This is on point and similar to my experiences in game companies. That said, I'm in music/audio, and from my side of the fence there seemed to be a sort of hig

This is on point and similar to my experiences in game companies. That said, I'm in music/audio, and from my side of the fence there seemed to be a sort of higher respect from management for programmers (and to a certain extent, art) in that they really tried to slowly ramp up their crunch and not keep it sustained for too long. In my experience, the truly crazy crunch tends to be borne by audio and QA. Audio is hardcore, Naughty Dog being the most hardcore (but they wear this as a badge of honor and everyone who works there knows it before going in).