Crunch culture is an extremely controversial topic in the video game industry. Many video game companies are in a “crisis” phase in the months leading up to the release of a game, often at the expense of the health and mental well-being of their employees. Naughty Dog, the studio behind the upcoming The Last of Us 2, is no stranger to crunch culture, and a new report reveals how it worked for the new game.
The report comes from Kotakus Jason Schreierwho has published extensive reports on the crisis in the video game industry in the past. Schreiers Report tells how Naughty dog-Employees who The Last of Us 2 were working on a Friday evening a month after 9 p.m. when a metal pipe fell off the ceiling and almost crushed it. Apparently construction workers were working in the building and didn’t know there was anyone else since it was so late.
The report also describes how the delay from The Last of Us 2 did not alleviate the crisis. It actually only extended the time that Naughty dog-Employees had to work in a difficult time. In fact, a developer at Sony Studio said employees had stressed that even with the additional development time, the pace of game development would not slow down. Even so, some employees were still relieved that The Last of Us 2 delayed because they had time to further improve and polish the game before launch.
The Last of Us Part 2 – (C) Naughty Dog
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The perfectionism of Naughty dog we will in The Last of Us 2 “feel”
One reason that the crunch culture of Naughty dogAccording to reports, the studio’s perfectionism is so intense. Their video games are often among the most detailed and technologically impressive games on the market and are constantly pushing boundaries in terms of graphics and gameplay. However, achieving this level of quality is costly, as an employee told the Kotaku editor.
In an interview, a nameless member of the studio said: “This game is really good, but it involves enormous costs for people. The same goes for other critically acclaimed, long-running games, such as Red Dead Redemption 2. This game was almost universally recognized, but was partially achieved through the Red Dead Redemption 2 crunch phase. ”
The crunch time for video game development seems to be accepted as a necessary evil by many in the industry, but many others have started to speak out against it. There have been efforts by the video game industry to band together for employees to avoid things like crises, and it is possible that this will happen in the coming years. Of course, it will be interesting to see how this affects game development and the industry in general.
The Last of Us 2 will be exclusively for the PlayStation 4 released.
Source: Kotaku
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