Same, I'm not even a game developer but is very relatable to me. Right now I am working for Amazon and there is just too much work that wants to be done.
Hello funny Minecraft music man But in all seriousness, i agree with you, if we don't talk about problems like crunch and workplace abuse then it won't ever stop
exactly. at least if you had a gun to my head and i refused your demands, my troubles would be over the moment you pulled that trigger. this is worse than a gun to your head.
Well, crunch is owned by nestlé, which doesn't care about killing children. A 2018 report found that they promote their powder milk to replace breast milk in certain countries, but breast milk helps babies build their immune system; you should understand where the problem is. When they first started doing it in Africa (in the 80s? 60s? I don't remember) they even gave free samples lasting just long enough that the mother stop producing her own milk, so that they would have no choice but to buy artificial milk. Such practices were internationally banned (at least in theory), but i guess nestlé is going to toe the line as much as it can.
High level companies' individuals are ignorant pieces of shit that think economy runs on fairy dust and artists are ammunition that they can pack into their shotgun, shoot at the wall of expansion and then just go find more bullets.
@@crunchybro123 did you not watch the video? The “Goose” is a metaphor for the developers. The Activision Executive basically said they’re willing to cook that Goose.
I like that Marty character and his Goose. But yeeeh, crunch is horrible, I've been having crunch time for some animations and it's horrible, even more cuz it's personal work and makes me feel bad if I get it late. Latetly I understood that if it's gonna be late then just work at your own time. Sometimes passion can give you that fun crunch, but it's not healthy trying to do it all the time, resting is good to recharge and keep doing it, or just taking it slowly.
It's both super depressing and really strange to see you crunching on your nonsensical videos that only last a few minutes, more depressing than strange, obviously
It's ok if your toons go out a bit late. I mean spooky month and ccccccchhhhhhhrrrrrrriiiiiiissssssmmmmmasss only comes once a year, so you got a full year to make it.
@@doyouknowdawae6660 I wasn’t there for that and I still know it was stupid, it’s a twisted and depressing irony that people sent death threats for him to make a video on undertale’s genocide route
Wow, I was forced to crunch to be in Noodle's video. He's a slave driver. (Added later) Ok, I’ve read enough comments that discuss my bad mic or recording. Not true. Julian actually did some cool sound design and post processing to make it sound real. Is that hard to believe?
I no joke had a psychotic episode due to crunch. I was taking adderall to keep my brain alive after virtually no sleep for a week, then my perception of reality completely warped and I erroneously assumed my roomate/ best friend was planning to kill me so I attacked him and spent 3 days in the psych ward. Thank God my friend understood and didnt press charges. Crunch isn't some back ache, or mild inconvenience, it absolutely devastates your sense of wellbeing and for what purpose? For leisurely golfing executives to make more moola. They view their workers, people, as instruments in a plan who exist only to help fatten their wallet.
In the last year or so I've oddly gotten more excited when I've heard of delays or postponements. My prime example is Infinite. I was telling friends after that initial reveal that if 343 wanted to do the right thing, it would be to delay the game and take their time. Then, they actually did it. I was so happy that more time and thought was being put into the game other than "we gotta get this out!"
@@WARSinRIOTS still, they should release a thing on time if they say they’re gonna, delaying games isnt good and let’s them know they can delay and make as much hype as they want, even if the game is a complete garbage heap mess. Ala Cyberpunk
@@babytricep437 i think you would be angrier to get a game that IS a hot pile of mess and garbage, and buggy as initial release cyberpunk was, than waiting so long upon multiple delays but actually get a fantastic game which came out almost flawlessly. Cyberpunk had an issue due to how the hype building up to it was so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to delay it further, or the community would go berserk. Such a task like game development is one which is by no means consistent and easy to guess how long it will take. Its an unpredictable and grevious process, so its hard to blame them if calculating when they are precisely done is humanely imposdible.
The problem with "passion crunch" that people take on themselves is that it still changes the culture. Now anyone else who wants to work and succeed at the company will be expected to work to the same level, regardless of the effect it has on their work-life balance or mental health. It's the job of regulations and management to make them stop. Like, it's the same with performance enhancing drugs in sports. Sure, some, maybe even most athletes would take them to improve their performance if they were allowed. But if you just allow them, you're basically putting everyone who isn't willing to potentially harm themselves at a disadvantage. Even if it's not written down as mandatory, it's effectively mandatory for anyone who wants to succeed.
Passion crunch is how we get employers to bully the shit out of you for all you are worth combined with depressing wages in compensation. People need to wake the fuck up and realize that work isn't the be all end all of life. FFS I see this stuff in education and especially my students, they are so buried into their work that they actually brag about how much work they are doing and it's demoralizing. Not to mention the abnormal hours I see some of my co-teachers put in and I'm just like, why? They're just abusing your generosity to afford to not pay you anything back in compensation. Then you see how capitalism fits into this and you hate it, even more, you are passionate about what you do, employers abuse that and take your passion for granted, don't pay their workers what they are actually worth and the cycle perpetuates. After all, if you're in charge of all of your employee's wages, why pay them extra when they'll still do the work anyway? Might as well use their passion and grind it into the dirt for all they're worth.
Had a manger who saw me working harder than the rest of my coworkers. She tried to mandate my level of work ethic to everyone else. I told her that if she tried that shit I was gonna leave, needless to say she removed the mandate. It’s sad that it doesn’t always happen that way though, with people becoming more and more stressed as their coworkers turn against them because corporate or the manager decided that everyone should be able to work at the fastest pace possible. This work culture that has cultivated over a few decades is becoming increasingly unfair not only to those who are currently employed, but also, those who need to find a new employer. It took me over a YEAR to find a job out of high school that didn’t let me go within the first month because I wasn’t able to keep up with highly unrealistic expectations and even now my current job doesn’t even give me enough hours so I can earn enough money to live off of.
This. I want more of this. Death threats aren't gonna fix anything, like honestly, how fucking hard is it to just be patient and instead encourage the devs to seek their own creative image of their own creative work in freedom (as it *should* be, because it's *their* product), rather than force them to crunch out a half-assed game just so the so-called """fans""" can stop blowing up their Twitter feed with death threats and psychological torture? That should just be human decency, honestly.
The best thing about cyberpunk is that i see this all the time now, people asking for gta VI and god of war ragnarok have disappeared, and devs are listening (halo infinite)
The bit with having Marty outside the window was hilarious, I've gotta say. And great sound design! For a company with a really good culture when it comes to this stuff, I'd put forward Wube, the devs of Factorio. Obviously most indie games will not achieve their level of success - they had the freedom to put good practices in place because they had the financial stability to do so, right? But regardless, they still were very careful about giving their employees the time they needed to not only complete Factorio within their deadlines, but also give them plenty of time away from the game to recharge.
One huge red flag of an abusive workplace culture is if the bosses refer to your coworkers and themselves as family. If it feels like a family then it doesn’t need to be said, otherwise it’s a guilt trip to take shit.
@@RPGgrenadei know i saw someone threatening to "spray water on the team's pillows" if they rushed it which is fair enough, i wouldn't want my pillows to be moist :(
People are encouraging TC to take their time, and make sure the final product is great. TC themselves told a random fan at a convention that they are not crunching, and are trying to release something good over something quick
This is why I respect team cherry so much They have like a million people ready to explode from excitement, really, and I mean _really_ , badly wanting to know when silksong is coming And they’re just like “It’s done when it’s done, now go before I slap you with a slipper”
Yeah, like even though people make memes about being disappointed when the Nintendo Directs don't mention it, we know that we'd rather wait in the darkness and be surprised when it's ready than beating them over the head to get it out asap
Aw man, as much as it kinda' sucks to hear that, I'm definitely glad they did it to make sure it was done right and avoid the human cost behind it. As great as a game can be and everything it can make and foster within it's subsequent communities, people shouldn't have to sacrifice their whole lives and wellbeing in service of it, just to keep it going.
I am disgusted by the fact that 2 years later this video still gets commenters trying to either make crunch not seem like a big deal or not needing to be addressed at all. apparently just the idea of 100 hours a week for 3 months AND NO OVERTIME PAY isn't enough to make people thing "wow, that's bad".
“Sometimes, there’s nothing like a good foie gras” in context sounds like a line a super villain says to make you realize how fucked up they are. Gave me shivers
I've returned to this video multiple times and I'm still deeply descasted and disturbed about his line, it is really fucked up and, mostly because the goose here is a human being, sounds like *actual cannibalism*
Also a navy lad a bit ago. Crunch defs was just the norm and it actually changed me as a person for the worse end of things. depressed and have no drive to do anything these days. Not even stuff I like to do
I've been in the industry for over 16 years now, and I've done my fair share of crunch in crunch culture oriented studios. You mentioned how contract workers were overtime exempt? Well, I was an actual full-time employee, but I was also technically overtime exempt. The closest to compensation we'd get was called "Project Days", which were arbitrarily awarded additional vacation days (often kept off the books, you know, in case you tried to quit and cash them out) that our manager would hand out at the end of a project. Did you work 60+ hours a week for months on end? Your compensation would be 4-5 extra days off once the game shipped, or maybe just 2-3 if the producer didn't like you. Thankfully, I now work at a studio where crunch culture is explicitly banned: If a manager or lead implies you are required to work overtime at all, you can go straight to the CEO and he'll sort them out. I've been back to working normal weeks for years, and it's one of the most fantastic boosts to my mental health that I have ever experienced.
Would you happen to know any other companies like this? I am about to jump off into the industry and the crunch culture here in the US is making me think maybe I should work abroad...
If I ever ran a video game company in the future, what hours and what days off for the week I should give to the developers and designers to make sure that everyone is doing a-ok? Also, how many days of a break I should give after the game is released to make sure that everyone can return with a freshened drive to create another game? I want to make sure that in the future when I do end up becoming a CEO or a head of a project that I don't overwork anybody, so everyone can have fun making great to good games.
@@theJ1B1A1 It's something that very much depends on the company. My advice is that if you are interviewing at a place, ask them directly what the policy is regarding crunch. How is it compensated? How many hours are people working per week right now? How many hours to do they work as a project is wrapping up? Don't just ask managers, ask everyone who interviews you and see if their answers line up. I once interviewed at a place where people were working 60+ hours a week TWO YEARS prior to the launch of the game. I did not take that job.
@@Tavdogg11 If your question is "How many hours can I expect my employees to work past a normal work week?" then my honest advice is to shift your perspective or just not run a studio. Planning for crunch is the absolute biggest failure that management can have, and it's guaranteed to burn out your team and produce lackluster products. You should expect developers to work 40 hours a week, just like a normal full-time job, and that's what you use when planning. In terms of breaks between projects, offering a competitive vacation package is the correct way to go. Most companies give 3+ weeks per year, depending on seniority. The main thing is to make sure people can actually take the vacation without being pressured out of it, or called in while on vacation (I have seen this happen first hand, it's insane. People vacationing out of the country and then being told they have to get back to the office, and they schedule earlier flights home, etc. I would quit on the spot if this happened to me.)
@@patrickharris7823 Yeah. I am not that knowledgeable on work hours. I am still in college and I haven't learn specifics on jobs yet. I am actually going for creative writing since I am not knowledgeable on work hours and what I should expect for work hours, plus I prefer creation of stuff on my own time rather than being forced on specific hours, so I probably need more training on leadership skills and work hours. However, that does lead me to another question. How many hours should I work on alone when creating works of my own pen? More specifically, as a creative writer trying to work on a novel or at least some short stories? I don't want to overwork myself, but I am unsure on how much effort is too much and how little effort is too little to get anywhere.
Can we all focus for a second how actually horrifying and villanesque "there's nothing like a good foie gras" is? Like, holy shit, that's an actual villain line. LITERALLY a villain line.
I feel like companies purposefully hire sociopaths as their higher ups who manage the work force. You "have to" in order to make this crunch culture we're in possible. No reasonable human being is able to force that on such a massive scale
Crunch is like squeezing a rock to get water, you could technically do it and get a drop of water trapped inside. But you're left with rock powder afterwards. And then you complain that there's only a single drop of water inside the rock.
Well there were also studies which showed that Japanese workforce is less effective than workforce in other countries even though the whole work culture is in crunch mode. (Talking about general work culture, not just Game Dev)
@@GraniteFaun Its not about effectiveness, its about reputation and quality. You want to buy a car made in Japan or Indonesia? Yeah it sounds racist to say but no one is going to bat an eye to assume the one made in Japan is of better quality.
In Asia, this thing is so so much worse. There is this weird romanticization of putting yourself through literal hell just for the sake of a few grades. Ive seen many of my classmates literally collapse out of exhaustion after exams
Earlier this year I left my "dream job" over burnout. I was doing AI research, but doing voluntary crunch to try to get models and code implemented. My manager was telling me that he didn't want me working that hard, but when I stopped crunching, I noticed that my reviews were becoming poor. I got more recognition and praise on projects after I crunched, and they'd call me things like "10xer." But eventually it all caught up with me and I had a mental breakdown, and my later projects started to fall to shit. I was pretty much done. After I quit, I tried to get my PhD at my old college, thinking the more free time and work to apply to what I wanted to do would help me out of burnout, but it only made it worse. I kept doing more of the same thing, training models, not getting the result I wanted, tweaking data and code, running experiments, averaging 80 hr work weeks, only to end up with trivial or bad results. I took a semester off from college, and just played videogames nonstop. Now I'm at the point where I need to return back to college, but I'm still burned out. I'm guessing this is that "stress casualty" that they're talking about.
I always hated the places where I worked and they say stuff like "we are basically family. We spend more time here than with our real families so we want to TREAT you like family." Idk, it's just disgusting.
it's worse when you're actual family. My dad is a farmer, each time i try to have a peaceful day for myself he goes on about all the work that I have to do and how he buys me nice things so I have to return the favor. Even when i'm working all day he tells me that i had all these things that I didn't do. When I came back from my other job he always needed me for something. having your boss follow you home for dinner isn't great.
The "they don't put a gun to your head argument" is like when your sibling puts their finger right next to you head but yells "I'm not touching you". You're still causing the negative reaction even if you're not directly striking them
Nah playing with someone’s lively hood is arguably close to having a gun put to your head, especially when cost of living is consistently going up, you don’t have too many chances to slip up
Marty's voice acting was pretty good in this, your writing always makes the interactions between characters amazing. At first I thought it was just you and Ice Cream Sandwich being funny but now im convinced you would have perfect comedic timing even if you were bouncing jokes off Barney the god damn dinosaur.
@@phoenixnight9237 Im not good at 2D stuff, so I wont say anything there, but I can do... about 30 secs of 3D animation in... 4-5 hours. And thats just like a gun showreel style animation
Nah, the exec implied that they don't _want_ to kill the goose, but if it dies, they could still get the foie gras from it anyway, so who cares? Not to mention they can easily buy another one to replace it.
@@this_is_patrick You make foie gras by months of preparation force feeding the goose beyond its normal limits. If you're eating foie gras, you know it well in advance. The exec is definitely implying they'll gladly work the goose to death and strip it for parts before moving onto the next goose. They know they're killing it, they just want to sometimes.
@@thewerdna "In another incident, Kotick has stated during the 2009 Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference that "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Kotick continued to say that they "have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."[52][53][54][55] Following the backlash on the statement, Kotick has commented that "Sometimes that commitment to excellence, well, you can come across as being like a dick. And when I say things like 'taking the fun out of making video games,' it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors."[56]" Source Wikipedia. HOLY SHIT. I had to read that thrice to make sure I didn't misunderstand this. Wow. I'm absolutely against torture, but I find it difficult to argue against force-feeding this person with foie gras until he dies (even if it's not the same person, who cares, deserves it anyways). Oh btw, he voted for Hillary, this just for all the people who think she's the lesser-evil alternative.
@@wawawuu1514 bruh don't bring politics into this. I don't care who one bad person voted for. The KKK supported Donald Trump, and that doesn't instantly make him more evil than any other.
Yeah some folks can underestimate how terrifying pressure from fans can be and how aggressive they can get if you don’t provide a released date or miss a date, and then they can tear you apart for the finished product that’s most likely been rushed out just to give them something, but it’s not good enough
All those fans, that are that invested in that shit, are fucking insane and should be sent for a psych eval. I had a friend who had invested over 2k into Chronicles of Elyria and was hyped about it since day 1. Amassed enough IP to start as a Duke. When it started looking bleak, he kinda just accepted the loss. I could never imagine him acting like the people Noodle showed screencaps of. And I would guarantee, none of those assholes in the caps ever got that invested into a game.
Absolutely agree, and I find it disgusting. Have you ever played Fortnite? I literally love the game, it's probably one of my favorited, but even seasons ago, when they were cruching hard their employees (I think they stopped now? Because the updates have been set to be much slower now, so hopefully they understood to stop being slavers) and when they used to release a HUGE update literally every week, people still complained and whined about them taking too long to correct mistakes. Especially till the 4th season of chapter 2 (we're in seasons 6 now, so not too long ago btw) people were so toxic towards anyone who supported the game and the developers, and just wanted them to be able to take a breath and get a slower pace. Now the situation is hopefully getting better, because many of those toxic-waste-fans are abandoning the fandom (and those who hated the game without playing it are just getting bored on being haters on it, just going somewhere else to ruin some other fandom), but trust me, it was extremely hard staying a fan and a supporter (loving the game and advocating for slower and more human updates) with all this hate going on. I can't even imagine how hard it must have been for developers. The gaming community seriously sucks sometimes...
This is mainly a problem of today's "I want it and I want it NOW!" culture. Example : I'm 38, a different generation, I still remember times without smartphones and where games often took minutes to lead a level, or where downloading a single mp3 file took HOURS. And Many other things, I LEARNED to have PATIENCE. But nowadays kids and young adults are so spoiled with instant gratification that they literally go insane if they don't get what they want RIGHT NOW. This is also one of the reasons why dating / marriage and relationships in general are going to shit, because those things take time and effort. I'm one of the people that were waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, do I want to play it? Fuck yeah I do! Could I play it right this second? Sure, it's on my SSD ready to go. Did I fire it up even once yet? No I didn't, I'm going to wait another half a year or a year until the majority of bugs are fixed and some extra content is available. And no, I'm not stressing about it, I'm not even thinking about it most of the time. I just keep myself busy with other things, in my head I'm like "It's done when it's done, not a second sooner" and I have no problem with that.
@@ObservationofLimits thy aren't fans and the only thing they're invested in is themselves. You have to be brain dead or unempathetic to think that rushing their work would do anything but squader it's quality. They don't even get that far though.
I did Game Dev at uni, and crunch was kind of just taken as part of the industry. There was no real pushback to the idea, the lecturers just dismissed any serious discussion of it as a necessary evil, paying lip service to the idea of "crunch bad". Very demoralising for a student.
Crunch culture being treated as a rite of passage reminds me of F1 fans who didn't like the halo-a safety device-when it was introduced, and one of the excuses was that "racers are gladiators" and _should_ face death.
@@ruffalo1643 I think a bit of it was the drivers seemed against it at the time to (some not all), but also the older drivers who'd lived through much worse safety standards who commentate and help form the general public's opinion seemed against it. Though a year or less after the introduction there's a crash with Charles Leclerc in Spa and I'm pretty sure that's when everyone in the sport was sure it was the right choice. There was pushback from the drivers (before my time + also if i remember this correctly) when the HANS device was first introduced which basically drastically reduced the chances of drivers breaking their neck if I remember rightly it was something like "well I need to be able to see more / turn my neck more, it's uncomfortable, etc. etc. Talking of safety in F1, rest in peace Jules. I'm sure without his accident a lot of the improvements in the past decade wouldn't have happened. A sad and scary reminder that a lot of safety rules are written in blood. I wish we could've seen him race in a Ferrari.
I am alone, in my apartment, on the second floor of my building at midnight with my pants off and blutooth earbuds in. Then your fucking knocking happened sound happened and I had such a fucking heart attack.
Deadlines are a good thing, as long as you actually manage to decide on a realistic date. Setting an unrealistic deadline is bad management. Not being able to set one in the first place because you have no plan of how long anything takes to get done is just as bad
problem with that is publishing there is a time to strike with advertising and if you miss it publisher will want to release it anyway mainly because about 50% of a AAA games budget is for advertising it's why Halo Infinite is the most expensive game of all time
Sorry to hear that. I personally heard stories from other college students that some foreign exchange students can’t get credit for a paper they helped work on (in terms of science ) because the professor just took the credit. I believe the person was Chinese but I’m not 100% certain.
@@garybrown2039 I agree. There is this issue about how we value Asian productivity less than white people. We take not only Asians, but contributions made by people of colour for granted a lot of the times. Edit: This is not to say it doesn’t happen to white people. Whenever there’s a hierarchy and systematic discrimination, this problem appears.
@@chardaranimations5981 I think you misinterpreted what I said. I meant to say that it happened a lot in China or Asia itself. Not here in the west because every foreign exchange student in person of color got their name on papers when they were here.
that point about realistic graphics = good is just stupid, there's even a sentence that describes it perfectly: "The pursuit for hyperrealism is a fruitless struggle that results in bloated file sizes."
@@cateyedboy4168 it's a quote for people who work too hard, like giving their best, are inherently too selfless, to tell them you're not achieving your goal by neglecting yourself. I guess it comes off as confusing to people who aren't like that.
@@this_is_japes7409 I get what the quote is trying to say, but I agree with CatEyedBoy. Self-care is self-care, period. Trying to convey what self-care is by saying that, if you don't take care of yourself you won't be able to take care of the world is non sensical... What if I don't care about the world? What about people who do good for the world at their own expense?
@@-Zakhiel- then this quote is not for you/them simple as that. quotes like these aren't meant to be universal. no one can summarize a complex issue for everyone in a single witty sentence. language is limited and we're not spartans. this quote has a target audience, people who do too much for the sake of others in neglect of themselves i.e. the people who tend to suffer from overworking in the first place, the victims of crunch culture, the topic of the video, the relevant subject. everyone has different values, this quote seeks to appeal to the values of those type of people in order to make them realize their self destructive behavior is working against them. also saying self-care is self-care is reductive (i mean so is the quote, but I digress). everyone has different ideas for what self-care should be, self-care isn't just self-care, because there isn't one definition. like you say, not everyone cares about the world(sadly), someone who is self-indulgent, and ruins their health in overindulgence likely needs a different motivation to stop their self-destructive behavior, so they need a different quote that appeals to their values, but they're typically not the victims of crunch culture i.e. they're not who this quote is for, they're not the reason I commented this on a video about crunch culture, and they're not the reason I was told it.
my dad worked in the games industry for about 15 years, basically my whole early childhood. he was a smart man who picked his projects very carefully, but even so, I don't remember him being around much when I was a kid. the crunch culture was so bad that even though my dad had it relatively easy, he still was under a lot of stress and didn't get much time off. shit sucks, dude.
aand this is why indie is a thing (and thank god its actually going so successful ya know with the whole big corpo crunching and all but I think it can still happen but a bit less likely with small groups like the dudes that made Risk of Rain 2)
@@slavcabbage2619 Like mentioned in the video, crunch culture isn't only caused by greedy Capitalists working poor people to the bone and implicitly threatening them with starvation if they speak up. It also is a result of consumers getting violently angry about a game being delayed or people attacking anyone that criticizes disgusting labor laws and advocates for unionization. Imo, it's a by-product of sweaty reactionaries getting more and more attention and support since gamergate and cultivating a pro-consumerist, anti-worker sentiment that annihilates creative people's mental and emotional well-being.
@@RaeIsGaee Thats true but im just saying that im glad that indie is actually being accepted and the other half of the major cause of stress, big corpos edging on crunching. However, I think that indie devs, like you said, do have a whole lot of stress from game delays and update delays from people. I even think they might have it worse off than the big games because if you look at a big high graphics game then as a consumer you might understand or give them more tolerance than smaller game devs who are making smaller games "and because they are making smaller games they should be able to do it easier". But yea indie games are cool and im glad they caught on.
@@slavcabbage2619 Oh absolutely, I'm glad too and I'm super thankful for groups like the devs for Deadcells. And absolutely, like indie devs always feel more vulnerable and personal because its their personal projects, and its much easier to target them than it is to seek out a specific overworked creative in a corporation.
yeah... tbh it takes a lot of time to just implement a feature and then to have it work flawlessly takes even more time. Even it's a simple feature, still takes time, and the more you add, the more interactions and so on you need to make sure works. I suppose without those crunches, those games would either never have been released or been pushed back a lot, and seeing Cyberpunk, I don't know if the community would be happy with that... Oh, and profit too, the longer it takes to release, the more the company bleeds money. Games don't make money until they release or Early access.
@@tracyblanchard7663 it could work if it wasn't just a calculation of maximum hours worked per staff member, and if studios/publishers weren't the ones deciding (which should be the case with any certification). There would have to be a third party (maybe... perhaps... a game developers' union?) that individually reviewed studios/projects and made it possible for staff to safely and anonymously report issues and concerns and have those reports reviewed by human beings with compassion and critical thinking. It wouldn't be perfect, because people aren't perfect, but it would be _something._
This is two years old but I have to share. Marty is 100% the kind of manager some software teams need. Personal crunch bleeds into a crunch culture, because once some devs start putting their lives on the backseat, it creates expectations from the clients and even other managers. I worked with a lead developer who would set deadlines around his crunch behaviors. His goto deadline was "2 weeks." What the client and managers didn't know is that those 2 weeks included 20 hours on weekends, and an extra 2 or so hours each day of the working week at home doing more work. I didn't want to do that, I wasn't even expected to do that, but suddenly I couldn't say "this will take 4 weeks" without having to argue "why? he can do it in 2," because I wasn't trying to crunch my way through it, and my managers ultimately were more interested in the client being happy so they didn't really push back or fight for a longer deadline. This built an expectation in my products that I had to crunch, because he set a standard that was not feasible without putting in that extra time. It ultimately made me a miserable person and led to me being fired because the stress overwhelmed me and affected the rest of my work. So, I'm glad you pushed back on that guy a little bit, in a respectful way of course, and I'm glad people like Marty are out there setting reasonable expectations for their employees to prevent that from spiraling. Sometimes passionate people don't realize how their seemingly personal toxic behaviors can become something that is no longer personal. It's fine to be passionate and want to work extra, but businesses are about results and it can transform into something much worse real quick because they won't see the human cost, either on purpose or otherwise.
As someone who served in an actual military that actually fights in an actual battlefield, to hear the term ‘stress casualty’ in any context other than euphemism for PTSD is.... Incredibly unsettling
@@tsrenis [[[sorry if anyone checks the comments and gets triggered by this. We used to refer to soldiers who committed suicide as ‘stress casualties’. Really uncomfortable that the gaming industry is claiming this term.]]]]
Ah man that stuff is awful.. Its.. bad, I've also heard things about workers in japan who will straight up die from working too much, so maybe.. unfortunately.. it could be an accurate term... Then again it's hard for anyone like me to know either side when i haven't experienced any of it..
@@tehynprk this is pretty graphic but for those who don't know, foie gras geese are force fed until they contract liver disease. it tastes good because of the fatty buildup that results from the disease (hence "foie gras" literally translating to fatty liver). it's horrendous, and in my mind is absolutely animal abuse.
@@InternetKilledTV21 excuse me what the fuck, why don't they fry it with extra grease or something, seriously, what the fuck.I'm all for eating meat but that's just fucked.
I feel so bad for artists who lose their passion and come to the point of hating something they worked so hard to become, something they truly loved with all their heart because some inpatient corporate assholes needed to push them so far they broke.
I was an animator.. it was my dream job. But now, it's my nightmare. 3 years staying in thinking "It's my passion" while throwing away other significant things in my life - my family, my friends and my relationship, my health physically and mentally. Glad I left it behind
Jeez I feel you in another level. Animation used to be my biggest passion since my sweet childhood. I did a bachelor in 2D/3D at an animation school and worked 4 years into a company... it costed my mental health. Me and teammates were 24/7 overwhelmed and we worked around 80 hours a week for 4 years. It became quickly a living nightmare that I still have to recover...
@@stfuincels_1 I wish you a speedy recovery and best of luck.. I took 5 months to rest after I resigned before I decided to changed my career.. being jobless is a nightmare too but I don't wish to continue to work in this industry anymore.. so I just grab any job that at least can provide me a decent life.. I still love animation too, but just chose to not let a corporation to have control over my passion.. :) Take your time in picking yourself up again okay?
I'm in the same position. Freelance. I'm glad you are recovering. I hope the industry changes, but I'm wise enough to know better till the culture of the world changes.
@@hurricanemeridian8712 This is what I've heard too. I feel the video conflated the usual conditions at the company and the conditions for that game, but maybe I actually heard this story wrong to begin with?
@@caesarspeaks uhm, no? Anthem was only actually develop for like a year, because management was just so shitty that they couldn't decided to even basic stuff. It is not the fault of the development, it is the fault of people management everything
I work in the military and these guys work similar hours to us on deployment during crunch. The difference is we're mostly doing tasks we're specifically trained to do, and the tasks are simple enough. Not draining, thought-provoking work that's difficult to get right. We work this hard for national interest and so our families can live to see us, and so other people can live to see their families. They work this hard so a handful of impatient assholes can get their game faster. We work this hard knowing our families respect what we do and why we're doing it. Not only that, but we volunteered, and everyone knows how hard we work. Some of these people's families don't really know how hard these people are working, and their families might not even understand, or respect what they're doing. Point is, it's wrong for civilians like this to work as hard as they do for not even half of the pay or benefits we get.
@@replyorratioifugaysaycrymo1684 That was a really long way to say, "I'm an ignoramus douchebag who purposefully acts like an asshole on the internet to get the attention my parents never gave me".
woahwoahwoah thank you for your service and all that shit bit don't get it twisted when you say you defending your families of your in the US military- that's a completely different story. But yeah I work in a similar industry- when you get work its 12 hours a day minimum and when you don't get work its nothing
You're just a pawn being used by the generals, think about all the wars America has started on the middle east for no other reason than to steal their oil lines.
I remember starting to crunch in elementary school. I put my love of learning into homework and school and got praise and suddenly you have a fourth grader who doesn’t know the concept of not doing homework and staying up til midnight doing an assignment worth a couple of points. This lasted as far back as I remember up until I physically couldn’t anymore. Health got in the way and I became physically disabled. Crunching probably didn’t cause my disability but it sure didn’t help when I had to learn the concept of pacing myself by physically not being able to do it anymore. I had to learn not to care and it might be now I care too little but at least I can take care of myself.
The best part of foie gras is that it's mostly known for being the product /of/ abuse. The goose is stuffed silly while it's alive to make sure the liver is put under as much stress as possible.
I both agree and disagree with you. 1 you are right, it suffers, but 2 you are wrong, it is not abuse, its an animal, it cant express or have an opinion. 3 even if it is abuse, think about it, every good thing has a darker side. Christmas, for example, which is comming in a few days, when you spend time with family, and if you are a christian, you will most probably eat pork, which is given a lot of food, so it gets big and fat over the year, only to be slayed 2 weeks before christmas. The meat is delicious. So is the foix gras. For everything, there is something to sacrifice, for every + there is a - and to this there are no exeptions.
@@eyemaysin please try and use something called constructive criticism, or if your iq is not high enough for that, i recomand going to school, yes, its actually a thing even in 2020. Thank you!
@@zamfir2005 It's so unscientific to say animal abuse is not a thing that it's hard to answer properly, that's all. Next time tell us of the moon made of cheese. We can't compensate for your shortcomings.
What I hate the most is that boss that constantly complains because I keep making mistakes after working 27 hours non-stop... Like, half my brain is not there anymore, idk what you expect of me...
Yeah, that sounds like actual abuse. This kind of workplace behavior should be illegal. People working at a company are still human people, and thus need to have decent lives. Higher ups can't just ask literally anything of them and expect them to do the impossible and not drop dead on the floor. People have a life outside of work. You deserve better, honestly. Many do.
@@gaetanodepaola2ndchannel179 Agreed, a footbal coach making players do drills that are dangerous to their health gets fired and sued. Why don't other positions in different industries get treated the same?
This video comes outta the blue, and describes exactly what's happening in my life right now. I work as a programmer for a digital marketing company. We are just 2 programmers there. I always have to cut my lunch break and work every day overtime comoleteo for free and without insurance. The bosses got so good at this that they managed to brainwash all my colleagues who do the same, and made them think this is a good thing, because it's for the good of the company. They're actually HAPPY to do that. I'm literally using all the money I get from this work for paying a psychologist, and I still feel like I'm not living anymore, because, well, that's the truth. The only thing that makes me keep going is the fact that I'm getting the mandatory work experience that all the other companies want if you want to work for them, so that I can leave this company and get to another one, hoping I will get luckier. How much will I be able to sustain it? What will happen when I will break? What am I even living for? To work?
I understand the feeling, dude. Its a, shitty, overused saying but stuff gets better. And hey, you're at least striving and aware of the crappy situation rather than just accepting it
Do you think it's any different when you work in any other sector or even on the cash register? Right now all shop staff/post offices/delivery guys work overtime, before holidays. The difference is you are getting paid at least double to 10 times as much.
The purpose of work is to earn money. The purpose of money is to facilitate trades. The purpose of trades is to obtain material wealth. The purpose of wealth is to bring the owner enjoyment. Therefore, if you hate your work and it makes you unable to enjoy life...what’s the point?
As my dad always has told me: when you crunch you're not gaining any extra work/ value on the work you're doing. You're taking on debt and you'll eventually have to pay it back off + interest
I do complain about it and I understand they weren't sure on a deadline (probably bc once again the 4 workers) I just wish they didn't say early 2021. But, this video definitely gave me a new take on it
Look at all the comments for Valheim, five person team and people act like the 3+ years they spent making what we have now just isn’t good enough. They can’t believe it’s been three months and they don’t have every single expansion that was planned out right now it’s crazy.
Similar shit happens in heaps of workplaces, where the execs, concerned only about their bottom line, refuse to hire the amount of staff really needed.
I agree with the point on crunch you want to do vs crunch you need to with both being damaging if you're not careful. I used to go from one video project right to the next without any breaks. Eventually I started forcing myself to actually take breaks and holy hell I immediately felt better. I got more sleep, I had a regular schedule, I had more time to talk and keep up with my friends. As it turns out, week ends are healthy, who'd have thought? These last few months I've just been working non stop on videos thanks to holiday releases and I've created a plan to take 2 weeks off while still having content to post during that time. A year or so ago I wouldn't have done this. I'm very looking forward to it. And when NINTENDO of all companies are able to do right in this regard, you know something is messed up.
“It’s the thing that immediately follows the feeling of ‘oh god oh fuck’ when you realize an assignment is due in two days and you haven’t started yet”, noodle says as I realize I have an assignment due at midnight that I haven’t started yet TwT
Fans: "C'mon, it's not like anyone's holding a gun to your head!" Developers: "Y'know what, you're right, we're gonna take some time off and push back release by a day--" Fans: *Cocks gun* "I will literally kill you"
Not really it's mostly draconian tyrants that are detached from actual work in the top management that are the issue, faster they push the game more money they make at the end, since there hopefully will be less competition and more microtransactions at the end, of course draconian tyrants in the top management have their ditched servants at middle management to direct psychopaths and sociopaths at lower management who actually do all the whipping.
@@lordhater4207 And you don't think the absolutely insane, rabid fanbase, who are known for sending mass death threats to the developers of a new release have any involvement with that? It may not be a root cause, but it most certainly promotes the culture. Guarantee it was a part of why 2077 was such a shitshow. The problem (and very large) cluster of companies who turn their developers into slave labor already don't give a shit about them, so what's a few death threats if not "encouragement" to continue the overtime crunches? I mean, the consumer wants their product out faster, and their wallet is our bottom line, so of course we'll keep churning shit out to an ever-increasingly impatient audience than ever think to treat our workers with a shred of dignity in regards to their mental health! That'd be outlandish, surely.
@@kimi7396 There is some truth in that as well, however which of the two is more likely : 1. That 100% of management acts in the way i've described in the comment above, or 2. that 100% of gaming audience are impatient little brats? I'd say number 1 is more likely and i would further reinforce that with fact that ditched morons in top management make deals with shareholders or lacking those by themselves or amongst themselves in advance, they make their "perfect" plans despite not having ANY experience nor knowledge on how long and how hard the discussed project would be, nobody of the people who do the actual work is involved promises of time and profit are made then and there, a budget is made for the project that only exists in the fantasy land and "perfect" planning of degenerates that shouldn't be in charge of anything let alone a software development company not to mention gaming company, the demands are made of lower management to push the teams to their limits to complete tasks as fast as possible before the budget is spent, and all so that little shits in top management running a company whos inner workings they do not know don't have to spend few bucks more to improve the quality of life of their workers, i say issue lies in worthless and useless management from top to bottom, you say rampant murdering fan-base, i'd say that incompetent management is the issue, and that a person with IQ in double digits cannot hope to manage those with tripple digits IQ, all software engineers eventually leave their jobs and start their companies that are either related or totally unrelated to their previous work, and there is a reason why, nobody wants to have idiots above them, it's humiliating to a software engineer and it demeans the profession as a whole.
Fans aren't the big issue for most games. Fan pressure is a thing in the AAA game space, not so much for games like Barbie's Horse Adventure, but those developers crunch too. Few fans push for the timely release of mobile game milestones but, guess what, crunch also happens in that space. Even in the AAA space it's management and marketing spurring fans into action by promising fixed release dates while the game is still in alpha.
Damn this one hit me hard. I'm a mid-level VFX Artist, I've worked on a few movies and Netflix series since 2013, and a few months prior to COVID a few commercials. Much of the "Crunch-Culture" in film/TV has evolved due to binge-watching behavior and the craze for nostalgic reboots like Marvel and Star Wars movies, and has been an issue in the industry for years. It's slightly newer (eh) in games but is very VERY similar. For the VFX/film/TV industry, there's a short doc on Vimeo called "Hollywood's Greatest Trick," for anyone interested. It gets pretty bad, the worse I had it was going to the hospital for a swollen appendix during... you guessed it... "Crunch-time," (which lasted maybe 4 months on this particular project?) in a renovated building with no bathrooms at 2am. Asking to wait until the next day to finish a shot/VFX was like walking on thin ice, almost having my employment on the line, which I would say most people that work in these industries could relate to. My boss even griped when I told him I started seeing a therapist because it cut into working hours, one hour a week, which were all hours of every day 5-6 days a week. "Work a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life," man did I fall for that one hard when I was 18... and then 22 after I graduated.
I feel you, man. Except, when I graduated College, I was already seeing the cracks. I was gonna go into the Animation Industry. I used to look up to companies like RoosterTeeth and other animation/Gaming Companies. But, I was denied jobs because my skill level wasn't high enough. And then I saw. I saw what was wrong with the industry. I saw how they preyed on my dreams and grand visions I had. It was then that I knew it was better to do art and things I love for myself online. Not for profit, maybe for glory, but never relying on some higher-up or corporate entity for my income. I am glad I was able to see through their lies before they got me too. I am 23, and I graduated College about three years ago I think. Been working retail jobs ever since. I finally managed to settle down for a good one that treats me fairly. In Canada, we don't get a lot of good creative things to work on here. So, when I got an interview with one of the animation studios, I started to notice things. Like how I seemed to be the only one excited and eccentric throughout the whole time. The manager didn't seem to care that I was there. And when I went on tour of the office, everyone and everything there was just soulless. Even in some commentary tracks for my favorite animated films, the directors and people just sound so bored and tired. I didn't want that life. So here I am. Stuck with a student debt I gotta repay, stuck in a job I am lukewarm on, and all the while just saddened by how many people, including myself, were lied to since we were old enough for school. But still, there's hope. There's always hope things can change. I hope you do well in your life, Andrew Roberts. I hope you find a place in existence where you're completely content and completely happy in life. I wish you well.
You can tell that people who say this are the same ones who want their video game to come out a few months earlier, and don't care if the developers are being overworked.
imo gamers are some of the most entitled consumer community around so most don’t even care about what goes behind the scenes, they want games gud they don’t care about the developers health etc.
@@amrilhaziq8114 if you believe that you're very ignorant. IMHO make up users are way more entitled I'll just mention mica mining in India and the beauty industry. Last I checked, the videogame industry don't use child labour nor do animal testing.
This is the reason I'm fine with Silksong taking the "It's ready when it's ready" approach. I loved Hollow Knight so much that I'm willing to wait basically forever for it to come out. Some time this century would be nice though.
see um, that's kind of "A Problem™"'. In a perfect world you could just do that, but we don't live in a perfect world. If you don't market the game both before AND after release, then you're not getting the fanbase as large as it realistically should be, and your game will end up rotting away unnoticed. There's many stories of poor marketing ruining entire franchises and even studios, to prove this ain't a good idea. This is double as important for indie devs where their funds prior to development come from things like Kickstarter and Patreon. People only invest in that kind of thing if they know their investment is in good hands, so they need to generate hype quickly so more people are willing to get invest. If they can't do that, the game is dead in the water at worst, and shoddily scrapped together at best.
@@heistingcrusader_ad3223 they literally made both titanfall games, i think they had a bit of a community before hand, this is something that devs don't have on a first game, unless they try to advertise and market it properly
@@GlenJHenderson then market it with a no release date and put a statement to be patient. Pretty sure in this day and age the majority would be patient to wait as rushed projects have proven to be bad and inferior
jesus christ bro. i used to be a hardcore "dude cmon i want to play this game now" kinda gamer (without the death threats) but now i feel bad even though i only got mad that it hadn't come out yet. i had no idea that people, REAL PEOPLE, were being pushed to their limits like this. it's horrible.
lots of people willingly turn a blind eye. Gamers are... by and large not nice people. The loud ones anyway. I tried explaining crunch culture to my coworkers (retail) around the time Red Dead 2 came out, the only thing they'd say was 'if they don't like it they shouldn't be game developers, it's not like it's a real job anyway'
@@ObservationofLimits yeah standard fare, and japan is intense enough with that overwork crap that they even have a term if you die from it - 過労死, or "karoshi"; "overwork death". and i don't think it's that they 'don't know', because i think they do know - just, sucks that it has to be something people just 'deal with' in the first place just to feed their families and themselves.
"Sometimes, there’s nothing like a good foie gras" is something you respond to with throwing a drink or spitting in their face because HOLY that is not a person
I feel lucky that somehow I've stumbled my way into a healthy work environment, and I definitely think that a lot of it has to do with the producers at my workplace making sure I don't overwork myself, and genuinely looking out for me to make sure I don't crunch 24/7. I know I would, given the chance, because I simply love what I do. But I love it even more when I can have a life outside of it, eat, sleep -- generally take care of myself. They're able to make decisions about pushing things back, and have the sense in their heads that I lack about a work-life balance. I know they won't see this comment, so I'm going to write them a really nice Christmas card to thank them for the health they've given me.
I've got the same kind of boss. I work catering, and multiple times I've come into work feeling unwell. Chef looks at me, points at the door, and tells me to piss off until I feel better. I've worked twelves and thirteens, and every time he tells me to not do that. He'll stop us working to make sure we all eat. I worked really bad places before, and have never actually felt loyalty to a boss before, be he's earned it time and again.
I’ve also managed to find my way into a healthy work environment. We don’t really have to deal with “crunches” very often but when we do it’s at absolute most a Month but usually about a week or two. I’m lucky as hell.
@@TeardropLabs Of course! Warning, it is very disturbing. Blizzard was accused of a series of workplace violations, including: - Encouraging employees to be drunk on the job with actual alcohol kiosks - Men going around the office harassing the women - Intentionally keeping women & people of color from getting pay raises and rising up in the company. - Lots and lots of sexual assault claims. - The higher-ups at the company were found to have a room they had at Blizz-con, the annual blizzard convention, known as the "Cosby Room" where they brought women visiting the convention to be assaulted. All of this, combined with immense crunch times in the office, paint a very terrifying and bleak picture of Blizzard as a company.
I recently was hired as a full time apprentice at my family's Mortuary and even here I'm not hitting 100 hour weeks. Granted this is an Apple to Orange comparison , but still.
That Nintendo story also brings to mind the famous Miyamoto quote: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Practical, but also works on the human level in this case.
@@kenobigaming5755 until you realize the reason Cyberpunk turned out the way it did is because it wasn't delayed more, didn't get more time. I think Cyberpunk is proof of that statement, it doesn't ruin it, but instead helps it's case. Cyberpunk was delayed and delayed, and the execs were mad, fans were mad, and the devs were tired after years of work and tons of crunch time, so the game was forced out when it still needed more time
I think team cherry has done an amazing job at stopping crunch culture while producing silksong. They didn't give an exact deadline and aren't hyping the game, so now they have as much time as they want without having to crunch.
Unfortunately their attempts at not hyping silksong by not putting too many trailers out only served to make someone make a youtube channel reporting silksong news every day because hollow knight fans are starved of content Still good that they arent crunching tho
After watching this video I’ve formed a little visual equation of crunch. Work is like a fire. That fire keeps you warm at night, cooks your food, and provides light. It is great for all of these reasons because it is comfortable and provides you with life. Crunch is you adding more fuel to the fire. Sometimes you need a bigger fire to feed the travelers that come your way, or provide more light for those lost in the dark, or simply because it is freezing cold. But add too much fuel and the fire becomes an inferno, totally out of your control as it consumes everything and everyone in its path to feed the flames that provides you with so much. Until theres nothing left. Sometimes this inferno is started by a poor decision to pour gasoline on the fire. But sometimes it wasn’t you who poured the gasoline. This fire is important. It provides you with everything you need so that you can achieve happiness and safety. But while it is your greatest tool it can become your greatest danger if managed improperly, either by you or a misguided traveler. Don’t let the fire rage beyond your control. Edit: So I had to come back to this video after learning about the scummy underhanded tactics Noodle used in his “bigger games” video. It’s hard to take this video and argument seriously when the guy is actively advocating for all the bad practices in the game industry with a different video, especially when Crunch is a symptom of those practices. If you see this comment: unsubscribe from this guy. I already have. He’s nothing but a hack and a liar, and is only interested in money. He’s not Mr. Anderson, he’s just another Agent Smith.
If I may add, once a bonfire becomes an inferno, it's going to burn through the fuel it has at an accelerated rate. In that instance, you may have limited fuel that will quickly wane and might burn out at the most inopportune time. If someone else fueled your bonfire with your spare fuel to the point of it becoming an inferno, and it burns out, reigniting that bonfire won't be an easy task, and even if you manage it (a.k.a. managing to come back to the development team after becoming a stress casualty), that fire won't ever burn the same as it did before.
Idk how many people know this, but foie gras isn't just the liver of a goose. It's the liver of a goose that was force-fed "human-caterpillar" style. Along with basically waterboarding the geese using a funnel shoved into their esophagus, they're also restricted to living in a confined space that restrict their movement. This process creates rich fatty livers that are considered a French delicacy, but is honestly just glorified liver puree.
This isn't just a problem in the gaming industry. I experienced this in the finance sector, too. I was a commercial real estate analyst. It was my job to analyze commercial real estate loan requests and make a recommendation of approval or denial based on my findings. One of our department's main sources of revenue was loan origination fees, so there was a massive incentive to try and process, and approve, as many loan requests as possible. Of course, I didn't receive any portion of the origination income, yet I was constantly under pressure to push through as many approval recommendations as possible by the loan officers, who did revive a portion of the origination income, and the department heads. I felt like it all fell on me, and I was constantly behind. The stress got so bad I started having panic attacks. This culture is so pervasive in the US, it has got to stop. It's not healthy, it's toxic.
"There's a gigantic difference between a day long marathon and a two month long death march" this line is great. Running a day long marathon might leave you exhausted, sweating, and gasping for air; but walking a two month long death march will hurt you in more ways than you thought were possible.
The biggest key difference, you sign up for marathons and are forced into death marches, and a company couldn't force you to do a marathon, so probably not a great metaphor to use for something you ask your employees to do.
Amazingly done video, Noodle. This video hits some really great points on crunch and how pervasive and damaging it is in the industry. I just wanna say, the sound design on this one was top-notch? The knocking literally made me turn around because it felt like someone was knocking on my door the first time, lol. And the muffled Marty through the window. Also, small note, I didn't even know about those details about reloading in Reach, holy shit? Keep up the amazing work, Noodle. Your stuffs super awesome! Edit: Also, an interesting note tangentially related since Halo was mentioned, with Halo Infinite being delayed til Fall 2021, the article they released earlier this month talked about the delay and that its important for "giving the team time to recharge over the Holidays and then coming back in January to finish the game at a healthy pace." Sure, I bet some crunching probably happens at 343, but it's also pretty great that they're deliberate in trying to avoid the kinds of terrible crunch mentioned here. Just another company (hopefully?) doing it right.
It is always difficult to tell whether such decisions in a company are truly being followed through with, or if they are doing the minimum required to be on the media's good side.
@@benignsquirrel3600 Whether or not studios follow through with claims like that, they are at least helping to propagate the idea that crunch culture isn’t healthy. Although I guess lying about how they treat their employees is a problem within itself.
Had my mom watch this video after getting laid off from a creative-based job loaded with crunch. She was genuinely surprised when she realized she had been working this type of job, and now she plans to work using a self-hobby-based job with her own deadlines. Great video.
The irony of the crunch at CDPR is that the game is all about suits exploiting the average people and how we should rebel against it
What's also ironic is during the time the crunch was happening, the ceo or whatever said they don't have crunch anymore basically
Only in capitalism you can exploit people to make work that's supposed to upend it.
Interestingly enough, this exact scenario is repeating itself with ZOM 100 anime.
@@Kage-jk4pj Thought the same when I saw it. Capitalism can twist anything
I'm missing the irony
Thanks for this. Talking about it matters.
Did you have to deal with crunch during the development/updates of Minecraft?
Hello c418
I love your music!
Same, I'm not even a game developer but is very relatable to me. Right now I am working for Amazon and there is just too much work that wants to be done.
Hello funny Minecraft music man
But in all seriousness, i agree with you, if we don't talk about problems like crunch and workplace abuse then it won't ever stop
Bruh marty ain't playin with that bat
oh shit hi drewski
Yeah, he should probably just give him back the goose.
*insert big smoke meme here*
Hello there
Ay isn’t this that dude from the scp overlord video
End bit with Marty is so good.
Chris Ray Gun Noodle collab when?
Yo, hey Chris. Have a nice whatever.
you and noodle need to have a rematch
I knew that clip was going to be important when he said it.
I wanted to see him take a fucking 12 gauge shotgun and blow down the door and take his goose back
"No one's got a gun to their head"
No, they're just threatening to cut their workers off from food, power, water, and housing.
So they have a gun to their head but it kills them slowly
Tooootally not threatening at all; the fuck you mean? /s
@@parencolonthree yes
It’s not a fun it’s a poison dart
exactly. at least if you had a gun to my head and i refused your demands, my troubles would be over the moment you pulled that trigger. this is worse than a gun to your head.
I like how Marty is now just another little character in the wacky Noodleverse
Hello papi
Hello papa
Hello dad
When are you coming back with milk
Hello dada
The only crunch culture I like is in my breakfast cereal.
what about nachos? and hard shell taco?
i like crunchy kit Kats :)
Screw Nestle tho
Well, crunch is owned by nestlé, which doesn't care about killing children. A 2018 report found that they promote their powder milk to replace breast milk in certain countries, but breast milk helps babies build their immune system; you should understand where the problem is. When they first started doing it in Africa (in the 80s? 60s? I don't remember) they even gave free samples lasting just long enough that the mother stop producing her own milk, so that they would have no choice but to buy artificial milk. Such practices were internationally banned (at least in theory), but i guess nestlé is going to toe the line as much as it can.
Uh greed
"You can't be creative if you're dead...Stay alive and stay healthy." That shit's so easy to forget but so important. Needed the reminder -- thanks.
Yes
hey I’m gonna keep the goose
High level companies' individuals are ignorant pieces of shit that think economy runs on fairy dust and artists are ammunition that they can pack into their shotgun, shoot at the wall of expansion and then just go find more bullets.
@@waxcutter9813 game designing
@@moss5356 It's not yours!
GIVE ME MY GOOSE BA~
"There's nothing like a good foie gras" is so cartoonishly fucking evil I almost can't believe a real human being said that
It was said by an Activision Exec, so it makes sense and is even more disgusting
its like the kick the dog moment in a cartoon to show how evil this next villain is.
@@Data-Expungeded Dio Brando moment.
@@FrostGladerit’s literally just duck liver I don’t get it why is everyone saying it’s evil
@@crunchybro123 did you not watch the video?
The “Goose” is a metaphor for the developers. The Activision Executive basically said they’re willing to cook that Goose.
I like that Marty character and his Goose.
But yeeeh, crunch is horrible, I've been having crunch time for some animations and it's horrible, even more cuz it's personal work and makes me feel bad if I get it late. Latetly I understood that if it's gonna be late then just work at your own time. Sometimes passion can give you that fun crunch, but it's not healthy trying to do it all the time, resting is good to recharge and keep doing it, or just taking it slowly.
It's both super depressing and really strange to see you crunching on your nonsensical videos that only last a few minutes, more depressing than strange, obviously
It's ok if your toons go out a bit late. I mean spooky month and ccccccchhhhhhhrrrrrrriiiiiiissssssmmmmmasss only comes once a year, so you got a full year to make it.
Yeah i remember how much people demanded underpants genocide path i cant imagine the stress
@@doyouknowdawae6660 I wasn’t there for that and I still know it was stupid, it’s a twisted and depressing irony that people sent death threats for him to make a video on undertale’s genocide route
Estoy seguro de que todos entenderán si te tardas uno o dos días. No es necesario forzarte ni hacer crunch
Wow, I was forced to crunch to be in Noodle's video.
He's a slave driver.
(Added later)
Ok, I’ve read enough comments that discuss my bad mic or recording. Not true. Julian actually did some cool sound design and post processing to make it sound real.
Is that hard to believe?
Hey check this out. Noodle got this cool pet goose. It's pretty cute.
Love seeing you round here Marty!.
OMG
Did you get your goose back?
Marty is the type of guy to always have a witty comment to break the tension.
I no joke had a psychotic episode due to crunch. I was taking adderall to keep my brain alive after virtually no sleep for a week, then my perception of reality completely warped and I erroneously assumed my roomate/ best friend was planning to kill me so I attacked him and spent 3 days in the psych ward. Thank God my friend understood and didnt press charges. Crunch isn't some back ache, or mild inconvenience, it absolutely devastates your sense of wellbeing and for what purpose? For leisurely golfing executives to make more moola. They view their workers, people, as instruments in a plan who exist only to help fatten their wallet.
What kind of job do you have
@@unuks9731 during graduate school I worked as an acute intern therapist at a psych work
Dude, I've been thru psychosis, it's fucking hell
Holy shit that must have been terrifying. Sleep deprivation and psychosis is the fucking worst. I'm glad your friend didn't press any charges
You good and talented people do not and will never deserve the shit they put you through. Know that.
I really need to think more about how I react to postponed deadlines in games.
In the last year or so I've oddly gotten more excited when I've heard of delays or postponements.
My prime example is Infinite. I was telling friends after that initial reveal that if 343 wanted to do the right thing, it would be to delay the game and take their time.
Then, they actually did it. I was so happy that more time and thought was being put into the game other than "we gotta get this out!"
@@WARSinRIOTS still, they should release a thing on time if they say they’re gonna, delaying games isnt good and let’s them know they can delay and make as much hype as they want, even if the game is a complete garbage heap mess. Ala Cyberpunk
@@babytricep437 did you watch the video mate? I'd rather the devs not die and they just postpone the game
@@babytricep437 i think you would be angrier to get a game that IS a hot pile of mess and garbage, and buggy as initial release cyberpunk was, than waiting so long upon multiple delays but actually get a fantastic game which came out almost flawlessly.
Cyberpunk had an issue due to how the hype building up to it was so overwhelming that it was almost impossible to delay it further, or the community would go berserk. Such a task like game development is one which is by no means consistent and easy to guess how long it will take. Its an unpredictable and grevious process, so its hard to blame them if calculating when they are precisely done is humanely imposdible.
Everyone does. Sending death threats to people just isn’t okay.
“Sometimes, there’s nothing like a good foie gras.”
-A guy who knows he’s a real life villain and loves it
Almost like he knew what he meant and deliberately destroyed the whole conversation, what a guy.
This comment both has me cackling and in fear cause of how accurate it is
I didn't think I was going to hear anything new from this video.
Then I heard that line.
That sounded like a genuinely good villain line, he should get an acting job
And of course he was an Activision dev
The problem with "passion crunch" that people take on themselves is that it still changes the culture. Now anyone else who wants to work and succeed at the company will be expected to work to the same level, regardless of the effect it has on their work-life balance or mental health. It's the job of regulations and management to make them stop.
Like, it's the same with performance enhancing drugs in sports. Sure, some, maybe even most athletes would take them to improve their performance if they were allowed. But if you just allow them, you're basically putting everyone who isn't willing to potentially harm themselves at a disadvantage. Even if it's not written down as mandatory, it's effectively mandatory for anyone who wants to succeed.
Passion crunch is how we get employers to bully the shit out of you for all you are worth combined with depressing wages in compensation. People need to wake the fuck up and realize that work isn't the be all end all of life.
FFS I see this stuff in education and especially my students, they are so buried into their work that they actually brag about how much work they are doing and it's demoralizing. Not to mention the abnormal hours I see some of my co-teachers put in and I'm just like, why? They're just abusing your generosity to afford to not pay you anything back in compensation.
Then you see how capitalism fits into this and you hate it, even more, you are passionate about what you do, employers abuse that and take your passion for granted, don't pay their workers what they are actually worth and the cycle perpetuates. After all, if you're in charge of all of your employee's wages, why pay them extra when they'll still do the work anyway? Might as well use their passion and grind it into the dirt for all they're worth.
Yeah if management is not great then the second 1 person does it everyone else is expected to even if there isnt a gun to their head
haha damn that's crazy good luck with that
Had a manger who saw me working harder than the rest of my coworkers. She tried to mandate my level of work ethic to everyone else. I told her that if she tried that shit I was gonna leave, needless to say she removed the mandate. It’s sad that it doesn’t always happen that way though, with people becoming more and more stressed as their coworkers turn against them because corporate or the manager decided that everyone should be able to work at the fastest pace possible. This work culture that has cultivated over a few decades is becoming increasingly unfair not only to those who are currently employed, but also, those who need to find a new employer. It took me over a YEAR to find a job out of high school that didn’t let me go within the first month because I wasn’t able to keep up with highly unrealistic expectations and even now my current job doesn’t even give me enough hours so I can earn enough money to live off of.
I bet Japanese death-by-overwork culture had that origin as well.
This is why it always makes me really happy when fans of a game are like "Take all the time you need, you're doing great! :)" to the devs
This. I want more of this. Death threats aren't gonna fix anything, like honestly, how fucking hard is it to just be patient and instead encourage the devs to seek their own creative image of their own creative work in freedom (as it *should* be, because it's *their* product), rather than force them to crunch out a half-assed game just so the so-called """fans""" can stop blowing up their Twitter feed with death threats and psychological torture?
That should just be human decency, honestly.
@@gaetanodepaola2ndchannel179 agreed
@@hyjinx1889 agreed +
The best thing about cyberpunk is that i see this all the time now, people asking for gta VI and god of war ragnarok have disappeared, and devs are listening (halo infinite)
To bad alot of it isn't up to the devs or the fans/consumers and the executives and shareholders.... :/
The bit with having Marty outside the window was hilarious, I've gotta say. And great sound design!
For a company with a really good culture when it comes to this stuff, I'd put forward Wube, the devs of Factorio. Obviously most indie games will not achieve their level of success - they had the freedom to put good practices in place because they had the financial stability to do so, right? But regardless, they still were very careful about giving their employees the time they needed to not only complete Factorio within their deadlines, but also give them plenty of time away from the game to recharge.
And it’s a very fun game to boot!
@@kawaiicrocodile1476 almost like happy devs with basically no deadlines make better games
Ironic that Factorio is the game that let people sleep
heart machine took time for hyper light drifter and only had to update the game to add more weapons they were thinking about
@Amoe Moth i think of the chocolate
One huge red flag of an abusive workplace culture is if the bosses refer to your coworkers and themselves as family. If it feels like a family then it doesn’t need to be said, otherwise it’s a guilt trip to take shit.
To be fair, people also abuse / kill their literal families.
Where’s my mom in this office
@@UrMom-bp2bu You get Asian mom instead. If you're not a doctor, you'll get disowned.
@InforaLoopermuscle man, that you?
Tbh every abusive work environment I’ve ever been in has had the cult leader of choice referring to participants as “family 🤮 huge red flag
i wonder how many death threats team cherry has got for silksong
never really thought about that
Oh shoot hope not many.
Pretty sure most of the HK community understand and appreciate the time team cherry is putting into silksong.
probably far more than you can imagine. I honestly hope they're taking their time and NOT crunching on it.
@@RPGgrenadei know i saw someone threatening to "spray water on the team's pillows" if they rushed it
which is fair enough, i wouldn't want my pillows to be moist :(
People are encouraging TC to take their time, and make sure the final product is great. TC themselves told a random fan at a convention that they are not crunching, and are trying to release something good over something quick
This is why I respect team cherry so much
They have like a million people ready to explode from excitement, really, and I mean _really_ , badly wanting to know when silksong is coming
And they’re just like “It’s done when it’s done, now go before I slap you with a slipper”
Yeah, like even though people make memes about being disappointed when the Nintendo Directs don't mention it, we know that we'd rather wait in the darkness and be surprised when it's ready than beating them over the head to get it out asap
Exactly 🐛
God this is perfect
They’re like 3 friend so i wouldn’t be surprised if they’re really causal about it
Done when it's done used to be the norm, see Soon(tm) from Blizzard as the staple of this trope.
You gained a new subscriber for that ad break alone
I really wish I didn't know that much about you...
Me too
It was beautiful.
same
Ei voi olla... Sillis
Mojang be out there delaying one of the biggest updates yet for minecraft to avoid Crunch, deciding to split it in 2 parts and I respect that
I'm completely fine with it however sort of disappointed with it as well
Waiting 6 more months to see bigger caves is definetily better then Mojang working 18th century coal miner hours
@@fartbasket92 You shouldn’t be disappointed, it’s coming, don’t worry.
I'm Glad they are delaying it, I'd rather have a delayed game then a game made with slave labor
Aw man, as much as it kinda' sucks to hear that, I'm definitely glad they did it to make sure it was done right and avoid the human cost behind it.
As great as a game can be and everything it can make and foster within it's subsequent communities, people shouldn't have to sacrifice their whole lives and wellbeing in service of it, just to keep it going.
I am disgusted by the fact that 2 years later this video still gets commenters trying to either make crunch not seem like a big deal or not needing to be addressed at all.
apparently just the idea of 100 hours a week for 3 months AND NO OVERTIME PAY isn't enough to make people thing "wow, that's bad".
“Sometimes, there’s nothing like a good foie gras” in context sounds like a line a super villain says to make you realize how fucked up they are. Gave me shivers
I probably would've shot the guy right then and there or at least threatened.
I've returned to this video multiple times and I'm still deeply descasted and disturbed about his line, it is really fucked up and, mostly because the goose here is a human being, sounds like *actual cannibalism*
rich people and their ignorance amiright
Ah yes I too love the cooked kidneys of my severely overworked employees
Actual psychopath
I'm in the US Navy and I thought it was pretty weird how familiar this all sounded, until you said "stress casualty." Then I laughed.
HOBBES?
THE ARMY? WHY?
@@xanderpostelwait2347 Calvin can't keep a job
Lol also in the US Navy and I was looking for this comment. SSN 775 says hello
Hobbes... man that’s a nostalgia trip
Also a navy lad a bit ago. Crunch defs was just the norm and it actually changed me as a person for the worse end of things. depressed and have no drive to do anything these days. Not even stuff I like to do
I've been in the industry for over 16 years now, and I've done my fair share of crunch in crunch culture oriented studios. You mentioned how contract workers were overtime exempt? Well, I was an actual full-time employee, but I was also technically overtime exempt. The closest to compensation we'd get was called "Project Days", which were arbitrarily awarded additional vacation days (often kept off the books, you know, in case you tried to quit and cash them out) that our manager would hand out at the end of a project. Did you work 60+ hours a week for months on end? Your compensation would be 4-5 extra days off once the game shipped, or maybe just 2-3 if the producer didn't like you. Thankfully, I now work at a studio where crunch culture is explicitly banned: If a manager or lead implies you are required to work overtime at all, you can go straight to the CEO and he'll sort them out. I've been back to working normal weeks for years, and it's one of the most fantastic boosts to my mental health that I have ever experienced.
Would you happen to know any other companies like this? I am about to jump off into the industry and the crunch culture here in the US is making me think maybe I should work abroad...
If I ever ran a video game company in the future, what hours and what days off for the week I should give to the developers and designers to make sure that everyone is doing a-ok? Also, how many days of a break I should give after the game is released to make sure that everyone can return with a freshened drive to create another game?
I want to make sure that in the future when I do end up becoming a CEO or a head of a project that I don't overwork anybody, so everyone can have fun making great to good games.
@@theJ1B1A1 It's something that very much depends on the company. My advice is that if you are interviewing at a place, ask them directly what the policy is regarding crunch. How is it compensated? How many hours are people working per week right now? How many hours to do they work as a project is wrapping up? Don't just ask managers, ask everyone who interviews you and see if their answers line up. I once interviewed at a place where people were working 60+ hours a week TWO YEARS prior to the launch of the game. I did not take that job.
@@Tavdogg11 If your question is "How many hours can I expect my employees to work past a normal work week?" then my honest advice is to shift your perspective or just not run a studio. Planning for crunch is the absolute biggest failure that management can have, and it's guaranteed to burn out your team and produce lackluster products. You should expect developers to work 40 hours a week, just like a normal full-time job, and that's what you use when planning. In terms of breaks between projects, offering a competitive vacation package is the correct way to go. Most companies give 3+ weeks per year, depending on seniority. The main thing is to make sure people can actually take the vacation without being pressured out of it, or called in while on vacation (I have seen this happen first hand, it's insane. People vacationing out of the country and then being told they have to get back to the office, and they schedule earlier flights home, etc. I would quit on the spot if this happened to me.)
@@patrickharris7823 Yeah. I am not that knowledgeable on work hours. I am still in college and I haven't learn specifics on jobs yet. I am actually going for creative writing since I am not knowledgeable on work hours and what I should expect for work hours, plus I prefer creation of stuff on my own time rather than being forced on specific hours, so I probably need more training on leadership skills and work hours. However, that does lead me to another question. How many hours should I work on alone when creating works of my own pen? More specifically, as a creative writer trying to work on a novel or at least some short stories? I don't want to overwork myself, but I am unsure on how much effort is too much and how little effort is too little to get anywhere.
Can we all focus for a second how actually horrifying and villanesque "there's nothing like a good foie gras" is? Like, holy shit, that's an actual villain line. LITERALLY a villain line.
Felt like I was watching a disney movie for a second
Yeah, I even took notes.
Activision amirite
Never knew that lex luthor worked as an EA executive
I feel like companies purposefully hire sociopaths as their higher ups who manage the work force. You "have to" in order to make this crunch culture we're in possible. No reasonable human being is able to force that on such a massive scale
I legitimately shivered at "there's nothing better than a good foie gras'"
The implications of that are so absolutely horrific
THID
*THIS
That's legit fucking evil.
Executives are actual fucking psychopaths, seriously.
I kinda expected it since it was an activision executive
Crunch is like squeezing a rock to get water, you could technically do it and get a drop of water trapped inside. But you're left with rock powder afterwards. And then you complain that there's only a single drop of water inside the rock.
Sunk cost fallacy.
i would imagine you hands would also hurt from squeezing a rock
@@flame7346 yeah just a tiny tad
Well there were also studies which showed that Japanese workforce is less effective than workforce in other countries even though the whole work culture is in crunch mode. (Talking about general work culture, not just Game Dev)
@@GraniteFaun Its not about effectiveness, its about reputation and quality. You want to buy a car made in Japan or Indonesia? Yeah it sounds racist to say but no one is going to bat an eye to assume the one made in Japan is of better quality.
In Asia, this thing is so so much worse. There is this weird romanticization of putting yourself through literal hell just for the sake of a few grades. Ive seen many of my classmates literally collapse out of exhaustion after exams
Ikr , ive heard people rather die than continue
Yeah my mom told me about this, in Nepal she lost many friends and family by the end of school.
@@derboe_thebeast6869 That's not surprising.
@@sanujakhanal8745 _we died idk_
Ugly pfp
Earlier this year I left my "dream job" over burnout. I was doing AI research, but doing voluntary crunch to try to get models and code implemented. My manager was telling me that he didn't want me working that hard, but when I stopped crunching, I noticed that my reviews were becoming poor. I got more recognition and praise on projects after I crunched, and they'd call me things like "10xer." But eventually it all caught up with me and I had a mental breakdown, and my later projects started to fall to shit. I was pretty much done. After I quit, I tried to get my PhD at my old college, thinking the more free time and work to apply to what I wanted to do would help me out of burnout, but it only made it worse. I kept doing more of the same thing, training models, not getting the result I wanted, tweaking data and code, running experiments, averaging 80 hr work weeks, only to end up with trivial or bad results. I took a semester off from college, and just played videogames nonstop. Now I'm at the point where I need to return back to college, but I'm still burned out. I'm guessing this is that "stress casualty" that they're talking about.
Hi! It's been a year since then, and I hope you do better
A year and 7 months
Are you feeling better now?
I always hated the places where I worked and they say stuff like "we are basically family. We spend more time here than with our real families so we want to TREAT you like family." Idk, it's just disgusting.
It really just sounds like a red flag instead of a pro for working there.
Prisoner of love and war
"This isn't a business, I always thought more of it as a source of cheap labor, like a family" -Hubert J. Fansworth.
Bro, I wonder WHY they're there with other devs than with family
IDK MAYBE IF YOU CARED ABOUT YOU"RE WORKERS THEY COULD HAVE A FUCKING SOCIAL LIFE
it's worse when you're actual family. My dad is a farmer, each time i try to have a peaceful day for myself he goes on about all the work that I have to do and how he buys me nice things so I have to return the favor. Even when i'm working all day he tells me that i had all these things that I didn't do. When I came back from my other job he always needed me for something. having your boss follow you home for dinner isn't great.
The "they don't put a gun to your head argument" is like when your sibling puts their finger right next to you head but yells "I'm not touching you". You're still causing the negative reaction even if you're not directly striking them
"I'm not in your room"
while standing juuuuuust outside the door frame.
Why is this so damn accurate
Nah playing with someone’s lively hood is arguably close to having a gun put to your head, especially when cost of living is consistently going up, you don’t have too many chances to slip up
Say what you like about corporate, but they are masters at denying responsibility and passing the buck.
@@DocMario Specially with how hard it is to get good jobs at game companies, contract working is bs
I'm calling you "funny cartoon man" from now onwards
ill just stick wiht cartoon man
we
I'm going to remember your comment and look forward to your comments in the future
@@Sebastian-uq8xu Comrade?
I got the privilege of getting the like number to 1k
The fact you actually got marty to be voice act being upset over the goose makes me laugh so hard.
+.
@@levilukeskytrekker This is valid brainfuck code. It doesn't do anything useful, but it does run.
I have studio grade headphones and "the goose" section with all the knocking on the door seriously fucked with me while drawing.
I dont even have that great headphones and i thought sombody was outside my window at midnight
fr, scared me so much
I looked up every time there was a knock. Legit thought somebody was at the door. Every. Single. Time.
Yeah, I did several double takes during that part
I have iPhone earbuds and I freaked out
Marty's voice acting was pretty good in this, your writing always makes the interactions between characters amazing. At first I thought it was just you and Ice Cream Sandwich being funny but now im convinced you would have perfect comedic timing even if you were bouncing jokes off Barney the god damn dinosaur.
The only animator for a whole season D: Jesus fucking christ
I wonder what the series is? It took me 2 hours to make a 1 second hand animation.
How does that even fucking work.
There's this old anime called Twinkle Nora Rock Me. "When you fire all the animators"
@@phoenixnight9237 On ones or on twos?
@@phoenixnight9237 Im not good at 2D stuff, so I wont say anything there, but I can do... about 30 secs of 3D animation in... 4-5 hours. And thats just like a gun showreel style animation
The "If I take time off the workload would fall onto other people and no one wants to be that guy" quote was too real
"People don't wanna actually kill the goose." After the foie gras metaphor, I'm not so sure anymore.
Nah, the exec implied that they don't _want_ to kill the goose, but if it dies, they could still get the foie gras from it anyway, so who cares? Not to mention they can easily buy another one to replace it.
@@this_is_patrick You make foie gras by months of preparation force feeding the goose beyond its normal limits. If you're eating foie gras, you know it well in advance. The exec is definitely implying they'll gladly work the goose to death and strip it for parts before moving onto the next goose. They know they're killing it, they just want to sometimes.
While Marty never named names, I can only assume the exec in the story was the devil himself, Bobby Kotick. Seems 100% in character for him
@@thewerdna "In another incident, Kotick has stated during the 2009 Deutsche Bank Securities Technology Conference that "The goal that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making video games." Kotick continued to say that they "have been able to instill the culture, the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we are in today. And so, while generally people talk about the recession, we are pretty good at keeping people focused on the deep depression."[52][53][54][55] Following the backlash on the statement, Kotick has commented that "Sometimes that commitment to excellence, well, you can come across as being like a dick. And when I say things like 'taking the fun out of making video games,' it was a line that has been often-quoted lately, but it was a line I used for investors."[56]" Source Wikipedia.
HOLY SHIT. I had to read that thrice to make sure I didn't misunderstand this. Wow. I'm absolutely against torture, but I find it difficult to argue against force-feeding this person with foie gras until he dies (even if it's not the same person, who cares, deserves it anyways). Oh btw, he voted for Hillary, this just for all the people who think she's the lesser-evil alternative.
@@wawawuu1514 bruh don't bring politics into this. I don't care who one bad person voted for. The KKK supported Donald Trump, and that doesn't instantly make him more evil than any other.
Yeah some folks can underestimate how terrifying pressure from fans can be and how aggressive they can get if you don’t provide a released date or miss a date, and then they can tear you apart for the finished product that’s most likely been rushed out just to give them something, but it’s not good enough
All those fans, that are that invested in that shit, are fucking insane and should be sent for a psych eval. I had a friend who had invested over 2k into Chronicles of Elyria and was hyped about it since day 1. Amassed enough IP to start as a Duke. When it started looking bleak, he kinda just accepted the loss. I could never imagine him acting like the people Noodle showed screencaps of. And I would guarantee, none of those assholes in the caps ever got that invested into a game.
"oH my gOd WheN is EndErtAle gOnNa coNtinUe"
Please keep on with the Mewtwo comic things they are adorable :>>
Absolutely agree, and I find it disgusting. Have you ever played Fortnite? I literally love the game, it's probably one of my favorited, but even seasons ago, when they were cruching hard their employees (I think they stopped now? Because the updates have been set to be much slower now, so hopefully they understood to stop being slavers) and when they used to release a HUGE update literally every week, people still complained and whined about them taking too long to correct mistakes. Especially till the 4th season of chapter 2 (we're in seasons 6 now, so not too long ago btw) people were so toxic towards anyone who supported the game and the developers, and just wanted them to be able to take a breath and get a slower pace. Now the situation is hopefully getting better, because many of those toxic-waste-fans are abandoning the fandom (and those who hated the game without playing it are just getting bored on being haters on it, just going somewhere else to ruin some other fandom), but trust me, it was extremely hard staying a fan and a supporter (loving the game and advocating for slower and more human updates) with all this hate going on. I can't even imagine how hard it must have been for developers. The gaming community seriously sucks sometimes...
This is mainly a problem of today's "I want it and I want it NOW!" culture. Example : I'm 38, a different generation, I still remember times without smartphones and where games often took minutes to lead a level, or where downloading a single mp3 file took HOURS. And Many other things, I LEARNED to have PATIENCE. But nowadays kids and young adults are so spoiled with instant gratification that they literally go insane if they don't get what they want RIGHT NOW. This is also one of the reasons why dating / marriage and relationships in general are going to shit, because those things take time and effort. I'm one of the people that were waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, do I want to play it? Fuck yeah I do! Could I play it right this second? Sure, it's on my SSD ready to go. Did I fire it up even once yet? No I didn't, I'm going to wait another half a year or a year until the majority of bugs are fixed and some extra content is available. And no, I'm not stressing about it, I'm not even thinking about it most of the time. I just keep myself busy with other things, in my head I'm like "It's done when it's done, not a second sooner" and I have no problem with that.
@@ObservationofLimits thy aren't fans and the only thing they're invested in is themselves. You have to be brain dead or unempathetic to think that rushing their work would do anything but squader it's quality. They don't even get that far though.
BRUH. CRUNCH WAS TAUGHT AS PART OF THE VIDEO GAME DEGREE PROGRAM AT MY COLLEGE.
thats fucking scary
Can you elaborate?
I did Game Dev at uni, and crunch was kind of just taken as part of the industry. There was no real pushback to the idea, the lecturers just dismissed any serious discussion of it as a necessary evil, paying lip service to the idea of "crunch bad". Very demoralising for a student.
@@wanderingrandomer This one speaks for me.
@@MetalDEmpire seems like game dev education is way too market focused
Crunch culture being treated as a rite of passage reminds me of F1 fans who didn't like the halo-a safety device-when it was introduced, and one of the excuses was that "racers are gladiators" and _should_ face death.
We should get those people put in prison. Holy shit.
I’d understand that reaction if racing is a dare devil sport but it’s not
And that's when you respond with "If we'd had the halo in '94, Senna would still be here."
Why do fans like to see everyone suffer?
@@ruffalo1643 I think a bit of it was the drivers seemed against it at the time to (some not all), but also the older drivers who'd lived through much worse safety standards who commentate and help form the general public's opinion seemed against it.
Though a year or less after the introduction there's a crash with Charles Leclerc in Spa and I'm pretty sure that's when everyone in the sport was sure it was the right choice. There was pushback from the drivers (before my time + also if i remember this correctly) when the HANS device was first introduced which basically drastically reduced the chances of drivers breaking their neck if I remember rightly it was something like "well I need to be able to see more / turn my neck more, it's uncomfortable, etc. etc.
Talking of safety in F1, rest in peace Jules. I'm sure without his accident a lot of the improvements in the past decade wouldn't have happened. A sad and scary reminder that a lot of safety rules are written in blood. I wish we could've seen him race in a Ferrari.
I am alone, in my apartment, on the second floor of my building at midnight with my pants off and blutooth earbuds in. Then your fucking knocking happened sound happened and I had such a fucking heart attack.
I literally jumped out of my bed to answer the door
I kept asking who who and nobody answered I was so confused I feel so stupid
You know, this isnt at ALL where I thought your comment was heading, so I just gotta say, I'm definitely relieved it ended up where it did.
Practically the same situation happened to me right now. I am still shaking from the brief panic attack I just had. XD
Did you at least have time to wear pants?
This is why games should operate on a "Its ready when its ready" system instead of deadlines
Deadlines are a good thing, as long as you actually manage to decide on a realistic date.
Setting an unrealistic deadline is bad management. Not being able to set one in the first place because you have no plan of how long anything takes to get done is just as bad
@@nokashii3375 Companies are usually willing to delay and rectify unrealistic release dates, which is a good sign.
See the original Cyberpunk trailer
problem with that is publishing there is a time to strike with advertising and if you miss it publisher will want to release it anyway mainly because about 50% of a AAA games budget is for advertising it's why Halo Infinite is the most expensive game of all time
Sure, we'll just stop releasing new hardware and having yearly part with your money holidays.
In Asia it’s worse. A former classmate from my old school just died, crunching for the school for a competition and had a heart attack...
jesus.
Sorry to hear that. I personally heard stories from other college students that some foreign exchange students can’t get credit for a paper they helped work on (in terms of science ) because the professor just took the credit.
I believe the person was Chinese but I’m not 100% certain.
@@garybrown2039 I agree. There is this issue about how we value Asian productivity less than white people. We take not only Asians, but contributions made by people of colour for granted a lot of the times.
Edit: This is not to say it doesn’t happen to white people. Whenever there’s a hierarchy and systematic discrimination, this problem appears.
@@chardaranimations5981 I think you misinterpreted what I said. I meant to say that it happened a lot in China or Asia itself. Not here in the west because every foreign exchange student in person of color got their name on papers when they were here.
@@garybrown2039 Oh. That’s unexpected and even more unfortunate. Thanks for the info
that point about realistic graphics = good is just stupid, there's even a sentence that describes it perfectly:
"The pursuit for hyperrealism is a fruitless struggle that results in bloated file sizes."
That’s how we get COD games with updates over 100 Gigs.
And it’s still shite.
Yeah. A good art style will keep a game timeless. An attempt at realism will not be realistic in a few years.
a quote from one of my co-workers: "self-care is about giving the world the best of you, not the rest of you."
That ain't self-care, that's caring for everybody but yourself
@@cateyedboy4168 i think you misunderstood the quote. You cant give your best unless you take care of yourself first.
@@cateyedboy4168 it's a quote for people who work too hard, like giving their best, are inherently too selfless, to tell them you're not achieving your goal by neglecting yourself. I guess it comes off as confusing to people who aren't like that.
@@this_is_japes7409 I get what the quote is trying to say, but I agree with CatEyedBoy. Self-care is self-care, period. Trying to convey what self-care is by saying that, if you don't take care of yourself you won't be able to take care of the world is non sensical...
What if I don't care about the world? What about people who do good for the world at their own expense?
@@-Zakhiel- then this quote is not for you/them simple as that. quotes like these aren't meant to be universal. no one can summarize a complex issue for everyone in a single witty sentence. language is limited and we're not spartans. this quote has a target audience, people who do too much for the sake of others in neglect of themselves i.e. the people who tend to suffer from overworking in the first place, the victims of crunch culture, the topic of the video, the relevant subject. everyone has different values, this quote seeks to appeal to the values of those type of people in order to make them realize their self destructive behavior is working against them. also saying self-care is self-care is reductive (i mean so is the quote, but I digress). everyone has different ideas for what self-care should be, self-care isn't just self-care, because there isn't one definition. like you say, not everyone cares about the world(sadly), someone who is self-indulgent, and ruins their health in overindulgence likely needs a different motivation to stop their self-destructive behavior, so they need a different quote that appeals to their values, but they're typically not the victims of crunch culture i.e. they're not who this quote is for, they're not the reason I commented this on a video about crunch culture, and they're not the reason I was told it.
my dad worked in the games industry for about 15 years, basically my whole early childhood. he was a smart man who picked his projects very carefully, but even so, I don't remember him being around much when I was a kid. the crunch culture was so bad that even though my dad had it relatively easy, he still was under a lot of stress and didn't get much time off. shit sucks, dude.
What game he work on
aand this is why indie is a thing (and thank god its actually going so successful ya know with the whole big corpo crunching and all but I think it can still happen but a bit less likely with small groups like the dudes that made Risk of Rain 2)
@@slavcabbage2619
Like mentioned in the video, crunch culture isn't only caused by greedy Capitalists working poor people to the bone and implicitly threatening them with starvation if they speak up. It also is a result of consumers getting violently angry about a game being delayed or people attacking anyone that criticizes disgusting labor laws and advocates for unionization. Imo, it's a by-product of sweaty reactionaries getting more and more attention and support since gamergate and cultivating a pro-consumerist, anti-worker sentiment that annihilates creative people's mental and emotional well-being.
@@RaeIsGaee Thats true but im just saying that im glad that indie is actually being accepted and the other half of the major cause of stress, big corpos edging on crunching. However, I think that indie devs, like you said, do have a whole lot of stress from game delays and update delays from people. I even think they might have it worse off than the big games because if you look at a big high graphics game then as a consumer you might understand or give them more tolerance than smaller game devs who are making smaller games "and because they are making smaller games they should be able to do it easier". But yea indie games are cool and im glad they caught on.
@@slavcabbage2619
Oh absolutely, I'm glad too and I'm super thankful for groups like the devs for Deadcells.
And absolutely, like indie devs always feel more vulnerable and personal because its their personal projects, and its much easier to target them than it is to seek out a specific overworked creative in a corporation.
When you think about how many "AAA" games in the past years have been bugged filled, rushed and crappy experiences, crunch proves not to work.
money comes first, not quality and especially not the health of labour
@@caramelldansen2204 I don't know if that is against the argument or with the argument, but it is true.
@@doodlizeddd It is an argument against the way we currently organize production
yeah... tbh it takes a lot of time to just implement a feature and then to have it work flawlessly takes even more time. Even it's a simple feature, still takes time, and the more you add, the more interactions and so on you need to make sure works. I suppose without those crunches, those games would either never have been released or been pushed back a lot, and seeing Cyberpunk, I don't know if the community would be happy with that... Oh, and profit too, the longer it takes to release, the more the company bleeds money. Games don't make money until they release or Early access.
Hell cyberpunk took like a full fucking decade of crunch and it still came out shit
Would be cool to have a “certified crunch free” on the game case. Kinda like certified organic or gluten free
I bet game studios would find an easy loophole to get that falsely
@Scinary publishers.
@@scinary7052 Oh 100%, they'd just use the "We don't _formally require_ crunch" argument to make it the Milk Chocolate standard of games.
I actually really want this
@@tracyblanchard7663 it could work if it wasn't just a calculation of maximum hours worked per staff member, and if studios/publishers weren't the ones deciding (which should be the case with any certification). There would have to be a third party (maybe... perhaps... a game developers' union?) that individually reviewed studios/projects and made it possible for staff to safely and anonymously report issues and concerns and have those reports reviewed by human beings with compassion and critical thinking. It wouldn't be perfect, because people aren't perfect, but it would be _something._
This is two years old but I have to share. Marty is 100% the kind of manager some software teams need. Personal crunch bleeds into a crunch culture, because once some devs start putting their lives on the backseat, it creates expectations from the clients and even other managers.
I worked with a lead developer who would set deadlines around his crunch behaviors. His goto deadline was "2 weeks." What the client and managers didn't know is that those 2 weeks included 20 hours on weekends, and an extra 2 or so hours each day of the working week at home doing more work. I didn't want to do that, I wasn't even expected to do that, but suddenly I couldn't say "this will take 4 weeks" without having to argue "why? he can do it in 2," because I wasn't trying to crunch my way through it, and my managers ultimately were more interested in the client being happy so they didn't really push back or fight for a longer deadline. This built an expectation in my products that I had to crunch, because he set a standard that was not feasible without putting in that extra time. It ultimately made me a miserable person and led to me being fired because the stress overwhelmed me and affected the rest of my work.
So, I'm glad you pushed back on that guy a little bit, in a respectful way of course, and I'm glad people like Marty are out there setting reasonable expectations for their employees to prevent that from spiraling. Sometimes passionate people don't realize how their seemingly personal toxic behaviors can become something that is no longer personal. It's fine to be passionate and want to work extra, but businesses are about results and it can transform into something much worse real quick because they won't see the human cost, either on purpose or otherwise.
As someone who served in an actual military that actually fights in an actual battlefield, to hear the term ‘stress casualty’ in any context other than euphemism for PTSD is....
Incredibly unsettling
It probably is still a euphemism for PTSD in this case ngl
@@tsrenis [[[sorry if anyone checks the comments and gets triggered by this. We used to refer to soldiers who committed suicide as ‘stress casualties’. Really uncomfortable that the gaming industry is claiming this term.]]]]
@@EKimatH I was thinking along the lines of the other person as well. That explanation makes the adoption of the term even more fucked.
@@EKimatH Yikes! I pictured stress casualties more like mental breakdowns. If it actually means suicide then holy shit, it sounds so much scarier.
Ah man that stuff is awful..
Its.. bad, I've also heard things about workers in japan who will straight up die from working too much, so maybe.. unfortunately.. it could be an accurate term...
Then again it's hard for anyone like me to know either side when i haven't experienced any of it..
Knowing more details about how foie gras is made makes that metaphor SO much more abhorrent.
Yeah and it’s also illegal in many countries for being animal abusive
Oh God damn, I just learned the truth and your right that quote is stone cold.
@@tehynprk this is pretty graphic but for those who don't know, foie gras geese are force fed until they contract liver disease. it tastes good because of the fatty buildup that results from the disease (hence "foie gras" literally translating to fatty liver). it's horrendous, and in my mind is absolutely animal abuse.
@@InternetKilledTV21 excuse me what the fuck, why don't they fry it with extra grease or something, seriously, what the fuck.I'm all for eating meat but that's just fucked.
@@alibouk227 no amount of grease could create the amount of fatty deposits that foie gras has (or if you do use enough, it'd wreck the whole plate)
Yo, this is beyond well made, important, and super charming. Good stuff and good you ^_^
Oh yo shit didnt expect you here dude your content is amazing
Oh, Hi there
the man himself has blessed us with his presence
hello XD
LIAM??
gamers that like crunch are insane, like seriously do you want good games or do you want more redfall and gollum?
we need more redfall=likes
I feel so bad for artists who lose their passion and come to the point of hating something they worked so hard to become, something they truly loved with all their heart because some inpatient corporate assholes needed to push them so far they broke.
Not only that, but also the demand from equally impatient, entitled gamers.
Thanks Thanos
”Nothing like a good foie gras.”
- The Devil probably.
So, Bobby Kotick then
It does taste really fucking good though... way less fucked up when it’s a farming goose rather than a human.
yes, EA
But that shit is hella good, the only thing that keeps me from eating it is that the procedure of how the make it is kind of f up.
-hannibal
Remember, we're not even talking about Japanese crunch culture. Because boy, it made the suicide rate super high.
japan is cool but not cool at the same time
@@burgerboy_20 their really just not that cool. Still haven’t apologized to China for what they did in WWII or anyone for that fact.
@One vibing cactus juice boi and his pet, lord momo is your brain in 240p
@Mr. Muhammad Iqbalyeah like a few years after the crunch culture had already established on that country
It also doesnt help that japanese men arent supposed to look weak, so they never reach out for help
Edit: Reword
"Crunch is not a triunp of the workforce, but a failure of the management"
-James Stephanie Sterling
(Thank God for Them)
I was an animator.. it was my dream job. But now, it's my nightmare. 3 years staying in thinking "It's my passion" while throwing away other significant things in my life - my family, my friends and my relationship, my health physically and mentally. Glad I left it behind
Jeez I feel you in another level. Animation used to be my biggest passion since my sweet childhood. I did a bachelor in 2D/3D at an animation school and worked 4 years into a company... it costed my mental health.
Me and teammates were 24/7 overwhelmed and we worked around 80 hours a week for 4 years.
It became quickly a living nightmare that I still have to recover...
@@stfuincels_1 I wish you a speedy recovery and best of luck.. I took 5 months to rest after I resigned before I decided to changed my career.. being jobless is a nightmare too but I don't wish to continue to work in this industry anymore.. so I just grab any job that at least can provide me a decent life.. I still love animation too, but just chose to not let a corporation to have control over my passion.. :) Take your time in picking yourself up again okay?
I'm in the same position. Freelance. I'm glad you are recovering. I hope the industry changes, but I'm wise enough to know better till the culture of the world changes.
Imagine being a "stress casualty" of a game that's as dead on arrival as Anthem... Christ, that's depressing
Happens more and more
They can’t blame the publishers tho, they can only blame themselves. They had seven fucking years and they didn’t do shit
@@caesarspeaks WTF is wrong with you did you even bother watching the video?
@@hurricanemeridian8712 This is what I've heard too. I feel the video conflated the usual conditions at the company and the conditions for that game, but maybe I actually heard this story wrong to begin with?
@@caesarspeaks uhm, no? Anthem was only actually develop for like a year, because management was just so shitty that they couldn't decided to even basic stuff. It is not the fault of the development, it is the fault of people management everything
I work in the military and these guys work similar hours to us on deployment during crunch. The difference is we're mostly doing tasks we're specifically trained to do, and the tasks are simple enough. Not draining, thought-provoking work that's difficult to get right. We work this hard for national interest and so our families can live to see us, and so other people can live to see their families. They work this hard so a handful of impatient assholes can get their game faster. We work this hard knowing our families respect what we do and why we're doing it. Not only that, but we volunteered, and everyone knows how hard we work. Some of these people's families don't really know how hard these people are working, and their families might not even understand, or respect what they're doing. Point is, it's wrong for civilians like this to work as hard as they do for not even half of the pay or benefits we get.
oh yikes. now THAT's the kind of thing i never thought of. keep up the great work man, and stay safe.
@@replyorratioifugaysaycrymo1684 That was a really long way to say, "I'm an ignoramus douchebag who purposefully acts like an asshole on the internet to get the attention my parents never gave me".
@@CryingButterfly0508 Don’t pay attention he probably played 1 cod game and thinks he know what’s going on in the military
woahwoahwoah thank you for your service and all that shit bit don't get it twisted when you say you defending your families of your in the US military- that's a completely different story.
But yeah I work in a similar industry- when you get work its 12 hours a day minimum and when you don't get work its nothing
You're just a pawn being used by the generals, think about all the wars America has started on the middle east for no other reason than to steal their oil lines.
I remember starting to crunch in elementary school. I put my love of learning into homework and school and got praise and suddenly you have a fourth grader who doesn’t know the concept of not doing homework and staying up til midnight doing an assignment worth a couple of points. This lasted as far back as I remember up until I physically couldn’t anymore. Health got in the way and I became physically disabled. Crunching probably didn’t cause my disability but it sure didn’t help when I had to learn the concept of pacing myself by physically not being able to do it anymore. I had to learn not to care and it might be now I care too little but at least I can take care of myself.
The best part of foie gras is that it's mostly known for being the product /of/ abuse. The goose is stuffed silly while it's alive to make sure the liver is put under as much stress as possible.
I both agree and disagree with you.
1 you are right, it suffers, but
2 you are wrong, it is not abuse, its an animal, it cant express or have an opinion.
3 even if it is abuse, think about it, every good thing has a darker side. Christmas, for example, which is comming in a few days, when you spend time with family, and if you are a christian, you will most probably eat pork, which is given a lot of food, so it gets big and fat over the year, only to be slayed 2 weeks before christmas. The meat is delicious. So is the foix gras. For everything, there is something to sacrifice, for every + there is a - and to this there are no exeptions.
@@zamfir2005 bro stfu
@@eyemaysin please try and use something called constructive criticism, or if your iq is not high enough for that, i recomand going to school, yes, its actually a thing even in 2020. Thank you!
@@zamfir2005 ok, what makes you think humans are the only animals with feelings.
@@zamfir2005 It's so unscientific to say animal abuse is not a thing that it's hard to answer properly, that's all. Next time tell us of the moon made of cheese. We can't compensate for your shortcomings.
What I hate the most is that boss that constantly complains because I keep making mistakes after working 27 hours non-stop... Like, half my brain is not there anymore, idk what you expect of me...
:(
Yeah, that sounds like actual abuse. This kind of workplace behavior should be illegal. People working at a company are still human people, and thus need to have decent lives. Higher ups can't just ask literally anything of them and expect them to do the impossible and not drop dead on the floor. People have a life outside of work.
You deserve better, honestly. Many do.
@@gaetanodepaola2ndchannel179 Agreed, a footbal coach making players do drills that are dangerous to their health gets fired and sued. Why don't other positions in different industries get treated the same?
Unless you live in mexico or some sort of third world shithole i think making employees work that much without relax is illegal
D:
This video comes outta the blue, and describes exactly what's happening in my life right now. I work as a programmer for a digital marketing company. We are just 2 programmers there. I always have to cut my lunch break and work every day overtime comoleteo for free and without insurance. The bosses got so good at this that they managed to brainwash all my colleagues who do the same, and made them think this is a good thing, because it's for the good of the company. They're actually HAPPY to do that. I'm literally using all the money I get from this work for paying a psychologist, and I still feel like I'm not living anymore, because, well, that's the truth. The only thing that makes me keep going is the fact that I'm getting the mandatory work experience that all the other companies want if you want to work for them, so that I can leave this company and get to another one, hoping I will get luckier.
How much will I be able to sustain it? What will happen when I will break? What am I even living for? To work?
I understand the feeling, dude. Its a, shitty, overused saying but stuff gets better. And hey, you're at least striving and aware of the crappy situation rather than just accepting it
Do you think it's any different when you work in any other sector or even on the cash register? Right now all shop staff/post offices/delivery guys work overtime, before holidays. The difference is you are getting paid at least double to 10 times as much.
@@lososthefish3 I actually get paid minimum wage, but yeah, I agree the problems can be found in other sectors as well
@@lososthefish3 "your situation isn't bad, its easy you ungrateful cretin"
-you
Everyone is allowed to have things suck
The purpose of work is to earn money. The purpose of money is to facilitate trades. The purpose of trades is to obtain material wealth. The purpose of wealth is to bring the owner enjoyment.
Therefore, if you hate your work and it makes you unable to enjoy life...what’s the point?
As my dad always has told me: when you crunch you're not gaining any extra work/ value on the work you're doing. You're taking on debt and you'll eventually have to pay it back off + interest
literally all of my friends were all complaining about the new among us update but there’s literally only FOUR ppl that work at innersloth
Jesus. But the sign in thing kinda messed it up and is now annoying to change name.
I do complain about it and I understand they weren't sure on a deadline (probably bc once again the 4 workers) I just wish they didn't say early 2021. But, this video definitely gave me a new take on it
Re your frienda also lobotomites?
Look at all the comments for Valheim, five person team and people act like the 3+ years they spent making what we have now just isn’t good enough. They can’t believe it’s been three months and they don’t have every single expansion that was planned out right now it’s crazy.
bruHuHuHuHuHuH
i can't get over noodle's discord profile and how it talks when he talks
I was looking for this comment! Wonder how he did it
@@DJUCCS If you have discord Nitro, you can use an animated avatar which will play when you're focused, such as when you're talking during a call.
I WANT MY GOOSE BACK !!
-Marty O'donnel
“Julian!!!”
Similar shit happens in heaps of workplaces, where the execs, concerned only about their bottom line, refuse to hire the amount of staff really needed.
I agree with the point on crunch you want to do vs crunch you need to with both being damaging if you're not careful. I used to go from one video project right to the next without any breaks. Eventually I started forcing myself to actually take breaks and holy hell I immediately felt better. I got more sleep, I had a regular schedule, I had more time to talk and keep up with my friends. As it turns out, week ends are healthy, who'd have thought? These last few months I've just been working non stop on videos thanks to holiday releases and I've created a plan to take 2 weeks off while still having content to post during that time. A year or so ago I wouldn't have done this. I'm very looking forward to it.
And when NINTENDO of all companies are able to do right in this regard, you know something is messed up.
Hi Jarek
Hi Jarek
Hi Jarek
Hi Jarek
Hi Jarek
When I heard "some come back, some don't," that really shook me.
Really makes me wonder about the countless times I've seen "In memory of" during credits.
@@XiaolinDraconis holy wow, now that i think about it. That's just... whoa
“It’s the thing that immediately follows the feeling of ‘oh god oh fuck’ when you realize an assignment is due in two days and you haven’t started yet”, noodle says as I realize I have an assignment due at midnight that I haven’t started yet TwT
Did you manage?
@@valravnsshadow9422 Barely lol
@@partiallyslicedbread369 😎 nice
"Two days definitely still a lot of time" - College procastinator
@@partiallyslicedbread369 Noice
Psychonauts 2 was made without crunch. It is one of the most incredible games ever made. It's the epitome of video games being art.
Fans: "C'mon, it's not like anyone's holding a gun to your head!"
Developers: "Y'know what, you're right, we're gonna take some time off and push back release by a day--"
Fans: *Cocks gun* "I will literally kill you"
Not really it's mostly draconian tyrants that are detached from actual work in the top management that are the issue, faster they push the game more money they make at the end, since there hopefully will be less competition and more microtransactions at the end, of course draconian tyrants in the top management have their ditched servants at middle management to direct psychopaths and sociopaths at lower management who actually do all the whipping.
@@lordhater4207 And you don't think the absolutely insane, rabid fanbase, who are known for sending mass death threats to the developers of a new release have any involvement with that?
It may not be a root cause, but it most certainly promotes the culture. Guarantee it was a part of why 2077 was such a shitshow. The problem (and very large) cluster of companies who turn their developers into slave labor already don't give a shit about them, so what's a few death threats if not "encouragement" to continue the overtime crunches?
I mean, the consumer wants their product out faster, and their wallet is our bottom line, so of course we'll keep churning shit out to an ever-increasingly impatient audience than ever think to treat our workers with a shred of dignity in regards to their mental health! That'd be outlandish, surely.
@@kimi7396 tru tho.
@@kimi7396 There is some truth in that as well, however which of the two is more likely : 1. That 100% of management acts in the way i've described in the comment above, or 2. that 100% of gaming audience are impatient little brats? I'd say number 1 is more likely and i would further reinforce that with fact that ditched morons in top management make deals with shareholders or lacking those by themselves or amongst themselves in advance, they make their "perfect" plans despite not having ANY experience nor knowledge on how long and how hard the discussed project would be, nobody of the people who do the actual work is involved promises of time and profit are made then and there, a budget is made for the project that only exists in the fantasy land and "perfect" planning of degenerates that shouldn't be in charge of anything let alone a software development company not to mention gaming company, the demands are made of lower management to push the teams to their limits to complete tasks as fast as possible before the budget is spent, and all so that little shits in top management running a company whos inner workings they do not know don't have to spend few bucks more to improve the quality of life of their workers, i say issue lies in worthless and useless management from top to bottom, you say rampant murdering fan-base, i'd say that incompetent management is the issue, and that a person with IQ in double digits cannot hope to manage those with tripple digits IQ, all software engineers eventually leave their jobs and start their companies that are either related or totally unrelated to their previous work, and there is a reason why, nobody wants to have idiots above them, it's humiliating to a software engineer and it demeans the profession as a whole.
Fans aren't the big issue for most games.
Fan pressure is a thing in the AAA game space, not so much for games like Barbie's Horse Adventure, but those developers crunch too.
Few fans push for the timely release of mobile game milestones but, guess what, crunch also happens in that space.
Even in the AAA space it's management and marketing spurring fans into action by promising fixed release dates while the game is still in alpha.
Damn this one hit me hard.
I'm a mid-level VFX Artist, I've worked on a few movies and Netflix series since 2013, and a few months prior to COVID a few commercials. Much of the "Crunch-Culture" in film/TV has evolved due to binge-watching behavior and the craze for nostalgic reboots like Marvel and Star Wars movies, and has been an issue in the industry for years. It's slightly newer (eh) in games but is very VERY similar. For the VFX/film/TV industry, there's a short doc on Vimeo called "Hollywood's Greatest Trick," for anyone interested. It gets pretty bad, the worse I had it was going to the hospital for a swollen appendix during... you guessed it... "Crunch-time," (which lasted maybe 4 months on this particular project?) in a renovated building with no bathrooms at 2am. Asking to wait until the next day to finish a shot/VFX was like walking on thin ice, almost having my employment on the line, which I would say most people that work in these industries could relate to. My boss even griped when I told him I started seeing a therapist because it cut into working hours, one hour a week, which were all hours of every day 5-6 days a week.
"Work a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life," man did I fall for that one hard when I was 18... and then 22 after I graduated.
I feel you, man. Except, when I graduated College, I was already seeing the cracks. I was gonna go into the Animation Industry. I used to look up to companies like RoosterTeeth and other animation/Gaming Companies. But, I was denied jobs because my skill level wasn't high enough. And then I saw. I saw what was wrong with the industry. I saw how they preyed on my dreams and grand visions I had. It was then that I knew it was better to do art and things I love for myself online. Not for profit, maybe for glory, but never relying on some higher-up or corporate entity for my income. I am glad I was able to see through their lies before they got me too. I am 23, and I graduated College about three years ago I think. Been working retail jobs ever since. I finally managed to settle down for a good one that treats me fairly. In Canada, we don't get a lot of good creative things to work on here. So, when I got an interview with one of the animation studios, I started to notice things. Like how I seemed to be the only one excited and eccentric throughout the whole time. The manager didn't seem to care that I was there. And when I went on tour of the office, everyone and everything there was just soulless. Even in some commentary tracks for my favorite animated films, the directors and people just sound so bored and tired. I didn't want that life. So here I am. Stuck with a student debt I gotta repay, stuck in a job I am lukewarm on, and all the while just saddened by how many people, including myself, were lied to since we were old enough for school. But still, there's hope. There's always hope things can change. I hope you do well in your life, Andrew Roberts. I hope you find a place in existence where you're completely content and completely happy in life. I wish you well.
Never make your hobby your job and you wont grow to resent it as quickly as you could otherwise.
Oh no... I was hoping that the TV/Film industry would be better than the games 😥 Now I'm just feeling hopeless.
@@Ari-ij3cz Nononononono, besides, Film/TV came first and only got worse. Games just joined the party later...
@@domenicksdesigns6417 Oh, well, would you say the culture is changing around the film/tv industry? ☹
It’s insane to imagine that people actually think that spending literally all your time working can be healthy.
You can tell that people who say this are the same ones who want their video game to come out a few months earlier, and don't care if the developers are being overworked.
imo gamers are some of the most entitled consumer community around so most don’t even care about what goes behind the scenes, they want games gud they don’t care about the developers health etc.
@@amrilhaziq8114 Yeah lol remember 2013
Cough cough meet Japan cough cough
@@amrilhaziq8114 if you believe that you're very ignorant. IMHO make up users are way more entitled I'll just mention mica mining in India and the beauty industry. Last I checked, the videogame industry don't use child labour nor do animal testing.
This is the reason I'm fine with Silksong taking the "It's ready when it's ready" approach. I loved Hollow Knight so much that I'm willing to wait basically forever for it to come out.
Some time this century would be nice though.
How to not piss off the majority of gamers: you can't, they just shouldn't know you were making a game until it's done
see um, that's kind of "A Problem™"'. In a perfect world you could just do that, but we don't live in a perfect world.
If you don't market the game both before AND after release, then you're not getting the fanbase as large as it realistically should be, and your game will end up rotting away unnoticed. There's many stories of poor marketing ruining entire franchises and even studios, to prove this ain't a good idea.
This is double as important for indie devs where their funds prior to development come from things like Kickstarter and Patreon. People only invest in that kind of thing if they know their investment is in good hands, so they need to generate hype quickly so more people are willing to get invest. If they can't do that, the game is dead in the water at worst, and shoddily scrapped together at best.
@@exyzt9877 if that's the case then how the fuck did apex legends survived
@@heistingcrusader_ad3223 they literally made both titanfall games, i think they had a bit of a community before hand, this is something that devs don't have on a first game, unless they try to advertise and market it properly
Team Cherry, on Silksong: *So i took that personally*
@@GlenJHenderson then market it with a no release date and put a statement to be patient. Pretty sure in this day and age the majority would be patient to wait as rushed projects have proven to be bad and inferior
This escaped my notifications somehow.
Thanks for this vid Noodle, you're the man.
haha didn't think I'll see you around after Robocraft. Nice grow up!
Woah, holy moly. That's a name I haven't seen in a while.
Cool to see you here, loved your Mordhau videos!
same buddy, forgot to hit the bell!
Yo Gromek, I see you everywhere recently
jesus christ bro. i used to be a hardcore "dude cmon i want to play this game now" kinda gamer (without the death threats) but now i feel bad even though i only got mad that it hadn't come out yet. i had no idea that people, REAL PEOPLE, were being pushed to their limits like this. it's horrible.
Yeah, I think if more people learned about how the conditions sometimes actually are, it’d be easier on devs
lots of people willingly turn a blind eye. Gamers are... by and large not nice people. The loud ones anyway. I tried explaining crunch culture to my coworkers (retail) around the time Red Dead 2 came out, the only thing they'd say was 'if they don't like it they shouldn't be game developers, it's not like it's a real job anyway'
Eh I mean, it's fairly standard fare in Japan. I'm not saying it's right, but you'd have to know going in.
@@halapenopepper what the FUCK do they even mean with "not a real job". do they think game devs are fucking magicians or something
@@ObservationofLimits yeah standard fare, and japan is intense enough with that overwork crap that they even have a term if you die from it - 過労死, or "karoshi"; "overwork death". and i don't think it's that they 'don't know', because i think they do know - just, sucks that it has to be something people just 'deal with' in the first place just to feed their families and themselves.
"Sometimes, there’s nothing like a good foie gras" is something you respond to with throwing a drink or spitting in their face because HOLY that is not a person
That’s something a super villain would say
That goose liver comment sounded like it came from a villain from a well written series
Sounds to me like the Exec wanted to crush dissent so he came up with some cold-blooded line the night before.
Why are people so corrupt that they can't put a line between free time and availability?
@@zynski3451 Oh yeah, it was totally a setup... and kind of a threat maybe. Total psycho
Welcome to corporate assholes, and why I as an animator/illustrator intend to never intentionally work under a bigger studio.
The scariest thing in my opinion is that to convince them to not destroy their employees, you have to explain them that it's more profitable that way
Rooster Teeth crushing the shit out of their animators and acting like a smoll indie company : "Don't be a meany to us, we're your fwends :D"
Uwu
CoMpaniEs arE PeoPle TOo!11!
H A H H A H H A H
"Letsy be fwendy!! Uwu! Me hooman twoo! Uwusy!"
Yeah, they're literally owned by Warner. They're not indie
It's a good day when Noodle uploads
indeed
SO TRUE
too bad it got uploaded at the end of it XD
@@Mamon_Saleh lol
Ur not wrong
I feel lucky that somehow I've stumbled my way into a healthy work environment, and I definitely think that a lot of it has to do with the producers at my workplace making sure I don't overwork myself, and genuinely looking out for me to make sure I don't crunch 24/7. I know I would, given the chance, because I simply love what I do. But I love it even more when I can have a life outside of it, eat, sleep -- generally take care of myself. They're able to make decisions about pushing things back, and have the sense in their heads that I lack about a work-life balance.
I know they won't see this comment, so I'm going to write them a really nice Christmas card to thank them for the health they've given me.
I've got the same kind of boss. I work catering, and multiple times I've come into work feeling unwell. Chef looks at me, points at the door, and tells me to piss off until I feel better.
I've worked twelves and thirteens, and every time he tells me to not do that. He'll stop us working to make sure we all eat.
I worked really bad places before, and have never actually felt loyalty to a boss before, be he's earned it time and again.
I’ve also managed to find my way into a healthy work environment.
We don’t really have to deal with “crunches” very often but when we do it’s at absolute most a Month but usually about a week or two.
I’m lucky as hell.
Weird to come back to that "Foie Gras" comment now that we've seen what Blizzard is capable of. This video is more relevant than ever right now.
They seem to _love_ being supervillains
Give my goose back
Such a shame cancel culture has targeted Marty's goose.
Would you mind filling me in?
@@TeardropLabs Of course! Warning, it is very disturbing. Blizzard was accused of a series of workplace violations, including:
- Encouraging employees to be drunk on the job with actual alcohol kiosks
- Men going around the office harassing the women
- Intentionally keeping women & people of color from getting pay raises and rising up in the company.
- Lots and lots of sexual assault claims.
- The higher-ups at the company were found to have a room they had at Blizz-con, the annual blizzard convention, known as the "Cosby Room" where they brought women visiting the convention to be assaulted.
All of this, combined with immense crunch times in the office, paint a very terrifying and bleak picture of Blizzard as a company.
I recently was hired as a full time apprentice at my family's Mortuary and even here I'm not hitting 100 hour weeks. Granted this is an Apple to Orange comparison , but still.
Still waiting on my uncles release date tho, smh
That Nintendo story also brings to mind the famous Miyamoto quote: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." Practical, but also works on the human level in this case.
But it kinda sucks see that quote get shadowed thanks to games like cyberpunk. While that quote is true, games like cyberpunk ruins it
@@kenobigaming5755 until you realize the reason Cyberpunk turned out the way it did is because it wasn't delayed more, didn't get more time. I think Cyberpunk is proof of that statement, it doesn't ruin it, but instead helps it's case. Cyberpunk was delayed and delayed, and the execs were mad, fans were mad, and the devs were tired after years of work and tons of crunch time, so the game was forced out when it still needed more time
I mean. Miyamoto actually never said this
"A delayed game is eventually good, a rushed game is forever bad....but a game too much delayed need to be spetacular to worth it"
@@thetntexpress7001 truth
I think team cherry has done an amazing job at stopping crunch culture while producing silksong. They didn't give an exact deadline and aren't hyping the game, so now they have as much time as they want without having to crunch.
Unfortunately their attempts at not hyping silksong by not putting too many trailers out only served to make someone make a youtube channel reporting silksong news every day because hollow knight fans are starved of content
Still good that they arent crunching tho
After watching this video I’ve formed a little visual equation of crunch.
Work is like a fire. That fire keeps you warm at night, cooks your food, and provides light. It is great for all of these reasons because it is comfortable and provides you with life. Crunch is you adding more fuel to the fire. Sometimes you need a bigger fire to feed the travelers that come your way, or provide more light for those lost in the dark, or simply because it is freezing cold. But add too much fuel and the fire becomes an inferno, totally out of your control as it consumes everything and everyone in its path to feed the flames that provides you with so much. Until theres nothing left. Sometimes this inferno is started by a poor decision to pour gasoline on the fire. But sometimes it wasn’t you who poured the gasoline.
This fire is important. It provides you with everything you need so that you can achieve happiness and safety. But while it is your greatest tool it can become your greatest danger if managed improperly, either by you or a misguided traveler. Don’t let the fire rage beyond your control.
Edit: So I had to come back to this video after learning about the scummy underhanded tactics Noodle used in his “bigger games” video. It’s hard to take this video and argument seriously when the guy is actively advocating for all the bad practices in the game industry with a different video, especially when Crunch is a symptom of those practices. If you see this comment: unsubscribe from this guy. I already have. He’s nothing but a hack and a liar, and is only interested in money. He’s not Mr. Anderson, he’s just another Agent Smith.
This is a good visual equation
This comment is incredibly underrated you phrased this so well.
you should become a philsopher
If I may add, once a bonfire becomes an inferno, it's going to burn through the fuel it has at an accelerated rate. In that instance, you may have limited fuel that will quickly wane and might burn out at the most inopportune time.
If someone else fueled your bonfire with your spare fuel to the point of it becoming an inferno, and it burns out, reigniting that bonfire won't be an easy task, and even if you manage it (a.k.a. managing to come back to the development team after becoming a stress casualty), that fire won't ever burn the same as it did before.
Solution: adapt to survive without fire.
I hate how crisp and realistic the glass tapping sound was made me had to look at my windows every single tap.
That "foie gras" line is like something a supervillain would say, wtf
You can hear the mustache twirling when that is said
I bet you that executive walks in front of the mirror day to do there "Oooh im a cool video game bad guy" voice
Idk how many people know this, but foie gras isn't just the liver of a goose. It's the liver of a goose that was force-fed "human-caterpillar" style. Along with basically waterboarding the geese using a funnel shoved into their esophagus, they're also restricted to living in a confined space that restrict their movement. This process creates rich fatty livers that are considered a French delicacy, but is honestly just glorified liver puree.
Yeah I was struck by the evil brilliance of that line. Sharp and soulless.
@@YourMajesty143 oh god you didn’t have to go into that much detail
That image is now burned into my mind, thanks your majesty
This isn't just a problem in the gaming industry. I experienced this in the finance sector, too. I was a commercial real estate analyst. It was my job to analyze commercial real estate loan requests and make a recommendation of approval or denial based on my findings. One of our department's main sources of revenue was loan origination fees, so there was a massive incentive to try and process, and approve, as many loan requests as possible. Of course, I didn't receive any portion of the origination income, yet I was constantly under pressure to push through as many approval recommendations as possible by the loan officers, who did revive a portion of the origination income, and the department heads. I felt like it all fell on me, and I was constantly behind. The stress got so bad I started having panic attacks. This culture is so pervasive in the US, it has got to stop. It's not healthy, it's toxic.
"There's a gigantic difference between a day long marathon and a two month long death march" this line is great. Running a day long marathon might leave you exhausted, sweating, and gasping for air; but walking a two month long death march will hurt you in more ways than you thought were possible.
The biggest key difference, you sign up for marathons and are forced into death marches, and a company couldn't force you to do a marathon, so probably not a great metaphor to use for something you ask your employees to do.
That foie gras metaphor makes me shudder every time. So unashamedly cruel. Like a cartoon villain
That man belongs in a reformatory
We should unalive them
@@SOoshi_artjust say kill
Amazingly done video, Noodle. This video hits some really great points on crunch and how pervasive and damaging it is in the industry.
I just wanna say, the sound design on this one was top-notch? The knocking literally made me turn around because it felt like someone was knocking on my door the first time, lol. And the muffled Marty through the window. Also, small note, I didn't even know about those details about reloading in Reach, holy shit?
Keep up the amazing work, Noodle. Your stuffs super awesome!
Edit: Also, an interesting note tangentially related since Halo was mentioned, with Halo Infinite being delayed til Fall 2021, the article they released earlier this month talked about the delay and that its important for "giving the team time to recharge over the Holidays and then coming back in January to finish the game at a healthy pace." Sure, I bet some crunching probably happens at 343, but it's also pretty great that they're deliberate in trying to avoid the kinds of terrible crunch mentioned here. Just another company (hopefully?) doing it right.
I actually recorded the door knocking myself using 3 microphones for maximum realism lol
thanks for the insightful comment
@@noodlefunny 3 microphones??? Your dedication to quality is admirable, holy shit man. LOL
It is always difficult to tell whether such decisions in a company are truly being followed through with, or if they are doing the minimum required to be on the media's good side.
@@benignsquirrel3600 Whether or not studios follow through with claims like that, they are at least helping to propagate the idea that crunch culture isn’t healthy. Although I guess lying about how they treat their employees is a problem within itself.
aren't you the guy that uploaded the undertale soundtrack??
Had my mom watch this video after getting laid off from a creative-based job loaded with crunch. She was genuinely surprised when she realized she had been working this type of job, and now she plans to work using a self-hobby-based job with her own deadlines. Great video.