averaging ten hours a day, seven
days a week. “We still really
romanticise the solo dev working in
their basement for years who
shipped a huge hit,” van Lierop says.
“The games press plays a big role in
this. The issue is that for every
single indie hit that was made under
those extreme conditions, 100 or
1,000 failed miserably and those
developers ruined their health, their
finances, and their relationships
chasing a false dream.”
For Vlambeer, the two-man team
behind Nuclear Throne and
Luftrausers, the dream was realised- but designer Jan Willem Nijman
nonetheless regrets the damage done
during the process.
“I burnt out a few times,” he says.
“The launch of Nuclear Throne was a
major one. Recovery means not
working for an extended period of
time, being a barely functioning
human, and then many months, if not
years, to slowly get back to normal.
On top of that, I lost some of my
‘elasticity’ – I can’t push myself
remotely as far anymore without
quickly burning out again.”
More recently, during the
development of Minit and Disc Room - two critically-acclaimed games
Nijman made with a variety of
collaborators for Devolver Digital - he took care to prioritise life over
work. “If it needs more time, it needs
more time,” he says. “If it means that
the game needs to be a bit smaller,
that’s also fine. For us, making things
years bouncing between tabletop-
related games like Chainsaw Warrior,
Ogre and Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics.
In its early days, developers weren’t
consulted when deals were made.
“The first two projects that I
worked on were disasters, from a
production point of view,”
partnership and production manager
Nina Collins explains to me. “The
team would have a contract put in
front of them saying ‘We’re making
this game in 12 months, for this
much money’. Both of those projects
were very much firefighting, and
that’s what led to them having
crunch – we had overpromised on
quality, on scope, and we didn’t have
enough time or budget. That was
when, as a company, we said, ‘This
isn’t sustainable.’”
In the years that followed,
Auroch started tracking the time
staffers spent on tasks, in and out of
normal working hours. “What you
get with that data is the hidden
work,” creative producer Peter
Willington says. “And if you can’t
track the hidden work, how in the
hell can you make good estimates
for future projects? Production is
something that happens before
you’ve signed the contract.”
Beyond making more sensible
promises to publishers, Auroch now
schedules its weeks differently too –
planning work for only four days out
of five, leaving extra time for
meetings. “You try and pull
developers who are under pressureleisurely is just as fast as making
them under stress. In fact, I am
convinced that by living a fuller life
you can be more creative and are
more open to inspiration.”AUROCH & A HARD PLACE
But what happens when the scope
and timeline of your game is decided
by an outside force, like a publisher?
It’s often midsized studios that are
trapped in the vice – accepting
high-pressure projects in order to
make payroll. Auroch Digital, which
now makes the space agency strategy
game Mars Horizon, spent severalDARK AGES The most notorious examples of games industry crunch
EA SPOUSE
“My happy, supportive smile is running out.” The
2004 open letter from the anonymous partner of a
game dev triggered multiple lawsuits against EA.ROCKSTAR SAN DIEGO
The Red Dead Redemption studio was the subject of a
similar letter six years later, which detailed
mismanagement and overwork.BIOWARE’S ANTHEM
A Kotaku report said many staff had taken
doctor-mandated stress leave after working on the
doomed jetpack shooter.“FOR US, MAKING
THINGS LEISURELY
IS JUST AS FAST AS
MAKING THEM
UNDER STRESS”
Let’s Kill Crunch
FE ATURE
LEF T: “It’s just
games,” Nijman says.
“Work shouldn’t have
to be like this.”
RIGHT: AAA projects
are complex, says
van Lierop, and
therefore mistakes
have a high cost.