8/16/2023 0 Comments Crunch meaning game industryGamers influence and support this because we're the ones that buy and play games. Perhaps good games make the most money, but the video games industry-as with most industries, sadly-isn't a meritocracy. In come the yearly releases with superficial changes, bloated games, microtransactions, season passes, battle passes, subscriptions, games-as-a-service model, and other tactics that prioritize these people making as much money as possible. To do this, they'll study gamers and see what gamers will buy, or what they can convince gamers to buy. The biggest driving factor of crunch culture is greed, with publishers and investors looking to get the biggest bang for their buck at the cost of game dev's livelihoods. This writer thinks that, while gamers aren't directly to blame for crunch culture, they are arguably the biggest unaware influencers and supporters of it. Now that we know what feeds into crunch culture in video games, let's tackle the question at hand: are gamers to blame for crunch culture? So, the gaming industry faces a bit of an unsolvable problem in trying to satisfy a community of people who are incredibly demanding and ready to be abusive if anything is wrong, which feeds into crunch culture. For releasing a game with bugs or broken features. And what do they get for working overtime? Likely a lot of abuse and complaints about the game, how it's broken, and why did they release it now instead of wait till they finished it?! And, if game developers are really lucky (sarcasm) they'll receive death threats as well. Then, the game studio will crunch to deliver the game without another delay, but problems will always slip through the cracks. However, if you look at the replies to such announcements, they're filled with angry gamers upset at having to wait a few more months to play the game (as if there aren't enough games to play till then). In short, there are plenty of ways a game's development cycle can go awry.įor example, when a game developer announces a delay, it can be because the deadline the publisher gave was unreasonable and the game is incomplete, not because they're being lazy. This can include last-minute additions or removals of features, going in a new direction way too late into a game's development cycle, over-promising features which then create a huge amount of work, and working on a huge game with endless bugs to iron out. If a manager or director poorly manages their team, then that's going to cause imbalances in the workflow that will permeate throughout the studio. Poor management lies at the heart of this, alongside pressure from company superiors. So, when one or more of these areas encounters something that sets them back, a game's development can go off-track or slow right down. These all need to be working together holistically to create a complete video game and healthy workflow. There are multiple departments, teams, directors, managers, and other various roles. Like most businesses, not everyone does the same thing at a video game studio. You might ask, 'hang on a second, aren't video game developers the ones that crunch culture affects?'. As it's their money on the line, these parties can get involved in the creative aspects of a video game, as well as set deadlines and mandatory features in a game. Video game publishers and investors finance and market a game they work similarly to how film studios finance and market movies. Examples include Take-Two Interactive, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), Electronic Arts, and Activision Blizzard. Starting off, we have video game publishers and investors. To see if gamers are to blame for this, we must first look at the three key parties that feed into crunch culture in video games: video game publishers and investors, video game development studios, and gamers themselves. If this was only in the ultimate days or weeks of a game's development-or even paid fairly-this might be OK.īut, crunch culture becomes its own mindset that means developers are crunching (i.e., working around 60-80-hour weeks, usually without extra pay) on a video game for months and possibly years. In short, video game developers face tremendous amounts of pressure throughout a game's development cycle to deliver vast quantities of work in a limited timeframe. If you're unfamiliar with crunch culture, check out our quick explainer on crunch culture in video games.
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