Crytek Brags About Tons Of Crunch Time | Feature Creep By Tarmack
30Crytek has bragged on Twitter that by the time Ryse ships they will have served more than 11,500 dinners to the development team working crunch hours. So let's talk about crunch, let me know how you feel in the comments below, but first my opinion. I'm Tarmack and this is Feature Creep.
It was a really weird tweet that came out of Ryse developer Crytek. They claimed in almost a boasting way that by the time Ryse ships, 11,500 dinners will have been served to the dev team. The implication is obvious but for those not familiar with game development, I'll explain. And to try to add what credibility I can, I worked on contract at BioWare during the crunch period of Jade Empire prior to launch and had a number of friends who were a part of the voluntary yet expected extra hours. I remember eating the brought in dinner with them sometimes when I was staying late hoping to do extra work and potentially land myself a permanent job.
The game industry much like other software developers as well as other industries works under a series of moving goal posts called milestones or deliverables. The contract that exists with the publisher will outline various deadlines for certain aspects of development including but certainly not limited to words like Alpha or Beta that you may be familiar with. Each milestone will have a checklist of criteria that is either met or in default as of a particular date.
If the developer has planned their project poorly either to due lack of experience or things like the title of this show, Feature Creep, certain teams will experience Crunch throughout the development of the game. Crunch is more prevalent at the end of the project when the only milestone left is to ship, but it certainly happens at other stages. Crunch in a very practical sense simply means the devs are working a ton of hours that they rarely if ever are getting paid extra for. We're talking 60-100 hour workweeks but only getting paid for your original 40. I'm certainly aware that other industries do this as well, but that doesn't make it right.
Unfortunately the industry over time has become such an employers market that this is not just commonplace but occurs at pretty well every developer. It would be silly to be surprised when employers can fill vacancies so quickly because so many gamers out there have dreamt of making video games for a living.
It raises obvious questions of business ethics of course but also of practicality. A 60 hour work week drops productivity by around 25% according to numerous studies so you can only imagine how useless a team is after 80 or 100 hour work weeks for a month or longer. The whole thing is done in the name of producing a quality produce, but the longer and harder people are worked, the worse that work becomes. It stands to reason that crunch can logically harm a product because none of the otherwise exceptional devs are working at anywhere close to 100% of their ability, but it's all ok because we'll have a great launch party with an open bar. And that's not even considering the very real damage this has done to relationships and friendships.
It's perfectly clear that whoever is managing the Ryse twitter account meant to try to showcase how dedicated their team is to creating a great game and I would never try to claim otherwise. However, when the alternative is to quit and find yourself new employment after so many people dream of being able to make video games for a living it quickly turns into a statement of how a company is instead abusing their employees which makes the whole thing take a sour turn. Whoever thought that bragging about the amount of crunch time done on a game was a good idea should probably spend some time in QA just prior to release because they've obviously never been subjected to it.
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