It's a little more complex than a numbers issue. Adding more people to a project can create inefficiencies as it becomes harder to communicate between them, and there's also the possibility that people aren't being properly utilized.
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Blizzard co-founder says that Blizzard wouldn't be where it is today without crunch, but acknowledges that it is unsustainable long-term.
- Thread starter LordDraven
- Start date
I remember Blizzard being very much a "It's done when it's done." company, am I fabricating that somehow?
Comments like this on websites like this are exactly what executives and bad managers use to justify abusing their workers - I hope you're proud of yourself.
As for this, as mentioned in the article, multiple studies have shown - and we've known this for quite some time - that crunch reduces productivity. I'm not sure if it will actually result in those delays unless the studios aren't designed for a reduction of crunch.
It's more about a criticism of naievete than anything. I never said that I condone this kind of behavior, because I don't, but I find it weird that suddenly it's a new issue that needs to be addressed when it's already been a problem for a long while now. It just seems like the main times it's brought up is when a big developer admits to doing it. I already said they are probably all doing it, yet until it's proven, it's not really spoken about with specific developers who get non stop praise. You'll also have legions bitching about release dates as though the developer is "lazy", but as soon as it's revealed that they end up doing crunch time, there's hell to pay.
The crunch epidemic has been publicly widespread since EA Spouse (2004). I've been writing about it since I started at Kotaku (2012). Nobody's claiming it's new. But it's become a more relevant topic in today's discourse because A) it's 2019 and the stories don't stop hitting, B) the game industry is finally talking seriously about unionization, and C) it's becoming clearer and clearer that this is unsustainable.
Thanks -- I thought it was a pretty damn sensationalistic headline, too. The article tells a different story.
The sort of great irony of crunch is that it seems like there are a number of studios where it's become the norm for developing content for their service-based games. It is little wonder that the same studios that are doing this for their games-as-a-service are ones that have an almost hilariously high level of technical debt, lookin' at you Epic.
People are not reading the article and the OP only has a single paragraph. For a lot of tech companies, Blizzard included, they would not be where they are today as these big prestigious companies that have made all time classics without crunch. Morhaime is simply recognizing this fact that in the past it was commonplace, everyone was doing it, it's how games were created and shipped so fast. Blizzard, just like most tech and game companies back in the day, built their work style around crunch from day 1. Crunch remains a tradition in the industry and it needs to move away from it because of how harmful it is and he agrees and even states it himself that it is unsustainable.
I can assure you basically nobody in a professional gaming dev environment is pointing to ResetERA comments to justify overworking employees.
Could you imagine though? If they were then that'd be two gross examples of mismanagement in one.
realistically 'delay' is a dirty word because how its generally interpreted and sold to 'gamers' that follow these things.
delay = trouble or problems in development
and while sure this is sometimes the case it certainly isn't always the case, but with the 24 hour news cycle of gaming anything that can be a story is made a story, so delay isn't equated to giving people time to live a life and finish a product, its sensationalized into is xyz game in trouble? is xyz studio failing soon to be shut down? and on and on hurting the studio, project, and people working
best thing that could happen isn't hoping a magical union can fix this issue, its separating developers from release dates and hype tours, letting them work without assumptions of some off hand comment means about a project or a studio. crunch often happens in response to expectations (it isn't always so easy as mis-management) not cutting a feature or content that was mentioned and therefore promised, not missing a date that was stated and therefore must be upheld, the weight of potential backlash (both in the short and long term damage to the project) of such changes will be portrayed
no one likes crunch, its bad and sucks plain and simple, but its been a part of things and is widely known, I look forward to it going away some day but got into this industry fulling knowing its there and something i was prepared for by teachers (developers or ex) as something that will happen, to what degree is about the studio not the industry. developers are a pretty small and connected bunch, we all know the rough studios, the bad times that happen there, sometimes its worth the resume bump to go to such a place sometimes its not.
articles like this, exposing it to the world at large are great, but never come as a surprise to anyone in the industry, we all know someone who has been at or has a friend who is/was at such and such place. the best case scenario for them isn't to scare developers off a studio, we already know, its to educate the gamer public. to let them have a look behind that flashy curtain of how media has presented game development ('grammas boy' anyone?) and see how it really is, warts and all.
and in that, maybe gamers can find the compassion and empathy for the people that actually make these things. not the boogie man entities that they associate with a game from EA or activision, but the workers, the people that just want to make something, something they can be proud of, something to hold up to their friends and family and say I made this, I did something.
for gamers and the people who cover gaming to remember a game is the amalgamation of hundreds of thousands (if not millions now a days) of work hours, for years of their life put into a project, and respect that time and effort and try to treat ALL developers as human beings, showing respect for their work whether or not you like it.
this doesnt mean you have to shower every game with praise, but it does mean not attacking games, developers, or people because you dont like it, instead of demoralizing comments that more often than not will eventually make its way back to developers. causing them to loose faith in their work and themselves. burn out on working in games doesnt only come from hard hours or worries about job security, its the people that get the emotional hit from the snarky cynical nature of things like reddit and twitter, not the concept of EA or the big bad publisher.
I'd gladly go back to working a full year of crunch again for this one simple change, to get gamers to remember regardless of its brand, its genre, its publisher, or even its quality, a game is an expression and representation of all those hours spent working on a project that in the end no matter how it turned out, you want to be able to take pride in, and so often that ability is taken away by pointless and hateful negativity.
if anyone reads this whole thing, and as a result holds back for even a moment before posting a jab at a developer or a game because they remember that someone that poured all that life and passion into a game would being seeing it and what that would mean to that person, then maybe i didn't waste my time here today
Not at all. SC2 WoL and Diablo 3 both were announced alongside huge and impressive public gameplay demonstrations that had be people salivating for them, insisting that the game looked ready and Blizz should just let them play. They didn't though. SC2 took a little over three years and D3 just missed the four year mark between announcement and release. Their production cycles have historically been hilariously long. That doesn't necessarily mean that they weren't struggling to meet dates all the time though. It's just a result of their drive to tinker and iterate endlessly on their own work.
I mean, look at Fortnite. Fortnite is a released product but that doesn't stop them from chaining their employees to their desks. Fortnite has endless crunch because the next milestone can never happen fast enough. Blizzard may well have been doing this ages ago, just before the days of everything being a live service in the way it is now.
It is a difficult subject, if Blizzard crunched on Cataclysm & Warlords of Draenor so that they didn't both ship half finished, i think WoW would be in a much better position today & they wouldn't need to fire 800 employees, but at the same time you don't want said employees sleeping in their car to finish off another raid tier before launch.
Shareholders just ruin everything & Blizzard is a good example of it, they can't take their time with games anymore because investors want results ASAP, so much for "when it's done"
Shareholders just ruin everything & Blizzard is a good example of it, they can't take their time with games anymore because investors want results ASAP, so much for "when it's done"
It is, now. It's been reaping the profits from its games, mostly WoW, for well over a decade. I'm assuming the quote means they needed to crunch to achieve the critical mass that was WoW's success, not that they need to do it anymore.
I think that is a fair point but many industries finance, law, tech, sometimes pharma, accounting, trucking, real estate experience crunch because there are hard deadlines and/or the only way to succeed is by outworking everyone else. Mind you this leads to a terrible downward spiral but in certain industries crunch cannot be avoided even with proper planning.
The poster's gross sentiments is representative of the wider gaming culture's need for impatient self-pleasure, not Resetera in itself.
Yes? I mean, we're talking human lives here, videogames can wait
Exactly. Bungie delayed stuff for D2 to avoid crunch and i am totally fine with that.
Regrettable but true .But I think that whilst its fair to point out that crunch periods are unavoidable , its important to point out that this is not ideal and that some companies from the industries you mentioned are actively looking into ways to eliminate destructive crunch times.
Whilst Im not familiar with the financial and judicial industries, crunch times(unsustainable hours) are being heavily pushed against in the pharmaceutical industry because tired and overworked lab technicians/scientist being overworked equals mistakes, corners being cut, documentation being unacceptable and potentially dangerous products, which equals companies and safety officers being criminally charged and liable for heavy fines and potentially being banned from markets. As such,most big pharmaceuticals (especially those which operate in the Uk and Europe) tend to discourage overtimes and overworking. There will be crunch times, but these are heavily incentivised and controlled.
That's good to hear about pharma. I haven't worked in that industry in well over a decade. Back then we had the occasional period of crunch. Thankfully followed by time off because as salaried employees we were not eligible for OT but we're eligible for small bonuses. The legal field on the other hand has proved to be brutal.
I am very disappointed with you mr. Morhaime. Your comments on crunch are terrible and it just shows you are an inconsiderate person.
Dont be like this mr. Morhaime.
Dont be like this mr. Morhaime.
Its gotten better but there was still a lot of room for improvement when I left. Like I said, big companies with a massive uk and european presence have to comply with a lot more stringent labour regulations and publicity which can a very big motivator to treat your employees with basic human decency.Smaller companies who are eager to break into the industry are sadly a whole other story however.
I've been transitioning towards software development for the past 2 years now and the situation seems to be the same depending on the client who you work with however I havent gone into games development so I cant personally comment on whether its worse.
It doesn't surprise me that crunch is rampant in law however.Law firms always struck me as cutthroat and a little dogmatic from a glance. Have there been any moves industry-wise to improve the situation?
No way. Profit is what makes crunch a thing. For public companies it's even worse but all companies exist to make money and you don't make as much money as you can without crunch apparently.
I think crunch is fine as long as it's for a short period of time and people are compensated for it accordingly. I have a feeling it's more salary slave labor though which has happened to me several times in my life though not in making games.
It's Era, baby, uninformed race to the bottom shitposting is the way it's done around here.
Not in a meaningful way. Things are better than they were at the start of the decade but long hours are still very much a reality.
Personally yes. I don't give a shit if a game is delayed. I don't live or die on game release schedules like many seem to do. I have plenty of other games and things I can do. Case in point, it a crunch thing, but the shitty EGS thing with BL3 and The Outer Worlds, I have no issues waiting until 2020 to play them when I can pick it up on Steam. If they were delayed til 2020 or later because of a no crunch policy, I would be fine with that as well.
I have been told direct from the horse's mouth that the Overwatch team does not crunch, presumably in part because Jeff Kaplan lived through the Warcraft III/WoW crunch days as the bottom man on the totem pole and has strong memories of seeing folks he saw leave for the evening come in the next morning, while he hadn't even left the office.
Crunch is fine as long as:
Workers are paid well for it.
It's optional for individuals.
The company hires more hands to cover those who cannot or do not want to crunch.
The problem is that many companies don't treat their workers with this kind of respect, and crunch conditions can be borderline inhumane.
Workers are paid well for it.
It's optional for individuals.
The company hires more hands to cover those who cannot or do not want to crunch.
The problem is that many companies don't treat their workers with this kind of respect, and crunch conditions can be borderline inhumane.
Glad he came out of that with that perspective instead of awful idea that he paid his dues and everyone else has to do that too.
Yeah, let's focus more on how bad it is that games are getting delayed instead of the mental and physical toll on the people that make them. Crunch isn't bad, the people reporting and talking about it are!
I hope I never see this line of thought ever again.
Damn, I'm glad Jeff Kaplan is doing right by his co-workers at the Overwatch team.
I think he genuinely cares about their well-being. Something he said multiple times to me when I was interviewing him in January was that he's the least important person on the team, and that it's the work of the much more talented folks that he merely manages that make Overwatch possible. It was one of the best interviews I've done.
Did Jeff Kaplan do stage theatre before, because that's legit one of our main mottos as actors.
No, he actually came from a creative writing background. You can listen to the whole interview here (warning: it's really long and I haven't finished transcribing it yet) but I'd be unsurprised if, given the overlap theater departments have with english departments, he didn't have some cross-exposure at least.
This falls on the heads of mainstream AAA gamers, not so much on gamers like me that spend more of their gaming time and dollars on small indie dev teams that on average don't abuse their workers. I've probably spent more money on 1-2 man dev teams in the last five years than I have on all AAA games put together. I am guilty of buying $40 Overwatch to play with my stepson since our gaming hobbies don't overlap much, but short of that and $15 Civ V Complete, I haven't bought any AAA games since I built this PC in 2012, not on PC nor on console.
Developing for spectacle is several orders of magnitude more expensive and abusive than developing for gameplay mechanics. In a post-PS2/Wii era where AA is dead, look to Early Access indies and Kickstarter to fund the changes you want to see.
Developing for spectacle is several orders of magnitude more expensive and abusive than developing for gameplay mechanics. In a post-PS2/Wii era where AA is dead, look to Early Access indies and Kickstarter to fund the changes you want to see.
Thanks, I'll try to get around to listening to the interview in the near future.
That wasn't my focus, but it's my fault for not elaborating enough in the first post. No, my real problem is that suddenly everyone is woke, even though this is an old issue. It's good that it's being made more public, but I can't imagine everyone that posts about it now simply didn't realize it was ever a problem to begin with. You'll see certain developers being praised as the heralds of gaming, as though because you don't see something, shady shit isn't happening with them either. Of course this cherished developer is sterling. As long as nothing is revealed, it's not happening.
But as soon as it's revealed that the behavior that anyone with more than a passing interest in the hobby should have already suspected could be taking place (since it's been a known issue with larger developers for over a decade now), there's a 180 feeding frenzy. People complain about delays, people complain about developers downgrading, or not keeping promises, then when people find out that to have their expectations reasonably met there's a mandated crunch, they complain about that too. I just don't understand why now it's in the spotlight as opposed to the years leading up to this point.
100 fuckin percent. Of course. What is wrong with you to even suggest getting a video game sooner (and you wouldn't even realize there was a delay if it wasn't announced so early in the first place), is worth a giant human cost? Make it two to three years if need be. We're talking about people and work conditions here.
