DEALING WITH CRUNCH TIME!

So the holiday season is upon us and everything is winding down, business is slowing, and it's time to start preparing for the holiday festivities, right?

Well, that might not be the case if you're a game developer working on getting your game out the door, whether it's for an early-2006 release or even to make next year's holiday lineup. We all know that working those long hours approaching a deadline or milestone -- AKA “crunch” -- seems to be an accepted part of a game developer's career. But can these long hours be avoided? If not, what methods do leaders use to cope with the stresses caused by crunch?

The following tips and insights from discussions with two industry veterans will, hopefully, assist you through this time and bring you back to the studio in 2006 (without an utter hatred for all that is gamer).

We had the chance to speak with industry veterans Daron Stinnett and Graeme Bayless about crunch time and stress in the game development studio. Stinnett's career in games spans 25 years with 11 of those at LucasArts, and he currently serves as executive producer at Perpetual Entertainment. Bayless, a 16-year industry veteran, enjoyed a six-year stint at Electronic Arts Tiburon before assuming his current role as D Director of Production position at Crystal Dynamics.

It was enlightening to get high-level perspectives on what has become an accepted part of the game developer's life -- “crunch.” This is the industry term used to define the excessive hours worked as a project deadline or milestone approaches. So what are the factors that lead to crunch and the stresses that result?

Stinnett and Bayless both agree that crunch should not be considered an accepted part of a developer's professional lifestyle. In fact, this acceptance may very well be one of the primary contributors to crunch in that it tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Additionally, poor planning in the creation of overly aggressive and unrealistic development schedules can further the burden. Bayless uses the term “self-delusion” to describe the unrealistic expectations that some people put on themselves and their teams. This self-delusion creates a “best-case-scenario” mentality that rarely, if ever, comes to fruition. Regarding the planning phase, Bayless simply states, “Don't lie to yourself and be realistic” when it comes to setting goals and deadlines for you and your team.

So can developers avoid crunch altogether or can we only hope to minimize it? Bayless and Stinnett are both optimistic and believe that while crunch might not be avoidable, it can definitely be minimized. “You have to be honest with yourself and your team's capabilities and not underestimate the importance of communication within the team.” Bayless goes on to say that getting the members of the team involved early on in the planning phase is highly beneficial. Realistic expectations will be set, stress levels will decrease, motivation and morale will rise, and people assume more accountability for their responsibilities because they were part of the planning process.

Stinnett fosters the mentality of “creating a self-motivated team that plans on short but frequent ‘healthy' crunches.” By “healthy” crunch, he refers to spreading out the workload over the course of the entire development cycle into a more manageable series of “mini” crunches as opposed to one large one at the end of a project milestone or deadline. Managed properly, developers can hopefully avoid the self-fulfilling prophecy of an intense crunch at the end of a project.

In the event severe crunch periods are unavoidable, then what can we do to lessen the stress induced by crunch time hours? Both Bayless and Stinnett agree that severe crunch time leads to a point of diminishing returns -- a productivity pitfall whereby the quality of a developer's work is compromised by physical and mental fatigue.

The following suggestions were derived from Bayless and Stinnett as well as a few online sources (clickhere and here) about dealing with stress that are specific and non-specific to the studio workplace:

•  Improve time management by establishing an efficient process/schedule.

•  Be honest with your team . This starts at the planning stage and must continue through the end of the project. It's always better to under-promise and over-deliver.

•  Work with your team members to realize where the point of diminishing returns is.

•  Schedule and require participation in events and activities outside the workplace.

•  Don't arrive at work less than 12 hours prior to when you departed (for example, if you worked until 10 PM the night before, don't come to work until 10 AM the following day).

•  Take at least one day a week off (coupled with the last rule, 12 hours, 6 days a week -- or 72 hours per week -- is all any team member should be working).

•  Make sure your employees are dedicating enough time to their personal lives. A developer's friends, family, and significant other can be great allies or devastating enemies depending on their perception of the studio environment and work culture.

•  Step outdoors for a short break; fresh air is rejuvenating.

•  Drink plenty of water and eat small nutritious snacks.

•  Tackle excess noise and distractions.

•  Adhere to ergonomic principles.

Before you start feeling sorry for yourself, keep in mind that developers in the games industry are not unlike employees in other industries that are bound by firm deadlines and milestones. All-nighters and over-caffeinated states of existence are quite prevalent across all media in the publishing world, whether it is video games, feature films, broadcast TV, or print. Only after you're able to embrace the fact that being a game developer and a 9-to-5 job aren't necessarily synonymous, can you begin to effectively address the crunch issue.

With solid communication, good team work, and proactive and collaborative planning it seems clear from the research and interviews we've done that it is indeed possible for game developers to actually have time to play the games they work so hard to create.