Crunch Wasn't Enforced On Borderlands 3

@gatsbythepig: That was my first thought too. It's real easy to imagine from the rhetoric of the headline that what they mean is, "We don't enforce crunch, but when it comes time to evaluate our hires we value those with the greatest drive and commitment to our brand, and this will be reflected in terms of individual employment moving forward." ...Or, "We're not forcing anyone. But anyone who doesn't won't have a job next week."

That's what the rhetoric of the headline leans on for me, but thankfully I don't get that impression from the article itself. I'm fairly sure the negative conotation of the headline was unintentional (and surely not just sleazy clickbait, either) but in the future, I really hope they'd use an actual and not misleading quote, like, "We are not a crunch studio..." Same headline, clearer rhetoric.

@gatsbythepig: The media have approached this completely wrong. There is very little wrong with crunch, it's only when the crunch is "forced" upon those that don't want it is where issues arise. Some people are workaholics and love the crunch, and they should be allowed to do this unless it starts impacting their health. Obviously, the real solution is better planning and managing, because you can't afford to have days where nothing gets done only to have to make up for them later on in the dev cycle.

Any development cycle where 90% of the game gets done in the final few months means that many things went wrong in the first few years and that needs to stop. That means lead/creative directors need to spend more time in the pre-planning stages of the game and figure out for sure what their vision is before committing. Too many creatives tend to just start the process having zero idea and then hope like hell something gets formed 5 years down the track. That may be fine for a single artist with unlimited time, but not for a large team that have deadlines to meet.

@jusstadrop:Oh please Uber driver tell us the ways of the world....

The problem is, as I sit in a film studio creating graphics for shows you'll be watching in six months, the work of a creative professional is never done until someone decides it is, which is a vague finish line at best. It's not a pallet of boxes to move, or inventory to check, it's doing countless revisions on things because people see you as a 24/7 resource they can keep piling work onto because they know if you say no you can be replaced, and you know it too.... So they can keep you at a desk doing the same thing over and over and over again until it resembles their creative "idea" and fuk any plans you might of had that night/week/year.

Crunch is not life, Crunch is a tactic used by management to push out products/shows/games quicker at the detriment of the workers and it's why creative industries are pushing back so hard on it. You just have no idea what you're talking about.

I work 12 hour days minimum by guild rules, I don't know a single person that works 60 hour manual labour jobs, 8 hours is standard unless you're in North Korea.

And anyone working a job with no set hours is doing it illegally, or selling weed. In which case can they set me up with a half O after I finish my 14 hours desk job shift?

@jusstadrop: Actually, as someone who has done both types of jobs, physical labor is much easier psychologically to work more than eight hours a day. Desk work is pretty draining mentally, which is strangely more taxing than being drained physically for me.

That said, I don't think crunch is good in any industry long term. If someone has ever worked a full time job, there are times where overtime is needed. It's when it is long term overtime that things get bad. I'd say if you are working 60 or so hours a week for more than a month, it's maddening. I've done that working two jobs, after two weeks, I was ready to quit both. But there are people who are workaholics and they enjoy that stuff, but they are generally the exception and not the rule.

Edit : I do agree that physical jobs do seem to shrugged off or not mentioned. It is draining of course, but I find desk jobs worse for overtime.

@Thanatos2k: lol, a little encouragement slap never hurt anyone right?

@videogameninja: Haha, I do think long term crunch is bad, but any full time worker knows sometimes your employer needs you to work overtime.

@Barighm: So that's why Breath of the Wild took so long to make lol.

@Barighm: We agree with you, but the investors can't be bother to give a shit lol. If the game turned out to be a piece of turd and underperformed, they will just pull out and invest in other things. Most investors never care about long term planning or reputation of the company or shit like that, they just want their money, and fast.

@Barighm: Remember, November and December provide a lot of sales (certainly more than 1/6th), so companies often try to push games early in time for the holiday season.

Of course, they could simply delay it until NEXT holiday season and spend the extra ten months giving the game extra polish and bonus features, but companies don't usually do that (especially smaller ones that may not be able to afford waiting ten months).

@Barighm: Everyone has a boss... when they set an agreed date for a product to be released those guys in the higher up offices mean it. Otherwise developers suffer some penalties.