Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

by Jason Schreier

The other option was to crunch. The Dragon Age team had gone through various periods of extended overtime during Inquisition’s development, but this would be the worst yet. It would mean months of never-ending late nights and weekends in the office. It would lead to, as Shane Hawco, put it, “a lot of lost family time.” “I would love to have no crunch ever,” said Aaryn Flynn. “I think it remains to be seen whether crunching actually works. Obviously a ton of literature says it doesn’t. [But] I think everybody finds a time in their development careers where you’re going, ‘I don’t see what options we have.’”

Game development is, as BioWare’s Matt Goldman describes it, like being on the “knife’s edge of chaos,” where the sheer number of moving parts makes it impossible for anyone to find predictability.

“Making a game . . . it attracts a certain type of workaholic personality,” said Obsidian’s audio director, Justin Bell. “It just requires a certain kind of person who’s willing to put in more time. . . . Crunch sucks. It fucks your life up. You emerge from crunch and—I’ve got kids. I’ll see my kids, and I’ll look at them, and I’ll [think], ‘Wow, six months have passed, and you are a different person now. And I wasn’t there.’”