UK Demo & Sampler Snippets #4: Halo 3 Essentials Disc Documentary - Git Ta Werk: Behind the Crunch
0For several years now, the prolific nature of crunch in the game industry has been a hot topic. While Cyberpunk 2077 and Anthem and their crunch stories have been forefront, it's worth noting that chronic crunch is not a new thing.
By the time Halo 3 rolled around, Bungie already had a reputation for heavy crunch periods which had already been documented in the Halo 2 making-of documentaries. But it was in this documentary included in the Collections Edition of Halo 3 that I first became aware of 'crunch' and witnessed it behind the scenes at Bungie during Halo 3's equally torturous development period.
There are no high-quality versions of this documentary online or on Youtube and I wanted to archive it for posterity, now having the means to do so thanks to my new Elgato capture card from my 360 as the disc will not play in regular DVD players. It's heartbreaking to see that even before the era of upper management mandated crunch, passionate people were already putting themselves through a harrowing and family-breaking crunch, even sometimes proudly, considering it as 'battle scars'