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The "death march" crunch of Metroid Prime almost ruined Retro until Nintendo stepped in

Bragr

Banned
From an interview with Mike Wikan from the Kiwi Talkz podcast:

"After Metroid Prime 1, we rarely crunched. We had a change of leadership between Metroid Prime 1 and 2."

"We had some crunch, but it wasn't like the death march of Metroid Prime 1. That was the worst. I had two times where I was there for 48 hours straight with one hour of sleep, and a couple of 36 hour days. And for the last 9 months, we were there pretty much 24/7."

"At the end of that time, everyone was ready to quit, we were done."

"Nintendo realized what was going on and took over the company, bought it out, and they put Michael Kelbaugh in charge."

"He was head of Nintendo's QA department. He said: "guys, give me a few weeks to turn it around", and he did."

 
See, THIS is crunch that should cause legitimate concern - basically working 24/7 for 9 months straight.

But, today, this is not the type of crunch people are crying about. Now, it is hearing someone worked 50 hours (with OT pay) for a 3 week period.

I know some still don't see the difference. But, maybe they will when they get a real career someday.
 
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ZywyPL

Banned
See, THIS is crunch that should cause legitimate concern - basically working 24/7 for 9 months straight.

But, today, this is not the type of crunch people are crying about. Now, it is hearing someone worked 50 hours (with OT pay) for a 3 week period.

I know some still don't see the difference. But, maybe they will when they get a real career someday.

Easy to say if it's not you who has to sacrifice his personal time instead of spending it with family, friends, on personal interests or just daily duties. It might be a bizarre concept for you, but there's much, MUCH more to life than just working, eating and sleeping.
 

ClosBSAS

Member
See, THIS is crunch that should cause legitimate concern - basically working 24/7 for 9 months straight.

But, today, this is not the type of crunch people are crying about. Now, it is hearing someone worked 50 hours (with OT pay) for a 3 week period.

I know some still don't see the difference. But, maybe they will when they get a real career someday.
lol you should see how people react here in argentina. i work 6 hours a day, we work one more they whine and bitch and they are calling their lawyers ready to sue their employer cause they are all protected against work discrimination so they win the case every time.
 
lol you should see how people react here in argentina. i work 6 hours a day, we work one more they whine and bitch and they are calling their lawyers ready to sue their employer cause they are all protected against work discrimination so they win the case every time.
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
This type of crunch is legitimately life-threatening and whoever said it's not, is probably psychopath. I am not too fuzzed about those "Jason Schreier" types crunch, but this one, can fuck you up.

Some people need at least like a 4 hour sleep every day otherwise they won't really be able to do their job and not the mention long term consequences of not sleeping. It's dangerous.

Due to medication I sometimes can't sleep, my melatonin levels are not there, so after like a 40 hours, I am starts to get slight seizures. Nothing life threatening, but you see lightings in your eyes, muscles twitches and so on. Sometimes you can see me here writing stupid shit, because it's legitimately scary. So I have prescribed Zolpidem (Ambien), which I try to avoid most of the time.

And yes I also work exclusively by my brain, which obviously have contribution to this. I think you can crunch longer if you do mechanical work, rather than if you do brain type of work, like coding and so on.
 

MikeM

Member
How is this fucking legal? Delay the game and treat your employers with some dignity.
 
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Easy to say if it's not you who has to sacrifice his personal time instead of spending it with family, friends, on personal interests or just daily duties. It might be a bizarre concept for you, but there's much, MUCH more to life than just working, eating and sleeping.
It HAS been me. I was a software engineer and there were times we had to work some OT to hit a deadline. It's life and, honestly, not that big of a deal.
 
See, THIS is crunch that should cause legitimate concern - basically working 24/7 for 9 months straight.

But, today, this is not the type of crunch people are crying about. Now, it is hearing someone worked 50 hours (with OT pay) for a 3 week period.

I know some still don't see the difference. But, maybe they will when they get a real career someday.
To be honest this is what crunch should be. 2 to 3 weeks to hit a deadline you can actually be productive because its only for a short period then you take a break to recover afterwards.

Now when 50+ hour become the norm that's when the problem starts.

The most annoying thing about constant crunch is it obviously doesn't work. All the companies notorious for crunch are constantly delaying games or have very slow output e.g. Rockstar, naughty dog, CD Project red, Sony Santa Monica.

Where as companies with none or very little crunch ship games, updates more frequently e.g. insomniac, the FF14 devs. Obviously that's anecdotal but you can google studies on it if you care enough.
 
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