By James Batchelor

The term 'crunch' instantly brings to mind visions of developers sleeping under their desks, working throughout the weekend, desperately trying to meet a deadline that seems impossible if restricted to regular business hours.

In our interview last week, Bulkhead CEO Joe Brammer said crunch "is subjective" – so, as the debate around working practices continues, Knowledge asked a range of developers for their own definitions.

Vlambeer's Jan Willem Nijman described crunch as "institutional overtime, either mandatory or culturally expected [and] almost always a failure of planning." He also noted that the reality is different for self-employed indies compared to those at a larger studio.

"I can enjoy an occasional evening or weekend day of work when I'm feeling the groove, but if your boss tells you you're working four hours extra each day for the next couple of months or the game is not getting done – that shit destroys mental health, relationships, people miss milestones with their kids, etc. On top of that, the work they do will be worse."

"When it's months at a time, it's definitely crunch.”

Simon Davis, CEO and founder of SecretSauce Labs (formerly Singapore developer Mighty Bear), says: "When it's months at a time, it's definitely crunch. Once you cross the four-week mark, it's no longer about hitting a specific deadline. It's more institutional at that point."

One UK studio head, opting to speak anonymously, believes crunch can be "an overused term."

"I experienced crunch working on Battlefield and I've never seen anything like that in the industry since," they explain. "It is soul-destroying, it breaks teams – no sane person or company would think it is a good way to make games."

However, Davis is among those who note that, no matter how solid your planning is, unexpected difficulties can make some level of crunching an unfortunate inevitability.

"People have become more opposed to it, but we're also becoming more detached from the reality of game dev," he explains. "People take strong, idealistic positions on what should be. Whilst that's a nice exercise, it doesn't really help us ship games, succeed as businesses, or provide a good standard of living for employees. Logic says this shouldn't be the case, but experience tells me it is. Timelines are very hard to predict, and the nature of the work is also difficult to quantify. 

"Almost every movie somehow comes in late or over budget. As creative professionals, we have to accept that's part of the cost of doing things we love. Sometimes things take longer than we initially hoped, and that's not really compatible with working a 9-to-5 life. If not working any extended hours whatsoever is very important to you, the game industry is probably not a great fit."

Richard Browne, director of Blue Moon Production Company and former exec at Digital Extremes, agrees "to a degree" that crunch may be unavoidable, depending on the game.

"Your project may live or die depending on hitting core milestones. If the vertical slice isn't great and the game isn't greenlit, there's a good chance layoffs will occur these days. Do teams often work excessive overtime to ensure that doesn't happen? Yes. Is it just a case of 'bad planning?' No, not usually. 

"We schedule projects and add buffers, but games are living, breathing entities, and it's rare that things miraculously come together the first time, on time, everyone performing at 100 per cent. After that, it's situational: Are we in a position to take longer? Can we simply cut features? Is there a viable path to avoiding this?"

He adds that online and live-service games further complicate the issue: "When we shipped Wayfinder, we had significant issues that we had not seen in betas. The game is live, customers have paid money, and they need to be able to play it. Those issues had to be fixed quickly – there was really no way of avoiding that. When the game was stable, we could take a break and recharge."

"There are many ways to deal with tight deadlines without crunch”

There are many who would argue against the inevitability of overtime; in fact, Nijman created a Twitter thread in 2018 collecting crunch-free games, the vast majority of which were indie.

"There are many ways to deal with tight deadlines without crunch: hire more people, scope down, or even miss a deadline if that's better for your team," he says. "Planning a game is incredibly difficult, and any game has infinite things that can be improved.

"But if you accept crunch as unavoidable, you are saying you value your company more than the lives of your workers. This is a creative field – people need to live life to be inspired, to be emotionally stable to do good work."

The anonymous UK studio head adds: "It is good for the industry that there is a certain shame associated with crunch.

"We've introduced 'Focus Mode': for a few weeks, all recurring meetings are cancelled, all non-essential project work is removed, and we ask people to avoid time off if possible. Breaks during the day are planned and synchronised to increase team coordination."

Since planning is often attributed as the cause of crunch, Davis offers this advice when beginning a new project: "Start with a timeline that is ambitious because it forces people to scope down, but also has padding and is realistic. It gives you the scope to cut back as well. It's not easy, and requires a lot of discipline. You need to be willing to cut things or make compromises if you want to protect people's sanity. Games that don't compromise don't ship."

Finally, Browne encourages game developers to put crunch into perspective; in any industry, or indeed aspect of life, there is always the possibility that timelines and requirements will shift.

"I appreciate Joe [Brammer]'s candor in his discussions about Wardogs – that project is, in many ways, a minor miracle," he concludes.

"At times, game development can just be blood, sweat, tears and sheer pigheadedness. But crunch isn't unique to the games industry – it happens in all walks of life, especially creative ones where fixed outcomes are often unpredictable. Just don't make a habit of it."