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Insomniac Dev : "I didn't crunch once. 40h weeks the whole time" when making Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart.

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starfoxxxy

starfoxxxy

Gravity Is Hard
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Mar 13, 2021
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I think sometimes its good to report good news also.



Edit——-

Just going to state that this obviously does not speak for all the devs over at Insomniac but there are more chiming in to support the notion.
 
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CarthOhNoes

CarthOhNoes

Someone is plagiarizing this post
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Oct 25, 2017
2,181
Wonderful to hear. You don't need to kill yourselves devs. It's a culture thing.

That having been said, it probably also comes down to them maybe not having a bad publisher forcing unrealistic deadlines on them.
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
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Oct 25, 2017
117,027
That's good to see. I hope that's the case across the entire team. I have always had an immense respect for Insom for years now, so I hope they've managed to sort out the issues they had last year as well.
 
julia crawford

julia crawford

Took the red AND the blue pills
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Oct 27, 2017
35,679
Hmm, this is good but it would benefit from input from other team members especially in other areas of development....
 
Zachary_Games

Zachary_Games

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Jul 31, 2020
2,987
This has always been the case at Insomniac. They have the best project management in the business.

It definitely needs to be praised and shared.
 
Temascos

Temascos

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Oct 27, 2017
12,600
I wonder how they pull it off, and in such a high quality and timely manner. I know they have a lot of staff but that can only cover for so much.

It might be a case where they outsourced some work (Which is common to do) for smaller parts, those might have gone through crunch but even for the main team alone it's impressive.
 
tophu

tophu

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Oct 27, 2017
9,486
that's awesome to hear. all the more reason for me to support their games day 1.
 
Kalor

Kalor

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Oct 25, 2017
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The title doesn't match the tweet. This is just their personal experience. Obviously it's good that it worked out for them but it could be different for someone in QA.
 
btags

btags

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Oct 26, 2017
2,103
Gaithersburg MD
I have heard this in the past for their previous games and I feel like someone should do a deep dive (cough jschreier cough) on how they manage to put out quality games with such a good work life.
 

bastardly

Member
Nov 8, 2017
10,604
yeh, the pms are probably the best in the biz at this point. crazy that they released Miles and Rift Apart with only what 6-7 months apart? insane
 
modiz

modiz

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Oct 8, 2018
17,955


Another Insomniac developer echoing the same sentiment.
But it should be noted that they speak for themselves, we can't say for certain that none of them crunched (fairly safe to say that to some extent developers did do overtime for one reason or another), we will have to wait for someone like jschreier to say what is it really like among most of the team's developers he gets to talk to.

I do remember that Jason previously suggested Marvel's Spider-Man was developed relatively crunch free as well though.
 
Sense

Sense

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Oct 25, 2017
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Noppie said:
These quotes do not say the same. I hope it's true, but that's a hasty conclusion.


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You could read it as just the game designer saying he/she didn't crunch but I can see it being interpreted your way as well. Atleast we can infer that there was no firmwide mandate to crunch.
 
TheGhost

TheGhost

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Oct 25, 2017
28,137
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It's good news but at the same time the studios accused of crunch are always the studios making 40+ hour games. (Naughty dog, cd project red, Bungie i believe at one point?)

this reminds me I finally downloaded j.s's book on audible and have to get back on that and probably be proven wrong with a well deserved edit later.
 
Toriko

Toriko

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Dec 29, 2017
7,757
A real good example on how Insomniac made a AAA game like Ratchet without potential crunch. Hoping this encourages more AAA devs to follow suit and encourages AAA publishers to give studios leeway to operate this way across their studio portfolio.



 
DanteMenethil

DanteMenethil

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Oct 25, 2017
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Thread title kinda alludes that there was zero crunch making the game while the OP tweet specify that the person is only talking for himself and not other members of the team
 
Cels

Cels

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Oct 26, 2017
6,808
terrible title - it's one guy who even says he's speaking just for himself and not any colleagues.
 
Northman

Northman

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May 13, 2021
406
Really awesome stuff. MediaMolecule is also a zero-crunch studio. Nice seeing this positive change in the industry :)
 
Vinc

Vinc

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Oct 25, 2017
7,407
Well well well. Sounds like someone figured out how to manage a AAA video game project. Major props to them, that's amazing!

Would love to watch a GDC presentation from them about that. If one already exists and a kind soul could point me to it, I'd be grateful!

Cels said:
terrible title - it's one guy who even says he's speaking just for himself and not any colleagues.
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It's multiple people, and one would think if you know people who did crunch on your team, you wouldn't go online bragging about your lack of crunch. That would seem to indicate a better culture around crunch at the studio.
 
ThisThingIsUseful

ThisThingIsUseful

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Oct 31, 2017
12,182
modiz said:


Another Insomniac developer echoing the same sentiment.
But it should be noted that they speak for themselves, we can't say for certain that none of them crunched (fairly safe to say that to some extent developers did do overtime for one reason or another), we will have to wait for someone like jschreier to say what is it really like among most of the team's developers he gets to talk to.

I do remember that Jason previously suggested Marvel's Spider-Man was developed relatively crunch free as well though.
Click to expand...
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Happy to see.
 
Dust

Dust

C H A O S
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Oct 25, 2017
32,859
With this output it has to be fucking SSS rank pipeline and management then.
 
OP
OP
starfoxxxy

starfoxxxy

Gravity Is Hard
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Mar 13, 2021
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TheGhost said:
It's good news but at the same time the studios accused of crunch are always the studios making 40+ hour games. (Naughty dog, cd project red, Bungie i believe at one point?)

this reminds me I finally downloaded j.s's book on audible and have to get back on that and probably be proven wrong with a well deserved edit later.
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What Naughty Dog games are 40+ hours?
 
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