10 Things Non-Gamers Don't Understand About Gaming
9. Crunch Culture Is A Major Industry Problem
If you're not part of the gaming "bubble," it's easy to underestimate the ludicrous amount of work that goes into making even a terrible game.
Though games are largely created in air-conditioned offices, that doesn't mean they aren't gargantuan undertakings for the hundreds of people employed to work on them.
And of course, what we're really talking about here is crunch - the means through which dev team employees are "invited" to work up to 80 hours per week to complete games before release, often without sufficient compensation.
Rockstar Games were raked over the coals shortly before the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 regarding their notoriously demanding working conditions, yet to outsiders, it's likely just assumed that gamedev employees are working relatively well-paid, cushy jobs - especially at the blockbuster level.
While to non-gamers a lot of video games might seem like similar iterations on the same basic idea, the absurd man-hours that go into creating maps, characters, game logic, animation, voiceover, cinematics, menus, and so on absolutely cannot be downplayed.
Though crunch is a well-known issue in gamer circles, it's sadly still struggling to pick up sufficient attention with the mainstream.