January was the month of major game delays. The announcement that Cyberpunk 2077 will be delayed by several months came just days after the release dates were pushed back for both Final Fantasy VII Remake and Marvel's Avengers. This has, once again, sparked a conversation on the issue of developer crunch.
Everyone wants their games when they want them and they want them to be perfect. Fans often fail to really understand there is an entire team behind these games. All they see is an iconic industry figurehead like Shigeru Miyamoto or Hideo Kojima without fully realizing that there are hundreds of people carrying the fate of whatever game on their weary shoulders. Crunch translates into extremely long and painful hours, as well as the stress knowing that if the next deadline isn't met it's a literal game over for the entire project.
How The Sausage Is Made
Video games are massive undertakings that have to be meticulously planned out from start to finish. Every line of code and every piece of art is accounted for and estimated against. These plans are laid out for the publisher, and have budgets built around them. All of this forethought should make game development easy, right? Sure. That is, until absolutely anything messes with the plan.
A development team is a fragile ecosystem and it all depends on the money coming from the publisher for whatever project. Thus, any request quickly becomes a demand. After all, the team can't risk disappointing whoever is paying for everything. Games are constantly getting canceled. Regardless of the property and how popular it may be, publishers will cut their losses at the hint of trouble and developers know this.
Any number of publisher demands can throw an entire bag of wrenches into a perfectly planned timeline. The publisher wants this or that added? Time to drop everything and focus on that. They want something changed? That's the new priority. The latest change brought back a bug that had been dealt with? There goes this week's schedule.
Developers could ask for more time or more money, but the chance of complicating the relationship with the publisher is often too risky. When the only option in 99 percent of cases is to, somehow, fit the changes into the already full schedule, crunch becomes inevitable.
Do it For The Fans
Video games delays happen for good and bad reasons. Regardless, it's usually a boon for the game itself. Gamers, despite their initial disappointment at having to wait longer, will eventually enjoy a superior, more polished final product. Though it may seem like more time should lessen crunch, that is often not the case. Instead of slowing the pace, game delays merely push back the finish-line.
With delays, unfortunately, come even more crunch. This can be warranted for a game development cycle that has gone off the rails in one way or another. If a game would otherwise not meet the basic standards expected, obviously that game will need more work before it is released. Sometimes, delays are genuinely there to add things that everyone agrees the game actually needs. Unfortunately, sometimes delays are in pursuit of less realistic goals.
CEO of CD Projekt Red, Adam Kiciński, when asked about the potential for crunch in regards to the Cyberpunk 2077 delay, said in a recent investors meeting:
We try to limit crunch as much as possible, but it is the final stage. We try to be reasonable in this regard, but yes. Unfortunately. We want Cyberpunk 2077 to be our crowning achievement for this generation and postponing launch will give us the precious months we need to make the game perfect
The last word there is key: perfect.
Big name games, really any video game these days, have to make a good first impression. A bad launch with bugs and other issues immediately draw cries from fans who say the game must have needed more time or it was just rushed out by the developers. Not every bug can be found before release, not every single issue can be smoothed over, and (especially as games get bigger) not every possible gameplay choice can be tested. Still, developers are forced to crunch harder and harder as they chase these impossible standards.
And That's The Way it Is?
On one hand, publishers are breathing down developer's necks, constantly adding new hoops to jump through. On the other, fans expect nothing less than perfection. This leaves developers trapped between a rock an a hard place, and these factors are not changing anytime soon.
Some might say that crunch is just the cost of doing business, and that there will always be tight deadlines and stressful conditions. There are millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs at stake for any given AAA title, so if there weren't at least some stressful conditions present that would be very surprising. The thing is, crunch doesn't need to be as bad as it is.
Just like any workplace with stressful conditions, game development studios need to understand that their employees are human. They have to be aware that overworking artists and coders puts them in danger of breaking down from the tension, something with very real physical and mental consequences. Stress is unavoidable when deadlines are involved, but, just like with physical labor, safety needs to be at the center of a healthy work environment. Acknowledging that crunch is a part of the industry is neither about normalizing it nor hoping it goes away entirely. It's about adding it to the list of priorities that have to be dealt with as the game goes on its way to completion.