standard way of working. You know, say you make a film. You make the film, it comes out and you sell it. Games can run three or four years over their original schedule, and everyone’s like ‘yeah, that’s pretty standard.’ Everyone nods along. How on earth is that allowed to happen in this day and age? “Yes, video games are inherently more complex, there
are a lot more moving parts. But the only way that you’re going to get to a position where we can make games in the way that we’ve made OlliOlli World, where we were confident that we’d be able to ship on a certain date, is by challenging all of those assumptions around how you make them in the first place. By challenging that philosophical part of this, which is how you align passion with a nine to five work/life balance.
“It would be nice to know that in 20 years time, there’s a
Below: Another welcome introduction to the series is OlliOlli World’s eccentric cast of characters
more formalised way of making games that allows people to not kill themselves, and that it’s not seen as a badge of honour. Like, I saw it as a badge of honour! I thought we were doing the right thing. I remember eating pizza late at night, being really excited about this way of working. It seems absolutely insane to me at the moment, but I know that there’ll be people out there who are doing it and thinking, ‘this is how it’s meant to be done.’ “I’d like to say to them, having been them a decade ago: if you think that that’s how you have to make games, then please challenge that assumption. Because the people
“Even once the passion runs dry, there seems to be an almost fatalistic acceptance of burnout in creative industries. Video games are hard to make – and therefore must require some level of suffering in order to exist.”
around you, who love you, might not hang around as a result of you pursuing this passion. Your mental health might not come around.”
A BETTER WAY While protecting the mental health of your team is, of course, the most important reason to refuse to crunch, there’s still more to it. It seems ludicrous to need to say this, but given that this is the games industry I will anyway:
60 | MCV/DEVELOP April 2022
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