Debunking Crunch Culture: Is Overworking Really Necessary?

the western mindset lately, right? Especially in the United States have been crunching is bad. Never crunch. Don't overstay at your workplace, right? Uh and even myself over the years have been like crunch culture is terrible. Don't do it. Right? And then uh COVID happened and then I felt like we overly crunch uh not crunch. It's like everybody started complaining about it's like I got I got to watch my kid. Who's going to watch my kid if I work? I was like what are you talking about? What were you doing before? you know, so it's like people were making excuses not to work and if anything working at a minimum, you know, uh during the day and and projects I think consequently I mean not even I think I know at this point we've seen a lot of projects got delayed got pushed difficulty on top of of many other difficulty right I'm not saying uh with with many people over on the pod

you know we we've learned right Um there's many factors that might delay the game. You know, not everyone's just lazy about it, but just complications and the changing variables of of people working from home, uh the distractions and just health, you know, the the health factor with COVID and everything, it just created a perfect storm of problems to not finish the game. All right, just saying that. Just sideline that right now. But like in in terms of like crunch mentality, it's still the same. I think a lot of people even now I think now is even worse because there's so many defeated developers, right? Where like ah you don't you get this much out of me from now on, right? Because there's this like I don't want to work that much for you, right? which I think uh is countering what this industry is about like as you guys have proven and seen right with your passion

project your project uh grail right here is that doing extra hours get things done which is I think the main thing that people do forget right uh so I don't know if if Europe is uh different I know eastern companies have always they work to the die. Let's they never change, right? Like the Chinese companies, Korean companies, Japanese companies, they like it's all about work. Uh so they they never changed. But I know like in at least North America, it's been very difficult to kind of talk to people about crunching anymore, right? Is is Europe kind of the same or different? What do you guys have to say about that? Multi
um
or Roy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Go ahead, Roy. This time.
Okay. Okay. Uh so very very interesting topic to be honest. I'm sorry for my camera that is

moving left and right. By the way, but um it's very interesting topic. I live in Spain. In Spain, we have a big sense of um let's say um finishing at the time, right? Finishing at the right time. And at the same time we have this kind of thing that we like things well done which means whenever is needed we are going to spend the extra the extra mile the extra hour the extra whatever is needed because we want things finished and well done right at least I would say that not every person in my country is like that like culture is not only countered by personality but there is a tendency for that right um that that being said um we will and most of us we will consider a failure of management the fact that we need to constantly crud right and that will in in many cases diminish the trust of our leadership very easily right uh at least

in this side of Europe which which I am almost the the most western possible except for Portugal and uh um it's it's like we have a good balance of life and work and this is what we we're looking for right like we we like to finish at five, go have a coffee, go have a beer with friends, you know, and to a certain degree have already today the life that some people is dreaming of when they retire, right? And and and this is like something that is very ingrained in our values. Does that means that we do less? Well, we do what we need to do, right? And and once again, whenever we need to bend the spine, we bend the spine, right? If that makes sense. Um what I can tell you is that the the crunch culture is still real. Like a lot of people I mean I will say that in every studio that I worked I collaborated at being um giving service to their goal is to remove crunch because of the obvious

consequences that that has to the workforce to the people working there right at the end of the day you need people who is engaged people who's happy to be able to deliver great games. And one of the worst things that could happen is having people that well wants to leave or wants to abandon the industry. You know that is lost knowledge that is actually having to reinvent the wheel. That is actually losing people who owns pipelines that are basically you know the you know sustaining your company in some cases