IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Is Crunch Mandated at Naughty Dog? The Answer Is a Bit Complicated
According to several people who used to work at Naughty Dog and agreed to speak to COGconnected under the condition of anonymity, the reality of crunch at the studio is somewhat complicated.
cogconnected.com
Several People Who Used to Work at Naughty Dog Speak About Working Conditions at the Studio
Last May, former Naughty Dog technical art director, Andrew Maximov, spoke at a game developer’s conference about crunch at the prestigious Sony studio. He said that while its developers crunched on games, crunch was never mandated by the studio’s higher-ups.
However, according to over a dozen people who used to work at Naughty Dog and agreed to speak to COGconnected under the condition of anonymity, the reality of crunch there is somewhat complicated. While several of our sources were critical of how the studio went about crunch, others were more ambivalent or even held positive views about the experience.
But they all said the same thing: While crunch wasn’t mandated at Naughty Dog, its employees and hired contractors were expected to work long hours.
*Author’s note: COGconnected contacted Maximov multiple times for this news story but never received a response.*
“So my take on crunch at Naughty Dog: The truth is more gray than black-and-white,” said someone who worked at the studio for several years on multiple recent games. “There is no official mandate for crunch. There can be a significant amount of peer pressure, though. And that can include peer pressure from the people who are effectively your managers. Peer pressure comes from having a team of brilliant, talented, dedicated people working hard on a project together.”
According to the source, the remarkable talent at Naughty Dog can make someone want to work as hard as possible in order to meet the studio’s high standards. “That internal motivation drives a lot of the peer pressure,” they added.
“Naughty Dog doesn’t have much dedicated managerial structure,” the source continued. “But there are a few leads in each department. Leads are both peers and managers. They do the same work as everyone else, and also run the department and have significant input into performance reviews. Being human, they may participate in the peer pressure… not always, but sometimes.”
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