‘Weekends became something other people did’: Understanding and intervening in the habitus of video game crunch

Abstract

‘Crunch’ – a period of unpaid overtime meant to speed up lagging projects – is a common labor practice in the video game industry and persists despite many costs to developers. To understand why, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of Game Developer magazine (2000–2010) to explore how industry members perceive and discuss gamework (1) in a publication for developers, by developers and (2) during the first decade in which serious conversations about labor emerge in the games industry. Our analysis found that many gameworkers treat crunch as ‘inevitable’ due to three specific themes: games as an unmanageable creative industry, an anti-corporate ethos, and a stereotypical developer identity based on passion and perfectionism. These constructions – combined with the industry’s project-based nature and cultures of passion and secrecy – build crunch into the habitus of gamework, helping reproduce exploitative labor practices. However, habitus can and does change over time, providing interested employees, companies, and labor organizers a means to intercede in existing work practices. We suggest a multipronged intervention that could build a healthier, more sustainable habitus of gamework.

Expectations and realities: Examining adolescent students’ game jam experiences

“…Crunch culture refers to a much-criticized labor practice of working unpaid for overtime, to speed up projects (see e.g. Peticca-Harris et al, 2015;Cote & Harris, 2020), and while the problem has been identified, it seems to persist (Legault & Weststar, 2017). Crunch culture is especially discriminating against women (Consalvo, 2008) or others with caring responsibilities (Legault & Weststar, 2017).…”

From hobbyist to professional : the identities of esports and game development professionals in Singapore

“…Working in esports provides an avenue for gamers to continue their leisure gaming practices and might be thought of as a form of "serious leisure", becoming an "improvement over work" that allows for selffulfillment (Stebbins 1982). Working in the game development provides similar opportunities, since the promise of enjoyable work draws individuals who have played games for a long time and enjoy the prospect of developing games as a career (Cote and Harris 2020). The "work as play" ethos within the game development industry is especially attractive as it seems to offer workers flexibility, autonomy, and of course, the opportunity to play games as part of their work (de Peuter and Dyer-Witheford 2005).…”

“…The game industry has achieved some notoriety in the press, given the work conditions that employees are subject to. Game developers experience crunch time (Consalvo 2008), which refers to a "period of extended working hours to speed up lagging projects"; it is frequently extensive and unpaid though it is a practice that is endemic to the game development industry (Cote and Harris 2020). On the one hand, passion supported game designers in making meaningful products.…”

“…I was there all Saturday; I was there Sunday afternoon until 7 or 8 at night. Cote and Harris (2020) argue that this makes for a "soft-coercive system" that is further exacerbated by passionate individuals themselves; since many in the game development industry love being able to develop games as a career, their passions appear to trap them in "unhealthy relationships with work." Within such a context, passion can result in "complete and uncritical commitment to an employer" (Kerr and Kelleher 2015), at the expense of an individual's wellbeing.…”

“…By mobilizing passion, employers benefit from employees who serve to "exploit themselves" by virtue of their affective attachments to their work. There is a noticeable difference in how Chester describes crunch as an issue that game development communities are confronting and the way students raise the issue of crunch -for them, crunch seems to have become a taken-for-granted feature of the game development landscape (Cote and Harris 2020). The problematizing of passion and learning how to manage it is something game development professionals learn through socialization; the divergence between instructor and student attitudes suggest that the internalization process is incomplete and given that most students at LTI are neophytes to the industry, it is unsurprising that they have only adopted some attitudes around game design work but not others.…”