Over the years, the gaming community has grown more concerned about the welfare of designers who make AAA video games, people who are too frequently pressured into working for long periods of Hades through sound management practices, transparent communication between staff, and workplace cultures that de-incentivize grueling spans of overtime.
Video games are highly complex works of media entertainment, to say the least; even the simplest indie game require hours upon hours of programming, rendering, play-testing, and quality assurance work. To make matters more complicated, the process of developing a video game can be unpredictable, with unexpected glitches, design challenges, and hard-to-implement ideas making it hard to complete project goals in a consistent time. Finally, timelines for game development can be disrupted by global crises such as COVID-19 or poor management practices (as seen in the infamously bad E.T. the Extraterrestrial video game, the product of developers who only had 5 weeks to make it).
When these delays occurs, game studios generally have three choices: they can delay the game's release date, as seen with Hardsuit Labs and Cyberpunk 2077. Too many studios these days choose to put their programmers through physically and mentally debilitating spans of crunch time in order to maximum profit and customer satisfaction, a chronic problem that has inspired unionization among programmers, movements against crunch, and promises from high-profile studios to treat their workforce more equitably.
It can be very, very hard at times to figure out which video game studios actually create "non-crunch" workplaces for their employees, particularly since it's easy for a company to say one thing and do another behind closed doors. The heads of CD Projekt Red, for instance, frequently claimed they wouldn't force developers of Cyberpunk 2077 into crunch time, only to go back on their word. The following studios, in contrast, have a more consistent track record of practicing what they preach, using fluid release dates and efficient management to publish quality video games without sacrificing the welfare of their employees.
Modern Wolf
Modern Wolf is a small-scale publisher of games from various indie studios, founded in 2019 with the self-declared intent of giving a developers a space to create video games without having to worry about "crunch" or other unhealthy working conditions. In the now-two years since its founding, Modern Wolf has published a wide variety of games from different publishers, ranging from the quirky outer-space puzzle game Kosmokrats to the political simulator Rogue State Revolution. One of Modern Wolf's core public principles is to work with their game studios to create practical, achievable development schedules while still giving designers autonomy to make their games the way they want.
Obsidian Studios
Obsidian Studios started out as a developer of licensed spin-off games such as Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic II and Fallout: New Vegas, before the success of their Pillars of Eternity isometric RPG franchise gave them the clout to redefine themselves as a studio with original IPs. Their most recent publications, The Outer Worlds and Grounded, were completed and released without any need for crunch time, according to developers.
In an interview with The Outer Worlds' story campaign and the smaller-than-average size of its maps.
Digital Extremes
Digital Extremes is the game studio behind Warframe, an extraordinarily popular massive multiplayer online shooter about futuristic space Ninjas called "Tenno" who fight to restore peace to a haunted solar system with their titular "Warframe" power suits. As a free-to-play title with a dedicated fanbase, Digital Extremes rakes in the profits by engaging regularly with their players on social media and releasing a steady stream of gameplay updates to whet their interest.
One would think the work culture of Digital Extremes would be very keen on "crunch," but in an interview by Eurogamer reporter Emma Kent, Digital Extremes COO Sheldon Carter stated that Warframe developers have managed to avoid excessive overtime and burnout by treating the development process like "a marathon, not a sprint." According to Carter, they keep the release dates for their updates fluid and talk honestly with their player-base about development challenges during dev-streams.
Supergiant Games
Supergiant Games is a small-scale Indie studio responsible for hit titles such as Bastion, Transistor, Pyre, and most recently, the hit "Godlike" RPG Hades. Despite being a small-scale team of 18 developers, Supergiant Games has managed to consistently create fun games successful enough to keep their studio truly independent...and all that while maintaining sustainable, comfortable working conditions for their employees. In an interview with Kotaku, developers at Supergiant Games credited the success and continued independence of their studio to three factors: good chemistry between the personalities of their close-knit team, sustainable work schedules, and company policies that don't put "invisible pressure" on employees to work overtime. One policy Supergiant Games set up to discourage "crunch" is to give its employees unlimited vacation time, 20 days of which must be used each year at minimum.
These definitely are not all of the game studios which are against crunch. Mike Bithell of Bithell Games, the developer of John Wick Hex and Thomas Was Alone, has spoken publicly numerous times about how bad crunch is for the video game industry on the podcast Play, Watch, Listen, and many, many other developers likely share the same sentiments. Hopefully in the future more studios will have the same mentality.
Source: Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Kotaku, Play, Watch, Listen/YouTube
