Tons of high quality games were created with a lot of crunching and squeezing (e.g. pretty much all ID games). People think too much about 9-5 or 4-day work but

Tons of high quality games were created with a lot of crunching and squeezing (e.g. pretty much all ID games). People think too much about 9-5 or 4-day work but what is much more important is give developers the FREEDOM to create contents. Of course flexible work hours is part of the deal but more importantly you need a management that understands the business and refrain from imposing unreasonable deadlines or requirements. BTW I believe the best place for a game developer is something similar to ID before Activision. It's small and flexible, but not too small to develop big titles. Nowadays you might need some 50-100 developers for a big title but if you go over the number and/or go public the productivity and more importantly the focus is going to be lost.