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Kojima is crunching to meet Death Stranding's release date
- Thread starter Lant_War
- Start date
Crunch is always a bad thing. Like, yeah, it's a reality of the industry, but it happens (at least in good-faith cases) because development did not go fully as planned.
yeah like this is classical crunch also, where its like a few months out rather than two full years out nonstop
It's usually two months before release, but considering today's development climate, all the studios continue working on the eventual Day 1 patch, so crunch time sometimes goes beyond "gold" status....
I hope the devs are paid fairly for their overtime and they are given some time to relax after release.
This is bad and it doesn't matter that it's coming from Kojima, nor that it's an "industry standard". That's bullshit and you should not defend it.
I live in a country where it's pretty common to work 9+ hours a day while the employer has you hired for part time. You see people voluntarily stay 12 hours at work just to keep it and don't get fired for 520€ per month.
If you complain to anyone you always hear them saying "thats the standard now". Well fuck off, you normalised this shit and now it's the standard.
Don't give excuses for shitty practises and don't even think about excusing it if you have never been abused by an employer.
This is bad and it doesn't matter that it's coming from Kojima, nor that it's an "industry standard". That's bullshit and you should not defend it.
I live in a country where it's pretty common to work 9+ hours a day while the employer has you hired for part time. You see people voluntarily stay 12 hours at work just to keep it and don't get fired for 520€ per month.
If you complain to anyone you always hear them saying "thats the standard now". Well fuck off, you normalised this shit and now it's the standard.
Don't give excuses for shitty practises and don't even think about excusing it if you have never been abused by an employer.
Starting? He says they're still in crunch, meaning they've been doing it for awhile.
Delay and release on PS5 instead is my advice. I won't play it until then anyway since I only have an OG PS4 and don't want an inferior experience.
Ah yes, the perfectionist approach. Also known as the we indirectly force people to work long hours via social peer pressure approach.
What a shitty and toxic work culture. If only there were managers that would tell people to not work and go home instead.
Didn't Kojima overwork himself a lot, particularly on MGSV? I remember something about shutting himself up in a room.
That isn't to excuse crunch if that's what is actually happening, but rather I'm worried if he took that rather extreme work ethic and applied it to the entire studio.
Hope this is asked about in interviews.
That isn't to excuse crunch if that's what is actually happening, but rather I'm worried if he took that rather extreme work ethic and applied it to the entire studio.
Hope this is asked about in interviews.
People excusing crunch because it's common is kinda pathetic.
Crunch culture punishes those who have responsibilities outside of work. Such as mothers, people with elderly Dependants, etc.
Wonder why tech is not diverse? There's one reason.
These changes companies make massive profits. A higher share of that could be absorbed as costs to promote a more balanced, inclusive workplace
But people have been culturally indoctrinated into killing themselves for crumbs.
It's sad really.
Crunch culture punishes those who have responsibilities outside of work. Such as mothers, people with elderly Dependants, etc.
Wonder why tech is not diverse? There's one reason.
These changes companies make massive profits. A higher share of that could be absorbed as costs to promote a more balanced, inclusive workplace
But people have been culturally indoctrinated into killing themselves for crumbs.
It's sad really.
You say it's a shitty and toxic work culture, but DICE, who you work for and is supposedly less aggressive with crunch or working hours or whatever, has notably worse employee reviews and opinions on Glassdoor than Naughty Dog, so clearly the work environment isn't as toxic as you make out. Instead, it is seemingly actually more positive than many or most other game development studios listed on Glassdoor, presumably because a lot more goes into what makes a studio enjoyable or rewarding to work at, beyond just crunch or work hours or whatever.
Whilst I'm not promoting crunch (though I acknowledge it is a pretty normal part of most employment that routinely revolves around deadlines, and that there are varying degrees of how bad it can be), if the devs at ND are so passionate about their craft that they literally want to stay behind and work of their own admission and choice, so long as they're still getting paid to do so, and there's no mandate on others to do the same, you can hardly condemn management for allowing such focus or determination.
There's reasons ND is arguably one of the best game devs in the world, and the quality of their work is as consistent and high quality as it is, and a large part of that is going to boil down to the talent and mindframe of many of their employees, some of whom clearly live and breath this shit, are at the very top of their game, and enjoy pushing themselves and their craft. Outside of the un-mandated crunch, it does seem that on the whole employee opinion at ND is highly positive, so the toxic environment claims or summaries seem misplaced to me, though of course there is clearly still room for plenty of improvement, especially around crunch.
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The good old "nobody is asked to do it" but if you don't you are fucking over your colleagues and yoi clearly don't care enough about the company so forget about promotions.
Managers that care about people to avoid those situations are why I love working on Sweden (different field though).
This is absolutely wrong.
I run programs at tech companies and rarely ever have crunch times on projects. It really comes down to a combination of proper planning, staffing, mitigation strategies, and corporate culture.
If a organization or company wants to avoid crunch times, they can do so. In my view the biggest inhibitor to preventing crunch times in most teams or organizations is lack of planning on the part of PMs or people that either ignore or hide from reality of their projects. They either accept it when developers tell them they are running behind but not to worry because they will catch up or I have frequently seen PMs that bully devs into committing to timeliness that are not realistic.
It is important to be transparent broadly in a tech team. This means empowering developers and testers to let PMs and leadership know when they are running behind, not default blaming them when they inform you, and working to mitigate the problems while also adjusting future plans and schedules to account for actual organizational velocity.
But this isn't the fun work and few people are either willing to do the work or are willing to spend the hundreds of hours learning how to do the work correctly.
Some of us do just that. Hell of Bing could build a competitive search relevance to Google with almost no crunch times for years, I would like to believe that a video game studio could do the same.
You can optimize your planning, but you can't necessarily change the deadline. So what do you do then? If you have a regulatory deadline for instance and you are running behind, then you either upstaff or you crunch. And upstaffing doesn't work.
You scope down and cut features. Push features you cannot deliver into post launch.
Again not possible with regulatory reports. Can't exactly tell the government that you can't deliver all the reports. There are simply limitations on what you can descope, what you can push back. And sometimes you have to accept that even with the best planning, you simply didn't deliver enough in the first place. And then you can either delay or you know, not delay and make sure you make it.
I work on regulatory stuff, we either change the deadline (happens more often than you think) or just crunch for a short term (1 week) which is then rewarded with holidays to avoid over burn. Even then, we had previously issues were coworkers had felt burn off due to this intermitent crunch and had gotten more power to talk to our superiors for delays.
"Ingrained in DNA" fucking, lol.
The rhetoric of people defending exploitation and internalized masochist work culture.
The rhetoric of people defending exploitation and internalized masochist work culture.
Ah, maybe I didn't get the context. Was referring to game dev. :)
It's okay as it's the norm is depressing af to read. I hope the devs are being properly compensated, at the very least.
As someone who works in the tech industry, this is not true.
Yeah, shit happens, things aren't going to go as planned. So what are the best option?
1. crunch the devs to meet the deadline so gamers won't riot
2. delay the game so that developers can have healthier worklife
Judging by this thread, first option should be the answer.
Not sure what kind of tech company they were talking about there.
1. crunch the devs to meet the deadline so gamers won't riot
2. delay the game so that developers can have healthier worklife
Judging by this thread, first option should be the answer.
Me too.
Not sure what kind of tech company they were talking about there.
I'm not trying to excuse crunch, as it is indeed terrible, but isn't crunch kind of normal? Like, not only in tech but everywhere?
Who of us didn't study a lot harder during the last week before an exam compared to when we started studying?
I guess we're kind of biologically wired to work more (or harder) when there is pressure (i.e. a deadline). Again, this doesn't excuse crunch periods lasting several months - the gaming industry took crunch to perverted degrees - and more of a management issue then.
Additionally, tech, moreso than other industries, is also riddled with unexpected problems causing huge delays, which makes proper management extra hard (or nigh impossible). And now imagine being based in the US where labours laws seem to be non-existant.
But that is it, sometimes a short crunch is required to catch up to lost time. (And yes, I know the regulator can be flexible at some cases, although that might be more industry dependent.) The problem with crunch is when it becomes a permanent crutch, but in a 2-3 year development process like for a videogame, 1-2 month crunch doesn't seem that extravagant. Especially because the people that will be crunching the hardest now aren't exactly the people that have to go all-in from the start of the next project and so hopefully these managers build in that recuperation time. Jumping to all crunch is completely bad and due to mismanagement, and all crunch is avoidable seems to me not realistic. Good management will ensure it is rare, that there is time for recuperation so it remains livable.
(Maybe I'm in luck that my company allows self-regulation on the latter.)
I think I was pretty clear. Crunch is never a solution. He's the one to bring them into this mess. Kojima should know better by now.
Fuck...me...that was harsh. But yea judging by the shit show BF5 was at launch (still is) it would appear this holds up.
In Discord I have said several times the problem itself is not crunch, which is a last resort tool that sometimes is required when everything else fails. The problem is when it has become a common tool that is used without any second thought about its adverse sides and for prolonged periods of time.
A 1 week crunch is a lot different than a 4-8 week crunch. Our projects also last years and once you get to crunches/delays so long, the main question is "where did we fail in project management?".
imo western crunch is kind of regular japan? Still, you can just feel sorry for the people that has to endure crunch, here or there, whatever their reasons to endure it. It shouldn't be like that.
And oh no it's not a solution. A solution would be to delay it and learn to plan better ahead of time. Not surprising for his first "solo" project but still, i hope he learns.
And oh no it's not a solution. A solution would be to delay it and learn to plan better ahead of time. Not surprising for his first "solo" project but still, i hope he learns.
Yes and No, because in Japan it has nothing to do with the actual amount of work. It is a culture of appearance. Your entire company could have no work, no deadlines and you'd still be expected to do this.
He's overdue for another week-long oversea trip to rest his mind so he can flow his creativity juice uh.
honestly it's super embarrassing. the tone of the thread would be completely different if this was a game by EA, activision, ubisoft, rockstar, etc.
It's such a shame shit like this still happens even with a game that was apparently very ahead of schedule. It could have even come out next year and it still would have made good time.