Schreier: There's been a lot of conversation here in America about overtime hours, the hours it takes to get games like this out the door. What's your team's stance on overtime?
Aonuma: When creating a game, game development is all about the people. So if one of them or any of them aren't well, that definitely affects the game and overall quality, and that's just not good. We always try to think flexibly about delivery dates, and in the past I've apologized for delays. That's because staff comes first, and I always want to think about it when creating a game.
Schreier: Did you work long periods of overtime for games like Breath of the Wild?
Aonuma: Overall as a Nintendo work culture, we focus on flexibility. And so even the staff have that flexibility of when to focus, and use their energy on something, or they have a little bit of leeway in their work schedule, don't have to exert themselves so much. They can maintain that balance themselves. Especially for Breath of the Wild, it was the same, and we focused on the staff. We didn't have anybody be exerted or anything like that, and I think we were able to achieve our goal.
SOURCE
So we have more indication here that Nintendo's work culture is not at all stress or crunch intensive as is the case for most of the western game development industry. It's also clear that you don't need to be working 100 hour weeks to put out a masterpiece.
I figured this was worth its own thread, given the centrality that crunch and work culture discussions have on Era, but mods, please feel free to lock it if you disagree.