You don't understand anything about crunch. (Gaming)

by General Battuta, Monday, May 25, 2020, 20:37 (1646 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY
edited by General Battuta, Monday, May 25, 2020, 21:02

I could try to explain it to you, but I don't know if it'd do anything for either of us. You have no understanding at all of the cost of the process, the reasons people are drawn into it despite 'forewarning', and the fundamental waste and stupidity of it.

Having gone from a bright-eyed kid flying into Seattle for his first real job out of grad school to a suicidal wreck in a padded cell over six months of Destiny crunch, I can tell you that crunch is not the reason we get great games. It's the reason we don't get more great ones.

If you've ever wondered 'why doesn't Destiny have more writing like the Books of Sorrow and the grimoire in the game itself?' the answer is crunch.

And before you try to tell me that I don't have what it takes to work at Bungie, my work is still good enough they're bringing me back on freelance. Destiny could have my writing full time. But the studio used me up in six months of crunch instead of keeping me for six years (as of this March) of sustainable work. I did the Books of Sorrow in a week. Imagine what I could've done with more than 300 weeks of creativity on Destiny.

Instead, I spent hundred hour week after hundred hour week filling out excel spreadsheets of gun and item names.

I lost nearly everything—my friends, my writing career, my health, my life savings, very nearly my life—to those six months. It's probably not an exaggeration to say they're the worst thing to ever happen to me. I'm still recovering (and my writing career probably never WILL recover from the years of total block I had afterwards—I will likely never be a marketable author under my real name again). It took years of adjustment to find the right combination and dosage of drugs to get me back on my feet.

Think about how many times this story has happened, to how many excited young people.

Think about what kind of games you could be playing if they were still with us.