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Crunch (video games)
In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours. It is often used as a way to cut the costs of game development, a labor-intensive endeavour. However, it leads to negative health impacts for game developers and a decrease in the quality of their work, which drives developers out of the industry temporarily or permanently. Critics of crunch note how it has become normalized within the game-development industry, to deleterious effects for all involved. A lack of unionization on the part of game developers has often been suggested as the reason crunch exists. Organizations such as Game Workers Unite aim to fight against crunch by forcing studios to honour game developers' labor rights.
"Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch a game on schedule. The complexity of work flow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video-game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within the industry by working long hours. Naughty Dog co-president, Evan Wells, argued that the drive for crunch may come from the developers themselves as individual developers may want to work extra hours without a mandate to assure their product meets delivery milestones and is of high quality, which can influence other developers to also commit to extra hours or avoid taking time off as to appear slacking.
Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. It stems from an emphasis that getting work done well and done quickly is more important than work-life balance or personal well being. Most of the problems with crunch are a result of the crunch culture that runs rampant and is widely accepted throughout the industry. In some cases, crunch culture is so ingrained in a company that leadership willingly exposes their teams' 100-hour work weeks as a sign of hard work and proof that companies are doing their best to release a game on time.
Some studios have made use of crunch hours over a period of months or years, rather than just in the run up to a deadline such as a game launch. This practice has been termed "death march", and is a particularly damaging form of crunch. Death march was present at Rockstar Games in the 2010s, including the final six to nine months of development for Red Dead Redemption 2. It was also present for nine months for Metroid Prime. The decline in game quality and eventual closure of Core Design has been credited to its extreme crunch policy, which saw years-long crunch periods. Developers undergoing death march have described sleeping at their offices and not seeing their family for months, while others have reported significant loss in body weight from the process.
Surveys from game developers in the 2000s showed the average working week was at least 46 hours for more than 60% of respondents; when crunch time occurs, workweeks of 60–80 hours, or in some cases, 100 hours or more, have been reported. This trend continues today[timeframe?] with developers still clocking in 12–14-hour days for seven days a week during crunch. Some of the biggest titles in gaming such as Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption 2 are the product of 70–100-hour work weeks. Terms such as "stress casualties" were coined at BioWare, the development studio for the game Anthem. A "stress casualty" is when an employee disappears for months at a time as a result of the stress that they are put under during crunch. In the case of Telltale Games, one employee recounts working until 3 am the night before they and over 200 other employees were laid off. The intense workload can partly be traced to a shift to a microtransaction model for games. In this model, the main game is free but add-ons and extra content such as skins that can change the character's appearance can be bought for an extra price. This emphasizes constant updates to keep creating more content so players stay attached which leads to perpetual crunch.
According to a 2019 survey from the International Game Developers Association, 40 percent of game developers reported experiencing crunch at least once over the previous year. Only 8 percent reported receiving extra pay for their crunch hours. At federal and state levels in the United States, computer professionals who earn above a set annual salary are exempt from overtime laws. This exemption permits companies to not pay developers for any extra hours in the office. The set annual salary varies from state to state. An exception is California, where software developers are specifically protected by a minimum hourly wage to be considered exempt, which as of 2008 was set to $36 an hour, though this tends to be lower than the average game developer salary. When games are created, strict contracts are signed between development studios and publishers that set budgets and deadlines for the project. Exemption from overtime laws enable studios to work developers more hours than usual without going over-budget.
Game studios also contract work out to cheaper contract workers. When this happens, pay and amount of work is settled on when the contract is signed meaning they are not entitled to overtime payment either. Contract workers are willing to do this in hopes for a full time job offer after the game is finished or a bonus upon completion if the game performs well, but neither of these are guaranteed and there is a good chance that they are left with nothing once the contract is up.
When crunch time does occur, the publisher or developer may help encourage employees by offering "crunch meals" that are delivered to the offices. Once a product is delivered, and the necessity for crunch no longer required, some companies allow their employees to take paid time-off in compensation for the overtime hours they had put in, or may offer salary raises and bonuses for successful completion of the delivery milestone.
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Crunch (video games) AI simulator
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Crunch (video games)
In the video game industry, crunch (or crunch culture) is compulsory overtime during the development of a game. Crunch is common in the industry and can lead to work weeks of 65–80 hours for extended periods of time, often uncompensated beyond the normal working hours. It is often used as a way to cut the costs of game development, a labor-intensive endeavour. However, it leads to negative health impacts for game developers and a decrease in the quality of their work, which drives developers out of the industry temporarily or permanently. Critics of crunch note how it has become normalized within the game-development industry, to deleterious effects for all involved. A lack of unionization on the part of game developers has often been suggested as the reason crunch exists. Organizations such as Game Workers Unite aim to fight against crunch by forcing studios to honour game developers' labor rights.
"Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch a game on schedule. The complexity of work flow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video-game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within the industry by working long hours. Naughty Dog co-president, Evan Wells, argued that the drive for crunch may come from the developers themselves as individual developers may want to work extra hours without a mandate to assure their product meets delivery milestones and is of high quality, which can influence other developers to also commit to extra hours or avoid taking time off as to appear slacking.
Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. It stems from an emphasis that getting work done well and done quickly is more important than work-life balance or personal well being. Most of the problems with crunch are a result of the crunch culture that runs rampant and is widely accepted throughout the industry. In some cases, crunch culture is so ingrained in a company that leadership willingly exposes their teams' 100-hour work weeks as a sign of hard work and proof that companies are doing their best to release a game on time.
Some studios have made use of crunch hours over a period of months or years, rather than just in the run up to a deadline such as a game launch. This practice has been termed "death march", and is a particularly damaging form of crunch. Death march was present at Rockstar Games in the 2010s, including the final six to nine months of development for Red Dead Redemption 2. It was also present for nine months for Metroid Prime. The decline in game quality and eventual closure of Core Design has been credited to its extreme crunch policy, which saw years-long crunch periods. Developers undergoing death march have described sleeping at their offices and not seeing their family for months, while others have reported significant loss in body weight from the process.
Surveys from game developers in the 2000s showed the average working week was at least 46 hours for more than 60% of respondents; when crunch time occurs, workweeks of 60–80 hours, or in some cases, 100 hours or more, have been reported. This trend continues today[timeframe?] with developers still clocking in 12–14-hour days for seven days a week during crunch. Some of the biggest titles in gaming such as Fortnite and Red Dead Redemption 2 are the product of 70–100-hour work weeks. Terms such as "stress casualties" were coined at BioWare, the development studio for the game Anthem. A "stress casualty" is when an employee disappears for months at a time as a result of the stress that they are put under during crunch. In the case of Telltale Games, one employee recounts working until 3 am the night before they and over 200 other employees were laid off. The intense workload can partly be traced to a shift to a microtransaction model for games. In this model, the main game is free but add-ons and extra content such as skins that can change the character's appearance can be bought for an extra price. This emphasizes constant updates to keep creating more content so players stay attached which leads to perpetual crunch.
According to a 2019 survey from the International Game Developers Association, 40 percent of game developers reported experiencing crunch at least once over the previous year. Only 8 percent reported receiving extra pay for their crunch hours. At federal and state levels in the United States, computer professionals who earn above a set annual salary are exempt from overtime laws. This exemption permits companies to not pay developers for any extra hours in the office. The set annual salary varies from state to state. An exception is California, where software developers are specifically protected by a minimum hourly wage to be considered exempt, which as of 2008 was set to $36 an hour, though this tends to be lower than the average game developer salary. When games are created, strict contracts are signed between development studios and publishers that set budgets and deadlines for the project. Exemption from overtime laws enable studios to work developers more hours than usual without going over-budget.
Game studios also contract work out to cheaper contract workers. When this happens, pay and amount of work is settled on when the contract is signed meaning they are not entitled to overtime payment either. Contract workers are willing to do this in hopes for a full time job offer after the game is finished or a bonus upon completion if the game performs well, but neither of these are guaranteed and there is a good chance that they are left with nothing once the contract is up.
When crunch time does occur, the publisher or developer may help encourage employees by offering "crunch meals" that are delivered to the offices. Once a product is delivered, and the necessity for crunch no longer required, some companies allow their employees to take paid time-off in compensation for the overtime hours they had put in, or may offer salary raises and bonuses for successful completion of the delivery milestone.