Three Shameful Revelations of Video Game Crunch From an Insider
So why is “crunch” happening?
As a producer, I’ve kicked people out of a game development studio at two in the morning since that was the “rule.”
I’ve slept under my desk, sitting up in a chair or on a couch waiting for a build to “pop” so I could get it to QA (Quality Assurance) to test to see if the critical bugs were gone.
While waiting for this build, other game developers were killing time to see if their fixes would hold.
I felt like Bill Lumbergh from “Office Space” when I broke it to the team that their families would need to wait for the sake of the game.
Working late hours and weekends weren’t an isolated week or incident — this cycle could go on for weeks or months in a game development studio — and it’s called “crunch.”
Crunching at video game studios is back in the news again, with crunch being reported at CD Project Red to complete their game Cyberpunk 2077. With the new Xbox Series X and PS5 console generation games released, the fans don’t realize that many of the games they will be playing had developers crunching to ensure the game gets out.
Crunch is terrible for morale, the studio, and its employees — but why do studios keep coming up in the news with stories that they are crunching their staff?
Video Games Are Complex And Usually Are Full of Scheduling Pitfalls From the Beginning
The first question regarding crunch is usually regarding the project’s management and scheduling — was it scheduled correctly and if not, what happened?
I was a video game producer for 14 years and shipped multiple video games that I crunched on — did this mean I was a lousy producer and couldn’t schedule things correctly? Did it mean that I had no concept of development time? Was I not being the ScrumMaster who said “no”?
The actual problem starts at the contract stage — unless your studio is independently wealthy or a game developer who works for themselves — the studio usually has a contract with a video game publisher.
At this point, the studio’s producer and management staff are putting out a “best guess” when the game will be shipped with milestones that take place every four to six weeks and have payments attached to them. The typical video game project at AAA quality usually takes three years. The studio is required to forecast what will happen and what development on the game will take place. If you are a launch title or dependent on a fixed date, your risks go up exponentially. If you are a startup studio, you commit to building the game while staffing up, which means you need to hire that person to make the feature before you can deliver it.
I used the word forecast since it correlates to a weather forecast — on the day you look at the weather forecast before leaving your house, the weatherman is relatively sure what will happen. Still, if they forecast out a week, their predictions get more ambiguous. What if that weather forecaster tried to forecast the weather for three years and sign a contract to deliver that exact forecast?
You can see where the problem starts in game development — the studio is under a deadline to deliver a game based on a three-year “forecast.” Even sports games have milestones and need to be on the shelves by a specific date yearly.
The pitfalls start at the beginning since a video game is complex, and new technology is always moving ahead. If your game is a sequel or a sports game, you can build on a pre-existing structure, but the fans are always looking for “bigger, badder, and more badass” version of the game. These demands lead to compressed timelines, which lead to crunch.
The solution may be to add more flexibility in the schedule and adopt a less rigorous plan, or there is an incubation stage where a more accurate timeline can be built.
Game Publishers And Game Developers Are Attracted to the “New and Shiny”
Three years is a long time from when the contract was committed to the game’s release date. Moore’s Law states that microchips’ capability and speed were supposed to double every two years, and a very similar thing happens in video games. Several new games are released every year, and a video game publisher watches the trends and usually finds a couple of new items that are “the new shiny.” In my experience, once the publisher requests these new things, the developer needs to go back to the schedule and add these features.
The “new shiny” becomes feature creep, and the production team needs to balance out the requests to ensure the delivery. Still, the “new shiny” features need to be added to the existing workload, which usually leads to crunch.
Game developers within the studio — whether it be the game design team or the staff of artists, producers, and engineers — usually have ideas on improving the game from looking at games released by their peers. It usually leads to a snowball effect. The simple tasks become more extensive and begin to divert their workforce from the tasks already assigned. Crunch is sometimes “self-mandated” by the developer who undertakes these tasks since they are added to the daily workload. Game designers and producers may also add to work to improve systems to match what is already in the marketplace.
A good practice to avoid this is if a studio uses scrum and can add and remove tasks from the product backlog. Every addition is a tradeoff with another feature — however, specific tasks aren’t the same length of implementation time or equal in staffing — so this may not work as expected. I’ve also run into scenarios where the requestor (publisher or management) is unwilling to compromise on the task and needs to be done with the current workload. Again, it’s a recipe for crunch within the studio. There’s no clear answer on how this is resolved unless the parties are willing to compromise.
The Game Studio’s Survival May Depend on Crunching
When a game development contract is signed, the game studio commits to that publisher’s agreed period. Usually, there is a clause that the development studio cannot work for another publisher. Unless the studio is large enough, the manpower would be lacking to launch a second project anyway.
As mentioned previously, the publisher pays out on milestones, and this acts as a checklist for their production team to sign off on a developer payment. If the features are not complete, then the development studio may not get paid until the milestone items are finished. The pay gap is additional stress on the studio since most are on regular payrolls and may not have enough cash cushion to wait a couple of weeks to be paid.
To ensure the milestone gets paid, the studio then needs to crunch to reach the milestone completed, but this could lead to an ongoing crunch cycle since the milestone fulfillment requirements get more difficult as the game progresses. This is due to multiple features in the game coming online and QA testing all the elements, and uncovering all the bugs in those additions.
Shrewd financial management is a must when dealing with game studio finances to avoid becoming dependent on milestone payments. But few game developers have a financial background or can hire a professional who is an expert in financial matters when the studio needs to fill its ranks with engineers, designers, and artists.
Closing Thoughts
I’m not a proponent of crunch — the employee and the game studio suffer in that environment. It’s a sensitive subject that most studios do not touch on until they are in the thick of game development, and the next milestone is looming ahead — so crunch is implemented. The most outstanding studios could have the best intentions for their employees, but when the sand of time runs out of the hourglass and the game needs to ship — old and bad habits are easy to fall back on.
