There are repeated reports that too many overtime hours are worked in game studios. However, such “Crunch Time” is supposed to be avoided at least in World of Warcraft. That is at least the goal of chief developer John Hight.
This is Blizzard’s goal: In an interview with Eurogamer, the lead developer of World of Warcraft, John Hight spoke about the working conditions at Blizzard. It included, among other things, the pressure on the developers:
Our policy is generally that we want to be a “No-Crunch-Team”. We haven’t fully achieved that yet, but it is already significantly better than it was 5 or even 10 years ago. I believe only very small parts of the team need to work overtime.
Nevertheless, there are some employees who work longer on their own initiative. Especially when larger patches or expansions are on the horizon, Hight sometimes has to walk around and urge people to go home. The work will still be there the next day.
How has Blizzard improved? One of the main reasons why developers now have to work less overtime is the duration that WoW has already existed. The game is soon celebrating its 15th birthday with a particularly limited collector’s edition.
Accordingly, many developers have been working on WoW or in the game industry for a long time. Hight himself has been in the industry for 31 years. They simply have a sense of what is currently important:
We have a pretty good nose for what is important from a staffing perspective.
This is how the developers work: Currently, developers release a new expansion every two years, which is roughly equivalent to a new game. In addition, there are three major content patches for each expansion.
In doing so, they pay little attention to how other games like Fortnite grow and work. Updates should come approximately every 11 weeks, and that is the only rough target.
Hight also advocates that content during a larger patch, like in the upcoming Patch 8.2, should come “over time.” It would be better if new content arrives when one is ready for it, instead of feeling “rushed.”
Why are fewer overtime hours important? Hight mentions a very pragmatic reason for why fewer overtime hours are important: After eight to ten hours of work, one simply is no longer productive enough.
Overtime, as it is presumably also stated for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, is therefore not particularly beneficial for the development of a game, according to Hight. Those who overdo it can even work themselves to death.
A similar policy is also followed by the head of Path of Exile:
