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But the question is, what do they get?

Would they develop products faster if the employees worked less?

What if they don’t? What if crunch works, at least in the short term, for the employer? Does any criticism of crunch time necessarily hinge on productivity? Does the health and well-being of individual employees warrant sufficient concern by itself to scale back working hours?

The pattern seems to be :

* Get a new job at game studio * Start off OK-ish, then get pushed to crunch more and more as release date nears and then slips (probably by design) * Release game * lay off most staff * They're broke for a while but the time without work is nice * Repeat

I can't find a source but I understand the average length of a career in the industry is 5-6 years. Also, I couldn't help but notice at my last place that those of us doing more general work (python, data engineering, etc.) were a hell of a lot more relaxed than those with video-game-specific skillsets (Unity3d).

This article seems to indicate that they would at least develop better games if the employees were not subjected to "crunch". https://gamasutra.com/blogs/PaulTozour/20150120/234443/The_G...

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