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Some have been wondering why I’ve been a little quiet about the current crunch culture debate, so let me be clear:
No game - NO GAME! - is ever worth sacrificing the health and well-being of your employees for. That is an immovable fact for me and many others.
No game - NO GAME! - is ever worth sacrificing the health and well-being of your employees for. That is an immovable fact for me and many others.
I’ve said this before though and I’ll say it again: I love that we are all talking about this so much more, but I also find it unhelpful to trample on individual studios or people in this discussion instead of addressing this from a cultural perspective.
Be critical of studios and individuals for sure - the cultural aspect I mentioned is influenced by each of us and making an active effort to make crunching culturally unacceptable is important. Talking about why we crunch and how it’s often addictive for people is important.
We are highly exploitable people because we love what we do, because the camaraderie of crunch is addictive, because the emotional investment is high. It’s less a situation of being chained to our desks and more about being too deep in it to see what’s happening to us.
I’m not talking about who does or doesn’t deserve awards because of crunch because I don’t think it’s helpful and I’ve seen how it hurts people and I don’t want to inflict any more harm on workers in this industry than we already do.
From where I stand, shitting on these studios and people does not actually do anything...
We need worker’s rights, we need cultural shifts and we need to deal with how we release games. Yes, backlash and gaming culture plays into this stuff too.
We need worker’s rights, we need cultural shifts and we need to deal with how we release games. Yes, backlash and gaming culture plays into this stuff too.
So, again... No game ever is worth sacrificing the health of employees under no circumstances.
I just think our road towards that is a combination of cultural shifts and focus on workers, not award discussions.
I just think our road towards that is a combination of cultural shifts and focus on workers, not award discussions.
A weird and maybe not obvious part to the solution by the way - in my opinion - is to get rid of our obsession with release dates. Announcing years before release is not a good strategy in my opinion, puts lots of pressure on the timeline and builds huge expectations.
I should clarify...
I do believe failure in management where people had to crunch is very much a thing. I’m just saying that people are less threatened into crunch and more coerced into it because we are asked to be passionate, because everyone does it, etc etc
I do believe failure in management where people had to crunch is very much a thing. I’m just saying that people are less threatened into crunch and more coerced into it because we are asked to be passionate, because everyone does it, etc etc
