Crunch has been around for a very long time. It's actually weird and eye-opening to me that someone hasn't heard of it! :D
In the mid-2000's, "EA Spouse" was a good catalyst for change, but I feel like it's regressing (or has regressed) back to where it was. (Disclaimer: I am not a professional game developer.)
I'm also assuming that similar crunches happen in other industries with deadlines, but as the video gets around to saying at the end, lack of unionization in the game industry sets it apart (pros and cons of unionization aside.) Done right, unionization would be amazingly good for workers in the game industry. As a game player, you might expect game prices to rise as a result, but we could also get more quality games.
The sexism addressed in the video is somewhat of a new topic though; it likely existed before, but in part wasn't as prevalent because women in the industry were rare. Pay disparity between genders was a bigger topic, and probably still is.
p.s. Watching that video is also the first time I've actually seen any Fortnite gameplay. :P
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Maybe "crunch" is more prevalent in certain industries like tech? I have honestly not heard of that word used in any other industries before. Overtime yes, but not crunch which I think can be summed up as extended and continuous unpaid overtime that went overboard? The way they described crunch sounds like it borders on torture, both mental and physical.
In the mid-2000's, "EA Spouse" was a good catalyst for change, but I feel like it's regressing (or has regressed) back to where it was.
I have not heard of that before. Will be doing some digging on Google, thanks! :)
For those interested: https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-EA-Spouse-controversy-all-about
p.s. Watching that video is also the first time I've actually seen any Fortnite gameplay. :P
Oh no! Did I accidentally turn you into a Fortnite convert? :P
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Oh no! Did I accidentally turn you into a Fortnite convert? :P
Ha, definitely not. If nothing else, I think seeing the gameplay cemented my position that I'll never play it -- it looks like every other generic low-poly 2010-era MMO, without the personality that games like TF2 had. Gameplay-wise... it's probably more ineresting, but only if you have time for it.
In the old days, crunch happened because publishers set release dates, and the developers then had to push hard at the end of the race to get the game done in time. Bonuses were often on the line, and in the late 90s and early 2000s crunches were becoming longer than humanly reasonable. Many games were no longer being made by tiny dev teams, and larger teams meant larger budgets for publishers to worry about, which meant games were often pushed out the door to retailers before they were really ready.
Before project planning techniques like Scrum and Agile, everyone was focused on Milestones. If you didn't hit your milestone, there was a good chance your game was getting cancelled. For each milestone, there were often mini crunches, and then a final longer crunch just before the game shipped. Three months is not a crunch -- that's terrible and inhumane working conditions.
And it wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was almost a badge of honor, and if you've ever found yourself "in the zone" with a passion project, you might understand how some developers could even enjoy it as they were able to spend an extended period of time immersed in their work. It became a problem when it was commonplace enough to be an inferred requirement and a quality-of-life issue.
No good project management team should ever have to crunch, but in game development, there are always unknowns that cause delays, and if there's a deadline, it often seems inevitable.
(Again, disclaimer: I'm not a professional game developer. "Game Developer" magazine was one I often read back in the day though, and developer-centric things like crunch also hit consumer magazines like PC Gamer.)
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Thanks a lot for explanation! Cleared up a lot of the confusion I had regarding crunching.
I'll also look up the PC Gamer article on crunching. Same goes for the Kotaku article mentioned in the video. Looks like I have some more reading to do :)
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I don't think there are PC Gamer articles in particular that I remember -- just that the development side of things, including crunch, could be mentioned in their reviews, etc.
If you really are interested in more in-depth reading, Gamasutra is the parent company that used to put out Game Developer magazine, and many of their old articles that give a good historical background on the topic are still available online, for example...
From 2004: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130438/manager_in_a_strange_land_crunch.php
From 2008: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132112/not_everyone_feels_the_crunch.php
...as well as articles about the issue as it continues today.
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Wow, this issue dated back to 2004? That's insane!
Thanks for the links :) I've learned something new from the 2004 article - "death march". This term sounds more applicable to what the host described microtransaction as... an endless crunch.
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Honestly it's not even about cost, it's about profit.
I'd rather pay the price I pay for products or services because people who provide them or make them are well compensated than to make sure the company can spend millions on advertising, perks for CEOs, VIPs and shareholders.
Unfortunately we are now living in a system that prioritizes people who do not participate in our economy instead of the people who make it happen.
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Awareness is the key to solving this I think. The video mentioned about getting enough gamers to care about games workers to lean on game companies to unionize. It's probably naive of me to say this but maybe once more gamers know about the terrible conditions the developers of their favorite games had to go through, they'd care about the issue enough to voice out.
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It's probably naive of me to say this but maybe once more gamers know about the terrible conditions the developers of their favorite games had to go through, they'd care about the issue enough to voice out.
I don't think it's naive. I think even if a lot of gamers wouldn't care, and some would even disagree, some will also learn about it and care enough to speak out to the companies concerned. Raising awareness is never wrong, even if you're only reaching 10% of the people you're talking to.
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I don't know about game developers in particulars, but devs in general are often not considered very well / underpaid.
Which is funny, because companies keep complaining they have a hard time finding them. Or at least, good ones. It looks like they'd rather waste months trying to recruit under market value and throw money at silly "perks" that noone really cares about (like "teambuilding trips" - sure, I want to spend my vacations with coworkers!), rather than increase salaries a bit and/or offer perks people really want (like remote work, or just a fair amount of free time). Meh ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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I don't know about game developers in particulars, but devs in general are often not considered very well / underpaid.
I had no idea! I have always thought that tech pays pretty well - as good as an engineering job maybe. The host did mention something about game developers being exploited, through insane crunches, because of their passion. I wouldn't be surprised if we later found out that game developers are also greatly underpaid, like most developers in other parts of the tech industry are.
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I've worked in jobs related to software development for a long time, including a short time in games development 15-20 years ago, and, in my experience at least, "crunch" isn't solely a problem of the games industry. Unpaid overtime also isn't solely a games development issue; in my career I've worked anywhere from 38 hours to over 70 hours in a "normal" salaried (i.e. fixed-income) work week. I've also worked many "all-nighters" and unpaid weekends, both in games and other software jobs, before big deadlines.
In Australia, at least, the much-touted "Fair Work Act" says that every worker is entitled to work reasonable work hours, but then goes on to say that "reasonable overtime" (with no requirement that it be paid overtime) is allowed. I don't know if similar statements are made in other first-world countries, but I expect many less-advantaged countries are much more open to worker abuse. Even here, though, the definition of "reasonable" may be very different for those working the overtime than it is for those demanding it.
I did find my experience in games development working on an AAA title to be slightly worse than the other software engineering positions I held before and after it, but probably that was more about remuneration than the hours. I was paid less for what amounted to basically the same work (with the same experience and knowledge required), and expected to work more hours and be happy about it, because "Hey, it's games!" After the big crunch time before release started winding down and I had time to look for work I ended up finding a job with similar responsibilities, but not in games, and got a 50% pay rise by leaving. The work hours were slightly better, but not hugely so, but at least I was paid more for my troubles. I never went back to AAA games (and I never received the promised free copy of the game I worked on, either -- bastards!).
Edit: I meant to add, I'd like to think the games industry has changed in this regard in 15-20 years, but I just don't know if that's true.
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Thanks a lot for sharing. Some indie devs once told me that they went indie from working at an AAA games company because they wanted to create a game that's more "them" than simply being a small cog pushing forward a game for a franchise (a beloved game franchise but still a franchise nonetheless). They have never mentioned anything about crazy crunches or anything similar to it... um well, maybe it's because of the NDA they signed as mentioned in the video? Did you have to sign something similar when you leave?
That being said, it does sound like the games/tech industry hasn't really learned much from past experience/s >.<
I never went back to AAA games (and I never received the promised free copy of the game I worked on, either -- bastards!).
Dang... they could have at least send you that free copy to make up for all those crunch sessions they put you through. It's still probably not worth it but that's really the least they could do >.<
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Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLAi_cmly6Q
I have to be honest - As a gamer, I have very little idea what the games I love playing really cost and I'm sure I'm not the only one. In fact, I've only started learning about this thing called "crunch" after watching a video game-related documentary a few years ago (I think it was about the rise of indie games development or something similar, and that "crunch" was mentioned only briefly), and unfortunately, I have not given it much thought until now.
That being said, I'm not a game developer and have not worked at any of these big game companies before, and frankly speaking, I'm still in that "disbelief" state of mind... do these game companies really just hire a bunch of devs just to "crunch" them down to their bones and then drop them once the game is out? There is a part in the video where a developer mentioned that he hasn't been home for like 3 months during a crunch. Is it really that bad?
I'm sure there are tons of game developers here on SG who probably have experienced what the host talked about in the video and I'd really like to read your stories, experiences and thoughts, especially about the "unionizing game workers" solution that the host has mentioned in the video.
Hopefully, this thread might also help to shed more light on the stuff that goes on behind the games that we are all so passionate about, and if it is really as bad as I'm starting to suspect that it is, then maybe we gamers should start caring about the working conditions of the very people who toiled day and night for the games that we enjoy playing.
P/S: The video touches on the other dark sides of the video game industry as well but the labor issue is something that's still relatively new to me (and maybe to many other SGers). Hence, the focus of this thread.
P/P/S: Feel free to share any other resources that may help to educate people/me on this issue.
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