Bungie, Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica and Blizzard discuss the problem of crunch
Officials from four of the world's largest software companies - Bungie, Naughty Dog, Sony Santa Monica and Blizzard - discussed the approach of their studios to the problem of crunch.
If you do not know, then kranchami are called after-school work of studios that are seeking to have time for a serious deadline, usually to the release of the game. Such periods of kranchey can be extreme, the combination of long work and lack of rest inevitably exhausts employees mentally and physically, until they begin to break.
This problem has become a gaming disease.
')
Luke Timmins from Bungie recently said that the crunch in the work on Halo 2 almost ruined the company, but since then, major changes have been made and Destiny 2 has completely dispensed with the forced crunches.
Art director Bungie Jason Sussman, speaking at the Digital Dragons 2018 art conference, also announced this. “We apply the zero-crunching policy, so crunches are not allowed,” he said, and the audience began to applaud. "It was very important to us."
“As a manager, if I see that my guys are working late, then I start asking them questions. It happens that people are addicted, and if they answer something like "I just can not go home until I get this thought out of my head", then this is normal. But if I see that this is happening too long, then I say to them: “guys, I don’t want you to burn out”. This simply leads to a decrease in productivity, and I do not think that people are able to maintain the desired level of creativity, killing themselves in this way. We have sensible manifestations of such situations, but they occur quite rarely. "
From left to right: Andrew Maximov (Naughty Dog), Tiago Klafke (Blizzard), Daniel Birchinsky (Sony Santa Monica) and Jason Sussman (Bungie). The guy on the left is the artist CD Projekt Red who held the conference.
Next up to the microphone was Andrew Maximov, a former technical art director of Uncharted developer - Naughty Dog, a studio that is often accused of the existence of a crunch culture. (A couple of months ago, Maximov left Naughty Dog and founded his own company.)
"It is difficult," said Maximov. “I can confidently say that we did not find the balance that the Bungie guys have. We are lucky to work with people whose dedication is difficult for us to control, because we have no producers, no separate management, everyone is absolutely free in everything, but this greatly increases the level of responsibility. For us, crunches turned out to be the price to pay. ”
"In Naughty Dog, no one forces a crunch," he adds. “This absolutely never happens. No one will ever order you to stay at work. But people remain, because they are sure that they want this and must complete the work. ”
The following was the lead sound engineer of God of War, Daniel Birchinsky, who recently spoke about how many layers there were in the dragon's roar from God of War. He suggested that Sony Santa Monica has yet to work on this problem.
"We still have fights," said Birchinski. “But I want to say that I see how top management is beginning to understand what effect it has on people's lives, so the company is evolving and changing. I have seen people burned out badly, and it's not worth it. It depends on the studio and its culture, but I see signs of progress in my work environment. ”
The last was made by Thiago Klafke, Blizzard’s leading Overwatch environmental artist, who expressed a more personal opinion and reminded everyone to look after their mental health.
“Sometimes mini-burnout happens to me when I work on something for too long,” he says. “I have been looking at my part of the work for two months and I think“ I hate it, I can’t see it anymore ”. Then I start to walk on weekends and forget that I work on games, doing all sorts of things that are not related to games, meditations.
We need to take care of our mental health, because we put ourselves under great pressure. We want to do everything better, work as quickly as possible, and this is what burns us from the inside. Need to be careful with this. It is necessary to learn to enjoy the process, and in the process of work try not to be too critical, not to think: “I am so slow and cannot cope with it ...“ It’s difficult, but if you succeed, you will burn out much less often. ”
Crunchy is often a synonym for video game development. There is nothing new in this - in 2010, the notorious “Rogstaw's wives revolt” happened - the spouses of developers working at Rockstar began to collectively protest against the harsh schedule in which their husbands were forced to work, and THQ caused the the faces of the devastated Homefront developers - but today the crunch is receiving more and more attention.
Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier once wrote a long article about crunches, and recently released a wonderful book called Blood, Sweat, and Pixels (“Blood, Sweat and Pixels”), which emphasizes the complexity of development periods in different studios, including Bungie (when creating Destiny), Naughty Dog (when creating Uncharted 4) and Blizzard (in the process of creating Diablo 3). I mention these companies because I talk about their employees in the article, but these are far from the only studios described in the book and criticized for their existence.
Polish studio CD Projekt Red is also mentioned in the book and is increasingly criticized for crunches when creating The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt Red even recently released a statement in response to allegations of low morale and crunch that says "This approach to creating games is not for everyone." Telltale Games' episodic storytelling specialist has also recently been accused of the existence of a crunch culture.
And this applies not only to large companies. Small studios and solo-developers also work to exhaustion, only because of exactingness for themselves, and not because of the pressure of a huge corporation. Eric Baron openly spoke about a four-year crunch, which he went on his own in the process of creating Stardew Valley.
We hope that the attention to crunches will positively affect the companies, as it happened with Bungie and it happens with Sony Santa Monica. Kranchey discussions also help us - video game players - to take a closer look at the companies we support and better understand the human sacrifices that we make when developing projects.
If you do not know, then kranchami are called after-school work of studios that are seeking to have time for a serious deadline, usually to the release of the game. Such periods of kranchey can be extreme, the combination of long work and lack of rest inevitably exhausts employees mentally and physically, until they begin to break.
This problem has become a gaming disease.
')
Luke Timmins from Bungie recently said that the crunch in the work on Halo 2 almost ruined the company, but since then, major changes have been made and Destiny 2 has completely dispensed with the forced crunches.
Art director Bungie Jason Sussman, speaking at the Digital Dragons 2018 art conference, also announced this. “We apply the zero-crunching policy, so crunches are not allowed,” he said, and the audience began to applaud. "It was very important to us."
“As a manager, if I see that my guys are working late, then I start asking them questions. It happens that people are addicted, and if they answer something like "I just can not go home until I get this thought out of my head", then this is normal. But if I see that this is happening too long, then I say to them: “guys, I don’t want you to burn out”. This simply leads to a decrease in productivity, and I do not think that people are able to maintain the desired level of creativity, killing themselves in this way. We have sensible manifestations of such situations, but they occur quite rarely. "
From left to right: Andrew Maximov (Naughty Dog), Tiago Klafke (Blizzard), Daniel Birchinsky (Sony Santa Monica) and Jason Sussman (Bungie). The guy on the left is the artist CD Projekt Red who held the conference.
Next up to the microphone was Andrew Maximov, a former technical art director of Uncharted developer - Naughty Dog, a studio that is often accused of the existence of a crunch culture. (A couple of months ago, Maximov left Naughty Dog and founded his own company.)
"It is difficult," said Maximov. “I can confidently say that we did not find the balance that the Bungie guys have. We are lucky to work with people whose dedication is difficult for us to control, because we have no producers, no separate management, everyone is absolutely free in everything, but this greatly increases the level of responsibility. For us, crunches turned out to be the price to pay. ”
"In Naughty Dog, no one forces a crunch," he adds. “This absolutely never happens. No one will ever order you to stay at work. But people remain, because they are sure that they want this and must complete the work. ”
The following was the lead sound engineer of God of War, Daniel Birchinsky, who recently spoke about how many layers there were in the dragon's roar from God of War. He suggested that Sony Santa Monica has yet to work on this problem.
"We still have fights," said Birchinski. “But I want to say that I see how top management is beginning to understand what effect it has on people's lives, so the company is evolving and changing. I have seen people burned out badly, and it's not worth it. It depends on the studio and its culture, but I see signs of progress in my work environment. ”
The last was made by Thiago Klafke, Blizzard’s leading Overwatch environmental artist, who expressed a more personal opinion and reminded everyone to look after their mental health.
“Sometimes mini-burnout happens to me when I work on something for too long,” he says. “I have been looking at my part of the work for two months and I think“ I hate it, I can’t see it anymore ”. Then I start to walk on weekends and forget that I work on games, doing all sorts of things that are not related to games, meditations.
We need to take care of our mental health, because we put ourselves under great pressure. We want to do everything better, work as quickly as possible, and this is what burns us from the inside. Need to be careful with this. It is necessary to learn to enjoy the process, and in the process of work try not to be too critical, not to think: “I am so slow and cannot cope with it ...“ It’s difficult, but if you succeed, you will burn out much less often. ”
Crunchy is often a synonym for video game development. There is nothing new in this - in 2010, the notorious “Rogstaw's wives revolt” happened - the spouses of developers working at Rockstar began to collectively protest against the harsh schedule in which their husbands were forced to work, and THQ caused the the faces of the devastated Homefront developers - but today the crunch is receiving more and more attention.
Kotaku journalist Jason Schreier once wrote a long article about crunches, and recently released a wonderful book called Blood, Sweat, and Pixels (“Blood, Sweat and Pixels”), which emphasizes the complexity of development periods in different studios, including Bungie (when creating Destiny), Naughty Dog (when creating Uncharted 4) and Blizzard (in the process of creating Diablo 3). I mention these companies because I talk about their employees in the article, but these are far from the only studios described in the book and criticized for their existence.
Polish studio CD Projekt Red is also mentioned in the book and is increasingly criticized for crunches when creating The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt Red even recently released a statement in response to allegations of low morale and crunch that says "This approach to creating games is not for everyone." Telltale Games' episodic storytelling specialist has also recently been accused of the existence of a crunch culture.
And this applies not only to large companies. Small studios and solo-developers also work to exhaustion, only because of exactingness for themselves, and not because of the pressure of a huge corporation. Eric Baron openly spoke about a four-year crunch, which he went on his own in the process of creating Stardew Valley.
We hope that the attention to crunches will positively affect the companies, as it happened with Bungie and it happens with Sony Santa Monica. Kranchey discussions also help us - video game players - to take a closer look at the companies we support and better understand the human sacrifices that we make when developing projects.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/359324/
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