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Jason Schreier: As Naughty Dog Crunches On The Last Of Us II, Developers Wonder How Much Longer This Approach Can Last

Edgar

Edgar

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Oct 29, 2017
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I gotta be honest after reading this i come to realization , even if they will show the awful crunch and what it does to people on video , via articles n such outside of this forum and maybe whos more up to date with gaming industry. Majority people wont care , people dont care how iphones are made , they dont care how the sausage is made. They are prioritzing their lives and struggles , and games like any other medium helps to provide escapism .
 

m29a

Member
Oct 25, 2017
387
The thing I have wondered is how much longer these big AAA games would take to develop if there were no crunch at all. 6 months? 12 months?

I really hope it gets better and I do think that games becoming even bigger in scope as time goes on is not sustainable especially involving harmful practices.
 

Deleted member 7883

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Oct 25, 2017
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i deadass want to smack every one of y'all who think this shit is essential to the industry upside the head

"OH WE JUST CANT AVOID CRUNCH IF WE WANT TO RELEASE GAMES ON THE TRACK WE DO—" so fucking delay the fucking games holy fuck do y'all not know how many games come out a WEEK? Do y'all only play one fucking video game and nothing else, so you're salty over that one game fucking delayed? what the fuck is wrong with you guys. fucking hell. Fuck off with your IT CANT BE AVOIDED bullshit.

Game Industry needs to unionize. Fuck everyone who says otherwise. Sorry for swearing so much but holy shit. It's wild to see the defenders to this bullshit. It's upsetting to say the least. I'll go cool off now and ignore this thread but HOLY SHIT THE IGNORANCE IS PALPABLE.
 
Kalik

Kalik

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Nov 1, 2017
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seems like 'crunch' is inevitable...no matter how many delays there are, the fact remains that the final stretch will be really tough
 
Tiago Rodrigues

Tiago Rodrigues

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I was just wondering that as well. But it's great to see such a known gaming journalist having the "balls" to do pieces like this.
Amazing read overall!
 
Visuwell

Visuwell

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Jan 22, 2019
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When you are at the tail end of anything, crunch is going to invariably be apart of that (or at the very least or anything that involves an element of creation with a due date). This is nothing new. Does it suck? Yes. Should it change? Absolutely. Will it ever? Probably not. But games devs certainly are not alone in this regard.
 
BeeDog

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Oct 26, 2017
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As someone working within IT software development at a global company and facing various struggles constantly, I would NEVER, ever want to work in the gaming sector. As an end-user simply playing the end results I'm content, but all these horror stories of endless crunch in AAA has put me off it for life. It's quite crazy how many of these companies keep doing this and continue to pump out quality stuff and actually manage to replace those that burn out. Too many buying into this gaming shit.
 

martincrimson87

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Dec 15, 2017
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Hopefully Sony is put under the spotlight for these practices just like R* was. That level of polish in their exclusives does not come cheap.
 
RowdyReverb

RowdyReverb

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Oct 25, 2017
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I feel like if they delayed the game or gave it an extra year of dev time, the game's scope would increase to meet heightened expectations and they would still crunch for months at the end. It always seems like these last months of development are when the scope has to be trimmed back somewhat to meet the deadline
 
DrDeckard

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Am I reading this correctly....70% of the team that worked on uncharted 4 aren't with the studio anymore?

That cant be right? Right?

If that's true that's horrific.
 
behOemoth

behOemoth

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Oct 27, 2017
5,609
BeeDog said:
As someone working within IT software development at a global company and facing various struggles constantly, I would NEVER, ever want to work in the gaming sector. As an end-user simply playing the end results I'm content, but all these horror stories of endless crunch in AAA has put me off it for life. It's quite crazy how many of these companies keep doing this and continue to pump out quality stuff and actually manage to replace those that burn out. Too many buying into this gaming shit.
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It's not only in gaming though. I would say that Academia is even worse as projects only last for 2 to 3 years and citations are way too important for your future projects.
 

Deleted member 11413

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DrDeckard said:
Am I reading this correctly....70% of the team that worked on uncharted 4 aren't with the studio anymore?

That cant be right? Right?

If that's true that's horrific.
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It's 70% of the non-lead designers from Uncharted 4. That area was about 20 people iirc. Not the entire studio, but I'm sure other areas of the studio have high turnover as well.
 
DrDeckard

DrDeckard

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You know what. I'm genuinely going to take the approach of buying this second hand on disk then trade it in once I've completed it. It's just not worth supporting this.
 
elenarie

elenarie

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Jun 10, 2018
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Raging Spaniard said:
Something Id like to point out is that good people managers ensure the wellbeing of the employee first and foremost. Remarks like "they work as hard as they want to" speaks to massive negligence in regards to leadership.

This particular brand of crunch (not enforced, employee initiated) happens a lot because the talent often WANTS to deliver the content being asked of them. Its the managers job to make people go home and lessen the workload so the talent doesn't feel pressured. Its also a bit of a false statement because the leadership sets the sprints and deliverables so theyre speaking out of both sides of their mouth when the messages are these:

"you dont have to crunch if you want to"
"These 4 characters need to be done to meet the deadline next week"

One of the points of agile developing and dev tracking (using tools like Jira and whatnot) are there so that the talent can TELL you the amount of work they can do in a sprint and then you plan around that, not the other way around.
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+ infinite on everything said. :)
 
Buttchin-n-Bones

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Oct 25, 2017
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One of the studio's unwritten maxims is that if you don't hear anything, you're doing well.
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Of all the awful things in this article, this tidbit is the most personally affecting for me. Diving into a stressful, perfectionist, peer-pressure cooker environment, and getting absolutely zero praise or affirmation whatsoever? I think it'd kill me.
 
Alex840

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Oct 31, 2017
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The buck stops with Evan Wells at the end of the day. He clearly isn't doing as good a job as Herman Hulst or Ted Price, both heads of studios who didn't crunch on their most recent games.
 
Outrun

Outrun

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Oct 30, 2017
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It is galling to me that the industry is in a perpetual state of wondering how crunch can be allievated.

Take more time. Or hire more people. People are getting divorced and having mental breakdowns because of this shit.

I can wait another year or whatever for a release.
 
denx

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noyram23 said:
Sony/ND should consider trying to extend their dev time by at least a year, 4 years since UC4 is too fast and too costly (human cost) for the quality of product they produce. Let the "gamers" whine, they'll buy the product anyway, nothing is more important than human lives especially not just for a video game
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You could give ND all the time in the world, they would still crunch through most of it. They have internalized crunch as part of their company culture.
 
Ravelle

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Oct 31, 2017
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Isn't the main problem the shareholders? They need a date in which a game releases and such, other wise release dates could just go?
 
Parsnip

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Oct 25, 2017
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The turnover at the studio is just staggering.
Burn everyone out, hire new fresh faced graduates willing to work to death, repeat.
 
HeroR

HeroR

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DrDeckard said:
Do I have to take the approach of not experiencing it if I'm against it?
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Honestly, yes. Since someone have to buy the game, supporting the practice, for you to rebuy it for cheap. So, you're not really helping things, compared to spreading awareness and telling people not to buy the game for the above reasons.
 
dbcyber

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Oct 25, 2017
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m29a said:
The thing I have wondered is how much longer these big AAA games would take to develop if there were no crunch at all. 6 months? 12 months?

I really hope it gets better and I do think that games becoming even bigger in scope as time goes on is not sustainable especially involving harmful practices.
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Media Molecule doesn't have a culture of crunch. Look how long Dreams took to make, hopefully that becomes the norm so developers don't work themselves to Death. I have no problem with 7-8 year Dev times if it means devs work the standard 8 hours.
 
KastuśKalinoŭski

KastuśKalinoŭski

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Nov 23, 2019
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hughesta said:
AAA (damn near AAAA) game development is unsustainable.
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AAA is sustainable. It's just corporations want mega-profit from it.

Like we have examples like this:
kotaku.com

Activision Blizzard Lays Off Hundreds Of Employees

Publisher Activision Blizzard has begun its long-rumored layoff process, informing employees this afternoon that it will be cutting staff. On an earnings call this afternoon, the company said that it would be eliminating 8% of its staff. In 2018, Activision Blizzard had roughly 9,600 employees...
kotaku.com kotaku.com
On the earnings call, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick told investors that the company had "once again achieved record results in 2018" but that the company would be consolidating and restructuring because of missed expectations for 2018 and lowered expectations for 2019.
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So it's more about capitalism rather than budget.
 
joshcam19

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Nov 11, 2017
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This is the most mixed that I've been on one of these stories so far. If there is no top down pressure to work more hours, and it's self motivated that is a challenge. Last week I had a day that worked 12 hours and the next I worked almost 15. Trying to wrap up projects and yearend reviews. No one made me write as much as I did and I always encourage my TMs to leave early and have a healthy work life balance but sometimes you want to put in the hours to make sure the work is as good as possible. I agree that leadership should push for a healthy work life balance but if someone is choosing to stay late, do you escort them out of the building at 5 every day. This one is challenging. It's not as cut and dry as other stories we've heard.
We have to figure out how to change this industry. Games are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Fans demand it, we have to change. Sorry for ranting my thoughts are all over the place on this one.
 
noyram23

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denx said:
You could give ND all the time in the world, they would still crunch through most of it. They have internalized crunch as part of their company culture.
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Alleviating strict deadline with conjunction with better management is a great first step in eradicating crunch, what do you want them to do? Just continue? It will eventually catch up with them like what happened with Bioware
 

FelixFFM

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Nov 7, 2017
345
dbcyber said:
Media Molecule doesn't have a culture of crunch. Look how long Dreams took to make, hopefully that becomes the norm so developers don't work themselves to Death. I have no problem with 7-8 year Dev times if it means devs work the standard 8 hours.
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You can't push release dates out forever. There's a real danger that a game is aged and obsolete before it comes out, because other devs with similar games beat them to the punch. Or the art and tech ages horribly and will need to be reworked because too much time has passed.
 

FelixFFM

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Nov 7, 2017
345
noyram23 said:
Alleviating strict deadline with conjunction with better management is a great first step in eradicating crunch, what do you want them to do? Just continue? It will eventually catch up with them like what happened with Bioware
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The thing that screws ND over is that they have an anti-producer culture. Producers introduce accountability into the creative process. They make sure stuff gets done and hold creative leads accountable for the knock-on effects of their decisions. But ND seems to view them as bureaucratic and stifling to their creativity.
 

thevid

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Oct 25, 2017
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Ravelle said:
Isn't the main problem the shareholders? They need a date in which a game releases and such, other wise release dates could just go?
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No, the problem is workaholics running amok and management not reigning things in to maintain a good work/life balance for their employees. It's a tough nut to crack because as stated in the article, technically no one is "required" to crunch.

It's just that everyone is expected to, and if you don't, you aren't a team player or aren't going to get ahead. My friend left Facebook because of this. Everyone there was working crazy hours so he felt the expectation to also work crazy hours until he got fed up and quit.
 
number8888

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Oct 27, 2017
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It reads like the management is pretty much done by the design team? This is the worse way to do project management because they just want stuff and don't care about time/resource/cost.
 
RPTGB

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Oct 28, 2017
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As much as I think too much middle management is a bad thing, it's clear as daylight after reading that article that ND need producers. Real ball breakers who will tell it like it is to the artists, designers, Druckmann et al, regardless of talent or ego.
There has to be a middle ground, I'm lucky enough to work for a Dev where it works out pretty well and that's working on a big title that has to be out every year.
The amount of staff turnover and hours being worked, plus all that scrapped work Jason talks of in that article is ridiculous for a studio of Naughty Dog's reputation.
 
Glio

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behOemoth said:
I don't want to derail the thread further but the peer pressure culture looks very similar to me.
And as Jason stated it looks like the employees are totally caught in it.
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Of course it exists. Your colleagues are working long hours, you don't want to be the only one who doesn't.

And the boss tells you "You are working on something exciting, imagine all the people who would like to be where you are, we are making an incredible game". Because they know you like video games, video games are cool, you are not programming the database of a cardboard box factory.

Everything manipulates you to think that it was your own decision to make crunch.
 
angel_deamon

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My company tries to force people to leave the office. But we can work at home 🤷‍♂️
 
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