Contents page 1 — you still Playing or “crunchst” you? Page 2 — There is a lot of Overtime, which will not be offset On a page
read Virtually every game from the Blockbuster to the Indie game – is the result of enormous pressure, late shifts and weekend work. In the Games industry, this game development time is referred to as a Crunch. Crunch describes the phases in which developers work week up to 80 hours to meet Deadlines or the game on time ready to get. This is standard practice, although the working hours in Germany are actually strictly regulated.
developers talk about how they almost in the company have been accustomed to, in spite of a small child and a highly pregnant woman, who were at home. They tell of 200 hours of Overtime in just one project or falling from a six-week period in the twelve hours a day have worked. “Nobody lasts long,” says Julia Schäfer*. “After twelve hours of work your body is at the end. You go to work early, drink and hold a lot of coffee you awake. At some point you go home, sleep right, and in five hours the alarm goes again. And this goes for a week.”
Julia Schaefer is in his mid-twenties and got directly after her studies, a job as a Level designer in a large German developer Studio. You want to make the games as good as possible and is also willing to do more than actually planned. The Overtime shall be regarded by the company as a matter of course, bother you, however. “At the end of last year we had as a closed Department of a big crunch time. The Overtime hours were imposed on us by the company, without asking us first. It just had to be okay.”
Many developers because of their passion for games with a very high willingness to self-Sacrifice. Especially young people will be exposed to the pressure of their employers voluntarily, because they want to prove themselves. If the office is open on the weekend, you feel obligated, even without a direct request from the management to come. In content questions, the enthusiasm of the players will be exploited as well, says Fabian Gose*, who now works as a self-employed programmer for a German car manufacturer.
In the economy, a developer could earn twice as much as it is in the Games industry is currently possible. Since the starting salary, depending on the size of the Studios and Position between 1,500 and 2,500 euros. Phrases such as “don’t complain, you can make your dream and the games were” life according to Level designer shepherd, no myths. They had become considerably less.
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This article is part of a series of articles that deal with boundaries in and around Games. All of the articles you can find here: www.grenzgamer.com
Under the continuous pressure, the result is
Durable Crunchen suffers, the developers do not agree, improves the game. “Eventually, I could no longer. My head was free and I was no longer productive,” recalls a Senior programmer Gero Gerber in his first Crunch-time experience. Through week long phases with Overtime, even mass, but the creativity remains, instead, fatigue and mistakes. Elias Hagemann*, Visual Effects Artist, made this experience just before submitting a game: “in The evening we had suddenly discovered a bug that made the game unplayable. We worked until four o’clock in the morning to fix it. In this Situation, we could choose whether we stay longer or not.”
How to positively enough time in the development, Fabian Gose to know during his work as a Level Designer to a successful strategy game. “We have to get at the end of three months more time, because it has to fit in the marketing plan of the Publisher,” he says. “In the time we were able to improve the game a lot.” But he also says: “With the project, I had been really lucky.”
