Why did crunch get so bad during 6th gen? There were always developer horror stories before hand but the multi year sweatshop conditions seem to originate during 6th gen especially on the Microsoft side. Fable and Halo 2 being the stand out crunch periods where everyone was fricked up all the time from start to finish.
Because games became blockbusters that needed to come out on time.
It was probably like that for a long time, this was just the first time we were hearing about it. Same thing happens across all media industries, for decades perhaps
4th gen developers were sleeping under desks
Game development became western studio focused and Americans are lazy and more likely to complain about actually having to work.
Everyone here is wrong. The difference is that teams became larger and jobs at studios became just jobs, instead of passion projects. Games like Doom had insane levels of "crunch" but the difference is everyone there wanted to do it. Later on, it was something an employer forced an employee to do.
you think speccy shitmongers weren't just there for a paycheck?
There was a lot of that at rare in 5th gen too
Because people who grew up playing games tolerated sweatshop conditions to finally have their "dream job" making games.
>be Japanese 80s developer
>so ashamed of your video game job you don’t even use your real name in the credits
>it’s one of the all time great games
Vs
>be western developer
>inherently self important douchebag who overestimates his talent
>you put your name everywhere you can, credits, title screen, everywhere
>the game sucks though
It’s always been like this. I guess kojima is an exception though.
because people exaggerate/lie for social media attention
I worked on a feature-length film here in Australia in 2009 (for free, no pay) and we would all be expected to put in 16-hour days, 6 days per week. It's just fricked. I even worked at a post-production house for 3-months while on break from university and worked 50-hour weeks but only get paid for 38-hours. These industries prey upon the passion young people have for moviemaking and game development. Can't imagine working 50-hour weeks anymore, even if they paid. There's always starry-eyed young people ready to go into the meat grinder though.
Yeah any field that draws passionate or creative people is subject to this. My wife was an interior designer of all things and had to put in 60 hour weeks at times for honestly shit pay. My boring office spreadsheet job paid me much more for a fraction of the work.
I don't know what 6th gen means but there was plenty of crunch in the 80s and 90s, but game companies were less business like in those days. It was more like comic books or something more of a creative endeavour which didn't take itself too seriously. By the mid 90s and especially by the end of the 90s it was much more corporate. So I can imagine it was more suit oriented and people worrying about deadlines. Though, that was already the case, it was just all on a smaller scale. There's plenty of stories of pc88 and pc98 developers locking their small teams up and abusing them and all that. Though, that's Japan. Anyway op, your premise really has no basis.
games became Hollywood and interactive movies instead of toys
3D models and collisions and all the programing needed to make it all work. Sprites were easy.
watch 16 bit sensation they show you how "easy" is to make dot art.
>but muuhh 3D models and collisions are harder
just make the low quality model,the colision is already made when making the model,just add the path to follow in map is already done.
The reason they started to make 3D games was to cheap out costs,not because was harder.
Take as an example most 3D dragon ball games have the same fighting style no matter the character (the reason people hate xenoverse is because it made each character have a custom moveset and fighting style).
Are you going to tell me a generic model of tenkaichi budokai was harder to make then hyper dimension characters.
Games became a big business and could accommodate lower-quality workers, who complain more.
because ea is big gay
"Crunch" is not a bad thing. All of history's most classic games were developed with a lot of what would now be called "crunch time". It is literally only in the past 5 or 6 years that morons on Twitter started screeching and b***hing about MUH CRUNCH and how bad it is, and now games are getting even worse because devs are allowed to be lazy c**ts. Don't bother arguing with me, you know that I'm right.
hmmmm, have you tried killing yourself?
The finished product being good in spite of crunch doesn’t vindicate crunch. There’s reason to believe good games would be better without it, considering near-universal human experience tells us people turn in sub-optimal work when strained and sleep deprived. The smug posturing doesn’t add even a minutia of persuasiveness to your post, FYI.
Crunch time is usually done in a few month period before release. Starting in 6th Gen it became crunch time for a year or more.
He's right. All this whining about "crunch" is leftist propaganda. Chad 10x engineers are in "crunch" perpetually, producing the finest games on the planet.
Pic related. This man isn't crying about "crunch" or "work life balance", he's getting shit done, and he was rewarded for the efforts. Pure alpha.
You talk as if Carmack was a normal human being.
I think the problem isn’t one guy staying late but everyone staying late. Coding in groups is fricking miserable if things go wrong
This is pure bootlicking. If you work people that hard for long enough you will burn them out or kill them. Carmack coding for fun nonstop because he's an autist who loves it is different from most people you need to get a game out the door.
>bootlicking
Commie buzzword.
You HAVE to go back.
OK bootstraps boomer.
>"Crunch" is not a bad thing. All of history's most classic games were developed with a lot of what would now be called "crunch time". It is literally only in the past 5 or 6 years that morons on Twitter started screeching and b***hing about MUH CRUNCH and how bad it is, and now games are getting even worse because devs are allowed to be lazy c**ts. Don't bother arguing with me, you know that I'm right.
It's true. devs don't mind putting in crunch hours if they get shit done quicker so they can move on with their lives. I think one of the most extreme examples of an anti crunch game was Duke Nukem Forever. I know for a fact (because I use to frequent the 3DRealms forums) that devs would leave out of boredom so they could move other to another studio and actually complete a game. Pretty sure a lot of GearBox employees left 3Drealms for this reason.
there was plenty of crunch during 5th gen as well, listen for instance to dario casali's tales of crunch during the development of hl1
There's always been crunch. Arguably it took until the 6th gen for devs to start voicing this stuff. I remember the guy who did the animations for Silent Hill 1 effectively lived in the office. Sure it resulted in outstanding work but who's to say he couldn't have achieved the same result if the team was better managed, with more reasonable deadlines and devs being allowed to see their families?
Programmers have been whipped into meeting absurd deadlines since the Atari 2600.
i honestly dont care and i dont feel bad for them, if and when games become good again then i'll care but for now, frick them all
>"ugggh, they told me I have to come into the office at least 1 day a week or they'd revoke my right to work from home! this is slavery!"
>she complained to the barista making her coffee
Krackle's better.
I'll let you in on a secret. They create drama because they have high social media visibility as "game developers" and can use that as leverage to get more benefits. The guys working 100+ hours/week hard physical labor down at the warehouse responsible for distributing food to the grocery stores you're dependent on to live would just be ignored if they cried about it.
Except you can brute force yourself through physical labor but you cannot brute force creativity. You can pick up a box for 12 hours a day and be mentally not there, but you cannot draw or design levels for more than 2-4 hours a day without burnout or less efficiency. If you're slower with the boxes, nothing happens. If you're slower with your illustration, you're holding back possibly 50+ people who are paid per hour.
>cannot brute force creativity
come on now anon
Are there really laborers, not bankers, not self-employed types, who work 100-hour weeks?
Crunch is a constant throughout the industry and across all geographies. There's a reason why so many developers who worked on 8/16/32-bit games either went into management or left the industry.
You hear about it now because they hire women and nonwhites now. You know, people who don't understand the value of hard work.
>that one story from the ratchet and clank 3 dev where he worked for three days straight bugfixing and he wouldn't go home until his boss forced him to
I'm pissed because this thread made me go out and buy a crunch bar. Fricking butthole, I don't want junk in my body but I have no self-control reeee I hate you you frickface