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Ian Walker (Kotaku): Games Made Under Crunch Conditions Don’t Deserve ‘Best Direction’ Awards
- Thread starter BY2K
- Start date
This seems to come down to a semantic argument about what direction entails as well as what Neil's role was within the bureaucratic structure of ND. I'm not sure that anyone on either side of the overarching argument, including the people who voted on the recipient for that award had a full grasp of both of these variables. Crunch is unambiguously an exploitative and debilitating practice. I'm not sure whether that was up to Neil or whether that is part of the "direction" of a game. TGA's definition of it uses the term to define itself. It's such a vague category.
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If they get nominated for Best Direction after that mess of delays, crunch and technical issues, it'll beggar belief.
How do we know how much crunching was going on at Insomniac this year as they worked from home to put out a PS4 and a PS5 version of Spiderman MM with a hard cutoff date?
Thing is, crunch is supposedly widespread and commonplace within the gaming industry, hell, you could argue it is within many industries.
The issue is we don't actually have a detailed insight into mass studio practices, and the only reason we even know about ND, Rockstar, CDPR etc, and not a hundred other studios, is because one investigative journalist decided to....you know, investigate them.
So you're essentially dictating a celebration of game design excellence not based on the quality of the games themselves, or even which studios and games had or did not have crunch, rather which have simply been reported on or investigated for it, which unfortunately happens in very limited capacity.
if they still get GOTY awards, that doesn't change anything you are still celebrating a product made under crunch, you are still celebrating poor working conditions and abuse of employees, because the end product is good it leaves open for other studios to crunch because crunch games are games of the year
Maybe it's different with DICE QA testing, but whilst DICE doesn't officially crunch and appears to be far better than most about it, there are a few employee reviews on Glassdoor that specifically bring up or complain about crunch nonetheless.
"There is a lot of shadow crunching going on. Typically, you are not "forced" to work but no one else is going to do your work for you so if you are not on deadline that will reflect bad on you, even if the deadline is completely unrealistic. Most of the time the tools are broken and they are a hassle to debug. A lot of times something breaks and it can take several hours to get fixed. "
"Over reliance on a few people - while most people don't need to crunch it invariably falls on a few to burn the midnight oil and pull things together and those are the ones who suffer the most"
"Crunch and crunch. Studio claimed to have stopped crunching when I joined, but the crunch was inevitable from the start. No paid overtime of course."
"Crunch is fairly low. Some intense periods during a project happen, almost guaranteed but not that much usually."
DICE (Sweden) Reviews: What Is It Like to Work At DICE (Sweden)?
55 DICE (Sweden) reviews. A free inside look at company reviews and salaries posted anonymously by employees.
Will it, though?
We'll probably get a "Games For Social Justice" category, voted on by the fans, to placate us while they absolutely shower Cyberpunk with praise, nominations, and awards.
What i always find crazy is all these heavy crunchers turn out to be the games that get delayed too. Like i wonder how long a game would take without it?
I agree crunch is shit but i disagree to pin it on all person. I'm not in the gaming industry but i can't even imagine how big of a workload a AAA game is. Most of them taking 3-4 years which is nuts when thinking about it. I also don't agree giving this award encourages crunching behavior.
But it wouldn't upset me if they lost due to that reason. Just hopefully game development can get to a point where we can get all these big games without the extra work. Kinda doubt it though.
I agree crunch is shit but i disagree to pin it on all person. I'm not in the gaming industry but i can't even imagine how big of a workload a AAA game is. Most of them taking 3-4 years which is nuts when thinking about it. I also don't agree giving this award encourages crunching behavior.
But it wouldn't upset me if they lost due to that reason. Just hopefully game development can get to a point where we can get all these big games without the extra work. Kinda doubt it though.
Idk if it were only game "vision" the description wouldn't differentiate between that and game "direction." Imo the how's and why's of development come to mind when I read that category. Maybe it secretly means a totally different thing from the description but in that case you can't blame people for not being mind readers
But at the end of the day it's somewhat splitting hairs because if you wanted to exclude any game made with this level of crunch from any award it would be warranted
But at the end of the day it's somewhat splitting hairs because if you wanted to exclude any game made with this level of crunch from any award it would be warranted
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Even then CP2077 would probably win it because they put a trans flag on the back of a car and called it a day. The game awards doesn't critically think about what qualifies a winner or not, do they? Is there a transparent rating system they use to determine what deserves an award or not? Because my impression is that all of it doesn't really matter. And it's whatever they think gamers will like the most.
Will it, though?
We'll probably get a "Games For Social Justice" category, voted on by the fans, to placate us while they absolutely shower Cyberpunk with praise, nominations, and awards.
Meanwhile Hades dev team:
kotaku.com
The Secret To The Success Of Bastion, Pyre, And Hades: No Forced Crunch, Yes Forced Vacations
It’s been ten years since Supergiant Games opened its doors. The team put all of their hopes into the studio’s debut game, Bastion, an action-RPG with a narrator. It succeeded with flying colors. Since then, the studio has released Transistor, Pyre, and Hades, every single one receiving critical...
kotaku.com
Consider what you are implying here is that you favor people getting hurt over maybe not getting a piece of entertainment you like or having it get an award.
He never won an Oscar for best director.
To everyone mentioning Hades, let's not pretend TLoU and Hades are on the same level regarding scope/ambition/graphics.
This was my thoughts as well. Also it would be way too tricky to prove crunch for these types of things without resorting to having studios follow some sort of standardized way of reporting their OT and crunch(something that will likely never happen)
What? That's incredibly unfair to pit a AAA studio backed by a console maker over an Indie and claim one had more ambition.
I think Supergiant is absolutely the anomaly, and should be an industry standard. The problem is that any of these games that have been lauded as GOTY, with massive development time and thousands of employees attached, I assumed invoked a level of unhealthy crunch and unhealthy work standards- those garnering more attention also get more publicized documentation of poor work standards. If you're going to criticize development for certain games, you've got to hold the entire industry accountable. I most certainly believe every single one of these huge creative projects over the past twenty years involved a lot of physical and psychological harm for many individuals involved.
Not celebrating shit made under awful conditions is not a loss. It's a good thing. Not even sure what you're gate keeping here.
Uh... more than awards, it's sales. I highly doubt the awards is what drives the need for the games that are forcing crunch. It's the sales. People buying games made with crunch is a the biggest reinforcement for crunch.
I'll admit, that was the one award/nomination for Naughty Dog in particular that stood out as really head scratching. Awarding the game GOTY for the work of the whole team. Fine. But Direction after the documented bad management behind the scenes is just tonedeaf.
It's about the message. It's like you saying keep crunching nothing matters anyway, at the end of the day game is still going to sell millions.
you're actually right
they def don't deserve best direction, in fact, their direction was probably pretty bad. they do deserve GoTY though.
Bungie doesn't do this, they basically say "we are not crunching so you will get new content when you get it"
Very true. Sadly these big games get a pass for this and other issues that should be immediately disqualifying when it comes to awards and acclaim.
I don't think relying on game awards of any kind to "send a message" is the way to do it. Unless the bottom lines start getting affected, I don't see anything changing. That said, if Geoff got on stage and said it goes to Hades instead of TLoU2 because of crunch, I would expect retaliation from Sony. Probably necessary though as crunch is something I hate.
exactly what I came to say....even small indie games require tons of hours more than a 9-5 job. Safe to say that there may not be aGame Awards without crunch either...the people who work on this stuff work a lot.
We aren't talking about simple OT here. The kind of crunch currently being condemned in the industry goes from months to years. Kind of makes awarding those exceptions all the more important, no? Including Supergiant, who was also nominated.
Got some good news: You only need to find ONE winner to give them the price of best direction.
Even that beloved article from the Hades dev even struggled to define crunch lol. I'm over here wondering if people here celebrate the indie dev who makes all kinds of sacrifices for their art, justifying their own self-made crunch.
It happens and the industry needs to change and maybe Sony and ND have already been working on this! We don't know yet. But ND could also use this platform to make a very visible change. As someone in the manufacturing industry who can have hints of wanting to work hard to prove myself and show off my skills AND sometimes feel overworked and need a break, I can see both sides. The difference is how forced is it and how it is punished if you don't succumb. Being fired or quitting because your work was replaced by someone who stayed over certainly boosts your signal and attracts articles and tweets though. That shouldn't happen (the work part, not the whistleblowing).
Not sure I agree here.
These devs made an incredible experience - from top to bottom - and shouldn't be disqualified because their management sucks.
These devs made an incredible experience - from top to bottom - and shouldn't be disqualified because their management sucks.
Actually I think games made under poor management conditions shouldn't be eligible for any awards. It might suck for employees but we shouldn't be recognizing organizations that are running their employees into the ground in any way. It just promotes the absurd working conditions the product was made under in the first place.
Every rung up the ladder you find people who have more power to eliminate crunch, I've never understood why we act like the buck stops at the top of Naughty Dog. This behavior is ultimately enabled by Sony and PlayStation.
Can you really compare a game like Hades, developed by a small indie studio with their own money, to such a behemoth of a game, costing hundreds of millions of dollars and co-developed by multiple studios, when it comes to their development process/how they crunch?
Your vague claim is very enlightening
Meanwhile, here's somebody who made a game I played recently outright saying they made it without crunch.
You think Rockstar/RDR2 is criticized here? (for other issues than being "boring" or so)
Like other industries, if you're a creative/visionary darling, a lot of things will be overlooked or excused (which is bs)