Topic: Crunch Culture

So I've been reading about what's referred to as "crunch culture," especially in regards to the development of Cyberpunk 2077, and I'm just wondering what can realistically be done to combat this practice/culture. To say I'm looking forward to this game is a massive understatement so even as someone who cares about working conditions I find the boycott strategy a little hard to swallow. Is that really the only option? I realize buying secondhand is an option but then that rules out digital which is the preferred and dominant format for many gamers. Plus let's be honest, a considerable amount of people might decide against this game because of the "crunch" but there's no conceivable reality where this isn't a massive win for CD Projekt. So a few people with principles notwithstanding, what would be the incentive to change in the future?

TL;DR: Is crunch culture a real problem and if so, what can be done to fix it?

@zupertramp Crunch culture is more a problem with the unrealistic expectations of gamers than individual developers. Look at the reaction to the delays of Cyberpunk already. The thing is, the game going gold or release day aren’t really an ‘end’ of development, it’s just the start of more work in terms of maintenance. Crunch is an unhealthy practice that is excused as ‘one last push’ but there’s not really any solution per se. Either consumers and stockholders get more patient or developers get better at timelining. Boycotting crunch culture would be boycotting a whole lot of companies, and honestly 99% of developers engage in some form of unhealthy work conditions. There’s a reason many devs are very very passionate about the work, it’s the only thing keeping them going. If your heart’s not in it, there’s better paying work with better conditions elsewhere in the industry.

@zupertramp

I gotta be honest, I think that crunch is something that is a little overblown. Many of my family members work in the medical field. Some work 60+ hours a week. Does having to work so much suck? Kind of. But most people go into jobs such as these because they find them fulfilling. If they were not being paid for this extra time spent, I would take extreme issue with the practice and boycott alongside you. Alas, this is not the case. The employees of CD Projekt red are VERY well compensated compared to those in other polish professions. Moreover, I have not seen ANY CD Projekt employees come out and complain about this. In fact, the ones that have spoken out convey their pride towards nearing release. The only people with an issue (that I have seen) are those with an ax to grind like Jason Schrier. Please do not attack me. I am trying to have a mature conversation. Have a good day mate.

@batwing47 No worries... I almost edited my post to ask, alternatively, if anyone thought the reports of overwork are exaggerated. Obviously I'd love if this were the case it's just it kinda goes against everything I've come to expect from capitalism in general.

Although, I would ask, just so I'm clear... is it overblown because it doesn't actually happen or is it that it does actually happen but that's okay because it happens in other industries?

EDIT: some light rewording for clarity.

@nessisonett Sooo.... I should just buy the game and not worry about it?

@zupertramp Well it’s more that a boycott would impact on those staff members who slaved away on it. Yes, they’ve already been paid but their future work is dependent on how well the game does. It’s a tough question though.

@zupertramp
I just think that it is overblown because it happens in other industries and you never really hear about it. In gaming circles, it comes across as an atrocity if any company is found to be doing it. I am honestly not a fan of it though. I don't think anyone wants to be treated by a doctor that has been working 12+ hours. Accordingly, I do not think that people perform that well when they are overworked (regardless of the industry).

@Kidfried It’s definitely possible but for that to happen, wider workers rights also have to be addressed. The US seemingly just don’t have workers rights in the slightest which I find baffling.

I don't know much about the reasons why overwork is so prevalent in the medical field but I'd hazard a guess that it has a lot to do with being chronically understaffed. Couple that with the fact that the number of people in need of medical care basically never slows down and I'd imagine that's a recipe for overwork, but one that needn't really exist anywhere else.

The oilfield and UPS are the two places I've experienced crunch but I wouldn't consider either a career so it was easy to walk away. I can see how this would be harder to do if you love what you do but don't love being bled dry in the process.

It depends. As long as they're well compensated, I'm not really for or against it. Like @batwing47, it happens in other industries as well. I've worked 12-days at university, because we had to space out the students to make it possible to teach during the pandemic. Yes, they were long days, but there was no other alternative, and I enjoy what I'm doing (it was either this, or nothing). If you go back 50-60 years, you will find that 60-hour week were common practice. The norm these days is around 40 hours, so we think that anything more than 40 is overworking. In 50 years from now, 20 will be the norm if automation takes off, and we'll be surprised when people say they work 40 hours a week.

The only problem I can see is that overwork often isn't mandatory in theory, but in practice it is. If you don't work additional hours, but the rest of the team does, you'll be be looked down upon by your co-workers or the management (not saying that's always the case, but it seems to be a common thing). It's an issue that can't really be mediated I guess.

I've not really paid much attention to it all but always assumed crunch was when employees work extremely long hours for an extended period, pulling all nighters, stuff like that.

This latest CDPR thing just seems to be normal overtime and not crunch, 1 extra day a week for 6 weeks. That seems pretty standard fare to me in working culture, and even I've done far worse than that. Worked 7 days a week for over a month when we had a new Accounts system installed in a previous job. We have mandatory overtime during our busy financial year end period. Yes you would rather be at home or out socialising, but you do get paid extra for it so is a nice bonus in your next pay slip.

I'm not sure if many of the people that are outraged by it are experienced enough to even relate to it. If there is work to be done, you get it done. Sometimes that involves working longer hours. Shocker. Welcome to the real world.

And yes CDPR staff are very well paid. CD Projekt is forecast to net $500 million in profit for its fiscal year. It gives 10% of profits to its employees as bonuses. They employ roughly a thousand people. In that situation, the average bonus is $50,000/person. So this is a bonus, which I understand is on top of their basic wage. I know I wouldn't mind working a few extra days and longer hours in that situation.

I definitely support labor laws and workers rights, but I’ve seen plenty of the opposite happen too — workers who ride the clock, waste time at work on social media, lie about their hours on their timesheet, steal supplies from their company, put in poor effort while they are actually working, just goof off in general while at work, etc, etc. This probably isn’t an issue at CDPR, nor at many of the developers, but it likely goes both ways. There is a set amount of work to do. If it’s not accomplished in the allotted time, then we’ll need to work overtime. So if one is efficient on the job, he or she can go home early, etc. However if the management of the work force is making people work overtime because of administrative poor planning and unrealistic goals, then that’s another thing entirely.

I do think there exists a problem where employers ask too much from some staff while others slack off. There was just so many variables, it’s hard to judge who’s to blame when crunch happens.

It's kind of a difficult situation, because I don't think it's as simple as some people make it out to be. It also isn't helped by the evangelicals on either side of the debate. The second someone even utters the word crunch Jason Schreier is popping out of the cupboard saying, "Did somebody say Crunch?!" like a really rubbish Candyman. Similarly, there seems to be people on the other side of the debate who'd be alright with workers dropping dead as long as they get their game on time.

It's also wildly different depending on situation. Like, being asked to come in and work one extra day a week, normal hours, that you'll be compensated for is crunch, but having to work seven days a week, 14 hours a day that isn't paid is also crunch. And I don't think the media - who obviously have their pitchforks and torches out for this one - are making that distinction as readily as they should because it hurts their case.

That being said... I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with crunch, in the sense that the company has to do something and there aren't enough man hours, so we'll do a bit more work every week to do it, and we'll all be paid for it, and you don't have to do it if you don't want. I do it in my working life all the time. And I ask people if they want to do it all the time and I don't feel bad about it.

The difference - as always - is that just because something isn't inherently bad it doesn't mean that nefarious bosses won't use it for their own ends without any regard for the workers. So, say, imagine a country that has a lot of video game companies and also inexplicably has no worker rights... well, that's a recipe for disaster.

I guess the TLDR version is that if I was at CDPR right now and they'd asked me to do one day extra a week for a month or two to ship Cyberpunk and I'd be paid handsomely for it then I'd call that a good trade off. But being bullied into working all hours, all the time... that's something else.

The issue with crunch is an insidious one. I work in software projects and yes, when it gets very close to a major launch, we do a lot of extra work to get it out. But we are talking a few days here and there and ultimately, if the software isn't ready to go it can't go. Devs will have enthusiasm and will put extra effort in.. but that is easily taken advantage of.

If you look at the CDPR request in and of itself, we will pay you to work an extra day for a few weeks... that isn't the worst thing in the world (though if you are a parent, have dependants or other challenges it becomes harder). The real issue that was reported is that there has been unpaid crunch at CDPR for every single failed release date. Unpaid and unrecognised crunch is the abuse bit - where the culture of the organisation makes people crunch and literaly exhaust themselves because they feel they have to.

Also I feel that the industry and gamers talk about crunch as if it is a necessary evil and no ones fault. Not true - crunch is caused when scope and changes are made at a point in the process that the schedule can't handle. Take for example Red Dead 2 - if you read the articles on the crunch culture for that game, a decision was made in the last few months of the original development cycle to change the way the camera zoomed in and out to make it more cinematic. That alone required huge amounts of rework (alongside many other changes) but they also made a decision that they couldn't move the release date anymore. How do you accomodate a scope change without changing the schedule? You have to force the team to do more in the same time.

The answer is that these changes shouldn't happen if they can't be done in the timeframe OR they change the timeframe. It may make the game better - sure but if quality was the object then time should be stretched to allow. Ultimately a game is never finished but abandoned. Take TLOU2, at a point in the development they must have realised that they had made a very very long game and it would take longer to make. They could have chosen to cut elements out or push release date out further. They did neither but crunched to try and make it.It wasn't just a natural process - decisions were made at project level.

Now I get the financial reality that release dates have to be met. I also get the bad games can be made good quote as well. Ultimately though, at some point the scope of a project should be managed correctly (speaking as a PM) and something has to give. The current give point is the work put in on the employees via crunch be it paid, forced or (more insidiously) just expected.

@Kidfried Alternatively, you could get a month of GamePass for $10, play the games you want, and cancel it before it renews!

@johncalmc @Rudy_Manchego @Kidfried Those are some really good points there. I think part of the problem is the marriage of art and business. Artists and creative people tend to also be poor at math and business, and vice versa. Granted, that generalization isn’t always true, but artists often have a laid back approach to life, seek improving their craft and projects on their own time, and frequently have bursts of inspiration that alters their vision of a project. Rudy’s words : “A game is never finished but abandoned” rings very true for those creators who have the most pride in their work.

On the flip side, the business mind want to churn out high volume content that sells, regardless of quality. The businessman doesn’t care if something sucks as long as it sells. Profit is all that matters.

I think about one of my favorites book series (if two books makes a series) The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss. Fans have been waiting 9 years for the third installment, The Doors of Stone, of what is presumed to be a trilogy. Rothfuss has supposedly had a draft of the book since 2013 but has been “editing” it for the last 7 years. Finally, his publisher publicly rebuked him on social media recently for his lack of progress, saying something to the effect of “I don’t think he’s even written a single thing for 6 years. I’ve had enough.”

At the end of the day, artists can’t put food on the table without people buying their product. And businesses can’t pad their executives and shareholders bank accounts without quality products. You push your development team too hard to churn out games like they’re toasters on an assembly line at a sweatshop and you end up with a situation like Telltale Games; You let your development team perfect their project ad infinitum and you end up with Dreams (an awesome game that will probably lose money) or Beyond Good and Evil 2 or Wild (a game that lives in development hell and may never see the light of day)

Crunch my a$$. Can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen am I right?! Work em til they cop it then ship in fresh blood.

@Th3solution We will never see The Doors of Stone, I’ve been waiting my entire teenage years for it and it still didn’t come out 😂

@nessisonett At this point I need to re-read Name of the Wind and Wise Man’s Fear if we do ever get the 3rd book because I’ve forgotten all the plot lines. But yes, I’ve given up hope as well.

Rothfuss must either be the most obsessive perfectionist writer ever, or a lazy daydreamer who has lost focus. GRR Martin is similarly sparse with releases, but he would at least show some slow progress as he traveled around living in medieval castles for inspiration. Things really kicked into gear once he contracted for the show with HBO. And now that the show is over, he’ll probably slow down the releases again.

Wow there's much to read here since I last checked.

From what I gather, everyone defines crunch differently and most see it as a necessary evil, if it's to be considered an evil at all.

One thing I will say is I don't think monetary compensation is the end all be all that some of you make it out to be but that's just my outlook.

Also I don't think saying it happens in other industries is a very good excuse. I'd prefer it didn't happen to anyone in any industry and thus I avoid spending money at certain places for this reason.

In regards to this industry though, while I concede that the situation at CDPR might not be all that dire, broadly speaking they're just video games and I really don't need anyone sacrificing their health and happiness to make them.

In the end, as someone alluded to earlier (i think @nessisonett) this is something that, if it needs addressed at all, should probably be done at the legislative level.