Industry analyst Michael “Slippery Bullet” Pachter has weighed in on the “crunch period” debate reignited by recent Team Bondi controversies. According to Pacther, working long hours is an obligation, and anybody who dislikes it needs to get out.
“The LA Noire project was disrupted, and there were several false promises of finishing the game, and poor Brendan McNamara — who is probably going to be ‘rich Brendan McNamara’ — was put in the position to get his team to crunch and get it done more than once,” he said. “I don’t know anybody in game development who calls it a 9-5 job. I’ve never heard a developer say ‘I don’t work overtime and I don’t work weekends.’ If you’re getting into the industry — if you’re going to be a developer – you know you’re going to work plenty of hours.
“I think that all the complaints about Team Bondi are premature. If your complaint is you worked overtime and didn’t get paid for it, find another profession, cause I don’t think you’re getting overtime pay anywhere. And if your complaint is that you’re just underpaid in general, then why don’t we wait and see what bonuses are paid out.”
While Pachter agrees that excessive crunch periods are a bad thing, his comments have caused quite a stir among those who believe that Team Bondi was unreasonable. Pachter is right when he argues that crunch development can be unavoidable, but what happened with Bondi seemed excessive and disrespectful. There are ways of getting more work from your employees — overworking them for more than a year and removing anybody who quits from the game’s credits isn’t a good way.
Pachter To Overworked Devs: ‘Find Another Profession’ [Industry Gamers]
