How would you judge the project management as an outsider? Hell, in a big company it might actually be quite hard to judge it as an insider!
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Ian Walker (Kotaku): Games Made Under Crunch Conditions Don’t Deserve ‘Best Direction’ Awards
- Thread starter BY2K
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How would you judge the project management as an outsider? Hell, in a big company it might actually be quite hard to judge it as an insider!
I'm curious what crunch culture is like with Nintendo. They make amazing games that have obvious technical shortcoming that they make up for with art design and gameplay mechanics. If the rest of the industry could learn from that and drop the need for insane graphics to accommodate better working conditions, I'd be fine with that.
yes we do need one, but i don't know who has the courage to make it
This is pretty much what it comes down to. Hell you even have moderators in this very thread excusing this behaviour with "well everyone does it".
Its classic whataboutism yet because its naughty dog its somehow okay.
Your work and work conditions go hand in hand with direction and even if you argue semantics a game with as shit crunch conditions as Naughty dog should never win this award. Especially so when a company that is actually a great example of how to properly treat your employees was also nominated.
Game of the year for Last of us 2, awards for best performance etc is all deserved, but best direction is downright silly. Especially with how much the show was trying to come of as a show all about being inclusive.
We've already had a thread when the allegations came out, this is not about the wider topic of crunch bad, this is about a specific thing which people are deflecting from.
It sounded more like you were using the fact Cyberpunk wasn't nominated to deflect criticism against them. Game awards are fluff and some of the least important factors for devs/publishers to evaluate their success. Word of mouth (like our OT), reviews and sales are factors that matters, and is the reason why this suggestion about not giving a meaningless award to a director sounds so hollow to me.
Crunch is a very WIDE term.
Crunch could just be general overtime to reach specific dates or honestly an a product of working in a team environment.
I've worked on teams where we had a managed crunch that lasted no longer than three week and no more than 60 hours per week, and even then most people worked closer to 50-55, which just means most people added an hour or two during the work week and worked a weekend day. It can be a great team bonding experience and it honestly is a great feeling to do a push and see the results over a couple weeks.
That being said, long term crunch or a death march is counter productive. I worked on a game where we crunched for nearly six months which led to burnout, fighting, and a lower quality output even though we were spending more time.
Crunch could just be general overtime to reach specific dates or honestly an a product of working in a team environment.
I've worked on teams where we had a managed crunch that lasted no longer than three week and no more than 60 hours per week, and even then most people worked closer to 50-55, which just means most people added an hour or two during the work week and worked a weekend day. It can be a great team bonding experience and it honestly is a great feeling to do a push and see the results over a couple weeks.
That being said, long term crunch or a death march is counter productive. I worked on a game where we crunched for nearly six months which led to burnout, fighting, and a lower quality output even though we were spending more time.
this. It's not a production award, it's more design or 'artistic direction'
otherwise it'd be more like a technical Oscar and I'd agree it shouldn't apply to a troubled development/production period
User Banned (Permanent): Concern trolling, off-topic derailing and minimizing concerns of transphobia throughout the thread; account in junior phase.
sony studios always are given a pass, cyberpunk OT here is a proff of that. Thread is locked and have stick admin posts due the transphobic scandal behind CDPR (which im understand and approve) but the last of us 2 OT didnt had a SINGLE admin post about the crunch scandal behind the game development.
Just my opinion.
Just my opinion.
I posted this earlier, but at least as of 2008, it sounds like there was bad crunch at Nintendo. Can't really say how things are now unless an employee whistleblows or an investigative journalist is allowed in. This is, of course, a much more difficult endeavor with Japanese studios, especially as crunch/overwork is sadly part of the work culture.
At Nintendo, Working All Night Is 'Mario Time'
Over the years, game development companies have found all sorts of euphemisms for unpaid overtime, but Nintendo’s might be the best. If legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto ever comes up and tells you it’s “Mario time,” you’re in for a long night.
kotaku.com
Yeah, I never respected Kubrick's decision in that movie. I think Duvall did amazing considering her mistreatment. I still love the movie, but I don't respect the method used to achieve it, and I can't help but feel the movie could have been better without the level of antagonism Kubrick had onset with her. Honestly, only once did I feel horrified by her screams, it was her quieter moments during the movie that really portrayed her character. And the scene on the staircase at the end, but I digress.
If these awards don't matter then why would it be worth a post defending it at all?
I think the industry needs to move away from crunch. I think not giving out any awards at all for titles that crunched is a very fair and valid viewpoint. But I don't see game direction as leading the studio in the way the article does. I can understand the view that it does. But I disagree with this particular award standing out more than other awards.
You must have missed a lot of threads. They were rightfully called out for the crunch in various long threads as well as the sexual harassment allegation against a former studio member.
I think it has nothing to do with it (as if projects developed under crunch conditions hadn't resulted in infamous failures).
David Lean and Sam Spiegel kept hundreds of people working under severe conditions for almost two years. The result was a film called Lawrence of Arabia... This story is as old as humanity. Every industry rewards results, not methodology. You don't change the playbook on a whim, based on a particular judgment; if this medium felt that way, they had their chance to vote, as every other site/magazine did (without making noise in the process, but that's the game these days).
PS: Directors are usually the ones who suffer the greatest toll during production, as months of public harassment on Druckmann come to show (only partially) in this case.
David Lean and Sam Spiegel kept hundreds of people working under severe conditions for almost two years. The result was a film called Lawrence of Arabia... This story is as old as humanity. Every industry rewards results, not methodology. You don't change the playbook on a whim, based on a particular judgment; if this medium felt that way, they had their chance to vote, as every other site/magazine did (without making noise in the process, but that's the game these days).
PS: Directors are usually the ones who suffer the greatest toll during production, as months of public harassment on Druckmann come to show (only partially) in this case.
I have a very, very hard time believing that Nintendo doesn't engage in crunch, given the state of Japanese work culture more broadly.
They can also easily afford to delay a game if it needs more time. Their games don't go down in price, and sell for a long time so it doesn't matter so much when they launch it.
Honestly Sony first party should also adopt this model of no price drops, their quality is in a league of their own. Sony should in theory always also could afford to delay a game rather than crunch.
yet not a single stick post in the game OT, like cyberpunk OT had.
The post I was originally replying to was saying:
I don't understand why I'm the one being accused of deflection and whataboutery by reiterating that this thread is about Naughty Dog.
If you want to make a thread about CDPR's crunch practices, link me it and I'll come swinging at them too.
If I had any talent in making those who make the official threads on this site, I would totally take the sword as it is something that should have a spotlight on.
Was their social media account and advertisement engaging in sexism and transphobia? Stop trying to equate the two.
What are we doing here? I'm responding to a rebuttal of the article.
No studio with this amount of documented evidence of crunch culture will ever truly deserve a GOTY or Best Direction award. It's a shame, then, that in the particular case of TLOU2 I'll never be shure who's thrashing the studio for all the right reasons, and who's hating on them because, you know, the SJW "reason".
This is a industry problem but this like asking the Oscar or what ever show to disregard a direction or who ever else because VFX people crunch hard .
A huge part of a director's job is managing people. A director who only cares about their precious vision and not the people working under them, who may not even like their vision all that much, should probably be working as a one man indie dev instead.
Making the game as close to your vision as possible is the dream, managing the people working under you is the job. Whenever you sacrifice the latter in favor of the former, you're getting closer to an egomaniac in a position of power than a good director.
I'm not in any way implying that X or Y director doesn't care about their team, there's no way I could possibly know this, I'm more arguing against the sentiment that game direction has nothing to do with that. Of course it does.
Making the game as close to your vision as possible is the dream, managing the people working under you is the job. Whenever you sacrifice the latter in favor of the former, you're getting closer to an egomaniac in a position of power than a good director.
I'm not in any way implying that X or Y director doesn't care about their team, there's no way I could possibly know this, I'm more arguing against the sentiment that game direction has nothing to do with that. Of course it does.
If you mean me, this is a misrepresentation of what I wrote and I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth. I have never excused crunch. I just don't think this particular award category is relevant to the topic of crunch and explained why.
i think you are just proving my point, why the last of us OT didnt had a admin post to remind people about the game BAD BAD BAD crunch scandal, one of the worst in our industry? thats my point. CDPR situation is bad and deserves all the attention, but if we are goind to do admin reminders about the game/developter bad action on the OT's from now on, that must be for everyone.
Feel like Japanese companies in general have less news about this, might be just due to overall work culture there but we'll never really know.
Regardless, I completely agree with the article.
Well, you seem to be trying to distract people from discussing it in this thread for starters
I think this is a dangerous line of thinking. First of all, the people who hate the game because they're bigots aren't shy about it and haven't felt the need to disguise their opinions.
Secondly, we should ALL be disgusted by crunch culture, and dismissing any concerns for this particular game because they might be in bad faith serves no purpose other than to quieten down the discussion in general. Crunch is a legitimate issue no matter what other context the game has been discussed under.
You see that as me defending ND? Go back and read where I wrote I think a Studio like ND should be completely out of consideration for any award, along with any other studio that relies on crunch. I was merely responding to someone that I think made it sound like crunch only mattered when it was award season and could be forgot the rest of the year.
Yes, I think this would be good. VFX artists are terribly undervalued for what they do in the movie industry and are often blamed for things that aren't their fault (see: Cats). I also would like them to make a lot of other adjustments, but we are on the gaming side of a gaming forum, in a thread about the Game Awards about a specific award for a specific studio. I think the least we can do is not deflect for the sole purpose of implying it's impossible to fix.
I don't see what point is trying to be made here, outside of deviating from the topic at hand.
I'm not talking about a defence of naughty dog, i'm talking about deflecting from criticism of the game awards, who are under the line of fire here. I'm saying the argument being made in the article is right.
You can, but you're an absolute dickhead for having to bring in CDPR and their transphobia into it.
I posted this earlier, but at least as of 2008, it sounds like there was bad crunch at Nintendo. Can't really say how things are now unless an employee whistleblows or an investigative journalist is allowed in. This is, of course, a much more difficult endeavor with Japanese studios, especially as crunch/overwork is sadly part of the work culture.
At Nintendo, Working All Night Is 'Mario Time'
Over the years, game development companies have found all sorts of euphemisms for unpaid overtime, but Nintendo’s might be the best. If legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto ever comes up and tells you it’s “Mario time,” you’re in for a long night.
He's talking about Super Mario 64 DS so that's probably more 2002-2003, the end of the Yamauchi era. I would imagine Nintendo has changed a lot in terms of culture, but I also doubt they're significantly different than the average publisher.
If your "oustanding creative vision" requires people to destroy their health & relationships, then it's not all that outstanding, it's just "we have enough disposable meat to throw at this project".
Then I'm not sure why we are arguing as I mostly agree, my only caveat is it doesn't go far enough and just focus on a "lesser" award I didn't even know who had won until I read this thread.
