are all reviewed as ‘Very Positive’ on
Steam – the highest honour in the
field of player satisfaction.
Developers may worry that forgoing
crunch will lead to unfinished
games, disappointed critics, or
frustrated fans waiting for updates.
But all of the developers interviewed
for this article believe their games
have turned out better since turning
their backs on overwork.
“The first game I worked on [at
Auroch] turned out fine, but no one
was like, ‘This is great,’” Willington
says. “We’re making our best-looking,
best-playing games since we stopped
doing this stuff.”
“Even if you’re a cynic, crunch is a
bad idea,” Bithell says. “All the data
we have on it says it demolishes
someone’s ability to produce work.
It’s really just common sense. You
have to understand what the
biological limitations of being a
human being are. You can’t work
crazy hours, and the research all
backs up that position.”
“It’s generally understood that
work done under extended crunch
conditions is often not good or
high-quality work,” van Lierop
explains. “Why would you want
that? You’re burning your people out
to get worse results and eventually
lose them, which just puts more
burden on the next batch. I don’t
think the results are compromised by
avoiding crunch. I think they are
definitely compromised by
depending on crunch to get your
games out the door.”BLOOD DIAMONDS
The question, then, isn’t whether
avoiding crunch works. It’s whether
the rest of the industry will follow
suit. Bithell’s established reputation
allows him to stand up for his team in
publisher negotiations, while
Auroch’s cashflow means it can
afford to delay milestones – both
privileges that a new indie team may
not have at their disposal.
Larger developers, meanwhile,
have less incentive to end crunch.
“They can pull in another coder
that’s just as good,” Collins says. “We
couldn’t afford to lose those people,
so we had to sort it out.” What’sAt Hinterland, members of the
team have crunched on three
occasions: once to get The Long Dark
through Xbox certification before
reveal at E3; once to fix PS4 technical
issues before the game hit 1.0; and
once to get overhauled story episodes
out before Christmas of 2018.
“It’s no coincidence that these
three instances all occurred around
fixed external milestones,” van
Lierop says. “Timing commitments
we’d made to our partners or our
players that we felt we couldn’t
break. Our solution since has been to
avoid making public commitments
like that, and as much as possible to
avoid lining up significant launches
of new content with new platforms.”QUALITY OF LIFE
It’s notable that The Long Dark,
Mars Horizon, Minit, and Disc Room“ALL THE DATA WE
HAVE ON IT SAYS IT
DEMOLISHES
SOMEONE’S ABILITY
TO PRODUCE WORK”
Let’s Kill Crunch
FE ATURE