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'Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga' will arrive on April 5th
Despite lengthy delays, developers at TT Games still reportedly had to crunch to finish the game.
Eidos' Quebec game studios shift to a four-day work week
Eidos' Montreal and Sherbrooke studios are switching to a four-day work week to minimize crunch.
Sega's Golden Axe celebration turned into a crunch commemoration
Sega is having fun with the launch of Golden Axed, but one of the game's original developers isn't.
Tencent's new blockbuster US game studio is led by a 'GTA' veteran
Tencent is expanding its footprint outside of China by launching a US studio devoted to 'AAA' games, with a Rockstar veteran at the helm.
Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell launches a game studio
Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell has launched a multiplayer-focused game studio, Mountaintop, and hopes it'll avoid the pitfalls of rivals.
Microsoft Japan’s four-day work week boosted productivity by 40 percent
The phrase "four-day work week" fills many people with a sense of ease and optimism, but most of us only get a handful of them per year. Microsoft Japan decided to give its 2,300 employees every Friday in August off and measure the results, according to The Guardian. The company reported happier workers and a 40 percent gain in productivity.
Respawn spaces out 'Apex Legends' content updates to avoid crunch
Now that Respawn has released its first Apex Legends Battle Pass and is otherwise settling in, it's outlining how it will handle Apex updates going forward -- including what it won't do. In the lengthy status post, the company's Drew McCoy stressed that his team would make the battle royale game feel "alive and thriving," but wasn't going to pursue updates so aggressively that it required crunch time that could prompt "burnout or worse." In other words, he'd rather a new feature take longer than jeopardize health or the quality of the output.
'Super Meat Boy Forever' will miss April release date
Super Meat Boy Forever is facing yet another delay, but don't panic -- it's not as bad as it has been. Team Meat has pushed the release of its squishy platformer to "after but not too far after April 2019." The developers are close and believe they could have met April if they'd pushed themselves to the limit, but they wanted to finish the game at a "healthy and sustainable pace." They're not going to go through the hell of crunch time just to make an arbitrary release schedule.
'Anthem' is proof that crunch can't save AAA games
Anthem is a fiery mess. Since launching in February, BioWare's loot shooter has been plagued by game-breaking bugs, narrative and gameplay inconsistencies and an overwhelming sense of incomplete blandness. Critically, Anthem has received middling reviews, and its current Metacritic score, 55, is the lowest a BioWare title has ever received. Yes, that includes Mass Effect: Andromeda. A report out of Kotaku this week helps explain why Anthem is in disarray, and it shines a light on a consistent and increasingly public issue in AAA development: crunch.
'Red Dead Redemption 2': Separation of crunch and art
Four days before the debut of Red Dead Redemption 2, arguably the most high-profile video game launch of the year, the non-profit organization Take This sent out an email to its supporters and the media. "Crunch is yet again a hot topic in the gaming news," it began. "With the recent stories about crunch development there has been a renewed interest in Take This' 2016 white paper on crunch and many organizations have come to us for comment on the topic."
The Game Archaeologist uncovers Shadowbane: Talking with Josef Hall and Todd Coleman, part 2
Don't miss the first part of this interview with the makers of Shadowbane, which we posted last week! And now for the thrilling conclusion... The Game Archaeologist: What was the reason behind the free-to-play switch in 2006? Did this help the game's population any? Josef Hall: Todd and I left Wolfpack shortly after it was acquired by Ubisoft, so we don't really have insight into the decision-making process behind the switch. Todd Coleman: From what I have heard, it had a very positive impact on the size of the player population -- but yeah, I have no idea what it meant to the game monetarily.
The Game Archaeologist uncovers Shadowbane: Talking with Josef Hall and Todd Coleman, part 1
After a couple of weeks of talking with players about their favorite experiences in Shadowbane, I decided it was high time to flip the discussion from those who played it to those who made it. Today we're going to kick off a two-part interview with the makers of Shadowbane, Josef Hall and Todd Coleman. It's interesting to realize that while MMOs come and go, many developers remain in the industry, moving between projects in surprising ways. In this case, both Hall and Coleman went from the brutal lands of cutthroat PvP to a colorful kids title: Wizard101. It's hard to imagine two MMOs being more different, but that goes to show you that developers, like gamers, don't always like being pigeonholed into specific roles. The duo were extremely eager to talk about Shadowbane, as you'll see from this interview. Buckle up -- you're in for a treat! The Game Archaeologist: Can you introduce yourself to us and explain how you became involved with Shadowbane? Josef Hall: I'm Josef Hall, co-founder of Wolfpack Studios, the creator of Shadowbane. Currently, I'm the Vice President of Development at KingsIsle Entertainment, creator of Wizard101. Todd Coleman: And I'm Todd Coleman, co-founder of Wolfpack. I'm currently the VP of Production and Creative for KingsIsle. Josef and I still work together; we were the two first people brought in start the dev studio for KingsIsle here in Austin. Hall: In fact, Wizard101 was our idea, which is a bit odd, given that we were also the first two people to come up with the core idea behind Shadowbane.
IGDA looking for feedback on L.A. Noire development conditions
The International Game Developers Association, a game industry non-profit organization, is responding to this past weekend's report of continuous "crunch" and dictatorial working conditions at LA Noire development studio Team Bondi by launching a full investigation. According to IGDA chair Brian Robbins, the organization will be soliciting reports, "positive or negative," from "any Team Bondi employee and/or family member." Robbins told Develop, "Reports of 12-hour a day, lengthy crunch time, if true, are absolutely unacceptable and harmful to the individuals involved, the final product, and the industry as a whole," echoing sentiments made in the past by a variety of game industry leaders. He also encouraged the aforementioned folks tied to Team Bondi to shoot an email to "qol@igda.org," before he added, "But no lolcats please ... okay, maybe a few."
THQ and Kaos defend 6 month 'crunch' for Homefront
Accusations of an exhaustive "crunch" at Homefront developer Kaos have been met head-on by parent company THQ and the studio's general manager David Votypka. Develop is covering all sides of the issue, including Votypka's acknowledgement that the studio has been crunching for the last six months, with 10 hour days. He notes, "If this seems unique or abhorrent, I would have to suggest that any assessment regarding a 10 hour work day would need to consider a much larger segment of the American workforce." The anonymous employee also wrote up their own piece for Develop expressing fears about "THQ publicly [saying] things that glorify crunch time." The source feels that management shouldn't have put the team on a schedule that created this extended, "seven day a week crunch mode." "Crunch," loosely defined as the overtime-intensive period before a game ships, is an industry standard. The issue certainly gets sensitive whenever brought up, and it always seems like the specter of EA Spouse is watching the conversation.
GDC 2010: Hands-on with Superbrothers' Sword and Sorcery
"Superbrothers" is the alias of Craig Adams, a Toronto-based artist who specializes in pixel-based artwork and cinema. He's a big fan of musician Jim Guthrie, and after the two met a while ago (and discovered they were actually fans of each other), he was inspired to create a few music videos of the songs that he heard. Then, a little while back, Adams ran into a few guys from Capy, a game developer (they've made some great puzzle titles like Clash of Heroes for the DS and Critter Crunch for PSN) also from Toronto, and he decided to team up with them to make his first game, and release it on the iPhone. I got to play the game for the first time at GDC, and what I found was an interesting mix of art, music, and gameplay that shows just how amazing a platform like the iPhone can be, both for independent developers and for artists who just want to express themselves (or music they like) in an interactive format. Read on to find out what the game is like, and how it uses the iPhone's assets and Superbrothers' creativity to create a singular experience.
Industry pipes up on lack of overtime pay from crunch time
Just over a month ago, Joystiq talked to Epic Games' Mike Capps about crunch times in game development cycles and how many hours his employees are expected to work throughout the development of a game. Interestingly, Develop put the question of crunch time (among other things) to "over 350 industry professionals" via a poll and found that nearly 98 percent of respondents received no overtime pay for crunch work.When we spoke with Capps, he pointed out that, for his company, crunch isn't a matter of force but that employees understand its necessity. "Our guys vote on how they want to crunch and last time they chose having weekends off ... I had one or two that were, wow that went too long, we had a rough time, we made some mistakes in planning but that's not to say that crunching is the wrong thing to do," Capps told us. He also noted that while crunch can hurt, employees (at least at Epic) are able to take a few weeks off between projects after a crunch so as to recharge, saying, "If you scoop someone off the front lines of Afghanistan and fly them to Iraq and you put them back out and you keep doing it, performance is going to suffer." It seems to us that, like most things in life, generalizing -- for instance, about the gaming industry as a whole -- doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 98 percent of those polled may not receive overtime for crunching on a project, but they may very well receive large bonuses after the product ships, or a long vacation, or a variety of other incentives. One thing's for sure: 100 percent of Joystiq writers make no overtime pay. [Image credit]
California law may exempt game programmers from receiving overtime pay [update]
Do you work in California? Do you program games? Do you make over $75K a year? Well, it may be time to seek employment in another state, friend. As of today, California Assembly Bill 10 has gone into effect and means the future of game development in California for some may be marred by brutal crunch times with no compensation for overtime hours.Amending the existing overtime laws and clarifying exemptions barring certain employees from receiving overtime under various conditions, AB 10 seeks to lower the number of lawsuits taking place in the state under previous guidelines. Joystiq's Law of the Game author Mark Methenitis explained the downside of the amendment to us this afternoon, saying, "Practically speaking, that means if you're a dev with a salary of $75K, you can't claim overtime during crunch, which means the developer is more likely to use crunch cycles."Game developers looking to leave the state may want to inquire with 2K Boston Irrational Boston -- we hear the company's hiring![Update: Please pardon the confusion, dear readers. To clarify: California Assembly Bill 10, did, in fact, go into effect during October 2008. We have not -- as some emails have suggested -- become trapped in a time warp, perpetually repeating the day every store in town was inexplicably out of napkins and dill pickles.][Via superannuation]
Mythos gets Crunched, levels 1-10
Just in case you missed it earlier this week, MMOCrunch attacked the first 10 levels of the Mythos beta and posted their main thoughts about the game so far -- which seem very positive.My own brief impressions: when people say it's similar to Diablo, they're really not exaggerating! Mythos is Diablo 2, except free, online-only, with better, brighter graphics, and most pretenses of story discarded. Plus no Deckard Cain. You could argue that's a major list of improvements, actually.If you want better images of how Mythos looks in-game, check the official site or the Massively Gallery from Akela Talamasca's first impressions of Mythos last month.Beta accounts are still flying out, so the wait is minimal if you sign up for one. Though, be warned if you're on an outdated operating system -- Mythos won't work on anything less recent than Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Vista.
Three stories of Mac woe
Maybe there was something about this weekend, but we received not one but three stories of busted Mac stuff in the past few days. Warning, these pictures are pretty graphic, if you consider seeing computers worth thousands of dollars in disrepair graphic.First up, we have Katie W's iPhone vs. Recliner story: She was apparently sitting in her recliner at home watching a movie, and after the movie, couldn't get the footrest to fold back in correctly. After a lot of pushing (and a few sickening crunches and grinds), she got it fixed, but then figured out why it wouldn't close: her iPhone was sitting right on the metal mechanism. And it still worked! Even more unbelievable: apparently Apple hooked her back up with another 8GB iPhone for free. Then there's Nicholas' story-- he works in an Apple store, and says they had a new iMac sitting in the sun for days. He says the glass was superheated, and you can see from the pictures that the screen's color got thrown way off. But he says after putting the iMac away and powered off for about 3 hours, it was back to normal.And finally, Shawn M sent us this forum thread, which is "what happens when you run over a MacBook Pro." Yeah, pretty gruesome. Again, apparently the flatted MBP worked just fine-- only the screen and the SuperDrive had issues. The guy was, however, able to hook it up to a monitor and keyboard and had no problems. Apple didn't treat him so well, however-- they told him it wouldn't be covered and it would cost $900 to fix.Pictures of all the carnage in the gallery below. Take care of your Macs, or this too could happen to you!%Gallery-6149%
Roxio to announce Crunch, a new video conversion app
Looks like VisualHub and iSquint are going to have some competition on their hands, as Roxio on Monday will announce Crunch, their own entry into the software video conversion market. With computer-based video leaving the nest for devices like the Apple TV, the iPod and soon the iPhone, tools that can easily convert video from a plethora of sources and formats are becoming ever the more useful. Roxio looks to make a decent splash in the market with Crunch, as it features their typical UI (which, personally, I detest) and a nice array of features, including batch encoding of multiple files, conversion of DVDs created with Toast, iMovie, and other video editing apps (in other words: it won't rip and encode commercial DVDs), support for a very wide array of video formats including the elusive MPEG-1, presets for specific devices and one killer and rare feature you don't see in many (if any) other apps: encoding from VIDEO_TS files that are ripped straight from a DVD.Still, all this comes at a price: Crunch will cost $50, whereas similar solutions that don't do DVD or VIDEO_TS conversion, like VisualHub, can be had for half that. Still, we'll have to reserve a final judgment until we can get our hands on a copy. Until then, check out our gallery of Crunch screenshots to get a better perspective on whether you should try out a demo.[Correction: VisualHub does convert VIDEO_TS folders as of version 1.1; our apologies.]%Gallery-2967%
