and crunching into a discussion,”
Collins says. “Their stress levels go to
the max. And the problem is that
they don’t view meetings as part of
development. And in that meeting, as
a group, you might find out that you
can cut 20 days off the AI.”
Willington knew these measures
were working when, on launch day
for Dark Future: Blood Red States, the
team was finished coding by
lunchtime – early enough to pass
around a bottle of whisky. “I was very
emotional about that,” he says. “That
was the pivot point.”
L ATE NIGHT CHAT
Beating crunch takes soft skills as
well as spreadsheets, however. As
soon as Mike Bithell made enough
money to start employing people, he
pledged that they wouldn’t crunch.
But sticking to that principle has
meant actively catching staff in the
act of working too hard.
“Still to this day, I have to check if
they’re working late,” the John Wick
Hex director told me at Yorkshire
Games Festival last year. “They’ve
worked in environments where that’s
expected of them, or often they just
really love their job. They’ll think
that’s the way to get into my good
books to get a promotion or a pay
rise. It’s my job as a boss to keep
by doing. “If you’re the boss who’s
working late hours, you’re just
overburdening yourself and setting
an unhealthy example.”BOSS FIGHT
It’s this last point that has proven
tricky to put into practice at some of
the studios I’ve spoken to. Somewhat
hypocritically, Bithell still works
overtime, a fact his staff have called
him out on. “We had a postmortem
after we released John Wick, and the
biggest piece of feedback from my
entire team was, ‘Mike works too
hard,’” he says. It’s an issue Bithell
Games is addressing by bringing in
extra producers.
“That’s one of our objectives as a
company,” he says. “We may never get
my hours down fully, but that’s OK
because I get to own the company. I
get my name on the fucking front of
the game. It’s a very different thing
when you’re an employee, being paid
hourly, and I can’t ask for the same
degree of devotion.”
Auroch’s last two games involved
no crunch at all, but some senior
staff do still put in the extra time.
“We’ve had someone start that will
hopefully spread that out,” Collins
says. “There’s always more to be
done, but we can proudly say we do
not do crunch.”reminding people that it’s not how
they impress me.”
Auroch has encountered the same
problem. “No matter how many
times we tell people that we are
anti-crunch, when they’re first
starting a new job, people still feel
like they’re trying to prove
themselves,” Collins says. “It’s
proving themselves in the wrong way- because there’s historic stuff from
the industry. And it’s really important
to stop people doing that, because
they’re going to run themselves into
the ground doing something that’s
completely unnecessary.”
Traditionally, many game studios
have presented crunch as optional –
but the consequences of opting out
have been severe. “It was never
explicitly stated, but I think everyone
knew that the ‘nine to fivers’ were
not the ones that would get the good
promotions, because they couldn’t
possibly be that dedicated or
ambitious,” van Lierop says. “What I
want to hear from studio leaders is,
they never have to talk to their staff
about work-life balance or having
healthy work habits because they all
know it’s expected of them. At
Hinterland, if we have to remind
team members not to work too hard,
it’s a failure of our leadership.”
Nijman believes it’s important to lead
Killing crush
FE ATURE