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Polygon: Why I Worship Crunch

N

Neptonic

Member
Subtitle: An industry veteran tackles a controversial subject
C r u n c h.

One of the most loathed words in our industry. It’s that period of time in which a team must tighten their belts, buckle down, and work more than the standard forty-hour work week. During crunch, it’s not uncommon to work ten- to twelve-hour days, seven days a week. Crunch can last a week. It can last six months. It drains you, literally sucks your life away. Time flies by, and you have no idea where it went because you were locked in a dim room for a month, surviving on lattes and Cheetos, the pale glow of your monitor mirroring the fading light in your eyes.
Click to expand...
Full Article here

Spend less time with family if old


Edit: about the writer:
Walt Williams is an industry veteran, having worked on Bioshock, Civilization, Borderlands, Mafia, The Darkness, and the acclaimed, genre-bending Spec Ops: The Line. This piece is an excerpt from his first book about his experiences writing games, called Significant Zero.
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G

gogojira

Member
"Crunch can last a week. It can last six months. It drains you, literally sucks your life away. Time flies by, and you have no idea where it went because you were locked in a dim room for a month, surviving on lattes and Cheetos, the pale glow of your monitor mirroring the fading light in your eyes."

Definitely sounds like something to worship.
 
M

McDougles

Member
A writer's experience in crunch is VASTLY different from a developer in crunch.

Also, the masturbatory appreciation for being a cog in an undying machine designed to profit the millionaires and billionaires is quite disgusting.
 
M

Marcel

Member
This nerdcore writing is pretty cringeworthy. "Guzzle that Red Bull!" "Slam that soda!" "The Demon Lord Crunch!" The part that's written like he has Stockholm syndrome about crunch is even more embarrassing. This is honestly a hard read because this guy has fucking asides and bad jokes everywhere so Gearbox should probably hire him.
 
S

Shift Breaker

Member
I guess this isn't about the character from the latter Crash Bandicoot games.

*Checks link*

Nope. But that would definitely be a less controversial (and IMO, less wrong) opinion than what this article conveys.
 
Eolz

Eolz

Member
Read it earlier, absolutely awful.
Even if it's a book extract, can't believe Polygon is sharing this stupidity.

Also, a writer (what this author is/was in tjis industry) won't approach a crunch the qame way as another developer job. Which irritates me a bit, just like when that famous Uncharted writer glorified crunch as well, even if ND has a terrible crunch culture.
 
P

PMS341

Member
I feel bad for someone who has to jump through hoops to justify one of the worst parts of the industry. Normalization won't help those who are miserable.
 
N

Neptonic

Member
McDougles said:
A writer's experience in crunch is VASTLY different from a developer in crunch.

Also, the masturbatory appreciation for being a cog in an undying machine designed to profit the millionaires and billionaires is quite disgusting.
Click to expand...
The guy who wrote it works in the AAA industry, it's an excerpt from his book
 
J

JohnTinker

Limbaugh Parrot
I immediately thought of the character from Diddy Kong Racing and thought this thread was headed in a very different direction

njbxImG.png
Click to expand...
 
P

PMS341

Member
Neptonic said:
The guy who wrote it works in the AAA industry
Click to expand...

An industry known for its monetary corruption, no doubt. CEOs need to be able to afford multiple islands while the coders, writers, designers, and actors can "crunch" to figure it out. That isn't a system worth praising.
 
M

Marcel

Member
Oh, no wonder this guy has a chintzy, nerdcore writing style that is hard to read due to the insertion of so many asides pretending to be "jokes".

cZAe3AR.png
 
J

jeffers

Member
personally I'm an advocate for worker's rights.

no free labour; excessive hours are agreed, logged, limited and compensated.
 
F

Forsaken82

Member
My crunch experiences did not involve lattes and cheetos...

They involved actual catering from local GOOD restaraunts so I can't complain too much
 
R

RetroDLC

Foundations of Burden
Yeah, no. I'm thankful I can keep crunch to a minimum in my freelance work. I gave up energy drinks back in May 2016 too.
 
A

ApharmdX

Banned
Shame on Polygon. This is a terrible article and they should feel bad. If you can't release a game with employees on reasonable schedules then delay it. No project is worth the damage that it causes to families.
 
M

Marcel

Member
ApharmdX said:
Shame on Polygon. This is a terrible article and they should feel bad. If you can't release a game with employees on reasonable schedules then delay it. No project is worth the damage that it causes to families.
Click to expand...

Polygon has no shame nor can it take on any. Nor can this writer apparently with this work is your life cheerleading bullshit.
 
S

sandpiper

Member
Neptonic said:
The guy who wrote it works in the AAA industry, it's an excerpt from his book
Click to expand...

Yes, but he's a writer in the game industry, not a programmer or animator or modeller. Being a writer in crunch is fundamentally different from having to clean up after other people's messes when rigging a 3D model for animation, or finding out that there are extra sides on someone's 3D model's polygons and having to redo the mesh topology, or realizing someone fucked their contribution to the LoD system and you have to redo the entire thing, or accidentally weight painting a limb wrong and having to undo 12 hours of work just to do it again, et cetera et cetera.

Actual game creation is, at least in my personal experience, several orders of magnitude more stressful than the crunch a game writer would experience.

In the case of a programmer, I'd assume it's even worse than being a 3D artist a lot of the time.
 
R

Raging Spaniard

If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
Really irresponsible and damaging article. This will empower other employers to push for crunch.

Bad look for Polygon.
 
N

Nheco

Member
I would post that is a dumb opinion (and it is), but I just realized that is basically a "free sample" of the author book (based on which I would never buy). Well, it's quite an opinion...
 
Z

Zenner

Member
lol the gamer is to blame.

Polish and innovation come at a cost. Not to you, of course. You’ll only pay sixty bucks and not a dollar more, because you lack the ability to measure the value of digital goods either through cost or effort.
Click to expand...
 
V

Vinc

Member
It is literally a failure in management leading to unpaid work done by people who have nothing to do with said failure. I mean... I really don't follow. It's not a necessity, nobody plans for it, it's literally failure. Failure should lead to more cost, not the brave sacrifices of innocent people. Come on.

https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/900399375750316032

Edit: Ha. Beaten ^
 
S

sandpiper

Member
Also, here's the sad truth:

Most people in the game industry don't enjoy crunch at all and never will, and some of these people are extremely talented and have uncountable contributions to the medium.

Many of the most lauded and important staff members in the game industry's history have left the game industry to focus on life with their families, and could not stand the intense pressure of crunch that squeezed them of all their vitality after working in it for a decade, or several.

I know some of these people - one of them just could not justify ignoring his family any longer, and he's one of the founding members of one of the biggest AAA franchises on the planet. Did he just not 'love' the game industry enough? He's much happier now that he doesn't actively work in the industry, but he's an incredible artist, and still loves videogames to this day, and still contributes to smaller projects.

Crunch chews people up and spits them out. The people who decide to throw themselves into it and love it are not 'better' than anyone else.
 
M

Marcel

Member
I work for a magazine and sometimes they have to force people to take vacations and will not allow you to overwork yourself because the people in charge know it's unhealthy and ultimately a bad reputation to get in this industry. The fact that big game publishers create a toxic atmosphere like this knowingly and turn impressionable people into cheerleaders for crunch is disgusting to me.
 
T

Toxi

Banned
This article would have been much less objectionable if it were about worshipping Crunch Bandicoot from the post-Naughty Dog Crash games.

Fuck this writer for celebrating the exploitation of his fellow employees.
 
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