So... there will be crunch...

[AdamTaylor]

I had really hoped CDPR had learned from their mistakes with Witcher 3 about crunch hours and overworking their developers. I've seen comments about how it's "not as bad as crunch in other companies"... but that doesn't make it okay. Crunch should never be a thing to begin with.

Honestly I'd have been fine with waiting another year or two if it meant that CDPR didn't have to be yet another soulless corporation that works employees to death to meet self imposed deadlines. CDPR as a company does so many things better than 99% of game companies out there. Like not filling their games with loot boxes and micro-transactions. Not chopping up their games to be sold for three times the price to get the full experience by witholding content. By putting out DLC that are actual content full expansions and not just pathetic cash grabs or bits of cut content being sold back to us.

To hear that they're still going to rely on crunch is very disappointing. I really hope they can be better than this.

 

[EngryEngineer]

I'd love a world without crunch.

That said, there are very few pieces of software that weren't made with at least a little bit of it. This isn't even a gaming issue, it is a nearly universal issue with most development jobs.

Praise companies who avoid it, shake your fist at companies who go crazy with it, but if there is word that a company is using some crunch I don't think that's grounds for disappointment or anything.

 

[Snowflakez]

I feel for the developers who are subject to crunch, but this is not a problem you can solve overnight. Just "stopping crunch" is not that easy.

First of all, you have the people who actually want to crunch -- the workaholics who arguably set a poor example for everyone else. Even if you outright tell your devs "YOU DO NOT NEED TO CRUNCH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP," that means nothing, people will still do it and thus others will feel the pressure to follow suit.

As for waiting another year or two, unfortunately, CD Projekt Red is a public company, and while they have plenty of leeway over how long they take to make a game, I don't think leaving 2077 in dev for another year or two (especially not with people actually paying for the game already) is going to fly.

 

[gregski]

First of all, you have the people who actually want to crunch -- the workaholics who arguably set a poor example for everyone else. Even if you outright tell your devs "YOU DO NOT NEED TO CRUNCH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP," that means nothing, people will still do it and thus others will feel the pressure to follow suit.

This. If enough people on the project start to do more than expected even due to their personal ambition and out of their free will, it might have ramifications in other parts of the project, so others have to adjust their parts so they too need to put in extra work etc etc.

 

[IndifferentEmpathy]

So what is your proposed solution then, work 8/5 and have AAA games take decade to make? Cyberpunk 2077 is now what, 7 years in development?

This does not work for gaming industry, as tech changes rapidly to leverage growing hardware resources. Game engines and middle-ware would need constant updates disrupting the process because assets will have to be redone. And now real-time Ray Tracing is coming...

Not to mention motivation. Working on something for so long until it finally ships would be depressing for creative, results oriented people.

The real problem is that the tools suck because most of them are made in house or poorly documented and all proprietary. As a result iteration is slow and automation is lacking. And not all features can be added simultaneously since the game is very tightly coupled and monolithic software. This leads to more uncertainty in estimation which leads to planning issues.

Normal software development is working on far more mature standards (Basics of HTTP is from 1989! ) and uses far more open source libraries nowadays. So it is far less stress-full. I am not sure when game development will catch up in maturity, but I don't think there are any magical means to solve current problems except replacing as much dev work with machine learning as possible.

 

[Sardukhar]

Some months are easy. Some are crazy busy. In our line, it varies but season to season sometimes my crews hit 50+ hour work weeks. You want the job done, that's how it is. They like the OT, I hate paying it and injuries and stress go up.

If you work jobs without deadlines, you might not get this. A deadline by nature is an inexact product. It's based on a what-should-be down the line. But reality doesn't care and people get sick, funding changes, laws change, material supplies fail, contractors bail, etc.

Overtime sometimes happens because professionals get the job done.

Now, I think consistent overtime is a disease and a fundamental aspect of poor planning. You can get better results with more staff, working harder in less time. But certain periods require your best and brightest to buckle up and get it done.

In this case, adding 5 months will -reduce- crunch. Trying to get it out the door by April would have been much worse on people.

This is smarter move and easier on the developers.

It means overtime, but controlled and spaced out.

 

[gregski]

So what is your proposed solution then, work 8/5 and have AAA games take decade to make? Cyberpunk 2077 is now what, 7 years in development?

This does not work for gaming industry, as tech changes rapidly to leverage growing hardware resources. Game engines and middle-ware would need constant updates disrupting the process because assets will have to be redone. And now real-time Ray Tracing is coming...

Not to mention motivation. Working on something for so long until it finally ships would be depressing for creative, results oriented people.

The real problem is that the tools suck because most of them are made in house or poorly documented and all proprietary. As a result iteration is slow and automation is lacking. And not all features can be added simultaneously since the game is very tightly coupled and monolithic software. This leads to more uncertainty in estimation which leads to planning issues.

Normal software development is working on far more mature standards (Basics of HTTP is from 1989! ) and uses far more open source libraries nowadays. So it is far less stress-full. I am not sure when game development will catch up in maturity, but I don't think there are any magical means to solve current problems except replacing as much dev work with machine learning as possible.

Good points.

Software development is such a dynamic process, especially with open technologies being more and more prominent, automation, microservice architectures and containers changing the way applications are developed.

Those technologies are yet to have a huge impact on gaming industry, especially automation should help with crunch as it frees teams from mundane, repetitive tasks.

 

[imitenotbecrazy]

Maybe if they would have crunched earlier we'd be seeing the game on time. It all comes down to time and people management. The gaming industry is notoriously bad at this

 

[AdamTaylor]

I'm not saying that they can magically overcome the whole crunch thing overnight. It takes a lot of planning and co-ordination to put all this together, and changes in one area can lead to a massive workload in another.

It's more a matter of trying to reduce it as much as possible, removing the "mandatory crunch" and replacing it with optional overtime. People who want to put in extra hours when they can should be encouraged of course (though steps also need to be taken to make sure they don't work themselves too hard).

I think the main issue with crunch is that it's not the worker's choice for the most part. It's often mandatory.
Some will say things like "we're not holding a gun their head" or other nonsense, but honestly for most companies, they are. The bigwigs at the top (who do very little overall work and mainly just rake in cash) just make it clear that while they're not "forcing" people to work crunch (as that's illegal), people who don't "volunteer" may not have a job to come back to. Which is exactly what the "holding a gun to their head" is, they are essentially threatening to cut off the dev's livelihood if they don't get with the program and slave away as expected.

While workloads will always vary, if a game can't get done by having everyone just work a normal 40 hour workweek (as is healthy), then the management at that company is at fault for not planning ahead and putting out deadlines that can't be reached without harming their workforce.

I'd much rather hear that a company will put a game out "when it's ready" than be given a set date that may or may not be reasonable in terms of workload. If it would take another few months to get done without crunch, then waiting is just fine. People not stressed to the gills are going to be far more productive and put out far better quality anyway.

Post automatically merged: Jan 18, 2020

In this case, adding 5 months will -reduce- crunch. Trying to get it out the door by April would have been much worse on people.

This is smarter move and easier on the developers.

It means overtime, but controlled and spaced out.

Yeah, that's why I don't mind the release being pushed back. I'd much rather they take as long as they need to do the job right than to see them killing their staff to get things out early.

 

[Skirlasvoud]

As Snowflakez said earlier: even if we, the customers are willing to wait longer on behalf of the employees so they can avoid crunch, there’s still the issue of money. CDPR might not be willing to wait for longer than September and spare their employees the crunch, because money needs to be made to cover costs through a release.

By that reasoning, I’m not at all convinced that better management, automation, tools or any other breakthrough in game development are the solutions to ending crunch. Even if these things are there to make the job easier, there’s still the issue of money, and that more of it can be made by simply moving the goalpost alongside innovations in Labor efficiency.

“We’re extending the April Deadline to September, because we need six months of crunch to finish the deadline.”

“New software halves the time necessary? Great! Cut the delay by half. Same crunch intensity, but we’ll release twice as fast. Also, make the next game immediately after, twice as big and twice as Labor intensive! It’ll completely undo the software’s gains, but Our game will earn more customers / has to keep up with the competition.”

Something’s got to give within this system and I’m afraid it will always be the employee. That’s especially true if we start normalizing it and seeing it as acceptable. New tech won’t be used to combat crunch if it is.

That article has put me in a cynical mood. I wanted to see CDPR as above the rest, but what if the whole consumer friendliness is just a marketing ploy? It just doesn’t feel right that they’re still squeezing it out of some other sap and I’m not quite ready to accept crunch as a normality.

It’s called “crunch” and not “super happy fun times” for a reason.

That they’d sit down in an interview and discuss it openly as not a big deal is in itself a problem for crying out load. I’m not sensing much regret or a desire to do things differently.


This industry needs to catch its breath somewhere along the line and decide that innovation will go towards employee health, rather than the desperate race to stay ahead of the curve. None of this makes me feel as if CDPR is going to be the company to do it and if CDPR wont, the other Triple A developers sure as hell won’t either. This bodes very badly for the future.

 

[Snowflakez]

I heard previously that CDPR's crunch policy was non-mandatory, but I'm not sure now. The conference call pretty unequivocally says "yes" (multiple times, even) when a caller asks if devs will be "required" to crunch. There are reasons given for it, but its still a "Requirement," unless he misspoke.

Non-mandatory crunch is the way to go. Let people who want to go above and beyond do so, and let everyone else stay sane.

With that said, it's my sincere hope that this delay will lead to less overworking. Maybe 50 or 60 hour weeks instead of 150 or 160 hour weeks, eh?

 

[CyberBobber]

When have players started to care about employees. I get layoffs, so players knows to expect sequel or no etc.

 

[Snowflakez]

When have players started to care about employees. I get layoffs, so players knows to expect sequel or no etc.

I know you're just being you, but this is actually an interesting question.

I think people obviously always cared about developers, but the thing is, it wasn't until the past... 5? Ish? years that the game development industry really opened up.

Now, devs engage on social media constantly, and they're all much more approachable than ever before. So, we've put faces to names, and thus made them "human.." If that makes sense. It's not that they weren't human or valuable as people before, but it took a big shift in the way they presented themselves for the public to really see them that way.

On top of that, major articles like Schreier's breakdown on crunch in the industry etc. really exposed a lot of its problems, so now people know what to care about. If that makes sense, too.

 

[CyberBobber]

Its damn wide subject, maybe things are better in the future when gaming is building around "major" players or no. As for CDPR and Cyberpunk 2077 needs to score with this, so I totally understand everything they do, crunch or delay etc. If Cyberpunk flops, Im not sure if Witcher is able to bring them back, at least I would bury whole GoG idea then.

 

[Hayashi.226]

This.

That said, there are very few pieces of software that weren't made with at least a little bit of it. This isn't even a gaming issue, it is a nearly universal issue with most development jobs.

I've worked in construction projects, rebuilding and massive renovations. There is always crunch - a variety of reasons conspire to delay the progress of the project ranging from simple human error to the environment to unforeseen circumstances - no matter how well-thought out the project schedule is.
Crunch is inevitable.

 

[Snowflakez]

Inevitable... perhaps. But I can think of plenty of industries where people work hard without overworking. Also, let's all define give our definitions of crunch. For me, 15-20 hours per week is reaching (maybe not quite hitting) dangerous territory. I've worked doubles in the past (usually 12 hour shifts), and sometimes more than once a week, but never for an extended period of time, which is what some game devs (not necessarily CDPR, as I simply don't know) are expected to do toward the end of release.

The best we, as players, can hope for is non-mandatory crunch policies. Something being inevitable, and something being actually required (I.E. you'll be fired if you don't comply) are two different things, and one is definitely a step in the right direction, while the other -- in my humble opinion -- could create an unhealthy working environment.

With that said, CDPR has said in the past that they have already instituted, or planned to institute, a non-mandatory crunch policy. Obviously, no developers are likely to confirm this for us, and Adam Kicinski did say say "yes" (twice) to a question in a recent conference call that asked if crunch would be required. However, I hope he misspoke, and I hope that CDPR is keeping to its word. Or will soon. Either/or.

I say all of this with the full knowledge that no matter what any company does, crunch will exist. Some people will work harder than others, and those others will then feel pressured to follow suit. But that will take much, much longer to address at an industry level, and I'm not even sure that it would be helpful to tell people they can't work long hours if they wish to.

 

[gaktem]

I don't care much about it as long as they are not breaking any labor laws.

 

[IndifferentEmpathy]

When have players started to care about employees. I get layoffs, so players knows to expect sequel or no etc.

Ironically Bethesda has very good employee retention and no crunch whatsoever but we see how their products turn out. Same for other companies players hate.

For us as consumers to desire to have games made without stress does not lead to anything good since there is nothing more effortless for game development as to have your game print money via MTX.

 

[doktor_fleck]

While I'm not saying in any way, that staying after hours to work on a project is OK, I don't really understand why exactly developers are the ones, which are supposed to be "protected" and "suffering" because of "crunch". FFS, firefighters, doctors, vets, teachers, plumbers, and every working group I can imagine has to do extra hours, sometimes day after day, often without any extra compensation, and nobody is getting "outraged" because of that.

So yeah, if your life as a dev is hard, go work as a cleaning guy/girl. You will get a new perspective in your life.

 

[Skirlasvoud]

I heard previously that CDPR's crunch policy was non-mandatory, but I'm not sure now. The conference call pretty unequivocally says "yes" (multiple times, even) when a caller asks if devs will be "required" to crunch. There are reasons given for it, but its still a "Requirement," unless he misspoke.

Non-mandatory crunch is the way to go. Let people who want to go above and beyond do so, and let everyone else stay sane.

With that said, it's my sincere hope that this delay will lead to less overworking. Maybe 50 or 60 hour weeks instead of 150 or 160 hour weeks, eh?

I'm not so sure that non-mandatory crunch is non-mandatory.

Sorry for going Jim Sterling on this thread, but let's say you're working in a cut-throat industry, with frequent lay-offs, downsizing and with a job's market that's over flooding with new recruits that companies could churn through like a shredder. If your boss steps into your work place, asks who's willing to do some crunch, and the majority of the workplace says yes, are you seriously going to say no?

Oh sure, your boss will say nothing off it, but they've made sure a culture of crunch already exists and you've just made sure you're the odd man out. Of course you're going to say yes against your own interests and better judgement.

The next time there's lay-offs, you notice an odd pattern where all the workaholics get to stay and all those who said no are told "you're good kid, but somehow you don't quite fit into this company's particular identity. Nothing personal." The next time there's jobs open, even more workaholics get hired and it gets even harder to say no. I mean, it's actually hard to disagree that workaholic employees are better for the company and put more of themselves into the job, right? That's the right type of discrimination, right?

Just read that interview. The heads of CDPR already admit that this is just how the sausage is made. That already strongly slants the working culture in a certain way, doesn't it? Saying no to non-mandatory crunch, just ain't normal.


There's a case to be made it's just ultra-liberal market pressure and that it's simply a crunch industry. That hard work and workaholics are the only ones who deserve to survive in this industry and that crunch is what separates the wheat from the chaff. I disagree with that point, but I can understand it, it's solid and the only thing I can do against is offer sentimental, moralistic arguments. Something Marxist, like capital being able to pit the workforce against itself in such a system and that it makes the quality of life worse for a majority of people, while a smaller group of bourgeois managers leading the industry, turn the extra blood, sweat and tears into extra profits for themselves.

I think non-mandetory crunch is a fairy tale however. The free market and the interests of business will ensure that employees are selected for their ability to crunch and that job security lies with saying yes. There's nothing non-mandetory about it when the ramifications are the loss of your livelihood. Being able to say "well, we didn't force them" is just a concoction to shrug off responsibility and to make people sleep better. Don't do that. It's just insincere.


The only way to be rid of crunch in a capitalist system, is for crunch to be illegal. Otherwise the market will sort itself out into there being unspoken crunch.