Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga has led to extensive crunch at TT Games

From Polygon: "In late 2017, development studio TT Games began work on Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga at a time when dozens inside the company were at odds with management. Citing frustration over tight development schedules, the company’s crunch culture, and outdated development tools, more than 20 current and former TT Games employees tell Polygon that calls for change over the years had largely been ignored.

Multiple people who worked at the studio remember breaking down outside of work hours because of the workload and some of the stresses they were under."

[-Foxtrot]

You know the industry is in a bit of a state when developers at a studio have to go through crunch over a LEGO game.

[darthv72]

do you have any idea how many pieces it takes to build a lego deathstar???? They been working on it for a long time so it will all be over soon.

[Rebel_Scum]

No doubt they’re gonna rush this out the door with an unfinished death star in episode 6 smdh…

[GhostofHorizon]

That's unfortunate, nobody should have to go through crunch.

[Outlawzz]

I will never understand why crunch is such a huge thing in video game culture. Can there ever not be crunch? Lol

[SoulWarrior]

Demanding execs, poor management, whiny shareholders, it's unfortunate and really shouldn't be as much of a thing.

[CrimsonWing69]

Yea and? This happens with a lot of things that have deadlines in many different industries. Are we going to have a freaking article for every game developed?

Back in the day people slept under the desks in the offices. If they aren’t doing that now, things have improved.

[Darkwatchman]

There literally have been stories of developers in the modern era sleeping at work and not being home for weeks on end

[CrimsonWing69]

This isn’t anything new then.

Crunch is always going to be a thing especially in the game industry. Even with proper management you run into debugging and all the wonderful anomalies that come with software and development all while trying to meet a deadline.

I’d say the time to get pissed about it is if people aren’t getting paid for overtime or if working conditions are god awful.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

This needs to change and it should start as soon as possible. The stress levels endured during these unrealistic crunch periods probably takes years off of people's lives for fear of losing your job.

Just because something has always been a thing doesn't mean people can't speak up against it and advocate for change.

[CrimsonWing69]

It’s not realistic especially given deadlines. I have personal experience with crunch in my job. So, I can tell you this happens in a lot of jobs regardless of how well employees and tasks are managed.

[senorfartcushion]

@crimson

Move the deadlines.

Deadlines are made up by people. They’re just made up. They’re words on paper, nothing more.

Every single single single single game delayed is opposing deadlines.

[Gamer79]

It happens in all industries. Cold fusion YouTube channel has a couple of videos about the first iPhone and the apple Newton, the crunch on these 2 products was immense.

[CrimsonWing69]

Yea that’s what I was trying to get at. I understand this whole, “We want the world to be a perfect place where everyone is happy” mentality, but it’s not realistic and when you have deadlines it almost always requires crunch time. These people get paid for their overtime and this isn’t anything new to the industry. They know what they’re signing up for.

I hate to break it to people, but doing work is sometimes hard and sometimes stressful. In the industry of creativity it’s especially hard when you don’t have unlimited time and funding to make a project for consumers.

[senorfartcushion]

@crimson (again)

Try to not do two things for me:

Have kids.

Get a driving license.

You’ll just endanger people 😅😅😅

[senorfartcushion]

That’s like saying things have improved because only one person gets stabbed and not 3. Improved, mathematically, sure, but someone was still stabbed.

Crunch is seen as a failure by business owners and creatives across America, which is odd because Americans are usually last when it comes to this kind of thing. This is a studio that’s in England doing it too, which means that it’s even more egregious,

[CrimsonWing69]

Stabbings are a bit different than having to work overtime to meet a deadline. I get you’re trying to say less of a bad thing doesn’t make it a good thing, but we’re talking about work and deadlines here.

Yes, crunch is a result of not maintaining the time management goals throughout a projects development lifecycle, but this is borderline common in a lot of businesses, that again, have to meet a deadline. Does that mean it’s unethical to employees or that the business is inherently evil for making their employees work extra to meet the deadline? No, it doesn’t. It sucks to have to work extra, I don’t think anyone will refute that. However, they are compensated for doing so and if they aren’t, well now we have a discussion.

Not everything goes according to plan and it’s costly to do delays, so it’s not just magically move the goal post and work until it’s finished.

Let me ask you this, Señor Fart Cushion, what would you do to change crunch in the workplace? Do you have any solutions? I assume you have a driver’s license and kids, so you must have all the answers, here.

[Stonilein]

Is there online coop?

[Firebird360]

Sadly no. Which in 2022 is crazy.

[Stonilein]

Then they should crunch some more instead of complaining like some hoes , game devs earn about 8k per month

[Firebird360]

Average people crunch every day at jobs they hate for less pay. Every job theres overtime, missed weekends and nights with family. These people are fortunate enough to be doing their dream jobs.

[Gamer79]

16 hour days, sleeping in the office. All for people to crap all over the product you've spent years working on, some dream job.

[Firebird360]

Don't like it? Work somewhere else, im tired of soft people bitching about everything in life.
Nothings easy, man up.

[BrainSyphoned]

I've been working 70-80 hour weeks for quite a few months to cover for everyone out with covid /shrug
Guess I should color my hair and whine on Twitter like these children. I vote for cutting their pay so they need to work OT just to make ends meet.

[senorfartcushion]

Doesn’t that just mean that you don’t have as many brain cells as the people with the funny coloured hair?

A Beta animal wouldn’t complain when the predator tries to eat them. It just sounds like you’re that kind of Beta animal. Too cowardly and brainless to try and save your own time.

[Dirtnapstor]

Oh no! You mean working to produce a video game isn't as easy as it sounds?! You mean it's not always a casual working environment? You mean their bosses actually have expectations and deadlines? Oh, the humanity!
Tired of hearing about crunch time.
It's going to happen.
It exists in just about every occupation out there.