“This used to mean commitment but now it’s discipline and ability to balance life and work so passion does not consume rookies. “Self-imposed: being senior staff means I must lead by example,” one anonymous developer told the survey-takers. Some 33 percent of respondents didn’t feel that the amount of time they worked was excessive, while 9 percent claimed they had no idea why they put in so many hours. Nine percent worked more than 81 hours, which is entering serious burnout territory.īut what led developers to work those hours? Some 73 percent said they were personally motivated to do so (i.e., self-pressure), while 14 percent said it was due to management pressure, and 11 percent cited peer pressure as the reason for remaining at their desks. Twenty-four percent of respondents worked more than 66 hours per week, which is pretty crunchy.
And when we look at the maximum hours worked during any particular week over the past year, things get a tad more extreme: It’s also worth noting that, while many of those developers had what might be described as “normal” workweeks, a small but noticeable number worked over 56 hours per week on average. GDC surveyed some 3,000 game developers to come up with its results. Specifically, most game developers seem to have worked a reasonable amount of hours per week over the past 12 months: Similar reports emerged from Rockstar Games, another huge publisher, when it was pushing to release “Red Dead Redemption 2,” another massive open-world game, back in 2018. Epic, BioWare, and other high-profile studios have faced their own crunch time controversies over the past couple of years.īut do game developers really feel forced to work crazy hours under incredible pressure? GDC’s State of the Game Industry 2021, the latest version of its annual report, presents some intriguing data. “Crunch at this scale, and for this duration, casts a shadow over ‘Cyberpunk 2077’- and actively undermines some of the progressive and cautionary themes no doubt present in the game itself,” stated a Polygon article at the time. Last year, for example, reports suggested the CD Projekt Red team assigned to produce “Cyberpunk 2077” (screenshot above) ended up working long nights and weekends at an “exhausting pace” in order to finish the blockbuster game. Companies have routinely pledged to end crunch time, yet developers still complain about overwork. For years, game developers have complained about “crunch time,” in which their teams are required to work virtually around the clock for many months to deliver a fully featured game by a certain release date.
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