Is crunch a natural state of a game dev studio? Well, according to a former Naughty Dog developer, The Last of Us studio sees it as inevitable if they want to keep delivering high-quality games to the players.
In an age of shaky work-life balance, this should sound alarming for Naughty Dog fans. We already have grind culture leaking into every possible discussion space, where one must break their back with the work they do, and still have a high chance of being laid off, regardless of how crucial they might be to the company. It makes only logical sense that pushing more devs to crunch in bigger studios is commonplace.
More devs came to defend the claim that Naughty Dog has made crunch a common practice in their studios. Apparently, this pressure comes not just from external but also from internal deadlines. It becomes a sprint after a sprint instead of a well-paced marathon for a game release.
Naughty Dog is Naughty to its Devs
While Naughty Dog sees it as inevitable, it raises a few questions. Surely a big studio with the likes of Uncharted and The Last of Us can spare to release or hire more hands to manage their release dates to their liking.
More devs came to defend the claim that Naughty Dog has made crunch a common practice in their studios.
But the problem is that it is ultimately the working man who suffers; it’s never the higher-up fish but the devs that have to stay behind and keep debugging, putting in longer hours while the higher-ups seem to be mismanaging, which is one of their jobs. Players and devs who enjoy the games would be more accepting if the gaming development field weren’t as shaky as it is now.
Naughty Dog seems to tie-in pay bonuses with crunch and even incentivises it by linking how much the devs contribute to the project, but not all studios will hear of this and do the same, or think they should follow suit in legal practices. Instead of breaking working hours and pushing employees to stay behind longer and get burn out (in the good end scenario), often unpaid or unreported on a set hour contract, there is the chance to hire more people or manage shareholders expectations, because gamers can wait and will prefer decent working conditions than knowing that the game they waited for was built on unnecessary sacrifices.
While Naughty Dog seems to be getting pressure from Sony, it doesn’t excuse the internal crunch mess, and no matter how many devs come out and speak fondly, it just highlights how troubled the current game development field is today.
