“We were crunching pretty hard most of last year” – Marty Stratton unapologetic over Doom Eternal’s delay

[Teeth]

Very well said and you are absolutely right. One thing that is particularly important in your statement is acknowledgement that self-reflection and agency is crucial. It took awhile for you, but you eventually recognized what was and wasn't healthy for you and are now able to protect yourself going forward.

There is a difference between an openly toxic "crunch" — god I hate the connotation that word now has — and "buckling down and getting shit done because that's your job". It is incumbent on the individual to exercise agency and protect themself. Health ALWAYS come first, even if that means stepping away from a job, as terrifying as that sounds, that you know is not right for you. Every single person can emotionally, mentally, and physically tolerate a different degree of work stress. It's up to you to learn what that breaking point is and be proactive about avoiding it.

This blanket statement from the Crunch Bunch Patrol about "All crunch bad. Capitalism shit" is absolutely asinine.

Notice in most of these crunch-related threads, those who are in, or have been, in the industry, like you, are much more reasoned and appropriate in their approach to crunch and its potential dangers. Those who haven't had made a single game in their lives stick out like a sore thumb with their often completely unrealistic black-and-white takes on the subject.

As a brief epilogue, the above is why I'm worried about Schreier's next crusade to solve crunch with his next book. He is a good writer and a smart man, but as someone who I dont't believe has ever made a game, I hope he keeps his approach as reasoned as possible, allows the stories speak for themselves, and avoids editorializing about something he has no firsthand experience with.

Sorry for the wall of text. I am feeling oddly pensive and stream-of-consciousness today. And thanks again for your very nice post.

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The funniest thing about Schreier is that, I have no doubt he works very long hours at his job, that also has no down time (ie- he takes and sends emails/correspondence/etc at all hours of the day and night). This isn't some indictment of OH YOU DO IT TOO MR HYPOCRITE, but it's odd that he doesn't see the connection between him being one of the more respected journos and his own lifestyle.

He would likely point to many other people in his field that work just as hard or harder than him and not get any recognition (which is also an uncomfortable truism: hard work and long hours is no guarantee of recognition or even quality results), but I'd wonder how many people he could point to his field that work much less than him and produce the same work.

 

[MisterAnderson]

Very well said and you are absolutely right. One thing that is particularly important in your statement is acknowledgement that self-reflection and agency is crucial. It took awhile for you, but you eventually recognized what was and wasn't healthy for you and are now able to protect yourself going forward.

There is a difference between an openly toxic "crunch" — god I hate the connotation that word now has — and "buckling down and getting shit done because that's your job". It is incumbent on the individual to exercise agency and protect themself. Health ALWAYS come first, even if that means stepping away from a job, as terrifying as that sounds, that you know is not right for you. Every single person can emotionally, mentally, and physically tolerate a different degree of work stress. It's up to you to learn what that breaking point is and be proactive about avoiding it.

This blanket statement from the Crunch Bunch Patrol about "All crunch bad. Capitalism shit" is absolutely asinine.

Notice in most of these crunch-related threads, those who are in, or have been, in the industry, like you, are much more reasoned and appropriate in their approach to crunch and its potential dangers. Those who haven't had made a single game in their lives stick out like a sore thumb with their often completely unrealistic black-and-white takes on the subject.

As a brief epilogue, the above is why I'm worried about Schreier's next crusade to solve crunch with his next book. He is a good writer and a smart man, but as someone who I dont't believe has ever made a game, I hope he keeps his approach as reasoned as possible, allows the stories speak for themselves, and avoids editorializing about something he has no firsthand experience with.

Sorry for the wall of text. I am feeling oddly pensive and stream-of-consciousness today. And thanks again for your very nice post.

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Your post was also well thought out and desperately needed to be said.

 

[JustJavi]

Is crunch better paid in the gaming industry or they just get paid the same? I do weeks of 60+ hours the whole time by choice, it payes very very well in my job.

 

[Deleted member 203]

I'm reading some stuff about delays here that i just want to post this tweet from Rami:



online discussions always end up turning something into GOOD or BAD and sometimes it's way more nuanced than that. In this case, it sucked, but delays are not necessarily a bad thing.

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Rami is consistently a bootlicker and will defend bad management practices to the death, I absolutely would not follow his lead on this topic. The motives for these delays really aren't "to relieve pressure on teams". This tweet is whataboutist nonsense. Crunch is bad whether a game is delayed or not.

 

[Deleted member 46948]

Passionate people will run themselves into the ground and need to be protected from their own work habits.

No one made me do insane hours when I first started in my industry. I wanted to do it, I loved doing it. I burned myself out after months of 15 hour days.

I got paid overtime and a pat of the head for my efforts. What I needed was for someone to tell me to go home. Which eventually happened when I completely burned out and was like a walking zombie.

Passionate, creative, workaholic people choosing to work crazy hours need to be protected from themselves.

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Spot on.

 

[Henrar]

What shareholders? They are privately owned. Also what management credentials do you possess?

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Private companies often have shareholders, their shares are just not publicly traded.

EDIT: In case of Zenimax, Providence Equity Partners had 25% stake at the company in 2007 and that probably increased due to later investments.

 

[Deleted member 45414]

Id software managers should be ashamed for letting people crunch for that long, pretty appalling stuff.

As someone who works in tech and experience crunch on a semi-regular basis, it fucking sucks and makes me want to die every time I have to go through it. And I get nothing out of it, no extra pay, nothing. I do it, because I don't want to lose my job.

 

[Chettlar]

Passionate people will run themselves into the ground and need to be protected from their own work habits.

No one made me do insane hours when I first started in my industry. I wanted to do it, I loved doing it. I burned myself out after months of 15 hour days.

I got paid overtime and a pat of the head for my efforts. What I needed was for someone to tell me to go home. Which eventually happened when I completely burned out and was like a walking zombie.

Passionate, creative, workaholic people choosing to work crazy hours need to be protected from themselves.

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This is an important part of the conversation absolutely. It's especially bad when management is also getting caught up in that too.

Heck I did it my first semester at graphic design school. I was putting in days that at one point got up to 18 hours. It was stupid, and I got so sick my body just failed and I literally am still not recovered from that. That was in 2016. My little brother is unfortunately doing a lot of the same thing in his schooling and I keep trying to tell him dude, be careful, it isn't sustainable.

 

[HStallion]

Pressure comes from competition in the field.

I felt crazy pressure at the last engineering firm that I worked at because all of the engineers that I worked with were mad scientists in their spare time as well as at work. These were people that worked their average 10 hour day at work and then went home and wrote linux drivers in their spare time. It was a lifestyle I couldn't keep up with because I was working with incredibly intelligent people who were also introverts and obsessives that lived for the stuff ("Carmack-likes").

On Era, I read a lot about crunch and boot licking and making money for people who just make money off of you....and yeah, the system is messed up. But it isn't going to be massively overhauled any time soon, so...what's the best ethical way to 'get ahead' in one's field? I'm not asking cuz I need the advice, I'm doing just fine; I'm asking because it seems to be a much more complicated hydra-like problem than anyone gives it credit for.

Like, if I want to advance in my company or even advance my own skills to market myself to a different company, theoretically I need to be "better". I can showcase worth through talent or through dedication; the work should speak for itself, right? So to be a better artist, I need to put time into my art. To be a better engineer, I need to put time into my knowledge base.

Do I work more hours to refine the work? Do I put more time in outside of work to improve my skills?

Is it more ethical to put the time in at work, to possibly get paid to improve the work that could be my demo for advancement? To improve the project I'm directly working on now, to achieve a higher standard for the customer?

Or is it more ethical to not allow the corporation to reap the differential reward of my hard work, and instead put in more time outside of work on personal advancement? But then I'm not receiving any remuneration at all for my work.

Is it ethical at all to strive to be better than my colleagues? Is putting more work in at work making them feel like they have to? Is being better at my job due to the time I put in outside of work unfairly raising the standard for them?

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Unionizing would make a huge difference

 

[jschreier]

Very well said and you are absolutely right. One thing that is particularly important in your statement is acknowledgement that self-reflection and agency is crucial. It took awhile for you, but you eventually recognized what was and wasn't healthy for you and are now able to protect yourself going forward.

There is a difference between an openly toxic "crunch" — god I hate the connotation that word now has — and "buckling down and getting shit done because that's your job". It is incumbent on the individual to exercise agency and protect themself. Health ALWAYS come first, even if that means stepping away from a job, as terrifying as that sounds, that you know is not right for you. Every single person can emotionally, mentally, and physically tolerate a different degree of work stress. It's up to you to learn what that breaking point is and be proactive about avoiding it.

This blanket statement from the Crunch Bunch Patrol about "All crunch bad. Capitalism shit" is absolutely asinine.

Notice in most of these crunch-related threads, those who are in, or have been, in the industry, like you, are much more reasoned and appropriate in their approach to crunch and its potential dangers. Those who haven't had made a single game in their lives stick out like a sore thumb with their often completely unrealistic black-and-white takes on the subject.

As a brief epilogue, the above is why I'm worried about Schreier's next crusade to solve crunch with his next book. He is a good writer and a smart man, but as someone who I dont't believe has ever made a game, I hope he keeps his approach as reasoned as possible, allows the stories speak for themselves, and avoids editorializing about something he has no firsthand experience with.

Sorry for the wall of text. I am feeling oddly pensive and stream-of-consciousness today. And thanks again for your very nice post.

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My next book isn't about crunch - it's about the devastating volatility of the video game industry, which itself makes crunch worse.

There are many different kinds of "crunch" in any field, and I've always tried to be careful to contextualize it in games. It can be awful because of a confluence of problems.

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1164228133618405383?s=21

 

[Zombegoast]

I'm reading some stuff about delays here that i just want to post this tweet from Rami:



online discussions always end up turning something into GOOD or BAD and sometimes it's way more nuanced than that. In this case, it sucked, but delays are not necessarily a bad thing.

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They could have delayed until this holiday or early next year

 

[Decarb]

Every time someone says they are happy when a game gets delayed because it means less crunch, we should point to this article. If anything, it sounds like it means EVEN MORE crunch on the developers.

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Yeah the delay usually leads to more crunching. Its like you've already used the one delay option, you can't use it again so crunch harder.

 

[Kill3r7]

ID software is owned by ZeniMax Media which has shareholders. I also don't need management credentials because my job doesn't require them. Your ad hominem is simply poor.

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If you are going to opine on how a project should be managed and hypothesize on how it is being mismanagement then a certain level of expertise is required.

Private companies often have shareholders, their shares are just not publicly traded.

EDIT: In case of Zenimax, Providence Equity Partners had 25% stake at the company in 2007 and that probably increased due to later investments.

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If you are being pedantic about it then all corporations have shareholders. Even if 100% of the shares are owned by a single person. Typically when talking about shareholder pressure or appeasing shareholders one is referring to a public company where management has to focus on meeting quarterly earnings and deal with market pressure around their earnings report and forecast. Private companies have a different business structure focused on long term growth. They don't face the same pressures as a public company.

 

[Thera]

How can you tell the people who just love to work hard on their art from the people you are being abused.

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That doesn't exist. It is not "their art", this is not an indie studio and we arent't talking about the art team here, it is the dev team who spend their day treating bug ticket. No one love to do that.

 

[Deleted member 17184]

This is what I've aways wondered about crunch. How can you tell the people who just love to work hard on their art from the people you are being abused. Something tells me the closer you are to the top the perspectives change.

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Let's say someone decides to crunch truly by choice. The biggest problem there is that passion doesn't prevent the consequences to your body. It still spends a lot of energy, even if you don't realize at the time. It will inevitably break down. Preventing crunch is about preventing that first and foremost, and passion ends up being irrelevant at that point.

 

[Deleted member 8852]

I know this form of peer pressured crunch time all too well, lol. Companies are great at making you feel guilty by pointing to colleagues who are crunching.

 

[Software Update]

These quotes are very self serving and lacking in self awareness given that crunch is a result of a failure in management.

 

[Fachasaurus]

Very well said and you are absolutely right. One thing that is particularly important in your statement is acknowledgement that self-reflection and agency is crucial. It took awhile for you, but you eventually recognized what was and wasn't healthy for you and are now able to protect yourself going forward.

There is a difference between an openly toxic "crunch" — god I hate the connotation that word now has — and "buckling down and getting shit done because that's your job". It is incumbent on the individual to exercise agency and protect themself. Health ALWAYS come first, even if that means stepping away from a job, as terrifying as that sounds, that you know is not right for you. Every single person can emotionally, mentally, and physically tolerate a different degree of work stress. It's up to you to learn what that breaking point is and be proactive about avoiding it.

This blanket statement from the Crunch Bunch Patrol about "All crunch bad. Capitalism shit" is absolutely asinine.

Notice in most of these crunch-related threads, those who are in, or have been, in the industry, like you, are much more reasoned and appropriate in their approach to crunch and its potential dangers. Those who haven't had made a single game in their lives stick out like a sore thumb with their often completely unrealistic black-and-white takes on the subject.

Click to shrink...

This needs to be pinned. We need to redefine toxic crunch with some other nomenclature. Too many keyboard warriors in here making quick assumptions about groups of hard working individuals (and organizations) without understanding the context of "crunch".

Should everyone's lives be easier, of course, absolutely. Is that the reality of an office that produces content with deadlines and client demands and hopes to succeed? Not at all.

Like the great post you quoted, individuals need to have that level of introspection to understand and accept their limits and ambitions. And that is really difficult. But it shouldn't be mandated by management in either direction. There is a difference in a company running you into the ground versus an individual trying to achieve success with their own goals. There are lots of shades of grey when it comes to this topic.

 

[Rodelero]

Feels like the end of the generation is leading to some particularly problematic timetables with a lot of games that presumably want to get out before focus shifts to Next Gen. I feel extremely fortunate to work in a games studio where we don't crunch. There was probably only one time in the almost five years I've worked here where I felt somewhat obliged to stay late - even then it was no more than a few hour and there wouldn't have been any complaints had I left at a normal time.

Crunch is a consequence of bad management and/or unfair expectations.

 

[Steak]

Like the great post you quoted, individuals need to have that level of introspection to understand and accept their limits and ambitions. And that is really difficult. But it shouldn't be mandated by management in either direction. There is a difference in a company running you into the ground versus an individual trying to achieve success with their own goals. There are lots of shades of grey when it comes to this topic.

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You know, I went back through the post you quoted and the post that quoted and I can't believe we've gone from "I needed someone to tell me to go home" to "Managament shouldn't do anything about people overworking". There has to be someone there to make sure people aren't damaging their own health or whatever, that's exactly what the "great post" is talking about. they were exactly the "individual trying to achieve success" that you're talking about. They weren't doing "toxic-crunch" and they still burnt out. And yet your whole post is arguing against doing anything about situations that lead to that.

 

[CelticKennedy]

You don't "just choose" to crunch. There is usually some career and social pressure involved.

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Not all the time. Depends on the team and the project being worked on. Ive experienced many different "crunches" during development. By all means, with a smaller team and everyone was passionate about the project. Of course everyone recieved compensation for the time spent though. Can't say that happens all the time.

I've also experienced some bullshit with some crunches. One in particular where my boss at the time total fabricated a milestone and mandated a two month crunch just to see if the team could handle it. He then ended up bragging about it on Gamasutra, got reamed out by other people in the industry and was fired shortly after.

 

[Henrar]

If you are being pedantic about it then all corporations have shareholders. Even if 100% of the shares are owned by a single person. Typically when talking about shareholder pressure or appeasing shareholders one is referring to a public company where management has to focus on meeting quarterly earnings and deal with market pressure around their earnings report and forecast. Private companies have a different business structure focused on long term growth. They don't face the same pressures as a public company.

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At this scale more often than not a private company has the same structure and goals as publicly traded one.

 

[Deleted member 9584]

Yeah the delay usually leads to more crunching. Its like you've already used the one delay option, you can't use it again so crunch harder.

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And imagine the morale where you worked and crunched so hard for one release date and it was delayed and now you have to continue to crunch for the entire length of the delay. It's like the delay time is just added crunch time on top of the crunch time that already took place.

 

[Fachasaurus]

You know, I went back through the post you quoted and the post that quoted and I can't believe we've gone from "I needed someone to tell me to go home" to "Managament shouldn't do anything about people overworking". There has to be someone there to make sure people aren't damaging their own health or whatever, that's exactly what the "great post" is talking about. they were exactly the "individual trying to achieve success" that you're talking about. They weren't doing "toxic-crunch" and they still burnt out. And yet your whole post is arguing against doing anything about situations that lead to that.

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Sorry, I didn't mean to twist any of the others words. I should have been clearer. My primary point was to echo that not all "crunch" is toxic and we need to evaluate the difference between "getting shit done" and "running an employee into the ground". Without that context, we can't simply react with these generalities people come into these threads with - "fuck this company and how it treats their employees!"

I was putting the onus on the individual employee when it comes to achieving personal success and crunching to do so. And you can only gauge that on your own with the situation you're in. I have worked at several places where there was forced crunch but also places with forced clock-out. The latter is also really stressful when it comes to working with a deadline. I used to go home and just think about the shit that I didn't get done or things that needed to get done the next morning to stay on schedule. It would consume me during my time at home and that sucked regardless of management giving me the ability to leave at 5PM every day.

 

[ShadowFox08]

No need to apologize anyway. I would take a longer delai so you guys don't have to crunch

 

[Deleted member 16876]

Man you should never be proud of crunch. It is never a good thing.

 

[SoulsHunt]

Passionate people will run themselves into the ground and need to be protected from their own work habits.

No one made me do insane hours when I first started in my industry. I wanted to do it, I loved doing it. I burned myself out after months of 15 hour days.

I got paid overtime and a pat of the head for my efforts. What I needed was for someone to tell me to go home. Which eventually happened when I completely burned out and was like a walking zombie.

Passionate, creative, workaholic people choosing to work crazy hours need to be protected from themselves.

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You said what I wanted to say.

 

[Deleted member 203]

I was putting the onus on the individual employee when it comes to achieving personal success and crunching to do so.

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This simply doesn't work in larger studios with many employees. It WILL lead to a culture of crunch because if staying longer means better chances of promotion, then by definition it means the people working normal hours are harming their careers. It is 100% management's responsibility to curb crunch and straight up tell people to go home. The poster you quoted is right. This philosophy of yours is exactly why crunch culture is a thing in so many companies. They can all say "management never demands crunch" but at the end of the day if half the team is doing it, you will be pressured to do it too, and your career will suffer the consequences if you don't, regardless of how good your work is.

The only time crunch is a "choice" is when it's a 1-person development "team". You can read in Schreier's book how the dude making Stardew worked himself to the bone for years. It's still tremendously unhealthy.

 

[obin_gam]

Choosing to work is the first step to a burnout imo.
Life should always come first. Not work.

 

[Xtortion]

That doesn't exist. It is not "their art", this is not an indie studio and we arent't talking about the art team here, it is the dev team who spend their day treating bug ticket. No one love to do that.

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Not even if they want the game to be super polished? Games are art, and I could see how bug squashing could be equated to eliminating imperfections in that art.

 

[Thera]

Not even if they want the game to be super polished? Games are art, and I could see how bug squashing could be equated to eliminating imperfections in that art.

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Have you ever done "bug squashing" during 10 hours?

 

[Morbius]

I'm not really trying to argue with anyone but it's a little annoying how everytime we see the word "crunch" it gets turned into a entire thread based off one quote. Being a game developer isn't the only job where people "crunch" my fiancé will sometimes work 13 hour days 6 days a week and choose to work her day off for extra money.

Do we know how these people are being compensated? Do we know if they get overtime? Do we know if it's mandatory? Like we just assume one crunch is like the other if they choose to do it let them. It sucks but that's the line of work you signed up for knowing what would happen it's like any other job.

Edit : With travel her days are 16 hours sometimes maybe more.

 

[Morbius]

I also don't mean to go at anyone in this thread in the industry but it seems like maybe at best 3/4 of you are just looking from the outside including myself but I'm around someone who works crazy hours and it's not just near a computer screen.

 

[Kamaros]

yeah, like many have said it, we who aspire to work in the games industry are willing to

Okay, hypothetical:

You're a modeller, in a team of modellers. You all do the guns for Bone Crusher X: The Dead Reckoning. You're each given a gun on Monday and told that they need to be modeled by next Monday. Your whole team works 40 hours that week, including you.

You know your strengths and your weaknesses. You know that time is the largest limiting factor on making your gun look good. You can absolutely carve out a gun that looks good in 40 hours. But you can carve out a banger in 60.

You know that there will be 48 more weeks of guns and the game is content locked in 49 weeks.

You are proud of your work. You really want to strive to be the best modeller you can be. You are proud of your work on Bone Crusher X.

What is the most ethical way to get ahead in your field?

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i think this is the best post in the thread.

the line we draw between "Game ready!" and "I can improve it" is very thin, and our dream job clouds our judgement.

as a modeller myself trying to get in a Studio, this is my nightmare. i try to make all my models done and game ready/not going to touch it anymore in a week in 40h or so.

 

[Deleted member 6235]

Rami is consistently a bootlicker and will defend bad management practices to the death, I absolutely would not follow his lead on this topic. The motives for these delays really aren't "to relieve pressure on teams". This tweet is whataboutist nonsense. Crunch is bad whether a game is delayed or not.

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lmao what the hell is this? should i follow your lead? Rami is an experienced dev that has done a lot for the game dev community. Besides, he is not talking that crunch is good, i'm not sure how you took it that way. He never defended crunch. He is saying that delays are not *always* a bad thing, a sentiment that i'm seeing around after that article from Kotaku.

Rami has some problems, for sure, but never in supporting stuff like crunch and etc.

They could have delayed until this holiday or early next year

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I agree. I'm not saying it's not bad in this case. It sucks.

 

[Asbsand]

I would have apologized so why isn't he me?

 

[Xtortion]

Have you ever done "bug squashing" during 10 hours?

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I don't claim to have any programming or game development experience. But I think I can see how the concept of polishing a game (or any piece of art really) could be something that could motivate an individual who is highly passionate about that project to sacrifice additional time, effort or any number of things to make the product the best it can be by a mandated deadline. Not endorsing that behavior, just trying to understand it.

 

[Greywaren]

I do believe there are people who are actually willing to work extra hours because this is a passion project for them and they truly enjoy doing what they do, but I hope they're being properly compensated and are able to take breaks if they want to. I have nothing against voluntary crunch, the issue here is that most of the time, it's not so voluntary.

So hopefully this is a case of "I want to do this" voluntary and not "I must do this or I'll be fired" voluntary.

 

[Teeth]

Man you should never be proud of crunch. It is never a good thing.

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Being proud of working really hard on something is pretty natural. Being proud of enduring hardship is pretty natural too.

Like, anyone who has ever excelled at something will have difficulty separating the hard work from the accomplishment.

 

[zombiejames]

"We really truly do try and be very respectful of peoples' time and lives."

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[beetlebum]

Passionate people will run themselves into the ground and need to be protected from their own work habits.

No one made me do insane hours when I first started in my industry. I wanted to do it, I loved doing it. I burned myself out after months of 15 hour days.

I got paid overtime and a pat of the head for my efforts. What I needed was for someone to tell me to go home. Which eventually happened when I completely burned out and was like a walking zombie.

Passionate, creative, workaholic people choosing to work crazy hours need to be protected from themselves.

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A+

 

[Xando]

As someone working project by project i'm continuously suprised people are suprised by crunch. We're crunching in almost every project and most people love it for the extra pay.

Not everyone is into working 9-5.

 

[Thera]

I don't claim to have any programming or game development experience. But I think I can see how the concept of polishing a game (or any piece of art really) could be something that could motivate an individual who is highly passionate about that project to sacrifice additional time, effort or any number of things to make the product the best it can be by a mandated deadline. Not endorsing that behavior, just trying to understand it.

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It is awful to do (not gaming related) and I only done it in exceptionnal condition and rarely for more than 2 days in a raw.
And yes, when you are doing some dev, sometimes you took more time to polishing it. But is your choice. In those big studios, it is not about choice.

 

[The Boat]

If you are going to opine on how a project should be managed and hypothesize on how it is being mismanagement then a certain level of expertise is required.

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Take any project management class and you'll learn that having your workers overloaded is a failure in and on itself. Whether it's because you didn't staff up correctly, didn't distribute the work load well or didn't schedule things realistically, relying crunch is a big failure in project management. The only way it doesn't fall on management is if the customer (in this case, the publisher or parent company) demands' are unrealistic or if something unavoidable like a natural catastrophe happens.

However, you don't need a project management class, you just need common sense. If you need your team to burn yourself out, you're not managing properly.

 

[Steak]

Sorry, I didn't mean to twist any of the others words. I should have been clearer. My primary point was to echo that not all "crunch" is toxic and we need to evaluate the difference between "getting shit done" and "running an employee into the ground". Without that context, we can't simply react with these generalities people come into these threads with - "fuck this company and how it treats their employees!"

I was putting the onus on the individual employee when it comes to achieving personal success and crunching to do so. And you can only gauge that on your own with the situation you're in. I have worked at several places where there was forced crunch but also places with forced clock-out. The latter is also really stressful when it comes to working with a deadline. I used to go home and just think about the shit that I didn't get done or things that needed to get done the next morning to stay on schedule. It would consume me during my time at home and that sucked regardless of management giving me the ability to leave at 5PM every day.

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But my point is that the "getting shit done" and "individual employees achieving personal success" are also forms of overwork that lead to burnout, which is what the original post was about. Companies should have a responsiblity to ensure that their employees are staying healthy in their work practices, including when the employees are overworking themselves for what they see as their own benefit. A company that allows their employees to burn themselves out because they are working more than is healthy for them, willingly or not, has failed their employee.

I'm sure not all instances of crunch (#notallcrunch) result in people burning out, but I can't believe for a second that "crunching pretty hard" for most of a year can possibly be healthy or unavoidable and I'm extremely suspicious of people that come into a thread about that to defend crunch.

 

[Deleted member 2620]

Okay, hypothetical:

You're a modeller, in a team of modellers. You all do the guns for Bone Crusher X: The Dead Reckoning. You're each given a gun on Monday and told that they need to be modeled by next Monday. Your whole team works 40 hours that week, including you.

You know your strengths and your weaknesses. You know that time is the largest limiting factor on making your gun look good. You can absolutely carve out a gun that looks good in 40 hours. But you can carve out a banger in 60.

You know that there will be 48 more weeks of guns and the game is content locked in 49 weeks.

You are proud of your work. You really want to strive to be the best modeller you can be. You are proud of your work on Bone Crusher X.

What is the most ethical way to get ahead in your field?

Click to shrink...

I'm not following why you're framing this around the employee making the gun model and not management/ownership? It seems obvious to me that it's ethical for employees to try to get ahead in a system that is structured to incentivize that, but criticism of crunch is, as far as I've followed, directed at this system and those with the most power to change it, not these employees.

 

[LiK]

Take your time.

 

[Deleted member 56069]

All this talk of crunch is getting insane.

So basically at this point if you don't crunch does that mean the game would take like 10 years to come out or something?

It seems all you hear recently is every big game from a studio has massive, unhealthy crunching.

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This is probably a result of games becoming more complex to create,, with bigger budgets and stricter timelines to boost ROI for companies before their year ends. All these stories about video game crunch remind me of when Iwata spoke at GDC years ago and mentioned Nintendo's desire to not contribute to rising video game development costs, by not focusing on the latest and greatest hardware.

Video game crunch is a direct result of what he talked about years ago, and unfortunately, once a game like Doom Eternal is released, no one will care or remember these stories. A vast majority of gaming audiences don't care, partly because the industry is at fault for setting high expectations and we all know what that means to enthusiasts in this hobby.

 

[Gunny T Highway]

We should never be shocked by this anymore. Crunch is rampant in this industry and it will continue to be until something substantial happens.

 

[Teeth]

I'm not following why you're framing this around the employee making the gun model and not management/ownership? It seems obvious to me that it's ethical for employees to try to get ahead in a system that is structured to incentivize that, but criticism about crunch is, as far as I've followed, directed at this system and those with the most power to change it, not these employees.

Click to shrink...

It's a secondary post with regards to my earlier comment on how competitive environments create a lot of this issue. It's framed under the guise of an employee's framework for a number of reasons:

1) If the managers had an ultimately fair environment and told everyone to go home after 40 hours of work a week, what is the proper path for a worker to "get ahead"? Work on their skills outside of work (which is basically creating skill capital to be exploited by future employers for free) or...secretly work to improve the actual assets/solutions on the shipping game you're working on?

2) If the management have a "you can work as long as you want, and you will get paid for your overtime", what is ethical in that situation (for the same above question)?

3) If the management has a "you can work as long as you want, but you're salaried.", same question.

It's a question of, if I'm on a team with 5 talented modellers and I'm the least talented modeller, but I can make up for my lack of talent with time, should I be barred from doing so?