Crunch Culture in the Game Industry
A lot of people have been talking about crunch culture in the game industry from a moral angle. I wanna take a more utilitarian angle. My background: been in the game biz since ’96, worked everything from 2D kid games to AAA open world. I’ve done the 100 hour work week. My past 15 years have been at ArenaNet where we evolved an anti-crunch culture. Mid-sized studio with lots of sub teams, so it’s not 100%, but the difference between my previous experience (and that of my friends at virtually every other studio) and here is huge. I tweeted that fact the other day and got an interesting range of responses, which I’d like to now parse through the lens of incentives and systems. If that sounds abstract, it will become clear as I go. I’m going to bucket the replies I got into the following categories… 1: This is why your games suck and your studio is unknown. 2: Your studio has other problems [so your opinion about crunch culture is wrong?] 3: Crunch is good because it dem