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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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Zebesian-X

Zebesian-X

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Dec 3, 2018
20,524
Hope this holds true for the whole team! Love a healthy studio :)
fanboy said:
is this secretly a thousand devs studio or what? How the fuck do they make these games without crunch? whats next? spidey 2 and new ip in 2022 during pandemic and crunch free? fuck me, Hulst should have pay fucking enormous bonuses to whole Insomniac.
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I guess theoretically, employees that work a healthy amount of hours would be more efficient than ones that have been crunching for weeks/months. Obviously there's a bunch of other factors at play and I don't know much about Insomniac's office culture, but ya I could totally see that contributing their crazy output
 
Gnorman

Gnorman

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Jan 14, 2018
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rras1994 said:
We know they blacklisted and destroyed people's career who brought up the sexual harassment that they experienced, excuse me if I don't think they are above pressuring employees who suffer from crunch to keeo quiet
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You're free to believe what you like. Lots of assumptions on your part though.
 
ThisThingIsUseful

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Oct 31, 2017
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Rappy said:
Maybe I got the definition wrong. I know that the sort of company mandated overtime/crunch is the biggest issue with crunch culture, but when you hear people putting in some extra time to finish or touch up some stuff that was possibly optional people still considered it crunch. Personally, if it's the latter case I'm sort of fine with that (but people will say you shouldn't be).
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9 times out of 10, I'd probably agree with the idea of not staying late because I'm of the opinion that people deserve far more vacation time than they get. I think sometimes in a creative field, you just really love something you're working on and stay a bit longer to do it here or there since you're in the groove and feel like you're being extremely productive (instead of running on fumes and your productivity suffering). YMMV based on you, your workplace, and your profession.
 

Dekim

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,361
Insomniac is probably one of (if not the) the most efficiently run studio in the industry. Always working on multiple projects. Rarely if ever are their projects delayed. Often at the forefront of technology (their image reconstruction technique is said to be one of the best in the console space). And they are doing all this without crunching their employees.

How do they do it?
 
ThisThingIsUseful

ThisThingIsUseful

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Cupcake Knight said:
But it release before Christmas!
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fyVd.gif
 
ElephantShell

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Certainly sounds like an efficient operation. If these stories are the norm for the whole team hopefully there's something to be learned here for other studios.
 
Palette Swap

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Oct 25, 2017
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Good to see, hope this is widespread among people who made the game because that would be an interesting lesson, that you can make a cutting edge AAA game without crunching.
 
Viale

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Rappy said:
Maybe late nights just means they scheduled their work times late which I'm not sure why even mention it, but if not, isn't that exactly crunch albeit minimal?
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Yeah, I'm gonna assume that it just means minimal OT. Like I work a few hours over the weekend every now and again for a deployment or need to work late to meet sprints on occassion.

It's rare and minimal enough to where I wouldn't really call it crunch though. I assume that's what the tweet is trying to say if I had to guess.
 
udivision

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hikarutilmitt

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Falchion said:
This is great! Turns out crunch is caused by unrealistic deadlines and poor management after all 😂
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In a personal setting with deadlines for things, the project management to Deadline, if it's really only those two factors in a bubble, it's still more 80/20. You can have a realistic or unrealistic deadline, but a terrible project manager or just poor time management and expectations on a team can sink the project no matter how much time you're given.

This isn't to say that I think all crunchers are part of a party culture (guarantee they're not all), but there is definitely a tendency in tech to play first, work later.
 
platocplx

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Viale said:
Yeah, I'm gonna assume that it just means minimal OT. Like I work a few hours over the weekend every now and again for a deployment or need to work late to meet sprints on occassion.

It's rare and minimal enough to where I wouldn't really call it crunch though. I assume that's what the tweet is trying to say if I had to guess.
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Yeah thats what I'd say it is for them.
 
kimbo99

kimbo99

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Feb 21, 2021
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This is awesome.

Are they hiring? I am currently averaging 44 hours a week, and sometimes working weekends...
 

Litigator

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Oct 31, 2017
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I've been looking forward to this one and am about to become $90 (CAD) poorer.

Nice reviews. 4th 85+ scoring exclusive since the PS5 launched. Not a bad start.
 
Praedyth

Praedyth

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Feb 25, 2020
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Petition to change Insomniac Games to No Need to Disturb a Good Sleeping Schedule Games.

I think this is something Insomniac should be really proud of, I hope some FIRST and THIRD party studios can follow their example.
 
Blizz

Blizz

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Oct 25, 2017
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Hopefully we reach a day where this doesn't need to be something that makes the headlines, this should be the bare minimum.
 
Aurongel

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Oct 28, 2017
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The right management team can make a world of difference. I try to instill this belief on my team members as it's also something my boss above me has also prioritized.
 
BarcaTheGreat

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Oct 27, 2017
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The work culture always bothered me about Naughty Dogs. There's really no excuse now since a fellow Sony studio and by no mean small one either, can do it without curnch. Hopefully now which pressure on ND to change their crunch culture. Really glad to hear it Insomniacs.
 

Maxxan

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Jan 7, 2018
224
Great news! It probably helps that they weren't targeting a holiday release date, but then again most games can be released at any date and still perform well.
 
Carn

Carn

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Oct 27, 2017
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Rappy said:
Maybe late nights just means they scheduled their work times late which I'm not sure why even mention it, but if not, isn't that exactly crunch albeit minimal?
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crunch usually implies a prolonged period (weeks to months) of working (big amounts of) overtime; especially when getting close to a deadline. The occasional extra few hours shouldnt be consider "crunch" and comes with pretty much every job I would argue.
 
Kaah

Kaah

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Jun 3, 2019
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Eh what is the point of these tweets ? employees who crunched aren't going to go public about it anyway.
 
SquirrelSaysNuts

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fanboy said:
weeeell

www.resetera.com

"I left Insomniac Games because of how they treat women" Ex-Employee speaks out

Follow the thread here Some excerpts: Worth pointing out that Edgar was eventually fired. Read the thread for the rest. Awful stuff and even more shocking that the behavior came from a member of the HR team. We need to do better.
www.resetera.com www.resetera.com
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Yikes! Never mind.
I guess it's like Pixar where everybody loved working there... if they could have stayed far away from John Lasseter. And noone's willing to step in and hold him accountable.
 
FinFunnels

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Oct 27, 2017
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Cess007 said:
This is nice and I am happy for them not having to cruch, but once again, QA is rarely discussed on this topics and there is a reason for that. I will feel better when I see someone from the QA team expressing the same
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That's kind of what I was thinking. Hopefully QA, Localization, IT, Player Support, etc, didn't/don't have to crunch, either.
 
Viale

Viale

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Oct 25, 2017
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Kaah said:
Eh what is the point of these tweets ? employees who crunched aren't going to go public about it anyway.
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Wdym? People who had a positive experience working for a game dev studio want to share their experience because it's unfortunately kind of abnormal. That's all this is.
 
mael

mael

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Nov 3, 2017
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If this is legit and across all departments then they have some legit good managers and planners.
Way to go, everyone needs a raise there.
 
shadow2810

shadow2810

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Oct 25, 2017
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