That's true. EA is so hated as a company but many people still think that it's a horrible place to work when it's actually not only one of the best but there's many benefits, great salary and better conditions.
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Devs tweeting about their games that were made with no crunch.
- Thread starter Captain of Outer Space
- Start date
That's true. EA is so hated as a company but many people still think that it's a horrible place to work when it's actually not only one of the best but there's many benefits, great salary and better conditions.
Seconding this—in an industry where Rockstar was working 100 hour weeks, what's "relative"? It could mean 50 hour weeks for a couple of months, but it could also mean way more than that. I mean, every improvement counts, but...
Intelligent Systems has a schedule in their site as well:
https://www.intsys.co.jp/recruit/oneday/
Work starts at: 10 AM
Lunch at: 12AM
Work ends at: 19PM
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Good Feel isn't as close to Nintendo as HAL/MonolithSoft/IntSys, but just for reference, here's their official working hours for most positions:
http://www.good-feel.co.jp/recruit/career/programer/
Start: 9:30am
End: 18:15pm
Just wanted to chime in here and say I found your story really enlightening. Thank you for posting the link!
Not to say anything about those companies, but the listed hours means nothing. Those are just standard work hours, and I've actually worked at places with those same hours that crunched the hell out of us.
Having known many people who have and currently do work at EA Tiburon, I promise you that this is not true. The ones that still work there do say they've been "trying to make things better", but it is definitely a crunch heavy developer.
I think Bungie prides themselves on being crunch free, idk if that changed but so far I havent heard any news about that.
Oh yeah, I was just giving the info related to his post as he said he didn't know about the others.
That's what I want to know as well in regards to Nintendo as during Iwata's tenure he banned overtime and told his employees to go home, I wonder if that changed after his passing.
The insomniac revelation doesn't shock me. This was years ago now but I remember seeing an article about them being one of if not the best places to work in the game industry. This was one of those articles that judged it based on employee treatment and benefits not game quality. They've always seemed like a really great place to work at.
Isn't the biggest reason for crunch about management trying to meeting a deadline to match their intricately designed marketing schedule which often involves multi-million dollar ad buys, publicly disclosed forecasts, and retail sales plans that can't be whipped together and changed without incurring incredible costs?
How do you make huge games with these restrictions without crunch? The opportunity cost of AAA projects versus the games listed in the OP are completely different situations.
It's cool to see people speaking out against it though, so hopefully labor abuse will be limited or stopped.
How do you make huge games with these restrictions without crunch? The opportunity cost of AAA projects versus the games listed in the OP are completely different situations.
It's cool to see people speaking out against it though, so hopefully labor abuse will be limited or stopped.
Bungie has had problems with crunch in the past. This article says they've tried to eliminate it. I wonder if they truly managed it.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-04-bungies-13-year-battle-to-kill-crunch-culture
It's sounding like it varies quite a bit within EA. My team didn't but, I know other teams did on the same game.
Yeah I did a google search myself and I'm glad to know that I wasn't just crazy!
And if we're going to be honest with ourselves, Insomniac probably does some crunch. It's the AAA video game industry after all and sometimes you gotta hit deadlines. Even the Shreier tweet says "relatively crunch free." But if you generally treat your people well a bit of crunch isn't the end of the world (is it?). If one week out of 52 is full of long nights is that so bad if the rest of your job is awesome? I don't know I guess that's debatable but at least it seems like Insomniac is one of the good ones.
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I would guess it also goes beyond management from just one department. Every level has to be on the same page.
Thanks, I didn't know that IS and others had their schedule like that as well.
Yeah, that makes sense. I thought the same that a normal schedule is that but a crunch one is completely different. Still, it's the only information that we have.
Yeah, I think they mentioned they did, as Halo 2 almost killed them. Though upon further research apparently Destiny 2 was the first game they released with no company wide crunch. It took a long time to move away from crunch culture.
I mean, RDR2 was made in 8 years WITH Crunch. GTA6 will likely be made on a similar period and also with crunch. Rockstar is a studio with all of it's studios working in one big game, unlike in the last two generations where they had much more than 1 game per gen.
If you have thousands of people and an insane budget and basically perfect management: maybe (but it would still be a very long dev cycle)
realistically: no
No worries! Best of luck with everything you do. As an artist with a huge personal project I'm trying to accomplish within the next year I know what it's like to feel immense pressure and work yourself to an unhealthy state. I actually did this to myself last year. Now I'm taking care of myself more. Please take care of yourself as much as you can :).
"Relatively crunch free"
Lol
Kind of like Samsung bragging that it has "relatively slave labor free" smartphones compared to Apple
Congrats?
Relatively crunch free might mean the worked overtime for a week or two, or like 'hey our deadline is next week, can everyone stay a few hours late on Friday?"
Yeah, it's not great, but I think most adults understand that there's a difference between situations like that and 'hey everyone is living at their desk for multiple weeks in a row every year' and there is a huge swath of possibilities in between.
This shit isn't black and white.
If crunch was the difference between an 87 game and a 96, I wonder how many gamers would still speak out.
I sure like Ratchet and Clank games, but I bet review outlets would have rated them higher to validate my own opinions if only the developers had put their health and relationships at risk while they were making them.
Valve is beholden to no investors or publishers. They are entirely independent. They set their own timelines. There is very little to no pressure with regards to release dates. They are not afraid of canning projects if they don't work out before ever seeing the light of day, or pushing back release dates.
But in the absence of pressure from deadlines, there are plenty of other pressures specific to their culture as a company. I think it's possible to work long hours and not be miserable, just like it's possible to mostly stick to a 40 hour week and feel pressured by other aspects of work.
It's like they've never bothered to do productivity analysis studies or listen to anyone else in the worlds studies on it. Because the appearance and culture around it is just so damn inflexible.
Does it? How many of the 90+ rated AAA games didn't have crunch?
They know, it also decreases salary expense. Who wouldn't pay 80 people's salary for 100 people's work?
None. And don't believe that Insomniac bullshit for one minute. Wardour Street had a war room up until the Monday after release.
No. How do you know that? You're basing your assumptions on what exactly? Dan Houser only said the writers had a few 100 weeks this year. No one knows what was happening during the 8 years nor do we know the hours of other employees.
"Relatively crunch-free" and "no crunch" are two very different things. It doesn't sound like there was a lot of crunch, sure, but some is still more than none.
Yeah, sorry, wake me up when any AAA developers add their games to this list, because as of right now it's not saying much.
I agree. That's what I'm making fun of...bragging about being "grey" lol
I mean, it's a journalist who is saying he knows a few people who told him Insomniac isn't as bad as Naughty Dog and Rockstar...not something to start jumping up and down and patting on the back about, imo
it's not something I can disclose at this moment due to personal reasons. Sorry.
Also to those arguing about the lack of AAA or large scale games without crunch: that just means these games should not be made, and this business model is not sustainable. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't buy them though
They are widely known for it, though, I think. It's not exactly a secret.
From 10 years ago. We don't know how it is now. RDR2 had a very long dev cycle and got delayed multiple times.
Well the other thread has examples of people getting burned out from GTA V too. And the glassdoor reviews, yes it's not exactly a real metric we can use since it's not vetted, but nonetheless the score for various Rockstar studios are just baaaad.
Almost every article ignores that salaried employees that crunch get compensated after crunch rather generously, at least from my video / animation background perspective. The Starlink EMEA team I worked with are done for the year, back in February, for what is essentially 3.5 months paid leave. So do I feel sorry them having to work extra hours the last two months? No.
I dunno, probably a handful. My point is that you don't have to create a AAA monstrosity in order to make a good game these days. Crunch is symptom of greed and poor planning.