Comment by pandaman
8 years ago
People are different. I for one cannot imagine somebody enjoying running a supermarathon. I cannot imagine enjoying running any distance, tbqh. Yet, I see people running on the streets and read about people doing crazy running events and training for marathons etc. Do they do this to advance their career in running? I have no idea. Seeing the vast majority of them not getting paid anything and only spending money on running equipment I'd say they are pretty stupid if they do.
On the other hand, I know that some people enjoy making games. I am one of them. I had stayed up 30+ hours few times chasing bugs not because somebody forced me but because it's more fun than sit at home and watch TV (or run, or make ships in a bottle or whatever people with different hobbies do in their free time). You don't believe it's possible to enjoy your job? If it's true, it's pretty sad actually.
Of course it's possible to enjoy your job. I never said otherwise. If people weren't passionate about making games they'd never put up with crunch time. And certainly I've enjoyed caffeine-fueled multi-day hacking sessions.
I have never heard of anyone who claims to enjoy extended crunch time. There might be an outlier somewhere, but I doubt even that exists. At best there's a shared sense of exhausted accomplishment when you're finally done. (Unless you get laid off as soon as the game ships.)
Crunch is not why people make games. Crunch is the price you have to pay to keep making games. Or at least that's what the people who make the schedule say.
It seems to me you are implying that somebody put extended crunch time on Andy Gavin and he had to put up wit it? Please look up who is he.
Not really the point. Read the section OP quoted, "YOU JUST DIDN'T LEAVE". Do any of those people sound like crunch was fun to them? They liked working on the game, and some of them reminisce about the crunch time like old soldiers telling war stories, but I don't see any positive adjectives in there. About the nicest thing anybody said was "when you're young you don't feel it that much," which is pretty faint praise.
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