[MUD-Dev] Crunch time

[Brian 'Psychochild' Green]

Mark Terrano (XBOX) wrote:

> Let me take a second to give Crunch Time a little bit of credit
> where it is due.  (I come not to bury crunch time, but to praise
> him! It's a long post, I started with a couple comments but ended
> up with a soapbox)

A very insightful post.  AoE2 is a classic game in my book, my GF
and I still fire up the game and play it on occasion.  This is
definitely one game that wasn't ruined by "crunch".

I think Mark mentioned the biggest thing people are overlooking when
discussing game vs. application development: the elusive nature of
"fun".  If you want me to make you a calculator to add, subtract,
multiply, and divide numbers, I can do it and perform a suite of
tests to make sure it works right.  If you want me to create a
version of Pong with added laser guns, it's going to take a LOT
longer to do because I have to decide how to make the game fun.  I
can't just write a testing harness and come back in the morning to
see if the game is fun enough or not.

What's the difference between good crunch and bad crunch?  I think
it depends on the motivation for crunch, as Mark mentioned.  I work
an average of 16 hours per day on Meridian 59 currently, and I love
it.  I do a lot of work, and often work into the early morning on a
regular basis.  Do I have to fix silly bugs?  Sure, I'm hardly a
perfect programmer, designer, or writer.  But, because I love the
game and want it to grow and succeed I put in long hours without
second thought.  Mark says he felt the same way working on Age of
Empires.

On the other hand, bad crunch time happens when you're expected to
work long hours without the requisite passion behind it.  I think
Mark Hughes mentioned his experiences working at a company that
posted hours worked on the corkboard so that people were pressured
into working long crunch periods.  I had a similar experience at
3DO; near the end of a game (which was originally scheduled to take
6 months but was 2 months overdue by that time), I wanted to take my
birthday off to spend the day with my GF.  Even though I had
completed most of my assigned work, my immediate boss told me that I
couldn't do that because everyone else was still crunching.  So, I
had to come in on Sunday and websurf... I mean, appear busy all day
in order to get my birthday off!  This expectation of crunch time
harmed the game in obvious ways, and the management didn't help
things at all.

I think a good game needs some crunch time to get it done in a
reasonable amount of time, but managers and planners can't simply
expect people to crunch for a game in order to get it out in time.
Doesn't make scheduling any easier, I'll grant, but that's my
observation.

--
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...."  -"Defender", Manowar
          Brian Green, brian at psychochild.org  aka  Psychochild
         |\      _,,,---,,_      *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
   ZZzz  /,`.-'`'    -.  ;-;;,_               Meridian 59
        |,4-  ) )-,_..;\ (  `'-'        http://www.meridian59.com/
       '---''(_/--'  `-'\_)            An online RPG with character
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