With how expensive marketing is... can “crunch” time really be avoided as a release date draws in? Help me understand

[weepninnybong]

I think one of the big factors is the high use of Agile/Scrum methodologies, which are very much creative/content driven. Among other positives, they promote constant evaluation, reworking, and iteration of content. That is an easy way to blow schedules and thereby creating crunch on fixed deadlines/budgets.

 

[Teeth]

I have wondered about this for years. Yes, AAA games are very complicated, multi-cultural, multi-team projects, but so are most of other big projects in other industries.

Industries where crunch or delays are not enforced/tolerated.

I have seen post mortem samples of AAA, AA and Indie games where it was really just bad project management, with obvious gaps in one or more of the triple restriction areas. I'm personally friend of some very skilled Indie devs that excel in Creative Design, Game Design, Programming, Audio Design, etc, but have encountered fundamental management setbacks with corresponding high impact to their scope and delivery dates (and cost-expected revenue, plus having no life for months).

I work in a similar industry and project management and best practices are fundamental to deliver the required quality, on time, with a very motivated (no OT, other bennefits) team. Just as skilled programmers, creatives, UX and other resources are mandatory/expected, a very strong PM layer should be fundamental.

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There's obviously problems with the way games are planned and executed, but I'd say that the engineering side of development has a lot more places to be shored up compared to the art side (and i don't just mean the pretty polygons).

With games, the biggest issue is that there isn't a template or systemic path to "correct". You're not building something deliverable to engineering or physical spec.

You can be left with "the game isn't fun" and there is no clear way forward.

 

[Deleted member 7450]

Unless there's a date that's set, the marketing campaign really hasn't started. Once that date has been set - that's when things are typically expected to be in a state where the game needs to be ready to go within several months to a year.

I'm not really familiar with any games that have that much attention or buzz ahead of the curve. I'm sure it happens but that might be proportional to the time spent on development.

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I see. Wish we could have a tiny bit more of (first hand) information regarding those processes, because it is easy to (often wrongly) assume that whenever someone is talking about a game that isn't near, that information is being carefully controlled. Sure leaks exist, but I feel like there are clearer signs when it is a legit one or not.

Perhaps I may be off regarding what consists of "marketing" then.

Anyway, appreciated the talk. ^_^

 

[RPTGB]

If you can't make your game without crunch, your game does not deserve to be made

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Ah, the wise words of an individual who clearly has zero idea of how a game development cycle works!

Crunch can and should be reduced to a manageable degree but it's a very rare and lucky dev cycle where it's eliminated completely. There are just too many variables outside the actual game creating environment that have an impact on how modern games are made.

What needs to change is this mentality that crunch time is some ridiculous fucking badge of honour. Each and every time some superstar studio mentions the hours their staff worked to bring their epic title to the shelves like its something worth bragging about, I seethe. It's a stupid worthless pissing contest and all it does is help make your studio decision makers look like twats.

It's not just marketing that apply the pressure though. I have worked on sports titles where, for instance, a license holder may insist on changes to a licensed asset at the eleventh hour.... that has a knock on effect, with code, QA and legal/sign off all needing to get involved. These little things, all add up, unfortunately.

 

[Umbrella Carp]

Crunch can be avoided altogether by developing games in a better fashion. For example, doing away with obnoxious shit like annual releases.

 

[More Butter]

Apex is one example of launching a project without a huge marketing campaign before release. Wonder if they had crunch time on that project.

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This is no doubt one way to go about it but not every game is a free to play BR game. I think there is a different hurdle to releasing a paid game without any lead time.

 

[RPTGB]

Crunch can be avoided altogether by developing games in a better fashion. For example, doing away with obnoxious shit like annual releases.

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Unfortunately, unavoidable with licensed properties, talking mainly about sports titles here. When there are millions of £ &$ involved for the use of a license, you can be sure those license holders (and shareholders) will want that annual release. There far too much money on the table.

 

[Umbrella Carp]

Unfortunately, unavoidable with licensed properties, talking mainly about sports titles here. When there are millions of £ &$ involved for the use of a license, you can be sure those license holders (and shareholders) will want that annual release. There far too much money on the table.

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That excuse doesn't fly for the likes of CoD and Assassin's Creed (although the latter is beginning to move away from annual games).

 

[aerozombie]

Ignore the people saying it is all poor planning. The reality is that unless your psychic, unexpected things will occur and things will fall apart causing last minute issues. Maybe some form of micromanagement can mitigate, but that tends to go worse with morale.

 

[texhnolyze]

Great. More "DOA, sending this game to die, I didn't even know this was out, should have actually marketed the game" comments coming if this happens. Oh and more medium-budget flops.

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ResetEra: this game bombed because it hadn't enough marketing.
Also ResetEra: lower the marketing budget.

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Depends on the developers/publishers.

Exclusive games and games from industry giant like Rockstart don't really need huge marketing. Crunch mainly come from those companies after all.

 

[RPTGB]

That excuse doesn't fly for the likes of CoD and Assassin's Creed (although the latter is beginning to move away from annual games).

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Yep, those are great examples of games that have simply become "too big".
Christ knows what those teams would do without outsourcing existing.

It's a catch 22 situation, the teams that create these spectacle games are consistently trying to "out awesome" each other, while the market laps it up.

The public want more, the bean counters want more and the dev staff want more (time).
We, the industry and the fans have created a monster!

 

[Randdalf]

Crunch is down to shit planning, simple as.

 

[balohna]

The occasional bit of "we really need to hit this milestone" OT is manageable to some extent. But even that is not great. In an ideal world, publishers wouldn't announce or begin marketing projects until after they have a strong alpha build, and the release date would be based on when the team expects to get it done. At some point, there's probably going to have to be a locked down date, though. So if the estimate is off by a bit there will still be some crunch.

I've had some pretty heavy weeks, even months straight of ~50 hour weeks, in this industry. But never even a single 80 hour week. So IMO companies that need people working 80 hours are fucking up big time. I once worked like a 72 hour week and it felt ridiculous, like I lived at work and barely got to sleep.

 

[RPTGB]

Crunch is down to shit planning, simple as.

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No, no it's not.
Some but not all, for all the reasons multiple users have explained in prior posts.

 

[Pirateluigi]

Ignore the people saying it is all poor planning. The reality is that unless your psychic, unexpected things will occur and things will fall apart causing last minute issues. Maybe some form of micromanagement can mitigate, but that tends to go worse with morale.

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Planning in an appropriate amount of contingency time and mitigation strategies is part of good planning. If your schedule falls apart because of last minute issues, it is often a case of poor planning.

 

[kaf]

I see. Wish we could have a tiny bit more of (first hand) information regarding those processes, because it is easy to (often wrongly) assume that whenever someone is talking about a game that isn't near, that information is being carefully controlled. Sure leaks exist, but I feel like there are clearer signs when it is a legit one or not.

Perhaps I may be off regarding what consists of "marketing" then.

Anyway, appreciated the talk. ^_^

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It's always carefully controlled - so if it's through an official outlet or person that represents the studio it's marketing.
But the money and investment in a trailer is way more than say.. a teaser image or announcement of a game or some random words about it. Things will escalate once a date is set, a trailer is dropped and media websites start covering the game with images etc. You can see these shifts in escalation if you follow a game from an announcement to the end.

 

[TheMadTitan]

Unfortunately, unavoidable with licensed properties, talking mainly about sports titles here. When there are millions of £ &$ involved for the use of a license, you can be sure those license holders (and shareholders) will want that annual release. There far too much money on the table.

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In the era of DLC, it's perfectly avoidable in annual sports titles.

Madden/Fifa/NBA 2k20. Next year, release the the updated rosters, arenas, logos, and whatnot as DLC. Certify the game again to sell the '21 edition as a full package at retail for those who don't already have the '20 version (GOTY edition for sports titles, essentially) and then turn around and put out a full blown release for '22 and then turn '23 into DLC again.

Main team gets a larger dev cycle to work on full releases, smaller DLC teams handle updating rosters, patches, and graphics. The only thing that would probably cost the same each year would be player scanning since they'd have to record new commentary and scan in rookies. But even then there'd be some cost saving because they could reuse applicable lines from previous years and mix it in with the new stuff.

 

[aerozombie]

Planning in an appropriate amount of contingency time and mitigation strategies is part of good planning. If your schedule falls apart because of last minute issues, it is often a case of poor planning.

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I agree, though information is not always as forthcoming as would be able to maintain an accurate plan which is why I mentioned micromanagement. There is definitely an onus on the producers/schedulers to make a plan that has sufficient wiggle room, but they does not mean the plan will be able to account for every last issue, especially any last minute tech issues that are unreasonably problematic. Though in those cases it can arguably be better to delay a game since that can lead to a broken game.

 

[xch1n]

Be like Nintendo and sit on finished games to fill schedules. Then you can market at your leisure.

 

[Leo-Tyrant]

I have worked on sports titles where, for instance, a license holder may insist on changes to a licensed asset at the eleventh hour.... that has a knock on effect, with code, QA and legal/sign off all needing to get involved. These little things, all add up, unfortunately.

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You bring a good scenario to the discussion. There will be instances where a specific risk will just materialize and there are no contingencies or mitigations other than to proceed with overtime or similar. This does happen and management can only help to reduce the impact to the resource morale.

However, I have also seen lots of other scenarios where the lack of mature project management meant wasted time from the artist, the programmer, the audio team, etc. Something that could have been caught on day 1, or at least week 1, had repercussion months into a project and the impact was so great at that point that OT had to be performed for weeks, and even then the scope had to change, and quality suffered.

There are ranges, and sadly, for such a high tech and mature industry, very simple best practices and principles in management are often overlooked.

 

[RPTGB]

In the era of DLC, it's perfectly avoidable in annual sports titles.

Madden/Fifa/NBA 2k20. Next year, release the the updated rosters, arenas, logos, and whatnot as DLC. Certify the game again to sell the '21 edition as a full package at retail for those who don't already have the '20 version (GOTY edition for sports titles, essentially) and then turn around and put out a full blown release for '22 and then turn '23 into DLC again.

Main team gets a larger dev cycle to work on full releases, smaller DLC teams handle updating rosters, patches, and graphics. The only thing that would probably cost the same each year would be player scanning since they'd have to record new commentary and scan in rookies. But even then there'd be some cost saving because they could reuse applicable lines from previous years and mix it in with the new stuff.

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OK, that's a great idea in theory, now explain that to the legal department and accountant, shareholders and company bosses at Chelsea, The Chicago Bulls, Mclaren and the Red Sox and see how far you would get. ;)

 

[Deepwater]

The thing I'll never understand is marketing material 2~3 years before the game is on heavy production.

Sometimes I feel like the project is barely on paper but, there are teasers, trailers, pre orders, DLCs, Bonuses, Collectors Editions, and people on forums buzzing around, and "OMG Where is gaem?".

If I was a dev on a situation like that I would go mental.

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I think you're exaggerating on how early that stuff is debuted. Being available for pre order, OFFICIALLY, typically happens within 12 months of release most of the time.

For example Kingdom Hearts 3 has been available for pre order on Amazon for several years, but just as a placeholder. I don't think it was officially cleared (as in, got a SKU) until June 2018.

Red Dead Redemption 2, wasn't officially announced for pre order until June 2018 as well.

I doubt you will find a game that has official cover art, an ESRB/PEGI rating, pre order bonus solidified, etc until you're close to the release date.

 

[Interficium]

Plan your projects better?

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JUST PLAN UR PROJECTS BETTER 4HEAD

 

[Chopchop]

Ignore the people saying it is all poor planning. The reality is that unless your psychic, unexpected things will occur and things will fall apart causing last minute issues. Maybe some form of micromanagement can mitigate, but that tends to go worse with morale.

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A bit of crunch is fairly common, and sometimes it just happens. Shit happens in every project, and that's what some buffer time is meant to mitigate.

But if your company starts crunch time months before release, or even weeks after starting the project, then something seriously, dreadfully wrong happened during project planning.

 

[Deepwater]

Put it in your budget to have six months of time to just polish the game after going gold.

It's not cost-effective to crush your employees with constant crunch.

Game studios should basically be run like socialist ones.

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Im not advocating for a culture of crunch, but you're talking about six months that may put them out of business if they don't put out a game.

If a studio has no recurring sources of revenue to fund their next game, they literally cannot forego shipping a MVP. What then happens is you have to reduce the scope of your game so that you can get a polished product within the budget and time constraints allotted.

But it's hard justifying that to the masses, who then complain about fucking puddles being downgraded from what they were shown in a previous trailer.

The problem is, it's near impossible for someone to show you a trailer right now, and then 24 months later have the final product match the trailer. It's impossible to foresee that when you're talking something as fluid as a video game. I'm sure devs would love to work on a game "until it's done", but it's literally impossible to do that while also keeping the lights on.

 

[TheMadTitan]

OK, that's a great idea in theory, now explain that to the legal department and accountant, shareholders and company bosses at Chelsea, The Chicago Bulls, Mclaren and the Red Sox and see how far you would get. ;)

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I probably could if I were versed in the legalese involved.

They already put out content updates and patches for these games for real life trades, stats, and all that stuff. Making a final update at the end of the year that includes modeling and voice work referencing the added rookies wouldn't change much.

They already sell the games digitally, so making "X Year" a digital based thing wouldn't change much either, other than needing a previous purchase. They could probably keep the old version on the market for a higher price longer since it would be a necessary component.

Games already have GOTY/Complete Editions, so putting one out for a sports title wouldn't change much. And if they're somehow contractually obligated to have a sports title out every year, then they would still be meeting that since GOTY NBA 2k19 is technically a different title based on console certification and ESRB ratings.

 

[Carn]

A few articles and books have found that it's not so much a question of planning or unforseen tasks etc, it's a problem of culture.

• The culture at an AAA developer and publisher putting out a hugely invested game is "make game of the year".
• Every member of staff is the cream of the crop and will want to "make game of the year".
• Directives from the publisher/stakeholders will filter down the ladder through management and will say "make game of the year".

And what is a "game of the year"? A game of the year is usually something of bleeding-edge detail, design and artistic quality. It's something that the staff will often choose to stay very late to work on (see Neil Druckmann's quote on trying to stem crunch in Blood, Sweat and Pixels). They want this to be the best thing it can be and this fosters a high level of in-studio competitiveness and "this has to be the best" mentality.

And unlike TV or cinema or theatre (a better parallel is prose fiction), you can keep on improving infinitely. You don't have a few hours/days/weeks of "production" and then production wraps and you have a few hours/days/weeks of "post-production".

In a video game production and post-production happen simultaneously and have no upper limit, they can be improved on infinitely. As such more time you pour in RIGHT up to release date, the better results you'll see.

That's a simplifcation, obviously, but the brutal truth IMO is that to kill crunch you have to kill the "quality culture" and just tell people to not worry about their work beyond their contracted obligation. "I don't care if you can make this better - the perfect is the enemy of the good. Go home."

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Well put. As long as there is a possibility to improve or change things (for the better), people will want to take use of that. Also, games are massive undertakings these days, unless you're cranking out similar projects/games on a steady schedule, every new ambitious game will run into it's share of development issues.

 

[caylen]

Resourcing for games marketing is fucking hard - probably one of the hardest parts of the craft in my experience. Scoping out what's needed for promotion, organic vs earned vs paid mix & spend allocation, branding & voice, how you do it locally for (often) global audiences in each region, spinning up vendors (trailer houses, tv/print buys, merch, etc) for dates that are not final - it's a ton of work for known quantities & live services, and it's way more challenging for newer titles. Especially when you want the studio afforded every and all opportunity to make the best possible game they can, but also balance that with the "well, we should show some stuff now" needs that traditional marketing funnel models predicate.

Crunch can always be avoided, but regardless of developer or marketer (or even player), everything always comes down to how much runway your game launch is afforded. Crunch happens when you want to hit a milestone that standard rate can't handle, and that milestone often is defined by the runway (resources & time) the plan allows. Even when you have "crunch-less" games, great games marketing still needs time & context to get shit done the right way.

 

[RPTGB]

I probably could if I were versed in the legalese involved.

They already put out content updates and patches for these games for real life trades, stats, and all that stuff. Making a final update at the end of the year that includes modeling and voice work referencing the added rookies wouldn't change much.

They already sell the games digitally, so making "X Year" a digital based thing wouldn't change much either, other than needing a previous purchase. They could probably keep the old version on the market for a higher price longer since it would be a necessary component.

Games already have GOTY/Complete Editions, so putting one out for a sports title wouldn't change much. And if they're somehow contractually obligated to have a sports title out every year, then they would still be meeting that since GOTY NBA 2k19 is technically a different title based on console certification and ESRB ratings.

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Sure, there's a compromise to be made there, somewhere but I don't think it's quite as simple as that. I know with some of the (big) motorsport titles I had experienced development cycles on, that the timing of licensing materials appearing, rule changes, personnel changes...track layout changes, means that crunches would still be occurring.
The business, the market and the users all have to change what they want for crunch to be less of a problem.