3 Games that fought against crunch

In the video games industry, it is no secret that most games are complicated projects that take large amounts of work, time, and money to complete.  This is regardless of the size of the development team.  A capitalistic approach to developing games has caused studios to release games at a certain deadline by any means.  In comes crunch, a common practice in game development where employees work very long hours, get little sleep, and time off for periods of time.  

The EA Spouse blog post from now known Erin Hoffman, shined a spotlight on crunch and how damaging it is to game developers’ personal lives.  Since then, there has only been a push and pull against crunch.  However, there is optimism for better working conditions within game development.  Here are three games with dev teams that worked to prevent crunch to the best of their ability. 

 

1. Assassins Creed Odyssey

Since 2020, Ubisoft definitely hasn’t been known for having the safest workplace.  There have been a multitude of abuse allegations with three executives resigning.  According to theverge.com, a survey was taken at the company in 2020 which showed that 25% of employees had experienced misconduct.  So while abusive practices allegedly still existed in 2018, we can acknowledge Assassin’s Creed Odyssey’s attempt to avoid crunch.  

Patrick Klaus-Ubisoft Quebec’s studio managing director said in a gamedeveloper.com interview, “While we can always do better, I can tell you hand on heart that [Assassin's Creed Odyssey] hasn’t required a massive crunch, like maybe some of the triple-As from five or ten years ago. We can still always do better, but we have managed pretty well to succeed in delivering a game of huge magnitude which is hitting a good quality [level], while making sure that our teams are not burnt out and disgusted with working in games.”  Senior producer Mark-Alexis Cote explained how the Odyssey team worked to be proactive to avoid crunch, and had the employees themselves evaluate their work load. AC Odyssey showed that it is possible to make an ambitious game without crunch being part of the work culture.  The team recognized that it is in everyone’s best interest to be proactive and evaluate projects to maintain a good quality of life.

 

2. Psychonauts 2 

Double Fine’s 2005 Psychonauts established itself as a cult classic.  It was a surreal 3-D platformer that explored the minds of characters.  It unintentionally (according to studio head Tim Schafer) touched on mental health.  In a washingtonpost.com interview, Schafer explained how the dev team learned a lesson with maintaining their health with the first Psychonauts entry, where they committed intense crunch.  

With Psychonauts 2, Double Fine worked to avoid crunch.  They sought different strategies to keep the team from overworking to prevent burnout.  However, a year into the pandemic, that became tricky.  It became harder to monitor the workloads of the devs while they worked at home.  The most important take away from the team was that avoiding crunch wasn’t looked at as just a tool to create a better working environment.  Avoiding crunch meant changing mentalities, and how game development is looked at as a whole.  Double Fine states “Some people are like, ‘Well, it’s just part of making games,’ but it’s only part of making games if you choose to not make it a priority. You’ve got to actually see the quality of life of the team as something that you can’t lower just to make a deadline.”

 

3. Sifu

SloClap and their snappy 3rd person martial arts action title Sifu was planned to release in 2021.  But this date got pushed to 2022.  Their community manager Felix Garczynski explained in a Playstation.Blog post, “We still felt earlier this year that we could make our original planned launch date, but as the deadline grew closer, it became clear that we wouldn’t be able to do so without putting the quality of the game at risk or creating huge pressure on the Sloclap team – and neither of these options were acceptable to us.”  This is another example of developer saying outright, crunch negatively affects the health of the game developers and the quality of the game itself. 

When doing research on game developers who prevent crunch, it was surprisingly difficult finding those who tried to forbid it altogether.  Big companies like Ubisoft explain how it’s an uphill battle where “they could always do better.”  Whereas an indie company like SuperGiantGames will say they don’t have “forced crunch.” If someone wanted to work more hours on a project, they could.  But whether it’s a smaller independent studio, or giant “AAA” company, it is definitely possible and worth it for game development to avoid crunch. The work that employees produce is of a higher quality, which reflects the video games themselves.

Sources

Ubisoft Interview: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/crunch-work-life-balance-and-i-assassin-s-creed-odyssey-i-a-view-from-the-top

Doublefine Interview: https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/07/19/psychonauts-2-preview/

Sifu community manager post: https://blog.playstation.com/2021/07/08/sifu-new-trailer-updated-launch-window/

EA spouse blog post: https://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/

Supergiantgames interview: https://kotaku.com/the-secret-to-the-success-of-bastion-pyre-and-hades-1838082618

Assassins Creed Odyssey logo and Screenshot: From Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Odyssey on PC via Steam

Psychonauts blog photo: https://www.doublefine.com/games/psychonauts-2

Psychonauts screenshot: https://aloha.doublefine.com/psychonauts2-presskit-2021/search?collectionIds=611d80a70c40300019e394cb

Sifu Screenshots: https://www.sifugame.com/gallery#Photos