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Devs tweeting about their games that were made with no crunch.

Captain of Outer Space

Captain of Outer Space

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Oct 28, 2017
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In the wake of the Rockstar news about their crunch habits, Jan Willem Nijman (Vlambeer, Minit) posted on Twitter asking for devs to respond with games that were made crunch-free and got a lot of responses:



I skimmed the responses to compile a list of some of what I see mentioned in there for those that can't check it out themselves. I figured this could be a good list compiling games that have been made or are being made without crunch for those that want to support this practice.

Agent Decker (physical card game)
Airships: Conquer the Skies
Barbearian
Battlestar Galactica
Beat The Art Breaker
Bleed 1
Bleed 2
Broken Age
Chicken Jump
Cultist Simulator
Domiverse
Dreams (source)
Dungeon of the Endless
Edge of Eternity
Endless Legend
Endless Space 2
Florence
Frobisher Says
Ghostman
Guacamelee 2
Gunslugs 3
Hohokum
Krunch
Lieve Oma
Loot Rascals
Minit
Operator Overload
Out of the Park Baseball
Panoramical
Path Out
Phase Drift
Pizza Ultra Titan
Regency Solitaire
Reunited
Rogue Aces
Save One More
Slamoids
Sound of my Town
Spitkiss
Star Crossed
Sunless Sea
Surge Deluxe
Thunder Kid
Tiny Trax
Tormentor X Punisher
Tower Fortress
Velocity
Velocity 2X
Wandersong

It's worth checking out the responses for links to studio sites, specific game store pages, and other people to follow on that topic.
 
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eyeball_kid

eyeball_kid

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Oct 25, 2017
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Seeing Endless Legend, Endless Space, and Dungeon of the Endless on there just reaffirms why Amplitude is my favorite indie studio. Great games, great post-launch support, great community engagement, and now great treatment of their employees. (okay they're owned by Sega now, but still)
 
Jessie

Jessie

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Oct 27, 2017
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Crunch time is a mark of an unorganized company. If you manage your timelines properly, there's no need for it.

Datajoy said:
I wonder what crunch is like at big Japanese developers.
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The problem with Japanese work culture (particularly in this industry) is that they value the appearance of working hard more than, you know, actually working hard. Sit at your desk for 14 hours unproductively, go out for drinks with your boss, and sleep under your desk? You're a top performer. Spend six hours working extremely hard, and then go home to enjoy your life and recharge? You're a failure.
 
Slam Tilt

Slam Tilt

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The_Land said:
well dam! "Relatively crunch free" doesn't mean crunch free. Sounds like sugar coating for yeah we had some crunch
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I think "mild crunch" (as in 48-50 hour work weeks) for two or three weeks isn't unreasonable; that's just a temporary 10-15% boost. Definitely a far cry from 75+ w/ws for months on end.

Jessie said:
Crunch time is a mark of an unorganized company. If you manage your timelines properly, there's no need for it.
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Theoretically, yes. But software development is still a very inexact field; scope creep, lowball estimates, unexpected bugs, and other such issues occur no matter how hard you try to prevent them (I once lost a key developer indefinitely because his family got into a major auto accident...).
 
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DriftingSpirit

DriftingSpirit

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Oct 25, 2017
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Certinfy said:
I would say this surprises me but it really doesn't. This is the same team who made Ratchet & Clank (PS4) in nine months. Not too hard to imagine they could make Spider-Man in three years without resorting to extreme measures.
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Yeah, Insomniac is quite efficient. They put out numerous games during 2016 all the while having bigger games cooking.

wild wild rice said:
Insomniac has always seemed like a chill place with good leadership.

I should get around to Spidey one of these days...
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Certainly. One of the best superhero games ever made (on par with Arkham Asylum which is at the top for me).
 
Wulfric

Wulfric

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Oct 25, 2017
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Bumping for visibility

Clearly this is going to be mostly smaller games, but it simply goes to show you can still put out a quality product without damaging your team's health.
 
ASaiyan

ASaiyan

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Oct 25, 2017
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It is so sad to not see a single AAA project on that list.

Granted, there are tons of great indie games on there that I can recommend.
 
Phendrift

Phendrift

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I honestly wonder how Japan is with regards to this. Would be curious to see the work hours for, say, BotW
 
AudioEppa

AudioEppa

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Oct 27, 2017
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When your a studio like rockstar games, I wonder how hard it is to avoid crunch time compared to other developers like the ones mentioned in the OP.
 

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ITT: None of the games listed had large studios working on them and hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets AKA they are all indie titles so it makes sense that no crunch occurred.
 

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1upsuper said:
I can't actually understand either of those tweets. What about Jimmy John's? What is cake day? What is voluntary crunch pressure?
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https://www.resetera.com/threads/l-...sues-rockstar-boss-chimes-in-nocakeday.75194/

Will explain your last two questions. It was about her experiences at Bondi and Rockstar during LA Noire era.

Chet Faliszek is saying that while at Valve the worst it got was Adrian Finol, one of his coworkers, always wanting to eat at the same place (Jimmy Johns) everyday. It's meant as a joke.
 
jschreier

jschreier

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The_Land said:
well dam! "Relatively crunch free" doesn't mean crunch free. Sounds like sugar coating for yeah we had some crunch
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I haven't had enough conversations with people who worked on the game to be able to authoritatively comment on this (yet), but the bits and pieces I heard suggest that they at least aimed for a sustainable work cycle, as opposed to months and months of 70-hour work weeks.
 
Instro

Instro

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SDR-UK said:
Naughty Dog supposedly crunch like crazy, so can't be too sure about that.
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Good point, forgot about that. My general thought was that the reigns would be a bit looser for first parties because they can better afford delays, have an easier time making money on software, are not totally reliant on said software, etc.
 
OP
OP
Captain of Outer Space

Captain of Outer Space

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Hobbes said:
ITT: None of the games listed had large studios working on them and hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets AKA they are all indie titles so it makes sense that no crunch occurred.
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I'm sure there are plenty of indies made with crunch, but I made this thread so people that want to support games without crunch could see which games have done that. It's not an all-encompassing list.
 
1upsuper

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Jecht

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Working those long hours decreases productivity and you would think they'd know that.
 
chubigans

chubigans

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Hobbes said:
ITT: None of the games listed had large studios working on them and hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets AKA they are all indie titles so it makes sense that no crunch occurred.
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I forced myself through crunch last year and it literally almost killed me. And I'm as indie as it gets (contract workers with me doing 99% of the programming/design). I wish I could add my game to the list but I can't.

If anything it goes to show that, even when there's literally no one forcing you to do crunch, you feel "obligated" as its almost like a part of the culture of the industry. I won't ever do that to myself again, I hope. (and also there are a lot of indie studios that go through the crunch phase, if anything it can feel worse because there are few employees to begin with and you have a much stronger sense of loyalty to get the company through the dev process as quick as possible).
 

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chubigans said:
I forced myself through crunch last year and it literally almost killed me. And I'm as indie as it gets (contract workers with me doing 99% of the programming/design). I wish I could add my game to the list but I can't.

If anything it goes to show that, even when there's literally no one forcing you to do crunch, you feel "obligated" as its almost like a part of the culture of the industry. I won't ever do that to myself again, I hope.
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Oh yeah crunch can definitely occur for indie titles, no argument there. My point was that because they are indie titles they are far less likely to be victims of crunch.

Also, thank you for the link, I'ma take a gander at it.
 
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