We were recently asked by Develop to comment on ‘crunch’ time in the industry, an issue that is back in the news following comments involving Rockstar San Diego.
Cohort CEO, Lol Scragg responded:
Crunch is still an unfortunate necessity in this industry, as much as we try and avoid it. Even with great planning, strong project management and a dedicated team, there will always be situations where overtime is unavoidable.
However, exploring and developing methods of minimising the need for crunch periods should be a priority for any studio management team. Ultimately, crunch periods fatigue the staff and there’s a genuine risk of increasing the overall project workload due to that fatigue causing mistakes and errors.
At Cohort, we try and avoid crunch as much as possible. Sure, we have a few late nights on the run up to milestones, but if at all possible, we ensure these are few and far between. The degree of lateness in those late nights is key too – push for overtime into the small hours and that counter-productive fatigue becomes a real risk.
In our four years working on various projects, we have probably asked (note: asked, not demanded) our team work a couple of weekends in total and we have never asked anyone to do any all-nighters. Even when we do work late, we generally won’t allow working beyond 10pm.
Our company IS our team and alienating or fatiguing members and departments does no long-term good. Most publishers will appreciate a stand being taken here, and will understand that whilst extra hours here and there are fine, asking a team to do days in excess of 12 hours on a constant medium-to-long-term basis adds little (and potentially removes plenty) from the final product for the customer.
With publishers, having a good, well-experienced producer is huge advantage. As persuasive as a developer’s arguments can be, having someone client-side who understands the impacts client-requested changes or additions will have on timelines and milestone deadlines is invaluable to minimising the need for heavy crunches. We need more producers that are focused on working *with* developers rather than steam-rolling them into a corner where crunch is the only solution.
You can read the full article over at Develop.
