The computer games industry has an unfortunate history in terms of how it’s development staff are treated. Your often expected to work unpaid overtime, and woe betide anybody who complains. ‘Crunch time’ has become something of a plague, and it’s time it was stopped.
My issue with expecting people to work overtime is that it should be an admission of failure, but too often it’s simply expected. If a project is scheduled properly with sensible and realistic expectations, and the publisher kept well informed then it simply shouldn’t be necassary. Whether or not the overtime is paid, having a business model that requires people to work out of normal hours regularly is simply unsustainable.
Unfortunately, the quality of management in the computer games industry is generally quite bad. Like any general rule there are exceptions, but on the whole far too many people in charge of development departments don’t really know (or understand) what happens during deverlopment, and how seemingly small changes can have a knockon effect to the whole project. The principal crime here is of ‘feature creep’ – a refusal to lockdown the design and boundaries of a game before development begins.
Too many games companies try to develop games on a shifting sea of design – and generally, they fail to maintain positive control over their costs and schedules. In the end, crunch time is simply a symptom of bad management.
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