It's realizing you're suddenly incapable of remembering your PIN when you try to make the impulse buy, because you're so overworked. It's impulsive purchases that you would never normally make, which turn into regrets. It's a learned irrational fear of the project, and desperately running both from it towards some chosen opiate(pharmaceutical or otherwise) and towards it, trying to just attack it in brute-force ways you never would have considered before so that you can check another thing off for the day. It's developing some amount of tunnel vision and becoming unable to think about the ramifications of what you're about to do, apart from 'it will be done by the deadline'. The other reason for crunch is unexpected opportunity.Ĭrunch is trying to muster the mental energy to start one more task or make one more decision, but instead sitting and staring into space. Some people can't operate under the stress, not all people enjoy the work or believe in the project and that's ok. Of course if a company does this as part of the course it's just bad management and exploitation, just because programmers and artists are crazy doesn't mean you should manage a company around this, it isn't a sound strategy. You can totally avoid it, you can plan your work so well that it isn't needed, you can cut your game so that you don't need it etcīut then you enter a 48 game jam during which you are basically indulging in a self-imposed crunch and now that I am almost 33 that is a more realistic way of doing this. Physically demanding, mentally challenging and to outsiders crazy, it is usually fueled by a need to impress with a project that isn't ready but must look like it's not only ready but amazing. With the only exception being cold hard cash.Įating pizzas, drinking, sleeping at work, getting up and just jumping into the project. I would never crunch for a project I don't like. Usually for demo purposes or for release. Better to go to sleep, take a day off and come back with a clean head.Ĭrunch is for meeting a short deadline and making a project stand out. If things aren't working, if you aren't progressing you aren't in crunch you are just wasting time. It's fucked up, but if I love the project it is crazy awesome.

The industry we work in is shit, but we take some solace in knowing that we're all in it together.Ĭrunch is fucked up, it shouldn't be done for more than a month, two at most. And we do it because none of us wants to be the only guy who isn't there when the cleaning crew goes home for the night. It continues because it is the culture of video games to treat employees like expendable items. It exists because of the false belief that more hours equals more productivity. Why do we do crunch time then? It's a relic of the past, based on our fanciful notions of our pioneering forefathers who would crunch out a major seller from their garage. And most studios still go through massive layoffs after every project. I can think of very very few companies that offer profit sharing. In the video game industry, by and large we get Jack-shit for giving up our nights and weekends, for lowering our quality of life, for missing our families, for piling on stress that causes long-term significant damage to our health.

In the most professions, doubling the hours you work means a substantial benefit to your life in some way, usually in your next paycheck. As an older developer, I can look around at my peers and see that 100% of them are having relationship problems, or health problems, or are in therapy trying to deal with the stress that specifically working in the game industry causes them.

Burnout is very real, and it affects your mind as well as your body. Gone, for weeks or months at a time.īut it's not just the lost time, it's the added stress and the extreme damage that it causes you both physically and emotionally. But then your 20s end and crunch time becomes this soul-crushing toil that you dread. When you're young and green, it's no big deal. In short, crunch time fucks your life up. Crunch time exists because the belief that working twice as long at half capacity is somehow better.

To be in a time crunch meaning