Develop Jury looks at both sides of the coin
Passion for delivering quality entertainment is just one of the many reasons that crunch and overtime exists, says this week’s Jury, as a host of developers explained how the issue is far more complex than what can be said in an anonymous inflammatory blog post.
In fact, David Amor – creative director of Relentless Software, a studio with a reputation for eliminating crunch and – was one of the first to express how complicated the issue is.
“I used to think that crunching would always have a negative effect on staff turnover and studio morale, but now I believe it's more complex than that: sometimes crunch will bring a team together, sometimes it's exciting,” he said.
“What I still believe though is that things become less predictable and more chaotic. It's hard to be sure that you're going to meet your milestone date when you're just past Alpha and already the team are working evenings and weekends.”
And Chris Kruger, an experienced developer who has worked for a number of studios, took a philosophical approach to the matter.
Advertisement
“To the company, the cost of crunch is very hard to define but any benefit at all is easy to measure. That's why it's such an easy decision to make for most companies.”
Kruger, who has worked on titles such as Manhunt 2 and GTA Vice City, did concede that crunch is “totally damaging”, though much more for staff than projects.
“An almost failed marriage in my case,” he said.
Team 17 Studio Director Martyn Brown made his views on the matter clear:
“Sustained periods of crunch in no way benefit projects, people or studios, increasing illness, stress and motivation,” he said.
Proper Games developer Andrew Smith reflected both views, stating that overtime can be “deeply damaging”.
Said Smith: “If you care about a game - and most of us get into the industry to make things we care about – then it’s so easy to do the odd late night to make sure you get what you want done properly and on time.
“The problem is that it gets out of control very quickly, and there are a multitude of ways it can cause damage.”
Smith also spoke of how console cycles and rapidly advancing technology will make a fully capable and confident team suddenly oblivious to the newest platform – another reason why milestones can be missed.
He asked: “How can anyone accurately predict how long a level will take to make with brand new tools that don't even exist yet?”
But the Jury’s majority view was that crunch is a problematic by-product of passion and bad management that, however, is somewhat understandable considering the tasks at hand.
Bizarre Creations’ commercial director Sarah Chudley and Assyria Game Studio MD Adam Green both said that crunch was - simply - the nature of the beast.
“I really can't see games, or other similar industries, being able to be produced without any sort of a crunch - whatever some studios might claim!, said Chudley, “because passionate and creative people want to utilise as much of the available time to make the best games they can.”
Cohort Studios CEO Lol Scragg said crunch was “an unfortunate necessity in this industry, as much as we try and avoid it.”
He said: “Even with great planning, strong project management and a dedicated team, there will always be situations where overtime is unavoidable.”
Meanwhile, Zoe Mode general manager Ed Daly called for studios to be more flexible to minimise crunch, while nDreams CEO Patrick O'Luanaigh said that excessive work hours for programmers can create as many bugs as they fix.
Hurray for Sarah Chudley and Adam Green, for doing their best to maintain the status quo!
At least now I know two companies not to bother applying to next time I'm looking for a change of scenery.
I have to agree with Andy P. You can always tell companies that have zero idea of business management. They use crunch as a crutch for their inability to assess and plan milestones. Using the excuse of "unforeseen issues" is sad. Anyone in the business world knows time must be included in the contract for these issues. I've seen it first hand when a management team is completely inept and the team suffers for months on end. It needs to stop!
Broadly, you're of course right Frank - poor management leads to bad crunch.
But I don't think Bizarre Creations’ Sarah Chudley and Assyria's Adam Green mean they specifically work their teams hard as Andy says - it's unfair to jump to that conclusion. (Although, hey, Blur did slip so who knows...)
Rather, the point was that passion and creativity doesn't automatically fit well in a 9-5 confine.
Studios need to accept that and then either plan and structure the work environment to strip away most other distractions - like those other 'crunch-free' studios. Or just pay for overtime when the unforseen crops up.
In fact, that's the devil's advocate question: would crunch be acceptable if developers were paid for the extra work they put in outside of the 9-6 office hours?
If you read the full quote based on what I said you will note that I think crunch is somewhat necessairy as it's not possible to entierly predict when bugs with appear in software development, but at the same time I did mention that it should not be "planned in" and crunch should only be used when the planned in contingency time is used up... So while I think it is sometimes necessairy... It deffinatally should not be the norm...
As a student programmer i've yet to find the regularity that i will hope to find when i move into the industry, that 9-6 working idea. ++
One thing i do know is that when i've got a good idea, or i'm working on something i enjoy, i will put in as many hours as possible to make it the best application possible.
I did hear something to the effect that was done at Epic for GOW2 (whether it's true or not i can't confirm) but they worked a system where you had to be in the office between 1pm-4.30pm and as long as you filled 9 hours a day you could work around that timetable, and you had to be out of office by 2am.
I think some of us certainly are at our best later in the day. i know i am.
Food for though
Those semi-independent teams backed in the long term by reliable steady income flows from bigger publishing companies live in a different world from the rest of the development community.
For those other less ecure development companies... if development staff REALLY care about the products they work on more than their social lives.... and if they are REALLY financially incentivized by their employers to pursue excellence in their work then crunch time/overtime would not be an issue... becuase the over riding motivation of doing the best work possible at all times would be top on those people's priority list.
If someone is stuck on an average to low wage with no prospect of any kudos or extra money coming from their overtime then of course they will complain if they are overworked. Simililarly if they are not really motivated by, or talented enough to do the work then they will also moan because their heart isn't really in it.
The solution has always been the same in games development.... fill your team with talented people who put their work first and fianancially motivate them to succeed.
Y'know I find it amazing that no one has noticed that games are never finished early?
All these enthusiastic, passionate people putting in these extra unpaid hours becuase they want to, but somehow never managing to finish early?
Odd that don't you think?
If indeed studios were able to plan timescales correctly, then crunch (ie extra hours worked for the passion/fun/enthusiasm) would produces games considerably quicker.
They do not of course!
This absued passion/fun/enthusiasm argument is nonsense, people do indeed work long hours sometimes for fun, but after a few weeks, months even years on end of late nights with no life outside of the office, it stops being fun.
Crunch is used by studios to get stuff done in absurdly finite amounts of fixed time with inadequate resources resulting in the forced, please let me emphasise that "FORCED", use of crunch, ie UNPAID overtime. Unpaid becuase the studios have fixed budgets they know won't stretch to the number of manhours the project actually needs.
I'd love to see a world where games came out early because these passionate enthusiastic people were able to chuck in a few all nighters due to their passion for the game!
But the reality is those many all nighters are caused by managment being unable to tell their paymasters that they can't fit a 3 years work into 2 in time for a predefined timeslot or be able to manage feature creep or resource allocation or handle a budget.
Not to worry, lets just find a few enthusastic passionate people, use them up, burn them out, let them go, and move on to the next death march project!
I've found crunch to occur when characters in management 'forget' to think with a sense of humanity and just the bottom line in the immediate term.
What I mean by this, is that promises are made, you're locked into a contract or promise, and you end up bent over a table with the choice of "quit the project and save my sanity, but have a CV that looks bad", or "ride it through to the end of the project, but live in a personal hell until then, just so my CV looks clean". If the project actually has potential, it's even harder to leave. With so many studios cutting back, it's even harder, as available jobs are small in number right now.
Crunch is increasingly likely when old practices of hiring upward, but not directly from discipline occur. Like when managers are promoted from younger roles like design or code and these people are not given training, they're just expected to hit the ground running without any technical training. It's even more likely if the studio has a culture of 'we have lots of time, so let's just squeeze as many cool idea into this', when there's no finish line pressure for any self-set (non-existent) milestones.
Two years later, the game has no direction, the shipping finish line is in site, and people are killing themselves to save their jobs, all the time knowing that management was at fault for a blaise attitude, no real sense of direction, and the dissented employees were right all along, but no-one would listen and others would not speak up as they were scared to get fired for "not being passionate enough".
Total and utter, inexcusable bullshit that needs to die.
I swore off big cos once I realised the status quo was not going to change, as it's far too convenient for accountants and accountant-style producers who only care that their CEOs are in love with them and their paycheck is taken care of.
So in short, I'm of the opinion that crunch is a product of the built-in, exploitation incentives of a capitalist economy, happily executed by sociopaths and lazy, nut-less idiots who need to be flogged in public for being inhumane sycophants without care for the guys who depend on them.
Crunch happens for several reasons:
1. Software Engineering as a discipline does not have a handle on estimating. Not in games, not really in any industry.
2. Games as a special case of software are even harder to estimate, because you've got to code for 'fun', which is elusive, and generally only found after much iteration, even then not always reliably.
3. The specific economics of the games industry means most developers are only a flop away from going under. This means that when the sticky stuff hits the fan, there's no wiggle room.
This is in contrast to more stable software domains. Microsoft went years late with Vista, big tech and big banks can afford to go years late with projects without instituting crunch. Games companies, because of the combination of factors above, often don't have that option, so they crunch to save themselves. There's also a cultural element (perhaps inculcated by the youthful, overwhelmingly male demographic inside the industry itself), as is made clear by the fact that even publisher owned, financially stable studios still seem to crunch.
How will this resolve itself? I think mostly by the industry median age gradually increasing, consolidation leading to a core group of stable publishers and developers, digital distribution and online games leading to developers getting more stable, regular revenue streams.
