in ur early 20s dumb bimbo, u going into workforce to compete(yes its a competition, rat race meme is there for a reason) in one of most competetive/demanding business- better expect to give ur youth,social life, health, soul and sanity in order to stay there, making big bucks- if u arent ready to make those ultimate sacrifices many other devs are making- tons of other jobs are there

 

[nkill20]

 

[TKOFromTokyo]

Depends. If it emerges and manifests through sheer passion or creative compulsion a team shares and devotes for a given vision then I find it admirable.

On the other hand, no. C-suites and management should not be given a mandate to force people to grind their health away.

I also want to underline there is a clear difference between working overtime and crunch. One is not like the other. Overtime can appear in infrequent instances while crunch is more of a thing that is spread over a consistently long period.

Also, this:

I have mixed feelings about the C-suite. Their job is to pull the right levers to maximize the value of their companies and their pay is heavily dependent on that. Unfortunately, I think a lot of them lack talent to strategically manage a company. Instead they become overbearing and fail to let businesses do their jobs effectively. However, the suite needs to be able to challenge the business to increase productivity beyond initial projections in many cases because generally people under promise in order to give themselves leeway and meet/exceed bonus targets. Let's face it, most of us benefit from being challenged to push harder whether it be athletics, fitness, health, studying, work, relationship, etc. I don't think crunch is the answer, but most people don't have the luxury of flexible or comfortable timelines in corporations.

 

[AMC124c41]

To ppl who think crunch(or rather working 10-12-16h days) is something evil, i got u here example of true indie(single dev) game, that launched august 2024:

Game got solid reviews but sold piss poor, and guy was working on it for years (2+, maybe even 3+ if we take in early concepts), and many of those days(on the weekends/holidays) he was coding for 12-16h non stop, thats true passion, he still didnt get rewarded for it coz afaik game costed way more to make vs what he made from sales profit.

I only know the details coz that indie dev is a co-host to a yt/twitch channel/podcast about games so while i listen to the biweekly podcast i could get info about his game on the side.

TLDR: Even if some1 works like a mule, crazy hours, it still doesnt guarantee success story, hell its extremly rare to have success story, and here we are with those AAA devs eatin tru hundreds of milions of usd budget providing us in many cases with mid(50 to 75meta for AAA game from big pub is super mid, fricken concord got 62(user score 1,7 and fully justified) and we know game shouldnt even get final meta of 30 if sellout journos were at least tiny bit genuine) games, bearing 0 risk, getting paid handsomely(easily 6figures) having all kinds of insurance and still complain.

Again- wanna have ez live- marry a milionaire when u are in ur early 20s dumb bimbo, u going into workforce to compete(yes its a competition, rat race meme is there for a reason) in one of most competetive/demanding business- better expect to give ur youth,social life, health, soul and sanity in order to stay there, making big bucks- if u arent ready to make those ultimate sacrifices many other devs are making- tons of other jobs are there

Wait, hold on, so your post basically demonstrates that working yourself to the bone does not guarantee success but all devs should be doing it anyway because they're too soft otherwise...?!?

Your internal moral compass is 50 shades of confused. Crunching AAA devs until they bleed won't get you good games, there are plenty of examples of that, see CP2077, a game I love but which launched in a horrible state and the team crunched their asses off to get out the door.

Crunch won't magically fix a project's issues because software development, especially on the AAA scale has so many moving parts and is too complex to just solve with the classic: "If it takes 9 months for a woman to deliver a baby then 9 women will deliver a baby in 1 month" - that's what you think crunch will do and I'm sorry to say but it really won't.

Concord wouldn't have magically become the best MP game ever if the team had constantly crunched on it because it had fundamental and conceptual problems that no amount of crunch can fix.
Let's use some critical thinking, shall we

 

[PeteBull]

Wait, hold on, so your post basically demonstrates that working yourself to the bone does not guarantee success but all devs should be doing it anyway because they're too soft otherwise...?!?

Your internal moral compass is 50 shades of confused. Crunching AAA devs until they bleed won't get you good games, there are plenty of examples of that, see CP2077, a game I love but which launched in a horrible state and the team crunched their asses off to get out the door.

Crunch won't magically fix a project's issues because software development, especially on the AAA scale has so many moving parts and is too complex to just solve with the classic: "If it takes 9 months for a woman to deliver a baby then 9 women will deliver a baby in 1 month" - that's what you think crunch will do and I'm sorry to say but it really won't.

Concord wouldn't have magically become the best MP game ever if the team had constantly crunched on it because it had fundamental and conceptual problems that no amount of crunch can fix.
Let's use some critical thinking, shall we

Im saying dont expect amazing results if u put in poor performance, coz even if u put in top performance results arent guaranteed, gaming buisness is a competition, no1 is given here participation trophies(those studios get closed,devs are fired), winner takes it all, loser gets fired/gets only crumps- some1 wanna work in this hard af business- better be ready to make srs sacrificies, one of them having only 40h workweeks, hence my other claim.

Thats the reason game devs should be mostly male, since gamers are mostly male, on top u dont want ur most inteligent/brightest women to waste their youth/fertile years on working themselfs to the bone- it wont provide them with better chance of finding husband anyways- it will actually reduce their chances of being happily married(for various reasons)- are there exception with competent and devoted to their work female devs- yes, but they are rare af and they sacrifice a ton to be there on pair with top male devs(mostly family/children aka happiness).

That kind of job prefers males simply, male dev will understand and know better what us gamers want, and they are able to work 12-16h/day in his early 20s in order to make big buck, which actually will make him more attractive in his 30s- gf/fiance/wife will rather have workoholic man, that is well off than a bum with tons of spare time that she has to provide for(that dude is on time clock anyways before getting dumped even if he provides best dick ), while we-guys dont look at women's career/money/education at all- we will happily date/marry barista if she is young and hot enough and has good(submissive) personality and potential to be good spouse(not argumentative, gives her man piece, bubbly, feminine).

 

[dgrdsv]

Crunch culture would not "eliminate delays", it would legitimize them.
Delays are due to management estimation failures, trying to plug these with crunch is fighting the consequence instead of looking to fix the source.

Also who cares if something was delayed, it's not like we don't have any games released between now and the delayed title.

 

[TheMule1983]

Absolutely. Activists hate to work and this would force them out.

 

[AMC124c41]

Im saying dont expect amazing results if u put in poor performance, coz even if u put in top performance results arent guaranteed, gaming buisness is a competition, no1 is given here participation trophies(those studios get closed,devs are fired), winner takes it all, loser gets fired/gets only crumps- some1 wanna work in this hard af business- better be ready to make srs sacrificies, one of them having only 40h workweeks, hence my other claim.

Thats the reason game devs should be mostly male, since gamers are mostly male, on top u dont want ur most inteligent/brightest women to waste their youth/fertile years on working themselfs to the bone- it wont provide them with better chance of finding husband anyways- it will actually reduce their chances of being happily married(for various reasons)- are there exception with competent and devoted to their work female devs- yes, but they are rare af and they sacrifice a ton to be there on pair with top male devs(mostly family/children aka happiness).

That kind of job prefers males simply, male dev will understand and know better what us gamers want, and they are able to work 12-16h/day in his early 20s in order to make big buck, which actually will make him more attractive in his 30s- gf/fiance/wife will rather have workoholic man, that is well off than a bum with tons of spare time that she has to provide for(that dude is on time clock anyways before getting dumped even if he provides best dick ), while we-guys dont look at women's career/money/education at all- we will happily date/marry barista if she is young and hot enough and has good(submissive) personality and potential to be good spouse(not argumentative, gives her man piece, bubbly, feminine).

I..I have no words for you and I regret replying cause you've clearly fallen down some seriously sad rabbit hole. Good luck with your issues I hope you will receive the help you need.

 

[PeteBull]

I..I have no words for you and I regret replying cause you've clearly fallen down some seriously sad rabbit hole. Good luck with your issues I hope you will receive the help you need.

Truth hurts sometimes, bro, dont believe feminism lies that men and women are the same/equal, they are opposite

 

[Ozriel]

Yes 60 hour work week minimum we need dedication to make excellence. I work 100 hour work weeks all the time. Read the Masters of Doom book if you want to know what it takes.

If you're working an average of 14 hours daily, 7 days a week, you're not really 'making excellence'.

You mean HARD WORK that professionals ceos doctors lawyers athletes etc ALL do to be successful?

Most of these work hard, but not the sort of destructive work you people are espousing. And of course the higher most of these go in their careers, the less they crunch.

Who's telling you that Elon and Jeff Bezos are crunching?

people who voted yes are most likely unemployed

Most certainly.

 

[PeteBull]

If you're working an average of 14 hours daily, 7 days a week, you're not really 'making excellence'.



Most of these work hard, but not the sort of destructive work you people are espousing. And of course the higher most of these go in their careers, the less they crunch.

Who's telling you that Elon and Jeff Bezos are crunching?



Most certainly.

I actually know personally(gaming online makes u meet all kinds of ppl) a guy who works in stocks/investments, he works 6days a week 16h/day, hell he even had to make calls durning his "free time" while gaming sometimes, he made 450k usd last year, he is in his late 30s, im just ur regular avg mortal with my casual standard 40h workweek and i couldnt do what he does, ofc my salary is nothing compared to his(ofc i live in much poorer country too), just saying most of high earners have or at least had to work at some point in ther life extremly crazy hours for prolonged time- they can retire in their early 40s tho, while guy like myself likely gonna have to work to late 60s and still die poor

 

[Scrawnton]

Crunch culture? No. But a factory like shift system would work for development studios.

My cousin has worked for Pixar for over 25 years and he told me they have an efficient 24/7 three 8-hour shift rotations where workers share the same computers and workflow is handed off so that production continues around the clock. People just work the shift they prefer and that's what they do five days a week. He said the only draw back is the room temperature is maintained around 67 ish or so to keep the PCs from overheating.

 

[DKehoe]

No. It's not like there's a lack of games for me to play.

 

[Black_Stride]

Give them the time to get the game ready.

Publishers should probably not give such aggressive release dates.
If a game is only truly playable 6 months after release it should have just released 6 months down the line.



P.S Pay for more QA!!!!!!!!

 

[BlackTron]

There shouldn't be such a crunch that people feel like they need to sleep in the office. On the other hand, many people can't accomplish greatness without pressure.

 

[Kaachan]

It's a good time for people to play their backlogs that they bitch about all the time

 

[ComputerBlue]

The amount of people voting yes is kinda fucked up, what the hell.

 

[DaciaJC]

Yes, work the ungrateful shits to the bone!

 

[PlayStaytion]

Some game devs choose to crunch like The Witcher, Cyberpunk, Halo. Young adults just don't give a fuck but I don't think that's morally acceptable.

 

[TheSHEEEP]

It's Human nature to act like time is infinite till it's finite.

That's precisely the reason not to crunch.
Nobody sane, at the end of their lives, will look back and think "oh, if I only spent more time working and less time with friends/family/hobbies".

The game can come out later, it's fine. We have way too many games anyway.

 

[YeulEmeralda]

Compare BG3 with BG2. You could not patch games so they had weeks of sleeping under desks.

I can totally understand nobody wants to do that anymore. The gaming industry became normal work not passion or art. Put shit into EA for two years and have gamers literally PAY you to bug test.