And the dam is at the bottom of the mass. 

Yeah, here and there a little ... but it's not bad! 

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_Game_Outcomes_Project_Part_4_Crunch_Makes_Games_Worse.php 

The people who defend crunch are almost always leads, ie, the people who are most directly excused from having to do their jobs properly by the 'validity' of crunch time. That or young lifers who don't yet have families or interests outside of games who wouldn't know what to do with 100 hours of free time per week anyway. These usually go on to become leads.

Crunch is massive schedule overruns, nothing more. in any other industry it's met with the people in charge of the schedule losing their jobs. (except, of course, in US government contracting.) 

I recently ran across someone who told me about Bully at Rockstar. 18 hours a day for 2 years. That's a soul destroying crunch - and he happily defended it. He said it was hard work but we should all be grateful to have jobs doing what we love, so it was worth it.

He got a completion bonus that was enough to buy a whole new car.

I couldn't fucking believe it.

A new mid-range car for 2 years of my every waking hour? Die in a fire. 

Oh, 18 hours a day / 7 days a week. 

I spend 10 hours a day in a call centre... then I come home and spend about 18 on my computer making maps.

Pretty certain I could crunch for 2 years, though I'd want money to be flowing like water. 

It's different when you can't leave and you have to work on what you're being told to work on. It sucks. Hard. 

I worked at a company for 6 years - spent probably a total of 2 of those years in evenings + weekend crunch time, and it was unpaid overtime, all the time.

I don't know of many games companies in the UK that actually pay overtime. 

 

I'd rather work a steady low paid job where I'm not treated like a slave.

Like I said, the money would have to flow like water. 

The last place I worked actively discouraged overtime. They knew that guys like the one Willem describes actively sell out the guys that come after them by being so utterly willing to strike such a losing bargain, and that such an attitude eventually becomes poisonous company culture. 

Of course, they're closed now, as is the place Scampie and I worked before that which also discouraged overtime, so, there's that little data point. 

It's hard to find a good spot in this Industry.
I've been working for almost 8 years now, I must have worked a total of 2 saturdays, and no more than 4 months of paid crunch (in time off usually, and it was usually soft, like 2h extra every evening). I feel really fortunate about it.

The hardest thing is finding a good lead. The company where I currently work does quite a bit of crunch at times, but my team's lead is well organized and manages to avoid most of it for us. Unfortunately this isn't always possible depending on your job, some teams are more dependant on other teams being on schedule (like character art vs environment art). 

...as is the place Scampie and I worked before that which also discouraged overtime...

...where I ended up working a bunch of overtime anyway to meet the needs of an important contract we had, but at least my boss stayed for much of it with me doing everything to assist.

Still wasn't very good for my mental health, especially when afterwards I took up Raven's offer to return to their frying pan of "way behind schedule, yet still discovering what the game was"... 

link 

Quit. 

Good game. 

Romero plays Doom http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/01/22/john-romero-doom-lets-play/#more-264569

Somewhat interesting. 

Interesting, but did they have to use that horrible engine with all those glows and blooms and weird texture filtering? :( 

Also, "gib sounds" as in, djibb:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJzbE8wz1Wo&t=6m20s

Eat it, Dazers / Dranners / Danzers / Dranz. 

nevermind 

JIB. Eat it, haters. :P 

Get wrecked world!