User:Jaden2xU/sandbox

Description
Crunch is a term used in the video game industry to describe forced overtime as it relates to the development of a game. Crunch in the game industry is common and can lead to work weeks of 65-80 hours for extended periods of time, often totally uncompensated. It is often used as a way to cut the costs of game development, a labor-intensive endeavor. However, it leads to negative health impacts for game developers and a decrease in the quality of their work, as well as driving people out of the industry permanently. Critics of crunch note how it has become normalized within the gaming industry, to deleterious effects for all involved. A lack of unionization on the part of game developers has often been suggested as the reason crunch exists, and organizations such as Game Workers Unite aim to fight against crunch by forcing studios to honor developers' labor rights.

History
Crunch time has been used in the industry since around the 1980s though never publicly discussed. Video game developers historically were paid greater than the average salaries, and because of the insular nature of the industry, where one's reputation is critical, few developers would leave the industry due to crunch. These factors made the acceptance of longer working hours the norm at some larger studios. As the video game industry boomed in the 1980s, its developers were considered white-collar workers and exempt from overtime pay; this was particularly true for those in California (where most of the industry had been established), in which those that made over double the current minimum wage were considered ineligible for overtime. In 2000 California introduced a specific "computer-related" clause for overtime exemptions, raising the minimum salary threshold to be exempt to around $85,000 per year tied to the consumer price index, which exceeded the average game developer salary at that time of about $61,000. The U.S. federal government followed suit in creating a similar class for exemptions at the federal level.

California's exemption changes stirred up debate within the industry for workers who thought they were being treated unfairly. At that time, a 2004 survey by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) found only about 3% of respondents did not work any overtime, and of those that did, nearly half were not compensated for overtime. Two lawsuits emerged against Electronic Arts (EA) as employees recognized they should not be categorized as exempt from overtime pay. One suit originated from artists that had worked on The Sims 2 that argued they had been forced to work overtime without compensation. A second lawsuit originated from a social media post by Erin Hoffman, posting anonymously under the name "EA Spouse", in 2004, describing the working hours her husband had faced at EA and how crunch time, initially proposed early in development as to get a heads-up on later stages, had been pushed as a long-term requirement throughout the development cycle for the employees. EA ultimately settled both lawsuits, agreeing to pay back $15 million to the employees by 2006, and that it would reclassify some of its developers as hourly employees eligible for overtime but eliminating their stock options. However, the publicity around these suits lead to more discussion in the video game industry on the crunch culture.

California changed its labor laws in 2008 in an attempt to keep high-tech industries from moving out of state or country; this included reducing the minimum salary to be exempt for computer-related jobs from the current $100,000 to $75,000 per year, which at that time fell under the average salary for video game developers. The labor laws also included a number of exacting provisions of what type of job functions were considered exempt, which covered most game development responsibilities. As a result, employees found it difficult to challenge crunch time through legal recourse.

More visibility of the industry's crunch conditions occurred in January 2010, when a collective group of "Rockstar Spouses", the spouses of developers at Rockstar San Diego, posted an open letter criticizing the management of the studio for deteriorating working conditions for their significant others since March 2009, which included excessive crunch time. This was followed by several former Rockstar employees posting similar complaints of their time there. The IGDA considered that Rockstar's working conditions were exploitative and harmful.

Since these points, some companies in the industry have taken steps to eliminate crunch. In 2004, following Hoffman's blog, the IGDA issued a report on the negative consequences of crunch time on developers and their quality of life. A 2014 IGDA survey found nearly 20% of game developers did not see any crunch, and where there was crunch, the average number of hours worked had dropped from the prior 2004 survey: in 2004, 35% had said they worked between 65 and 80 hours per week, while by 2014, 35% said they had worked from 50 to 65 hours. A 2019 survey of developers by the Game Developers Conference found that nearly half still worked over 40-hour weeks on average with only 12% working more than 50 hours a week on average, though nearly 75% stated they had at least one period where they had worked more than 40 hours in a single week.

However, stories of crunch time still have brought more awareness that crunch remained an accepted practice in the game industry. Families of Rockstar developers for Red Dead Redemption 2 in October 2018 brought forth similar concerns as the prior "Rockstar Spouse" case. Anonymous Epic Games employees speaking to Polygon spoke of crunch time with 70 to 100 hour weeks by some ever since they released Fortnite Battle Royale, which has drawn a playerbase of millions. While these employees were getting overtime pay, there remained issues of health concerns and inability to take time off without it being seen negatively on their performance.

Most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic led to various disruptions on game development across the industry, but in most cases shows that development companies could still make games while employees were working remotely from home, raising the question of the need for crunch time. In October 2021, Eidos-Montréal and Eidos-Sherbrooke were some of the first major studios to announce a shift to a four-day workweek as to improve the quality of life for its developers. The developers of Hades have also taken measures to eliminate forced crunch and replace them with forced vacations instead.

[Add in information about how Hades is a well reviewed, critically acclaimed game to emphasize that no crunching led to better development]

On Developers
[Mental / physical health, family life, effect on life outside of work, etc]

On Games
A study by The Game Outcomes Project found that mandatory crunch led to less successful games, using Metacritic as a gauge of success. The group found that cultural factors such as focus, team cohesion, and a compelling direction were more important than pure hours of work in determining how good a game was. This led to the conclusion that in fact crunch might make games worse rather than better, and at the least, resulted in diminishing returns.

During the development of Overkill's The Walking Dead, crunch at Starbreeze Studios and Overkill Software due to development problems had a negative effect, resulting in a product that was critically panned for its quality and gameplay, and leaving both studios in financial distress

[find other games that were negatively affected by crunch and some that saw success with crunch].

Future
[Unionization efforts, labor laws, change in culture, organizations fighting against crunch]

Normalization

 * Some developers crunch out of their own free will - either because other people are doing it around them or some other reasons such as perfectionism or fear of being perceived as lazy.
 * The industry perceives crunch as a necessity with many employees even expecting it when they get hired.

Shifting Perceptions

 * [Talk about the shifting mindset of crunch from necessity to burden]