Crunch Time Is Bad. But It's Unlikely to Change

[Something Amyss]

I mean, it's more than just "crunch time," but that's the current trending topic, so that's what people are talking about.

Working conditions in the games industry reportedly suuuuuuuuck, ad it's not limited to any one studio. The problem is, our complaints are kind of at odds with the sales of the games, and guess which the company hears?

Now, part of the problem is that your average gamer probably doesn't even know about these problems. In fact, I'd go so far as to assume most don't. I'd even go as far as to say it's borderline pointless to shake our fists at those who do, as if we could get everyone who was aware to care and it'd likely be a relative drop in the bucket for most game studios. Rockstar would still be swimming in their money bins because omghorsetesticleschangesizewithweatheramazing!!!!!!!!! and the hype train will roll on, unimpeded by the relative handful of people who get run over.

There are only two ways we see any real sort of change, and we've seen both in recent examples, but they require intervention from groups that likely won't intervene here. One path requires the Battlefront lootbox approach, which ended up with bad PR and was lightning in a bottle as far as I can tell. It was the perfect storm of a franchise randos care about and particularly egregious business practices. The other is legal intervention and...I mean, one of the major reasons the lkaw got involved in so many countries over this is the usual THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!! stuff that is behind most gaming legislation. The "problem" here is that it seems like many countries are slow to get involved in the kinds of activities involved--union busting,m poor business practices, wrongful termination in cases where it applies, etc--because "won't someone pleeeeease think of the workers?" never seems to have the same punch as "won't someone pleeeeeeeeeeeease think of the children?"

So...what do we do? Anyone who's tried to raise awareness for treatment of workers probably knows this sense of futility, because people don't even want to know, as long as they get their iPhone for 50 dollars less, or their cheap PC parts, or their...realistic weather-affected horse testes. I canb't believe that's a thing why is this a thing?

It seems borderline futile.

Anyone want to take a crack at talking me out of my defeatist attitude? Is there a probable path to change, or what?

 

[Xprimentyl]

Not quite sure I understand what exactly you?re railing at (which ?problem(s)? specifically?), but ?crunch time? is usually about satiating investors and shareholders, those people who front the money and are promised a finished product and return on their investment in due time; it?s not necessarily or entirely about a studio?s or dev?s intrinsic ethics or work practices. Shareholders don?t necessarily have the patience or love of the craft to wait another 6 months to a year or more just so everyone doing the heavy lifting is afforded a cozy 40-hour work week. Sad thing is, a lot of crunch time is spent chopping out chunks of hard work. I?ve watched a lot of development videos, and inevitably, each one has that moment near the end when ?crunch time? hits they itemize all the last minute omits and changes or talk about the blood, sweat and tears that ended up on the cutting room floor (to this day, I still wonder what Halo 2 would have been with another 3-6 months dev time?) Not saying it right, but it?s explainable: it?s not personal; it?s business.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

So...what do we do?

Continue to raise awareness, continue to encourage unionization, praise and buy the hell out of games whose studios don't do crunch, repeat. Not to mention the fact that crunch leads to worse products, because exhausted workers make more mistakes and take more shortcuts in their work, which is an argument that should resonate with the bigwigs as it means they spend more money and time in order to get a wore product.

Half the problem with crunch is that we do it to ourselves with a passion that makes us think "If My buddy in the cubicle next door is putting in 100 hours a week, I should do". If we can solve that, then we can move on the other half, which is the execs who demand crunch despite it being a terrible practice.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Well, deadlines are the source of it all it seems, but then you also kind of need those, I guess. I heard someone say that making it for that holiday release is where a lot of this pressure comes from. But then there's also games that get delayed, sometimes for like a year, and those still have crunch.

I don't know, games are just shit to work on it seems. Maybe over time aspiring game developers and programmers will realize it just isn't worth it, causing a servere lack of work force... at which point they just outsource it to China and India, yeah there's no solution to this problem.

The most practical answer appears to be unions, but then I'm not an expert on that or on why some people are so opposed to it. Or just don't work at Rockstar at the very least, since they've had bad press regarding employee treatment since Red Dead 1. Seek out the studios with the least crunch.

 

[Majestic Manatee_v1legacy]

Worker's rights in all industries require strength through unionising, my mother leads one in the pharmaceutical company she works at and it is usually a thankless position, making enemies of people who would much prefer their workers put up and shut up. People are regularly misinformed and dissuaded from the idea of union by, coincidentally enough, the very people who profit the greatest from the exploitation of their workers. The US is an unchecked capitalist paradise, so of course unions are heavily demonised there. Solidarity makes a workforce stronger. These problems run deep for too long. How gaming has avoided this outcry till now is beyond me.

 

[CaitSeith]

Anyone want to take a crack at talking me out of my defeatist attitude?

Nope. Because the solution has to come from the developers getting their shit togheter and taking control of their working hours.

it's not personal; it's business.

It's incompetent business. Bad planning and promising something beyond of the employees' capabilities by incompetent leaders leads to overextended crunch time periods. Giving priority to shareholders wishes over employees' well-being is one of the things that give corporations a bad reputation.

 

[jademunky]

In any other industry besides video-games, the need to resort to "crunch-time" means that you have completely failed as a project manager. You did not properly estimate how many hours the project would take, did not budget and assign resources accordingly and in any other self-respecting company, would be fired over it.

AAA developers have incorporated incompetence as part of their business model and it shows. The end result is almost always a buggy mess of a game that will have to have several rounds of patches just to make it functional.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

In any other industry besides video-games, the need to resort to "crunch-time" means that you have completely failed as a project manager. You did not properly estimate how many hours the project would take, did not budget and assign resources accordingly and in any other self-respecting company, would be fired over it.

AAA developers have incorporated incompetence as part of their business model and it shows. The end result is almost always a buggy mess of a game that will have to have several rounds of patches just to make it functional.

Yuppity yup.

My boss at Nine Dots said more or less the same thing (Minus your beautiful first line of Paragraph 2). Crunch is a failure of management, and it should NOT be celebrated.

On a related note, I drop this article nowadays anytime crunch comes up and hell if I'm not gonna post it now. [https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/14/outward-proves-you-dont-need-to-crunch-to-make-a-massive-rpg/]

 

[jademunky]

In any other industry besides video-games, the need to resort to "crunch-time" means that you have completely failed as a project manager. You did not properly estimate how many hours the project would take, did not budget and assign resources accordingly and in any other self-respecting company, would be fired over it.

AAA developers have incorporated incompetence as part of their business model and it shows. The end result is almost always a buggy mess of a game that will have to have several rounds of patches just to make it functional.

Yuppity yup.

My boss at Nine Dots said more or less the same thing (Minus your beautiful first line of Paragraph 2). Crunch is a failure of management, and it should NOT be celebrated.

On a related note, I drop this article nowadays anytime crunch comes up and hell if I'm not gonna post it now. [https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/14/outward-proves-you-dont-need-to-crunch-to-make-a-massive-rpg/]

Oh, you're working on Outward? That's pretty cool. I don't work in gaming myself but Outward has been on my radar for a little while now. (I'm a big fan of games with permadeath: Sunless Sea, Darkest Dungeon, etc)

*Edit* the "Defeat scenarios" sound like an interesting concept. Like waking up in the lair of some monster who dragged your still-living body into it's lair to "teach" it's children how to hunt and now you have a last chance to survive.

 

[Satinavian]

Over half of beginning programmers are gamers and would really like to work on games instead of boring stuff.
Most of programming work to do is not games.

-> bad salary, subpar working conditions

Otherwise, what i regularly read about crunchtime in gaming development is outright illegal in this country. That is not because of laws specifically protecting game developers, it is because of laws protecting all workers. The only horror stories i hear about game development here are from companies that are alrady failing and try to stave off bancruptcy until after the one last release.

 

[Pseudonym]

This seems like an instantiation of broader political problems. Specifically bad legal protection of workers or bad enforcement of those protections. The thing is, solving crunch is not hard for the companies involved. You just close the office at between 6PM and 9AM and in the weekends. Any company that still has crunch, should be seen as fully responsible for that. The best things to do are unionizing and working towards political intervention on behalf of workers.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Otherwise, what i regularly read about crunchtime in gaming development is outright illegal in this country. That is not because of laws specifically protecting game developers, it is because of laws protecting all workers.

Same in Sweden, if anyone tried to pull the stuff that American developers regularly do over here and they'd have the unions and Department of Workplace Environment over them in no time. DICE and Paradox have both gone on record about the fact that they do some planned crunch, but not nearly to the levels that US Developers do, simply because they can't due to labor laws and strong unions. DICE in particular have been open about the fact that management has to be much better at managing scope because they can't just push everyone into 60 hour weeks for months on end. And I think Pseudonym here pointed at the broader issue:

This seems like an instantiation of broader political problems. Specifically bad legal protection of workers or bad enforcement of those protections.

The US in particular has absolutely atrocious labor laws in general and very little recourse for individual or small groups of employees that get mistreated. Game developers just stand out because they are a highly educated and well paid group compared to the groups that are usually mistreated to this level (cashiers, waiting staff, janitorial staff etc.) and thus have better ability to speak out about it, not to mention a platform to speak out to in the forms of fans and journalists that are already interested in their work.

What the US needs are substantial labor reforms with increased regulations concerning psycho-social work environment and some way to strengthen and enforce the rights of employees. The mean way to say it is that the US needs to cover a century of ground and drag its labor laws out of the early 20th century.

 

[Xprimentyl]

it's not personal; it's business.

It's incompetent business. Bad planning and promising something beyond of the employees' capabilities by incompetent leaders leads to overextended crunch time periods. Giving priority to shareholders wishes over employees' well-being is one of the things that give corporations a bad reputation.

That was actually me that said that, and it wasn?t my dismissing the issue, but succinctly explaining it. I work in corporate America, and one thing I?ve learned is that whoever signs the checks, runs the show. What you call ?incompetence? is likely, in no small part, ?subservience.? A dev might go to shareholders and offer a realistic ?we can produce in 18 months,? and shareholders counter with ?you?ve got 12.? What does a dev do? As many of them as there are out there clamoring for a piece of the pie, it?s hard to take a stance and essentially demand the time and money necessary and conducive to the elusive ?great place to work? when the other guys behind him are all more than happy to take that 12-month deadline, any cash that comes with it and run themselves into the ground. Besides, as the adage goes: it?s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission; promise the 12-month completion, get the cash, and around month 10, when you ?suddenly? realize you?re 8 months behind, kowtow to the shareholders and beg for the extra time. It?s business; it sucks, but it?s how it works; it?s one of the uglier, shrewder heads of the hydra of Capitalism.

 

[Pseudonym]

This seems like an instantiation of broader political problems. Specifically bad legal protection of workers or bad enforcement of those protections.

The US in particular has absolutely atrocious labor laws in general and very little recourse for individual or small groups of employees that get mistreated. Game developers just stand out because they are a highly educated and well paid group compared to the groups that are usually mistreated to this level (cashiers, waiting staff, janitorial staff etc.) and thus have better ability to speak out about it, not to mention a platform to speak out to in the forms of fans and journalists that are already interested in their work.

What the US needs are substantial labor reforms with increased regulations concerning psycho-social work environment and some way to strengthen and enforce the rights of employees. The mean way to say it is that the US needs to cover a century of ground and drag its labor laws out of the early 20th century.

Amen to that. I recently saw some stuff about how amazon treats its workers. I don't think its just the US though. CDPR is in Poland and has the crunch issue as well and the Japanese have the reputation of a very unhealthy overwork culture, so I wouldn't be surprised if they do it too.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

The good step would be trying to convince people that crunch sucks, not only because it's sucking out will to live from devs, but also because it isn't an effective way to develop a game. Deadly tired workforce has a lesser chance of creating a quality product.
Unfortunately, and here's the crux, for many of those studios quality doesn't seem to be as important as deadlines.

 

[Something Amyss]

Anyone want to take a crack at talking me out of my defeatist attitude?

Nope. Because the solution has to come from the developers getting their shit togheter and taking control of their working hours.

it's not personal; it's business.

It's incompetent business. Bad planning and promising something beyond of the employees' capabilities by incompetent leaders leads to overextended crunch time periods. Giving priority to shareholders wishes over employees' well-being is one of the things that give corporations a bad reputation.

It?s not so much incompetence as it is indifference; they just don?t give a shit that people are sweating blood for them. The only thing that will truly change it beyond legal encroachment is the willingness of them to put themselves in those people?s shoes for one of those crunch periods, and really absorb how it affects them and their families. If that doesn?t change anything, then hopefully karma will someday. Even better if it?s when they least expect it.

 

[BreakfastMan]

So...what do we do?

Organize. Actually organize, not in a bullshit online activism way. It has been down before, people know how to do it.

 

[Something Amyss]

it?s not personal; it?s business.

It's shitty business with diminishing returns.

The extra shitty thing about crunch time that people rarely talk about is the move to "live service" models for aaa games means that crunch time never ends

There's always a dlc

Always a patch

Always a new piece of content coming down the tube that needs to be crunched

It's bad enough working a couple 100 weeks once every year, but now it's every month and yet people still defend it

Unless they get fired.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Game devs need to unionize. There's no other way.