Dave Prout wrote an article on the subject of crunch. He approaches the issue from a different angle, examining the causes and effects of compulsory overtime rather than dwelling overmuch on the quality of life issues. Early on, he makes an excellent point about the perception of importance:

While espousers of crunch often equate it with creative passion — a necessary duty, a sacrifice shouldered in the realization of a nascent gaming opus — I grow increasingly skeptical. Any project, enshrined in the pregnancy of its own importance, is able to distort the realities of its true value to the world, skew the definition of success for team members, and inflate the supposed creative caliber of team leadership. Not all games are game-changers.

I think this is such a critical point because I have seen so many cases where a project develops this aura of misleading significance, this notion that slipping the release date will result in disaster and grievous consequence. Yeah. Right.

The release date is generally only of such dramatic importance to investors and major stakeholders, and as Prout says, reliance on crunch is actually a disservice to them as well: “Common practice or not, one cannot make good faith assurances to an investor regarding budget and date targets, if said assurances are dependent upon significant, but unknown, quantities of free labor.”

The full article, “A Closer Look At Crunch”, was published today on GamaSutra. It’s an excellent read, especially since it explores various ways to avoid the need to crunch by avoiding what Prout believes to be the fundamental root cause of the issue: premature production. While I’m not sure that I would agree that this is the cause, it can certainly be a contributing factor and the preventative techniques Prout outlines do have some merit regardless of their ability to eliminate crunch from the development cycle.