It’s a vicious cycle, and I don’t think it was just that one studio trapped in it. I don’t (or at least don’t wish to) begrudge Epic for their practices, but I’d appreciate it if in their public statements about crunch they at least mentioned that they think it’s a bad thing and they try to minimize it. So far all I’ve heard is words like “necessary” and “intentional”, and when you’re in a position of influence like Epic is, this is dangerous ammunition to give all of the employers who don’t have the talent and processes setup to create games the way Epic creates games.

This may be going in circles… we both agree crunch is bad, disagree on some of the causes, apply libertarian principles to Epic’s use of it, and possibly disagree on the ramifications of Epic’s one-sided presentation of their views on the issue.

Mike Capps claims that Epic crunches intentionally so that they have less employees to split the profits among. The question that begs to be asked is whether they could find a way to make games of the same quality with the same number of employees. Are they even trying this, or have they resigned themselves to the idea that crunch is the solution?

On one hand, I know from people that work at Epic who have commented that yes, they are constantly working on improving their processes and that they have actually gotten *less* crunchy over the years. They have a lot of guys in the same boat as me, getting older, married with kids, etc., and that is only going to increase for them because they are always going to be looking for experienced developers as opposed to the “EA approach” of setting up in a college town and churning through idealistic new grads.

That said, why should we begrudge Epic for choosing to try to maintain a small, efficient studio structure where everyone gets a nice piece of bonus pie? They’re not misleading people or trying to trick people into working there for a fat bonus check, only to spring crunch on them at the last minute. They’ve actually got the guts to say it up front, which a lot of other studios don’t. Too many studios feel compelled to lie about their commitment to Quality of Life when what it really comes down to is they are stretched for resources and are one bad game away from going under. Just because a studio crunches doesn’t necessarily mean they’re complacent about it. In Epic’s case, I think they’re just able to be honest because they are prestigious enough that it won’t hurt them. Bungie, Valve, and Blizzard are all in the same boat, from what I understand.

There are always options but they are not always practical. Many of us like our jobs quite a bit, except for the crunch. Why give up the whole job if we can work to eliminate or minimize the crunch?

Sure, and believe me, I’m not advocating going to the nuclear option and quitting the first time you’re faced with crunch. As I said in my original entry, when you run into a situation that becomes untenable for you at work, you have the option of ignoring it, trying to change it, or making a job change. I suppose the last option is to do nothing but complain, and my view is that far too many people choose the last option. That said, changing a group’s culture is a very difficult thing to do, and one of the things I’ve tried to repeatedly reiterate is that crunch isn’t a single-source problem that can be fixed by management going “you know what, let’s stop abusing our peons today!”.

Just an example… back in the EA spouse days, if I recall, Erin and Leander felt trapped in their situation because of a signing bonus that was required to be paid back to EA if Leander left within a year. They didn’t have the money to pay it back, so Erin turned to anonymous blogging.

Understandable, but again — taking a signing bonus is a choice. Those are called “golden handcuffs” and there’s a reason that employers offer them (and it isn’t because they like giving out free money). They offer them BECAUSE they know it makes people more likely to stick around, everything else being equal. And, though it isn’t terribly relevant to this discussion, the way most people get around this is by negotiating with potential employers to pick up the cost of the bonus that was due the previous employer. If they want you bad enough, this is a no-brainer.

Perhaps it’s impossible to schedule a project correctly, I’m not sure as that isn’t my job. But it sounds like a cop out. If we crunched on the last project for 1 month, why not try to scope and schedule this project so that we finish 1 month earlier?

Again, why do you assume that we *wouldn’t* try and schedule appropriately the next time around? One of the biggest problems with the crunch argument is that many people base all their arguments on the fundamental idea that producers are amenable or at the very least ambivalent to crunch, and do nothing to try and minimize or curb it. Assume for a second that every producer did everything in their power to curb crunch, and studio heads realized that crunch was a big problem. Do you really think that would end crunch forever?

The reason I say it wouldn’t is because guys like Epic, Valve, Bungie, and Blizzard are all among the best in our industry in terms of employee happiness and retention, success, and constantly investing in improving themselves, and none of them have managed to solve this problem, despite generating BILLIONS of dollars of revenue for the last decade. And the reason for this is because they’re all studios that value product quality above anything else.

But the issue for me is… are we trying to minimize crunch? As a project, as a company, as an industry. If we’re going to hold everyone up to high standards of work and efficiency, we should seriously examine the causes of crunch on any project and avoid them on the next.

I tend to agree with you, but I’m something of a libertarian, I guess. Don’t get me wrong, I abhor the idea of studios who claim they don’t crunch, and then go into a death march a year before ship. Those places deserve to see their people leave en masse. But there are so many situations that don’t fit neatly into a black and white argument. Lots of fledgling studios simply can’t afford to hire enough people to pull off something ambitious, but they try anyway. Should we as an industry, tell them that’s not okay? If the guys working there know it up front and they’re sharing in the spoils of success at the end, I don’t see the problem. That’s not just symptomatic of the games industry; that’s pretty much the blueprint for any startup in any business, anywhere.

Personally, like I said, I don’t schedule crunch, and I don’t mandate crunch. But I know we will crunch on my project at some point. And that’s why I’m *extremely* flexible and understanding with my people early in development (and we do work 40 hour weeks. And beer has been known to be consumed on Fridays. Or other days that end with “y”). I like to think of crunch as a bank of goodwill, and it’s my job to make deposits in that bank before I ask for a withdrawal. If someone can’t or won’t give extra when I ask, that’s fine, and I don’t take it personally or blackball them, but I’m less generous with my deposits of goodwill going forward. It’s a two way street.

Thanks again for the comments, I’m a little shocked that anyone’s actually reading this

I have no doubt that Epic employees wouldn’t trade their compensation for better working practices, but isn’t this a false dilemma? Mike Capps claims that Epic crunches intentionally so that they have less employees to split the profits among. The question that begs to be asked is whether they could find a way to make games of the same quality with the same number of employees. Are they even trying this, or have they resigned themselves to the idea that crunch is the solution? If they’re not working at peak efficiency all of the time, it seems odd to suggest that the choice is solely between crunch and compensation.

The battered woman analogy is a little melodramatic, really. And it is almost always the best solution for a battered woman to get out, but it doesn’t make the choice any less hard. I guess I think people are too flippant with this advice, in general, when applied to game developers in crunch. There are always options but they are not always practical. Many of us like our jobs quite a bit, except for the crunch. Why give up the whole job if we can work to eliminate or minimize the crunch?

Just an example… back in the EA spouse days, if I recall, Erin and Leander felt trapped in their situation because of a signing bonus that was required to be paid back to EA if Leander left within a year. They didn’t have the money to pay it back, so Erin turned to anonymous blogging. Did they have a choice? Maybe, but I couldn’t face them and say they did it the wrong way.

Regarding scheduling, I think your view is overly pessimistic, but of course as pessimism tends to be it’s grounded in reality. Perhaps it’s impossible to schedule a project correctly, I’m not sure as that isn’t my job. But it sounds like a cop out. If we crunched on the last project for 1 month, why not try to scope and schedule this project so that we finish 1 month earlier? We’ll have more time for polish and a buffer to account for extended bugfixing or anything else that comes up.

Schedule and scope are intimately related, which I think you’ve pointed out. My requirement from production as a programmer is that they’re scheduling and scoping the project to the best of their ability. I think a lot of times if they are, crunch won’t happen very much. It probably still happens… the best project I worked on we crunched for a week. But the issue for me is… are we trying to minimize crunch? As a project, as a company, as an industry. If we’re going to hold everyone up to high standards of work and efficiency, we should seriously examine the causes of crunch on any project and avoid them on the next.

This is why Epic’s stated practice of scheduling crunch is so abhorrent to me. There doesn’t seem to be any assumption that they can improve their efficiency. They’re putting their trust fully in a tool that ideally would be reserved for emergencies. What if Epic runs into a problem they didn’t expect and didn’t schedule? Instead of their planned 3 weeks of crunch they may end up with months of it. Again, I’m not project manager, but it seems like bad practice to me, and when applied at GDC it sounds like bad advice.

Disclaimers: I also dislike Costikyan’s ranty tendency. I thought Rod Fergusson’s talk was 90% good (from the slides, I wasn’t there). And I fully understood Mike Capps position from the Studio Heads panel and get where he’s coming from. I like having this discussion… I just hope everyone understands fundamentally that if we can avoid crunch at all, we should try.

You unintentionally illustrated what I believe to a be a huge misconception about production when you said “the production department’s entire responsibility is to create… the schedule”. I believe I know what you meant, and I didn’t really get into this in my post because it could fill up pages of blogging, but in my opinion, producers should never be “creating” the schedule. The process of creating a schedule should be every bit as collaborative and iterative as the process of developing a game, and requires a lot of input from all disciplines to work.

Schedules are always off because estimates tend to be poor. Because it’s impossible to think ahead about every system and technical requirement up front. Because you can’t account on paper for what turns out to be fun or boring when it gets in the hands of a player. These are all risks that can be mitigated but never fully eliminated. Even when you have really kickass veterans and a well-defined product target that the team has made successfully in the past (because I’ve been in this exact situation), there will *always* be something that comes up.

Trust me when I say this can happen in the absence of any of the scenarios you mention above. I’ve lived it. As I mentioned in Myth #4, you *can* solve this problem. You can cut features, or just start out by being extremely risk-averse and stay ultra-focused. Neither approach is without significant drawbacks, however.

As far as Myth #5, I knew that would earn me some flak, but to answer your question, no I haven’t forgotten about the people who are laid off. I was one of them a few months ago. I don’t take the statement lightly, because I am acutely aware of the challenges that face developers in this market. However, even as I was preparing to apply for unemployment benefits, I was considering the options available to me and what I needed to do to provide for my family. Ultimately, I took a huge risk and had the opportunity to set up a new studio, where I was in a position to extend a hand to a number of great people I’d worked with before who were also laid off. So yeah, I know about that situation, and have probably done more to fight it than most.

The bottom line is that working in games *is* a choice, and I made the choice to get out of one industry and get into his one a decade ago. I believe every one of us bears a personal responsibility to ensure we have a backup plan. Nobody said it’s going to be easy, or that it’s going to come overnight. But if you want to ensure that you never crunch again, find a boss who will guarantee that. Work for yourself!

Game developers today have opportunities that are historically unprecedented in this industry. Between casual gaming, XBLA, and the iPhone, you’ve got three vastly different markets that each offer numerous ways to get started.

The battered wife analogy is a little melodramatic. Of course no one blames the victim, but ironically, most literature targeted at women in abusive relationships in fact urge women to leave and get away from the abuse. Applying your logic about the economic climate to this situation, we’d suggest that women in abusive relationships do nothing and wait for the government to save them! That’s the mentality of a victim, not of someone who controls their own life.

I do think we need to distinguish between what are legitimately abusive practices that should not be condonded (and I laid out my objections to Death Marching up front) and companies who have high expectations of their workers, and reward them accordingly. Epic is in the latter group, because unlike the vast majority of game development studios irrespective of their crunch practices, Epic actually shares ownership with its employees and people who work there share in the spoils of their successes. Ask the folks who work there if they’d be happier with 40 hour weeks at the cost of some of that compensation and see what they tell you. I have

It doesn’t matter what Rod Fergusson or Mike Capps believe on the issue. It’s certainly fair game for people to point out that the idea that great games require crunch is ridiculous and counterproductive. Most of us realize that extended unpaid overtime is harmful and potentially unethical on some scale. So when a company champions it while the rest of the direction of the industry should be to minimize it, we rightly cry foul.

You didn’t provide another convincing reason for the existence of crunch under Myth #2. Capps did make one good point, which I’ll paraphrase: if game developers are not motivated to finish work that has been reasonably scheduled on time, how is it not management’s fault for keeping them around? The production department’s entire responsibility is to both create and maintain the schedule, so when unpaid overtime needs to be wielded to stick to the schedule whose fault is it?

I see three possibilities. Either there was an unexpected event (death, illness, publisher meddling, massive change in game scope, etc) that forced the schedule to change in a significant way, or the schedule was unrealistic when it was created, or the schedule was not enforced throughout development. Two of those are ultimately production’s fault, though art, programming, etc are complicit in the third option.

Regarding “you have a choice”, have we forgotten about everyone that’s laid off right now? Can we all just quit and magically get new jobs where there is no crunch? It takes balls to say to someone’s face that they have a choice when you know nothing about their situation. Do we tell battered women that it’s their fault for not leaving? Sometimes the equation isn’t as simple as it looks on paper.

A few more insights on “what success looks like” in various phases would round it out and put it on a best seller list for game designers and software developers and project managers from all realms.

Good stuff!

David

I think I have one more to add, probably under the heading of management. Goes something like this:

Upper Management: You will use technology X.
Team: But…it’s not a fit for us, and best case, will cost us time. Worst case, this kills the project.
Upper Management: Sounds like something that’s not my problem. We own X, you will use X. End of discussion.
Team: Um, alright. (Shuffles off to work on resumes)

Gone through that twice, personally. The second time I was observant enough to see the end coming, and tired enough of fighting it that I just quit, pretty much on the spot. Turns out it didn’t really matter, as the company decided to put an end to development later on anyway (NCsoft, class of 2007), but it still ticks me off.

“No other time of the year is more jammed for retailers, buyers, platform certification gatekeepers, and marketing folk, yet the herd mentality prevails because we believe that increased holiday shoppers will lead to more impulse buys … which will somehow… more than make up for the fact that TEN TIMES the freaking number of SKUs are vying for those impulse buyers?!”

That’s the biggest point that NO ONE seems to have the balls to bring up to the people in charge of making decisions like this. And the lack of faith it implies is chilling, in its way.

I wish there was a publisher out there that had sack sufficient enough to simply hang on to a title for a month or two before launching it into the world instead of buckling and suckling at the shareholder’s teat because it makes the quarter’s numbers look better.

Frankly, that’s one aspect of publicly traded companies that I’ve always found deeply unsettling… a myopic focus on quarterly results instead of considering long-term company health and more mature perspectives on what makes projects successful.

Unless you have a ridiculous PR machine like Google that makes everything they do sound like a volcanic eruption of hot fudge sundaes, it seems like bowing under the pressure of a legion of armchair quarterbackesque groupthink is inevitable. Mirror’s Edge is just one of so many examples of that, and it’s sad.

You should post this other places.