WEBVTT

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there are a few things more exciting to gamers than the launch of a hotly

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anticipated new title but even with on sale dates announced far in advance

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you'll hear tales of development studios having to delay their launches or

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forcing their employees into something called crunch time in order to hit a

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street date but what does crunch time consist of and why does it even happen

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development crunch is when programmers and other employees have to put in extra

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hours at work in order to meet a deadline if you're working in another

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field like law or sales where time sensitive projects are often the norm

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then you know this isn't a new concept but development crunch has made

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headlines lately in mainstream media as video games have exploded in popularity

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in general but even in the gaming world the modern history of development crunch

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goes back at least to 2004 when the spouse of an ea employee famously wrote

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a letter detailing how crunch time workers were on the job for 13 hours a

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day seven days a week without even being offered any additional compensation

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or time off even now 100 hour work weeks

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are not uncommon in the development world during crunch time with one

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infamous example being how telltale games laid off a couple hundred

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employees right after some of them were on the job until three in the morning to

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finish working on the walking dead but why have crunches that demand so much

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from workers become so common well the difficulty studios face from getting a

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game out on time comes in part from how many moving pieces there are from the

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technical side of things to art and design to testing together these mean

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that delays in any one part of the studio can have a ripple effect down the

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line for example a small bug in the game's code may not become evident until

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it causes problems for other departments that rely on that code and oftentimes

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identifying and fixing a bug is a time-consuming process and because game

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design is so collaborative it becomes tricky for the folks who work on games

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to push back against crunch time business practices unlike a traditional

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blue collar field like manufacturing where there are typically bright lines

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between workers and management the fact that game studio employees are expected

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to be creative problem solvers blurs those lines especially as game companies

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much like other tech firms tend to have go-getter cultures in which workers

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often feel like they have to keep up with the most dedicated employees lest

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they be seen as low performing many folks who work in game development tend

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to be relatively young and have flexible schedules so although crunch time is

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unpleasant these employees might feel that their employers won't have much

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sympathy for them wanting to use their free time for non-work purposes if a

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deadline is looming and obviously there's nothing wrong with working hard

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or expecting employees to do so but many are concerned that the development

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industry has taken this concept to an extreme especially as mistakes tend to

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pile up when workers don't have enough time to rest or pursue other activities

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since coding requires a high degree of concentration that's harder to pull off

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when you're stressed or sleep-deprived but development crunch

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can result in an on-time release instead of months after the promise date so

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despite calls for change that include everything from a labor union for game

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developers to closing legal loopholes that allow companies to refuse paid

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overtime crunch remains a common

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practice in the industry because the business model of many studios has shifted away from cranking

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out lots of separate titles and toward concentrating on a few popular

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franchises and profiting off continuous dlc releases consumer demand for

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frequent game updates is quite high meaning studios are always fighting

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deadlines this pressure on devs to keep up with their competitors also means

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11th hour requests for changes are common from management which often

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require more crunch time the good news however is that with more attention

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brought to the issue a number of large studios have begun to explore ways to

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reduce the burden of crunch time in the meantime though if you happen to

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know someone who works in game development a little emotional support

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