Crunch is a serious issue for the entire video game industry. It's only made worse by the idiotic treatment of unhealthy stress and unrealistic deadlines as a b

Crunch is a serious issue for the entire video game industry. It's only made worse by the idiotic treatment of unhealthy stress and unrealistic deadlines as a badge of honour. In fact, rumours about the terrible way game studios treat their employees, along with a brief firsthand glimpse of it during a summer job, is the reason I didn't immediately go into the game industry after graduating. Despite the fact that I had dedicated myself wholeheartedly towards pursuing a career as a game programmer ever since I was a kid. After 3.5 years working on the development of surgical simulators, I finally took the plunge into the game industry. It's one of the best decisions I've ever made. When I first started working at Ghost Games (an EA studio) I heard a lot of horror stories about the crunch of the previous project. What made me put this aside and take the job was how everyone at the interview spoke sincerely about how crunch is a bad thing, the damage it had done to the studio and all the ongoing efforts to ensure it wouldn't happen again. In the end, the project I joined (the reboot of Need For Speed) finished without anything which could reasonably be called a crunch and I only had to put in a few hours of overtime, including one Saturday. This made me feel so relieved and I'm now looking forward to a long career in this field. Of course, EA has a history of crunch as bad as the next game company, but there is a strong feeling that they've realised that it's a problem and they are doing everything they can to mitigate it. It's simply not good for business to burn through talent at a rapid pace and build a reputation for ruining people's lives.