Yeah it is. The circumstances are too.

Let's assume that the team is 200 people, which is a very large team. That's 58 days of crunch. That is an unacceptable amount of required overtime.

Wasn't Ryse in development for well over 6 years? Is 58 days over 6 years really unacceptable?

Edit: That said, tweeting about it like it is something to be proud of is not cool.

7 years from what I remember reading.

And I don't think they were proud of it. I think they were just stating "Hey, look how long and hard we have been working on this game!"

It's tough to say what the purpose was other way.

But once again...more fun to jump on the soapbox.

Here is the thing. Apparently, due to some studies, people have decided that working long hours is bad. Apparently (honestly, I don't buy it).

So now anyone who is proud in working extra hard, proud in staying long and giving their all for a product they want to make as good as they can, is actually an idiot and is helping companies abuse all workers at all times.

This is what I am getting from most discussions about it anyway.

No, this isn't the opinion of most people. Most find that working overtime *because you want to* as perfectly acceptable. It's the mandatory, soul-crushing, constant, required overtime that people are complaining about. There is nothing glorious or righteous about crunch. It does not make the company a better product or the worker a better game developer. It's a mentality I wish the industry would grow out of.

It depends on if they were crunshing since the beginning of development or just during the final end of production.

But Crytek is well known for its crunch at the end of productions, hence the mediocre Glassdoor rating by its employees.

How about finding a new word then? For one of the two anyway.

Crunch, to me, in my current setting, is paid overtime, that happens almost certainly more than once during production and can go on for some weeks.

It also includes times when no crunch is scheduled, but I put in the hours myself because I want to, sometimes even more than the above mentioned.

And then there is the abusive, unpaid, uncalled for crunch that you are talking about.

There is nothing wrong with working hard. There is everything wrong with being told that unless you spend 6 months out of the year pulling 80 hour work weeks you will get fired. Overtime is, for the most part, not optional.

If you're such a harder worker willing to give your all to a work I really encourage people to make their own things. You will find it far more satisfying than being the most efficient cog in someone else's machine.

They crunched for a month and a half 6 weeks before e3:

http://www.polygon.com/e3-2013/2013/6/10/4395790/ryse-seven-year-
development

And that is JUST E3. I was part of a team that crunched for 5 months, 7 days a week, 12 hour days min, and it was horrible. It was a little bit better only because the people I worked with were fantastic. The studio went under 3 months later (Also, the CEO was never to be seen after 4pm on weekdays and not at all on weekends). Even after "crunch", some people made it weird that I wanted to come in at 9 and leave at 6, just because most everyone else was coming in at 11 and staying later than 6.

Anyways, crunch shouldn't be the standard. Some of you guys are trying to make it that way, which is ridiculous. Crunch SHOULD be a "Oh shit, we REALLY fucked up the schedule. We are stupid.", not a "Well let's choose this date for launch because we can always just crunch, even though this said launch date impractical."

@Nikolas: I would wager that many people are salaried and get no extra pay for their crunch time. Lucky you that you aren't salaried I guess?

@Tyler: Are you located in the US? In Europe you usually get paid for overtime in addition to your regular salary. As Crytek is a German studio my guess would be they pay for overtime.

I had no idea about the 6-7 year timescale, but it's absolutely frightening that there's a 6 years development schedule and the final product is forced to depend on 2 months of madness. Depending on the difficulties forced by the inevitable pressure of this crunching, that potentially means 97% of the work could be compromised by a hasty rush to a tiny install base.

I don't know the specifics but this reminds me of Perfect Dark Zero.

@Nikolas, the "some studies" you refer to:

http://www.danzpage.com/Construction-Management-Resources/Calcula
ting_Loss_of_Productivity_Due_to_OT_Using_Charts_-_Nov_2001.pdf

http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Munster/Industrial/chap17.htm

http://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appg.htm
(Temporarily down due to government shutdown)

http://legacy.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons

Also, you're correct, we should be distinguishing between "overtime" and "crunch."

Overtime, which is a component of crunch, is defined as working more than 8 hours in a day, and more than 40 hours in a week. (44 in Alberta.)

Crunch is the "sustained" application of overtime. That "sustained" differs depending on whom one asks, but we can safely say it encompasses "months," and possibly "weeks."

The studies above have shown that "overtime" is fine in small doses. A few days, a week, maybe even a few weeks, are actually beneficial to output. However, beyond that, productivity drops. And at 2 months, crunch reverses all gains and begins detracting from the project.

Finally, unpaid overtime is illegal in some places:
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC515-5.pdf
http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Glossary.asp?Button1=E#employee%20in%2
0the%20computer%20software%20field

Evan's IGDA piece, linked above, is really worth reading if one is interested in the topic. I also try to explore the topic (and encourage employee-driven change) in my blog:

http://gamedevgonerogue.blogspot.ca/2013/04/if-you-agree-to-crunc
h-youre-part-of.html

It's a nuanced subject, for sure. But once we define terms and look at data, there is no good reason to "crunch."

@Daniel:
There, that's more like it.

Of course I am opposed to crunch as defined in your post/sources. More than a few weeks at a time at most and yes, output will drop due to exhaustion etc. I get that.

What I have a problem with (and no, this is not an isolated incident but it happens often these days) is people complaining that the willingness to work overtime (again, as defined by your post/sources) is seen as a core problem of the crunch culture in our industry.

That's what I take issue with.

@Tyler:
Like I explained, differentiation and a clear definition of crunch/overtime is necessary. For me, crunch is what I experienced in companies before, but it was actually more the "overtime" as defined above, not the maddening crunch for a year things.

Having clear differentiation would help in this immensely.

Yeah, I am not even a little interested in it.

Outrage scapegoat dogpile. It's a common Internet phenomenon. At least this time, it was directed at a general company and product, rather than ruining some innocent victim like Adam Orth or Jennifer Hepler.

This.

The gaming industry is so used to this exploitation they don't even think about it anymore. The ones who do realize they're being exploited know that a 22 year old is waiting to take their job.

The game development industry is notorious for brutal crunch times, but throughout the software development industry at large, salaried employees are expected to work for as many hours as is needed to get the job done. I know this from my own personal experiences as I work in IT consultancy and even we see crunch times as code is prepared for delivery.

Crunch can happen for trillions of different reasons, and it doesn't always equate quite simply to poor management. Last-minute bugs may arise, code refactoring could scale up towards the end and demand more developmental resources, etc.

But I'm not defending the status quo, which in the game development industry equates to months of overtime and unhealthy crunch. I just wanted to put it out there, that crunch is pretty much guaranteed in software development, and for all kinds of wonky, insane, last-minute reasons.

It sucks, but it's just an occupational hazard of sorts.

Because you accept it.

I watched a "behind the scenes" video of the Lord of the Rings movies where the team was proudly discussing the ludicrous number of hours they worked. The team felt proud for having worked so hard, and fans think it's great that somebody worked hard to contribute to a great outcome. Same with doctors. Same with lawyers. Same with CEOs.

Why does the video game industry complain when those industries don't? Money and prestige.

@ Jay

Well yeah, if you get paid enough to make the life-lacking worthwhile then a lot of people are willing to do that. Not me, but a lot of people. A lot of businesses, high-level positions and industries work that way.

Correct me if I am wrong though, but I don't think the average game developer gets these benefits.

@Dane
If the message is "Crunch is evil (unless you pay us more)", then it's difficult to care that much about the outrage.

Crunch is evil even with the paid benefits because in the end it diminished the outcome over time (contrary to what people seem to believe). I think Brooks said it really well when he refers to the idea that throwing more people at a particular problem will solve it quicker/better.

Also, crunch over long period WILL damage your personal life. That includes lawyers, CEOs and whatever (which is why we have concepts like workaholics and people going to life coaches, marriage counselors, etc). Just because someone is greedy enough to not care doesn't mean I shouldn't care either. And it's not just a matter of priorities (as in some people prioritize differently), the more we educate people that work is better than personal happiness/self-realization the more the cycle continues and the less happy people we have (I guess you could model these kind of relationships in a game like sim-city or whatever and see what happens to your 'kingdom').

The idea in the end is finding a balance between work and personal life.

And finally, if a product goes into "oh shit we've got two more days and have only made 57% of it" crunching is not the actual solution. Either release what you have and work on as it is out, postpone the release or cancel the product and start fresh.

@ Jay

I don't understand why? People work for money right? Some people are willing to work a lot more for a lot more money. Most people are not willing to work a lot more for no extra money. Seems pretty simple to me.

I personally would never work crunch hours for any reason, but if some people want to for a lot of extra pay or prestige more power to them. In software development you are forced to work and don't get either. That's a problem.

I'm not sure if you've noticed the rate of experienced developers leaving the games industry but it isn't because of butterflies and goat-milk. And no amount of 'paid benefits' will solve this by the way. Providing a better working environment will, this includes no fucking death marches [ie. crunch].

A better working environment also includes many other things which are not really supplied by companies but that's a discussion for other posts.

Many of the games I idolize were born out of crunches and broken processes that cause some of its members to leave the team or the industry. Thief, Bioshock, Journey.

Kaizen may produce great Toyota cars, but the creative process does not always follow the same rules.

If you take a closer look at this sort of thinking, you'll discover that this isn't even correlation, let alone causation, unless you also take poor games whose developers crunched into account. All you can say at this point is that there's a development process that may produce both crunch and a great game.

I really dislike this kind of fallacy, because it reinforces the stereotype of a doomed artist. Well, I have two cats and a girlfriend, I come to the office at ten and leave at six, the flower pot in my window has a flower and not pot, and I don't drink, and I'm still highly regarded by my peers for my fertile imagination.

The naive development process that most studios use does not shield developers from crunching, and that's a fact. It's so because the process fails to take into account certain key dependencies that emerge in preproduction, but only begin to impact the schedule during production. The most common kind of project with a lot of crunch is a project that doesn't know what it wants to be until very late in its life cycle.

There's no excuse for not knowing your own creation. We just need a better process. If we can invent one that provides greater visibility at early stages of the project, then we can expect it to result in both less crunching and more creativity in games. This is the main reason why I'm advocating things like designated research teams that solve technical challenges posed by creative ideas before they become a liability.

@Jacek
Yes, there is no causation or correlation between crunch and game quality. My point is that lack of crunch shows no correlation or causation to game quality either.

Yes but it wasn't the process that made the game it was the people and as you said they've left...

Lol those games weren't "born" out of crunch, crunch can occur and does occur often on any project but those great games were the result of the strong processes and teams with proper management to insure quality all along the pipeline. If anything games which "over" crunch which indeed were born out of crunch, from which otherwise they would never get finished, those are the ones which garner low 30's in metacritic. Unless your celebrating those, i don't think u can use "crunch" as the definitive factor in making those great games.

" they know there are 100s no 1000's of people just chomping at the bit to take there place"

Maybe for junior level slots. Once you have a few years in the industry, some specialized knowledge... I doubt there are 100 people in the whole industry that can do what I do.