Sarah Chudley of Bizarre Creations is wrong. Quite often crunch is forced upon staff because the studio leads are unable to accept what is possible and reasonable within the agreed timescale of developing the digital product.

Studio leads who continually insist staff add features and refine tiny elements of a product to try and get 'one step over the opposition' while disregarding the overall schedule and scope of 'the product' are shortsighted and risk developing unbalanced mediocre products, reducing the value of their IPs, and at worse pulling down complete studios.

Historically you'll see this has happened many many times in the games industry. It needs to grow up.

wow, I'm not always so cynical, but there's a lot of content riling me up on here lately...

Crunch time is bad management pure and simple. A little crunch here and there (and by little I mean the odd few extra hours) is fine, but 7 day weeks for 2 months is just insane exploitation. I don't understand why anyone stands for it.

I think Danny Bilson has a couple of options. He *could* delay the release of the game, send folk home and let them rest, see their families, etc., based on what he's witnessed.
Or, he could continue being a massive dick.
Let's see, eh?

So they can't move the release date because the game has to come out and shift units just before the end of Financial Year 2010-2011.

Talk about rubbing it in peoples faces, I don't know anything about the situation at hand but 7 day crunch for such a long period of time is simply bad management. Take a look in the mirror for god sake.

Crunch at independent studios is generally the result of a nasty publisher demanding more features than the budget and time allows. It's that simple. So long as indie developers are tied to publisher milestone payments, this will always be the case. I've seen and heard of publishers simply ignoring the development contract and refusing to pay a milestone because they unilaterally have decided to change milestone and deliverable definitions. The developer has no choice then but to buckle under. This needs changing. Crunch won't go away until it is.

Agreed with all the above. I'm currently in 'crunch' at the moment. The last 6-8 weeks have been mad, and I have another 4 to go. Usual working day 9 am -9 pm or whenever. Usual week 6-7 days. No project management and no planning or direction from the powers above will result in the usual bad end product, which the punters will take back or moan about because of the unfinished features. I'm looking to get out of games, as the last 3 years have been the worst I have encountered in my 12 years worth of experience. Life can't go on the backburner anymore so the CEO can afford the latest Porsche.

I'd love to see some hard figures on the impact of crunch time, though due to the nature of game development I guess it's hard to quantify.

I'd be willing to bet good money that it actually reduces productivity (not to mention morale as mentioned earlier), which actually goes completely against the supposed point of doing it in the first place.

People aren't machines and to assume that more hours = more productivity is just naive.

What's the point in crunching at the end like this? The team will be doing their worst work at the time when they need to be doing their best. Presumably THQ have invested a pile of cash in this project, so why risk all that being wasted by rushing the project at the end?! It's appalling man management, and reflects the usual attitude that developers are factory workers, whose passion will somehow allow them to work on in impossible conditions.
As Wilbur rightly commented, milestone abuse is rampant, I doubt the team is responsible for this mess, unrealistic and shifting milestones are most likely to be the cause. It would seem that either features need to be cut, or the project needs to be extended. That would be the appropriate project management, but clearly that's not the chosen path. Exploitation is the chosen path.

It's amazing that publishers push and push for their own list of features without ever seeeing that as shifting the goalposts, and without ever acknowledging that those decisions mean an increase in budget or development time, it's always the developer that has to go the extra mile to get the job done.
I highly doubt that the developer at this stage has any clarity of thought, or any remaining vision for the game, they probably just want the damn thing finished so they can go home and sleep. Is that the ideal attitude for a creative industry? I doubt it. It's the attitude of a sweat shop industry...

What's unbelievable to me is that Mr. Bilson tweeted like it was some sort of feather in KAOS's, or THQ's, cap. I would expect such a juvenile mindset from a kid new to the industry - "look how hardcore these guys are!" - but from him? It...'s absolutely embarrassing.

@Danny Bilson: Seriously? You're proud that your employees are working MANDATORY 7 day weeks? Make it stop.

Danny Bilson is ex-EA. Having worked at EA for a decade, I can tell you that they think crunch is normal, expected, and you're not being a good executive if you're not squeezing every last drop of blood out of your team. Bilson has taken that to THQ. Or maybe it was there already. It's an industry problem, and why I'm not recommending my kids go into the industry, even though one of them would be very good.

Apparently Bilson is going to shut Kaos down when Homefront is done, I wonder if they'll even get severance for all their hard work"

You're all right. I know I'm just adding another voice to the song, but when crunch time is ordered then the project has failed.
A lot of developers will happily hang back in the evening to fix something or to improve a feature that they know will benefit the game, anyone worth their salt in this industry has that kind of pride in their work. But once time is lost on a project for whatever reason it CANNOT be made up.
Working a team past their maximum productivity threshold will just lead to silly mistakes and hacks that will only prolong the development once it goes into QA.
As one of the 'middle management' I often get furious at the upper management and publishers for their blatant lack of regard for the people who are making the games (and ultimately their MONEY). It's absolutely impossible to manage a large project when you have tired staff with no belief in the schedule and then be asked to make one more unreasonable request of them.
No other industry would accept this kind of behaviour. It's neither big not clever.
But the publishers have the developers over a barrel on release time. They book the shelfspace with the retailers in advance - so if the product's not out on time it ends up in the bargin bin and everyone's wasted their time.
This industry is long overdue for a wake-up call to grow up. It happened to the financial industry, we're next!

(thanks, I feel better now)

THQ doesn't know how to manage AAA titles, and hearing things like this makes me think that they have no internal means of plotting a course to making them.

My own time in the THQ machine was well rewarded, but it was ultimately not worth it; unrealistic goals and demands of persistent presence of the workforce really did make the products worse than they could have been.

I'm one of those people, though, that said, "no, I'm not coming in this weekend." I wish more people in the industry would do that, even if only once in a while. I have no problem with working hard or working extra hours, but good products come from passion and self directed crunches, not from mandates on high from corporate suits who go home at 5pm.

Either your organization allows you to find and express your passion, or they think they can give it to you by "mandating" crunch. Perhaps clearly I think one is valid and one is not.

(A side benefit of refusing to work 7-day weeks and even taking entire weekends off while crunching is that your bug count will be lower than that of your comrades and you will finish your work before them. You end up looking like a superhero since you now have the energy to help them finish their work! Of course studio management won't see it that way...)

Although publishers do sometimes abuse their advantageous position (they certainly seem to be in this case), I think the role of lead members at the studio are all too often overlooked.
A poor producer will over promise, over stretch the team and then fail to manage the project making crunch inevitable.
A poor designer will increase your work ten or hundred-fold by having your endlessly try and fix and iterate what is clearly a flawed concept from the beginning.
A publisher also often has experience of releasing far many games than your studio yet their advice often isn't heeded till too late in the project.
Although crunch at my studio is nowhere near as bad as what's going on at Kaos, I'm still grumpy and I feel it's been internal failings that have caused it and would like to highlight this is sometimes the case.

Ignorance and a willingness to enslave others for personal gain dies so very slowly even in the face of well established facts. If you are in any sort of management or you are managed, give this presentation: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html

Remember: It doesn't have to be this way. And it can be better if you change.

take care
Danc.

THQ's new logo looks deceptively like being trapped at your chair and desk for half of infinity (symbol).

Seriously.

There is now even an iPhone app for that:

http://www.tavshande.com/crunchtime/presskit/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crunchtime/id378679888?mt=8
http://www.tavshande.com/crunchtime/

Crunch is nothing to be lauded, as everyone else here has said far more eloquently than I am able. I do think crunch happens in any creative industry to some extent, if it has people passionate about what they are making. This usually takes the form of self-enforced overtime to make something that much better or to get a really excellent feature into the final product. Even in that sort of situation it should be a management imperative to make certain that these individuals don't let their passion burn them out and negatively impact their work and their personal life. That is good management, and clearly tweeting mandatory multiple month crunches is not.

The worst part is that even when crunch "works" (i.e. the game is successful), even when compensation is in place to pay for that kind of investment, it isn't worth it, and it only gets worse the older you get.

Unfortunately, there are companies where crunch is seen as a loyalty test, a chest-beating macho penis-size-proving activity that proves you love your job and are "passionate" about the product. Being in the office and being crunched is proof that you are working very hard for your bonus.

And because you love your job, you won't mind that crunch is built into the schedules. Just don't dare have a family or outside commitments, though.

Unfortunately ethics or goodwill or even good management wont counter the bottom line.

Until some one is injured or killed in an accident that can be directly attributed to fatigue or mental illness caused by crunching it will continue. A serious lawsuit based on a tragedy thats bound to happen ( I personally know of a couple of people who have had close calls due to fatigue or stress ) will turn things around because the financiers wont risk their cash on that sort of liability.