Of those crunching, some received incentives and additional payments. 26% of respondents worked more than 60 hours per week.This figure is higher than the 2019 DSS where about 35% of respondents engaged in crunch. 47% felt that crunch or long hours was expected as a normal part of their job.Īmong those who experienced crunch, 58% of employees, 64% of freelancers, and 63% of the self-employed had crunched more than twice in the past two years.A further 22% said that their job required periods of extended work hours but they didn’t call it crunch.One-third said their job involved crunch time.This sudden loss of progress compared to the past trend of crunch decreasing year over year is likely caused by inefficiencies and delays caused by work from home and mental health challenges caused by the pandemic. While the game industry has overall done well during the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw nearly double the number of developers reporting they had crunched recently. In their 2021 Developer Satisfaction Survey, the International Games Developer Association found more developers complaining about crunch than in previous years. The current state of crunching in video game development Something the academics describe as creating ‘cruel optimism perpetuates unsustainable labor practices.’ ‘ Good crunch’ is often used to justify crunch in developers that aren’t willing to address a toxic work culture. Whilst research from the University of Oregon describes another type of crunch - the ‘good crunch’. This type of crunch is not necessarily deadline driven - it can reflect a crunch culture where employees expect and accept long hours. Delusional Crunch - This is when the studio truly believes that they are not crunching, yet the staff works overtime and spends late nights at the office.According to the academics, this is ‘often because of unreasonable scheduling created early in the project that forces employees to work extra hard to get the game shipped according to schedule’. Continuous Crunch - This is crunch that continues throughout the whole project until the game is complete.Mini Crunch - These are multiple crunches throughout the project to meet specific milestones.It’s used to deliver a high-quality game to the required schedule. Final Crunch - This is a short-term crunch for the last weeks of the project before the final deadline.Research from the University of Gothenberg identified four types of games development crunching.
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