but we did have to do a bit of crunch. And I think, to be honest, you will always have a little bit when you’re trying to finish something, especially when there’s so much complexity that needs to be brought together.
What does doing “a bit of crunch” even mean? Crunch means you’re (practically) forced to work overtime, there is no excuse for this IMO. The game was on early access for a while, surely they could’ve delayed its full release by a bit to prevent this.
I agree.
Crunch is a project management failure. This is my professional opinion as a tech lead at a mid sized gaming company.
When I saw all the praise the game received at release, the level of detail etc. My first thought was, so what was the cost on individuals?
Don’t get me wrong, this is an amazing game. But I worry that a lot of overtime went into this.
And other projects will be measured against that. This might set another very bad example.Release windows can make or break a game, and they were counter programming Starfield, which they expected to be a bigger deal. I would interpret “a bit of crunch” to be a few weeks rather than the several month death march you hear about in game development all the time.
IMO crunch has no excuse; it is a decision that benefits the business while hurting the workers.
“A few weeks” of crunch translates to hundreds of extra working hours.
I agree, it does, and it does. In many cases it’s necessary for the survival of the company once you’ve committed to release dates and marketing expenses. Larian ought to have enough cushion for their next project that requiring it makes even less sense.
I recently interviewed for a software job where they want you to work at least 12 hours per day.
During the first interview, I had asked about work-life balance, too, and the HR rep said, “well I’m not an engineer, so I’m not sure.” And then after my fourth interview, she goes, "just so you know, this will be a high intensity position. There is not much of a work/life balance.
The fuck do you mean, “fourth interview”??
This has been the norm for bigger tech companies for a while. I recently went through 4 interviews with a company that went great at every step. Had a chat with a HR folk after that about expectations, laid out my salary expectation, then was suddenly rejected the next day on not having enough relevant experience (I have literally 20 years of relevant experience).
I think they were looking for someone slightly less senior initially, but c’mon. Why waste everyone’s time going through that whole process if you have no budget? I saw the post is still open and being refreshed on LinkedIn more than 6 months later.
Did you laugh in their face?
I was talking to them recently about a job and their pay is kinda low for the industry too
You didn’t have to, you just chose to.
And I’m glad they did, the game is 10/10!
Only if it was voluntary and OT was paid at 1.5x…
it never is, the employees are salary
I worked on salary and OT was paid x1.5. The OT also counted towards total salary, which in turn increased the pay for my paid leave I took right after OT period, so I was pretty happy.
