That Time The Gaming Industry Worked Me To Death
The Reality Of Crunch
For weeks, the playful ribbing continued in a way that never ceased being fun, but simultaneously instilled the idea that only working your contracted hours was lazy. Even guys who had to leave to pick up their children from school (who had been in the studio since 7am) were given the ol’ elbow in the stomach as they did the walk of shame past all of us real developers, and I promised myself that I wouldn’t ever be one of those guys.
Crunch came. I’d never been in a crunch before, but here it was, and I was raring to go.
I got stuck in - as we were going to be here for the next ten to thirteen hours, I figured I’d really try to give it my all (and subsequently, hopefully impress some higher-up with some promotion powers). We all worked through it, we all got free pizza, everyone got back pats... and I loved the feeling. I loved being a reliable, hard-working mega-dev.
Before long, I started doing those type of hours by default - in part to keep up the positive image that I was good enough to promote beyond the lowest possible rank the company had, but also because... I started to get a buzz from being everyone’s go-to guy, the guy who was always there, the guy who arrived before everyone else and stayed late whenever he could.
Christmas of 2010 was arriving fast, and the whole studio was called into the main meeting room for an impromptu gathering. The big boss was here (you could tell, because his Lamborghini was parked outside), and he looked concerned.
“60FPS and all the features need to be in. If they’re not, then [the studio] is through. That means all of you, too, remember. This is do or die.”
He left with as little joy as he brought with him, and we looked at one another in dread. We knew that this was the point where our extra effort would be the difference between success and outright failure, and let me tell you - between my newfound lust for overworking and my hatred of being unemployed, I was going to knuckle down.
Cont.