3 ms·
This is a very kind question. The long answer is I'm not sure. Crunch time is driven by the fact that making games is one of the coolest businesses you could be
by pizzathyme 2y ago
This is a very kind question. The long answer is I'm not sure. Crunch time is driven by the fact that making games is one of the coolest businesses you could be in, which means everyone wants to do it. Supply is overwhelming against limited demand and it's winner-take-most. There are hundreds of games released every day.
In that environment, who rises to the top? It's the studios who are willing to make it their life's purpose to make the best game possible, which means 70+ hour weeks. What they produce is awe inspiring but it's a sweatshop.
I literally interviewed once at a game studio that told me, "You will not do well here if you have a family." Kudos to them for being upfront about it. A friend who took their offer told me they expected him to work Thanksgiving and Christmas day.
- bitmasher9 2y agoIs this also true of European and Japanese game studios?
- johnnyanmac 2y agoEU will still crunch, but they have much better holiday scheduling. I was always jealous at Unity on how the EU branches would take an entire month vacation as mandated by their national law. Much harder to layoff but not impossible. EU's been hit a bit by the last year and a half as well. Japan is on a whole other level of "crunch" however. Not in the case that they rush last minute (but it's not unheard of, far from it), but in that the regular is 60 hours a week, along with any "workplace activities" that take place after work. They will almost never have layoffs in the tradiional sense due to their labor laws, but they have kind (very big severance) and creative (isolate you from the team to do useless busywork) ways to make people quit if pushed to that point.