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 fucked up all the time from start to finish.
>>10878085Because games became blockbusters that needed to come out on time.
>>10878085It 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
>>10878085Game 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.
There was a lot of that at rare in 5th gen too
>>108780984th gen developers were sleeping under desks
Because people who grew up playing games tolerated sweatshop conditions to finally have their "dream job" making games.
>>10878115you think speccy shitmongers weren't just there for a paycheck?
>>10878085because people exaggerate/lie for social media attention
>>10878085I 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 fucked. 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.
>>10878150Yeah 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.
>>10878140>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 gamesVs>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 thoughIt’s always been like this. I guess kojima is an exception though.
>>10878085I 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.
3D models and collisions and all the programing needed to make it all work. Sprites were easy.
>>10878173games became Hollywood and interactive movies instead of toys
>>10878085Games became a big business and could accommodate lower-quality workers, who complain more.
>>10878085because ea is big gay
>>10878085"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 retards on Twitter started screeching and bitching about MUH CRUNCH and how bad it is, and now games are getting even worse because devs are allowed to be lazy cunts. Don't bother arguing with me, you know that I'm right.
>>10878730hmmmm, have you tried killing yourself?
>>10878085there was plenty of crunch during 5th gen as well, listen for instance to dario casali's tales of crunch during the development of hl1
>>10878730The 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.
>>10878085There'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.
>>10878730Crunch time is usually done in a few month period before release. Starting in 6th Gen it became crunch time for a year or more.
>>10878315watch 16 bit sensation they show you how "easy" is to make dot art.>but muuhh 3D models and collisions are harderjust 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.
>>10878730He's right. All this whining about "crunch" is leftist propaganda. Chad 10x engineers are in "crunch" perpetually, producing the finest games on the planet.
>>10879009Pic 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.
>>10878085i honestly dont care and i dont feel bad for them, if and when games become good again then i'll care but for now, fuck 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
>>10878085Krackle'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.
>>10879062Except 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.
>>10879098>cannot brute force creativitycome on now anon
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.
>>10879062Are there really laborers, not bankers, not self-employed types, who work 100-hour weeks?
You hear about it now because they hire women and nonwhites now. You know, people who don't understand the value of hard work.
>>10879009>>10879016This 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.
>>10879145>bootlickingCommie buzzword.You HAVE to go back.
>>10879146OK bootstraps boomer.
>>10879016You talk as if Carmack was a normal human being.
>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
>>10879016I think the problem isn’t one guy staying late but everyone staying late. Coding in groups is fucking miserable if things go wrong
>>10879186mega based
>>10878730>"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 retards on Twitter started screeching and bitching about MUH CRUNCH and how bad it is, and now games are getting even worse because devs are allowed to be lazy cunts. 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.
>>10878085I'm pissed because this thread made me go out and buy a crunch bar. Fucking asshole, I don't want junk in my body but I have no self-control reeee I hate you you fuckface
